Annie Hoeg and Thea Mae Hesler in You Must Change Your Life | Photo by Drew Berry
Okay. I’d like to say I tried with this one, but did I? Could I? Would it matter if I had? Would I even know? And what does it mean to try to connect to a work of art? Listening more intently? Watching more diligently? Blocking out my own thoughts? Letting my mind fully wander? Should I have done more research into the work of Richard Foreman?
I’m onboard for theatre artists to shake up convention. I can appreciate Dada, I guess, but it’s not my jam. The cut-up method (chopping text up and rearranging it) makes sense to me as a process, not an end in itself. The craft for me is in the rearrangement having some discernible purpose. I haven’t seen Foreman’s work, but reading a little about him gives me some clues as to how creator-director Ilana Khanin, with You Must Change Your Life, has crafted something in his spirit. At the end of the day, that purpose and meaning can be my own projection, I can dig that, but I was at a loss here.
I understand the appeal of this level of self-conscious avant-gardeness, and I especially appreciate it inhabiting a traditional proscenium venue, with all the theatrical expectations we have of such a space. Those expectations can be so perfectly subverted by simply denying us the established trappings. We’re confronted here with the bare, exposed brick of the stage. Work lamps, with their straggly cables, provide harsh illumination for the performers. It’s all quite deliberately austere and alienating.
And I can vibe with that aesthetic. I love deconstructing the theatrical experience and its unspoken contract between artist and audience. My issue here isn’t with the playful toying with artifice and the lack thereof—it’s the text. I’m an aficionado of elliptical language. I’m willing and enthusiastic to put the work in, but I need at least a little traction. I just couldn’t follow this. And, more crucially, wasn’t compelled to.
I was pretty consistently bored, in fact. There is a line that keeps cropping up: “This isn’t interesting.” And that felt apt to me. For most of runtime, Annie Hoeg and Thea Mae Hesler recite text that relies heavily on non-sequiturs. It feels like a natural conversation, I suppose, but not one I could track. And I tuned out.
I perked up here and there, whenever something changed and the monotony was broken. It was weirdly invigorating, in this particular context, to have new performers suddenly appear. Could I find a logic in how and when Golshan Alaei, Katie Crompton, Mika Deneige and Chris Holtkamp pop onto the stage? No. But it was notable here as a thing happening.
It was also significantly exhilarating to have the door of the theatre opened out onto the street! And to have people leave! Was I invested in their plight or purpose? Nope. But it was a thing happening. So too was the appearance of a very contrived bit of set and costuming scrambled together in a corner of the stage that seemed almost… sarcastic? As if the subtext was: “This is what you’re waiting for, right? Crafted Theatre!“
Now, all that said, the finale did tie this together a bit for me. Some text from the top of the show is repeated, but this time with some cozy and familiar theatre-ness creeping in. We even get some colour in the light! How lovely! Is that a spoiler? It’s hard to determine what might be considered a spoiler in this assertively nonrepresentational (hyper representational?) gestalt.
I’ll leave you with this: I had more fun writing about it than I did experiencing it. If any of this sounds intriguing to you, I’d recommend seeing it with somebody as the resulting discussion, I imagine, is where this might best satisfy.
You Must Change Your Life
June 11 to 21, 2026
Alumnae Theatre Mainstage
(70 Berkeley Street)
60 minutes
Annie Hoeg in You Must Change Your Life | Photo by Drew Berry