Can you hear me now?

P E R F OR MA NC E

Can you hear me now?

Play presents some interesting ideas about life, death and unlimited minutes

By Rick Romancito C ell phones are everywhere and we’ve come to depend on them like some kind of magical append­age that allows us instant commu­nication with anyone, anywhere.

Just forget yours at home one day and see how lost you feel without it.

Poking a little fun at this social phenomena while also twisting the audience’s heads around quirky ideas involving life and death are part of the reasons to check out the Working Class The­atre production of “Dead Man’s Cell Phone.”

The play, set to open Friday (March 12), 8 p.m., Backstage at the Taos Community Auditorium, 145 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, is about what hap­pens to a woman named Jean (Susan Nuss) after she answers an annoying cell phone that is ring­ing on the table of a café — in front of a man who appears to be dead.

It’s a surreal world she steps into from that point, led by playwright Sarah Ruhl’s unusual yet perceptive point of view.

The “Backstage at the TCA” moniker is used here because first-time director and TCA manager Dancer Dearing said she preferred a smaller, more intimate venue instead of feeling like she needed to fill the whole auditorium. The format works to advantage because with seating literally on-stage, audience members can feel more par t of the action.

The play will also be enhanced by a few techni­cal tricks involving video-projection backdrops behind the characters and music evoking a cin­ematic aesthetic. Dearing said the method “gives space to this space,” referring to the staging area.

All of this is in ser vice to the play’s underlyng themes, which Dearing sees as being “a love story.” Under the references to mythology, literature and a particular transformational experience, Dearing said it’s about “live for today, live for the humans around you, not the technology around you, and to make the most of the reality you have.”

Damon Klassen, left, appears in a scene with Susan Nuss from ‘Dead Man’s Cell Phone’

Rick Romancito