Job: a dynamic evolving feed/feud of information and conspiracy theories
30 Apr 2025 - Photos by Elana Emer

Job begins with stark blasts of light reveal rapid-fire vignettes of a young woman brandishing a pistol at an older man. It is disorienting and confusing as the action and intentions change with each rendition. Then Job settles into a cat and mouse rhythm as Charlotte Dennis and  Diego Matamoros (Sankofa: The Soldier's Tale, Rosmersholm, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, Post-Democracy, Little Menace, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Royale) launch into a battle of words. Words underlined by the gun which she agrees to stow in her handbag. A handbag she clings to tightly. It is only later on that we learn what the flashes mean, but they also serve a metaphorical purpose, demonstrating one of Job's main themes. Dennis worked for a tech company and Job is vitally concerned with how the internet and social media affect how we process information. How the web inspires and feeds on notoriety and conspiracy theories. How feeding us snippets of information, true or false, in short bursts, keeps us attentive and coming back for more.

Matamoros is a psychiatrist who is to assess Dennis in order for her to return to work after a very public breakdown. The exact details are teased out, as are the cause of the breakdown, just what her job was and why it was important to her, and why she is so hostile towards Matamaros. The two circle each other, volleying ideas and attempting to pry information from each other. Back stories are teased out and a generation gap is never bridged. Matamoros is skeptical of the value of social media, Dennis is terrified that she can't live, won't exist, without it. There are many telling lines. Matamoros says that her generation has "traded psychedelics for a slow drip of dopamine from your phone. From exploring your mind, to having it harvested for advertisers," she accuses him and his generation of much worse. Neither are quite what they present as, and we never really learn just which conspiracy theories are true. That is the terror at the heart of Job, we no longer have any idea of what is reality. But we are distracted by the flashing lights and torrent of words.

Director David Ferry directs this cage match so that it is always in motion. Two combatants on a triangular stage given an ironic faux-homey styling beneath a looming metal lighting fixture by set designer Nick Blais. Dennis declines to lie on the couch despite not having slept "for days." She is barely contained, on the verge of erupting or possibly another meltdown, but when she monologues about the banal horrors of her life and the shocking horrors she has seen, the words are infused with stillness and are riveting. Matamoros is genial and the very image of an aging hippy who truly wants to help. Except there is a shrewd malevolence lurking under the sweater and bead bracelets, behind his kind eyes. He will do whatever he has to do to survive. Their attempts at mutual manipulation are as pointed and athletic as a sword fight. Playwright Max Wolf Friedlich fills the dialogue with hot button issues, zipping over some, belabouring others, and supplies several twists that are as galvanizing as the bursts of light and noise that punctuate at unexpected moments. We are in a dynamic evolving feed of information that exists just to flood us with information. And misinformation. 

The Job that Dennis is so desperate to return to, that might destroy them both, is a major twist that qualifies as a spoiler, but it is also painfully thought-provoking and devastating. And a contrast or complement to Matamoros's Job of evaluating her fitness for it. In a world where connections are only electronic or digital, a Job can be self-defining to the point of detriment and self-destruction. As we watch them struggle to communicate across a generational and digital divide, one can't help but internally debate Job's many concerns about our humanity. Pre-show, we are instructed to shut off our own ubiquitous phones as prop devices will ring and ping throughout and be integral to the plot. Post-show, all of us were hesitant to turn them back on.