After millennia of storytelling, countless traditions spread across the world, have we finally run out of stories to tell?
“The Antipodes” explores this question, offering its audience unorthodox yet refreshing answers. The Pomona College Theater Department’s production, which debuted on Oct. 8, examines the tension between creative expression and corporate demand. It asks what happens when the stories we tell become commodities.
Set in a 2016 writers’ room, the play centers around a group of creatives who are pressured by their powerful showrunner, Sandy, to produce an original television pitch. “The Antipodes” premiered Off-Broadway on April 23, 2017, at the Signature Theater in New York City. Since then, the play has garnered glowing reviews from critics and fans alike.
Written by playwright Annie Baker and directed by Scout Davis, Pomona’s production ran for an hour-and-a-half, and was filled with rich dialogue between a host of complex characters settled on one side of a long table in the middle of the stage, much like Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper.”
The set featured a kaleidoscopic range of colors, sounds and dynamic props that swirled and swayed as the plot spiraled along. During the day, the stage was bright and clear. At night, it became shrouded in ultraviolet light that emanated a dark, ambient haze.
Hanging noticeably above the center of the set, a warped clock and its two hands spun around rapidly for every jump-cut in time, along with erratic flashes from the stage lights that could have been mistaken for a rave.
Ryan Chen PZ ’27, who played counselor Mitch Mahoney in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” last year, offered positive reviews of the production, particularly noting the set.
“I thought [the production] was great,” Chen said. “The set was gorgeous. I really enjoyed what they did with the limited space.”
As the writers reveal increasingly scandalous details about sex, dreams, tragedies, aspirations and family drama, Sandy forces them to stay over the weekend to finish the pitch while a heavy storm engulfs their unspecified location.
By the end of the play, the writers, led by Adam, played by Kevin Angel PO ’27, a pensive yet outspoken writer who struggles with guilt and regret, develop an original, albeit absurd pitch. Yet Sandy, portrayed by Nina Gitlitz PO ’30, folds to corporate pressure and decides to pull the plug on the entire project, ending their writing careers.
Through this conflict, “The Antipodes” questions whether originality can survive in a system that exploits personal stories while prioritizing market value. The writers are expected to turn their experiences into something entertaining and profitable, yet they have little control over what happens to their work.
Attendee Weitao Ke CM ’29 expressed his appreciation for the play’s philosophical themes about the fraught nature of storytelling.
“We live for stories, we constantly seek stories, and I feel this show is a response to human nature,” Ke said. “That’s something that will last with me.”
“We live for stories, we constantly seek stories, and I feel this show is a response to human nature,” Ke said. “That’s something that will last with me.”
The production was directed by Davis, a critically acclaimed queer and nonbinary writer, director and actor known for their “live communal performance works,” intimate representations of queer characters and sharp social criticisms.
“When I started to read [the play], I really fell in love with the text,” Davis said. “Annie Baker is a playwright that I’ve wanted to work with and on their pieces for quite some time, and it just aligned beautifully.”
They described mediating and bringing to life the text as a central challenge of the production.
“It’s pretty challenging in terms of the density of text, and getting to create a behavioral life and organic nature for these characters to operate from within the parameters of what the playwright gives us,” they said.
Jude Brooks PZ ’30 portrayed Dave, a forceful, jockish writer with hard-nosed ambition who finds creative inspiration in the tragedies that have shaped his life, such as the untimely deaths of his grandmother and father. Considering the psychological complexity of the role, Brooks spoke about what he has learned from playing Dave.
“Dave is an embodiment of toxic masculinity,” Brooks said. “My time playing him has helped me map out what a lot of men do wrong in the workplace and society.”
Angel, a returning actor who played Titania in last year’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” spoke about what he hopes audiences take away from the performance in light of each character’s unique journey.
“I hope that they see this story as a kind of reality that we live in,” Angel said. “‘The Antipodes,’ or the version that we’ve made, reflects different lived experiences, and we’ve all done the work for ourselves to build who we are, who the characters are, and I hope that showed.”
In the spirit of the play’s main theme, Angel firmly believes that every person has a story, and there are always more stories left to be told.
“Nobody has the knowledge and ideas that you have, and they are important,” he said. “I hope people take from this that there are stories left to tell.”
“The Antipodes” is a reminder to believe in the power of your story, and use it to carve a space in the rooms you seek to enter, even if the doors are shut.
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