On Friday, March 1st, Quark Theatre will stage Adam Rapp’s Tony-nominated The Sound Inside, directed by Tony Isbell.
The play, starring Kim Justis and Taylor Roberts, revolves around two characters, an isolated creative writing professor and her enigmatic student. “The play is about how the two of them get entwined in each other’s lives,” says Isbell. “They develop a relationship, not a romantic relationship, and — this is the part I can’t give away — Bella [the professor] makes a request of the young man, and we don’t know if he’ll be able to do it or not. And at the same time the young man is telling her the story of the novel he’s writing, and the audience is not sure whether what he’s telling is just a novel he’s writing, or if this actually happened to him. And there is some mystery about it and a little bit of suspense about it.”
Isbell continues, “It’s the kind of play that I love. It has some real emotion in it, but it also has some comedy. In fact, it has one of the funniest monologues I’ve ever heard in a play. Some of it is amusing. Some of it is, like I said, mysterious, and it’s something that people will be trying to figure out exactly if what you’re seeing is true or not. You could say that both of these characters are unreliable narrators.”
This will be the regional premiere of The Sound Inside. “We look for plays that are newer, that haven’t been done in Memphis, that are unique in some way or another,” Isbell says of Quark. “We tend to like small casts and shows that don’t require a lot in the way of set or special costumes because that’s just our aesthetic, a kind of minimalist aesthetic.”
This season, the theater company has already put on the American premiere of The Wasp to a sold-out run, and they’ll also be putting on another regional premiere with Constellations by Nick Payne in May. As of right now, Isbell says, opening night of The Sound Inside only has eight tickets left.
Tickets for the 90-minute-long show with no intermission can be purchased at quarktheatre.com. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through March 17th. A pay-what-you-can performance will be on Monday, March 11th, at 8 p.m.
The Sound Inside, TheatreSouth, First Congo Church, 1000 S. Cooper, Performances March 1-March 17, $20.