Bigger Than i

Directed by: Joshua Chase Gold

With the popularity of confessional websites, blog culture, and the advent of the technology age, Counting Squares Theatre examines the cause and effect of our increasingly stark interpersonal relationships. Counting Squares asks the question: Why can’t we deal with each other and really be ourselves out in the open. Through the use of scene work, song, dance, and multimedia we expose how our inner secrets cause our outward fears.
Everyone has a secret. Everyone. Even if it’s a pithy, possibly insignificant secret, it is still this guarded piece of forbidden information; exciting and shameful, exultant or just bizarre. Secrets and the consequent need to share this knowledge, or to receive some absolution as a validation of one's very existence- these are universally shared experiences by mankind. Perhaps this is why the idea of kept knowledge is so riveting and compelling. Speaking in the dramatic sense, there is no better fodder than this.

As technology continually expands, engulfing the very crevices of our everyday lives, people have been given a new anonymity. People, through the Internet, now have the choice to construct the facets of their identity at a whim, changing parts of their subjective reality, which may same unsatisfactory to the individual, into a more pleasant "reality." Or at least this is how they wish the world to perceive their reality. This is a mask. And the very purpose of a mask is to conceal.

Why do we keep secrets? Why is it that we feel the need to divulge our secrets? What are the ramifications of such actions? Is it to selfish ends that these feelings are borne into? Or is there more to the story?

Counting Squares Theatre would like to extend a special thank you once again to the brave real people who poured out their secrets to us on camera. Having shared this experience with them, I can honestly say that it's funny how not alone we really all are. It just seems that a lot of times no one has the courage to ask, to reach out and see if anyone might take their hand.

Please enjoy yourselves tonight. If you let it happen, you may see a little of yourself onstage.