New York artist Andrew Schneider is a revelation. His work YOUARENOWHERE, part of Melbourne Festival, is the kind of art you need to experience in the flesh to understand. To reveal what happens in the work would be to destroy the pleasure one as an audience member receives throughout the piece as the details come together and the answers to mysteries slowly dawn on you. A man darts around on stage between blackouts, making use of the plain, white floor and sticking his head in and out of a black, backlit metal frame. He rambles about quantum physics, time, philosophy, parallel universes, his imminent death, pop culture, the near future. His deepest secrets are shared. What does it mean to be present? What does it mean to be here, or there, or anywhere, or nowhere?
Despite the weighty topics about the universe and our existence in both physical and metaphysical forms, there's a consistent humour and element of surprise dappled throughout the work, and though we never respond to the man talking to us, the whole audience is immersed and irrevocably intertwined into the piece. The set — heavily incorporating audiovisual effects that mess with your senses — takes on a character of its own.
YOUARENOWHERE is a must-see piece of experiential theatre. It may leave you with more questions at its conclusion than you had at the beginning, but it also provides a strange peace of mind.
