I’m lying in bed, sorting through some emails, when an unusual one comes into my inbox. The sender is listed as “Xipe Totec” (the Aztec death god), and the subject (and only text of the email) reads “DO YOU THINK YOU’LL BE SPARED WHEN IT HAPPENS?”

The following email alleviated any worries, assuring me that an overzealous child taking an Aztec mythology unit in school had mistakenly sent a blast email to the Block Association mailing list, and that I shouldn’t worry because two-factor authentication should prevent this from ever happening again. It gave me a chuckle, but the ominous feeling stayed — I later realized this was a perfect microcosm of what was to come in Block Association Project.

This type of exchange was typical in the lead up to Block Association Project, the latest collaboration between the playwright Michael Yates Crowley and Director Michael Rau, as I was slowly drawn into the world of the Block Association. As prelude to the show, the audience was placed on the block mailing list. All the characters were there, perfectly formed and delivered to my inbox daily: the property value-obsessed realtor, Elena; the white-guilt laden student, Emma; the spacey, xenophobic, and shrill Pitowskis. All caricatures, to be sure, but all archetypes intimately familiar to anyone stuck in any sort of municipal purgatory. I had the (mis?)fortune to be prepping for a move the week of the show, and the emails were so well-crafted, I briefly forgot I had signed up for them, and mistakenly thought my new roommates had just enrolled me on our actual block mailing list.

On the evening of the event, the minute I heard the clickity-clack of heels, and saw a pantsuitted woman with a plastic smile approaching me with a business card and a clipboard to check me in, a cornered panic set in immediately. Oh no. This must be Elena. The mailings before the event had set the stage spectacularly. Characters sat among the audience, chatting with them as we waited for the “meeting” to begin, and also make conversation with us during group discussion points during the show. At points, the lines between performers and audience got blurred enough that guests began to question whether other guests were themselves plants. The first participatory action during the show turned out to be for tablemates to introduce themselves to each other (with no distinction between performer and audience), and answer “what community meant to us.”

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Following the proceedings of a block association meeting, complete with a potluck dinner to follow the meeting’s main body, Block Association Project started firmly in the realm of comedy. Imagine living in your very own episode of Parks & Rec. But as the show went on, and tensions rose between members of the community, the show took on an unmistakable nervous energy. Never getting too heavy to access, the show managed to use humor to capture its audience before confronting them with harsh and ugly political truths around the death of community in the Trump era, the ongoing refugee and immigrant crisis, and the limits of activism.

As the audience was moved towards the end of the show to partake in the potluck dinner and take a group photo while sitting on the bleachers in the room (so as to protect the gymnasium’s very expensive floor, according to Elena), we found ourselves in position to receive a final closing monologue, one that was tragicomic and harsh and beautiful all at the same time. It was a vision of both a future world created by a cruelty and apathy (the kind we’re all capable of), and of the resilience and beauty our common bonds as neighbors can create.

Bertholdt Brecht famously used comedy and song to throw his audience off balance, to force them to engage his works from a political perspective. In that rich tradition, Block Association Project succeeds wildly, bringing those ideas into the immersive space with confidence and wit. Everyone left the theater wondering about their answers to the group. What did community mean to us? What were we doing (or not) to impact our communities? Were our efforts just bandages, a slacktavist attempt to feel a sense of control in a world increasingly out of tilt? Or did they actually mean something?

Part of the Beyond the Realm drama festival of works in progress, Block Association was an absolute triumph, especially for a first staging. Still in gestational stages, the author met with us after the show, soliciting our help to fine tune it. I’m thrilled at the prospect that future stagings will reach a wider audience and allow more audiences to see the world through its off kilter, but all too familiar, prism. People can be selfish, apathetic, and cruel. Both reality and Block Association Project make that all too clear through the cast of characters we’re forced to meet.. But what it uniquely illuminates is the ability to collectively rise above that, and the responsibility we all share to do so.

Block Association Project has concluded its work-in-progress run. Read our interview with one of the creators.

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