There Will Be A Test
We hope you’ve been studying
There Will Be A Test is a comedic theatrical performance, set in the contemporary US-American moment in which we are asked to question the multifaceted meanings of truth. Presented as a bewildering assemblage of genres and performance styles including dance, newscasting, theater, improvisational poetry, and more, this concept-driven piece takes a joy ride through episodes depicting various figures of authority—the schoolteacher, the news anchor, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Dad—and challenges our faith in each of them, keeping a careful eye on our conspiratorial tendencies. The doubt that pervades the show is broad and fundamental: in what ways does the body limit our knowledge of the world around us? In what ways does our knowledge of the world around us limit our sensory experience? How does scientific progress thwart itself?
There Will Be A Test premiered in Elgin, IL at the 2019 Elgin Fringe Festival.
Bonanza! This show has everything you love about perceived reality: song, dance, surveys, talk shows and headline news! . . . If it were possible to create a didactic piece of art whose agenda was the anti-agenda, it might look like this. And if the thing you remember most about a performance is the ending, then when Dad says it's bedtime, you trust him.
— Jeffery Pierce, The Elgin Review