Bare Witness

Less a play than a sequence of sketches in reverse chronological order, Bare Witness portrays impressions of photojournalism in a war zone: the daily confrontation with killing, maiming, and dying; the characters inhabiting these regions for a photograph; and its effects on them.

The central character's loss of close colleagues and her increasing focus on war photojournalism at the expense of time at home underscore war's destructive effect on perspective.

Whilst most dramatic performances attempt to create continuity between scenes, Bare Witness emphasises scene discontinuity.  Bursts of rather pointless frenetic activity reposition actors for the next (preceding) sketch, relatively natural dialogue being broken up by highly unnatural action.  The more violent stage effects seemed designed merely to upset audience digestion.  I was barely able to tolerate the first quarter of an hour.

The acting, though, carried the work well, and the lighting, sound, and almost all the props contributed perfectly.  (But could nobody have removed the chair left to obstruct for almost the entire performance the projected moving images?)

Without troubling to convey coherent motives or characters, Bare Witness conveys an impression—possibly accurate, possibly inventional—of the randomness, the disconnectedness, and the constant threat in which photojournalists in war zones live and work.  The uncomfortable staging is finally worth enduring for the acting that conveys that with reasonable conviction.

John P. Harvey

Image: [Foreground, L–R] Adam McConvell, Todd MacDonald, Eugenia Fragos, Daniela Farinacci, and Ray Chong Nee, in Bare Witness.