The Bucket List Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind

More than a schmaltzy piece of clichéd dreck with Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, and Sean Hayes, the bucket list is a giant to-do list of things we all vow to do someday, maybe, or at least when friends from out of town stop by and crash on our air mattress. Sensing our own mortality, The A.V. Club gets the jump on death and vows to check out every “you’ve never seen ____?!” in town, determining whether it was worth the wait or worth dying having not experienced it. In this inaugural outing: The Neo-Futurists’ long-running 30-plays-in-60-minutes, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, now in its 20th year.

Since 1988, The Neo-Futurists have performed Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind—its signature show that’s as high-concept as its name is a mouthful to say. Although I’ve heard about it for years, my knowledge on the show was based on word-of-mouth intel from friends: It’s weird and frantic, they determine the price by the roll of a six-sided die, the mini-plays change frequently, and it occasionally involves some audience participation. So, after 20 years, I figured TMLMTBGB is probably as solid and set as it’s going to get—it was time to cross it off my Bucket List.

Turns out that this single roll of the die is what the show is all about—everything in TML is a crapshoot. Audience members were ushered into the Neo-Futurarium after being kept in a quasi-holding area/lobby, and are issued nametags at random (I became “Multi-Task”) before taking their seats in the performance space. Hanging above the stage were 30 numbers, each signifying a play the company would perform. The audience shouted numbers, and the company picked one and then began the play. This process was repeated for an hour, and the ensemble usually succeeds in acting out all 30 mini-plays, which bear names like “Guac-A-Mole,” “Alex As Metaphor,” and “There Is No Bird.”

If it sounds extremely gimmicky, that’s because it is. But that’s to be expected with The Neo-Futurists—an aggressively weird theater company that prides itself as being immediate and fusing, uh, “sport, poetry, and living-newspaper” into something audiences can watch. The problem, however, is that with so much left to chance, it may not always make for a compelling show. (The experimental material rotates in and out of circulation based on the roll of a die by an audience member after each show.) Also not helping things: It feels like the last drafts of these plays are also the first drafts. So, when they brag that they’ve done more than 7,000 plays in 20 years, is that really an achievement if quality control is virtually non-existent?

Experimentation for experimentation’s sake is ultimately masturbation, which certainly has its value, but if TML has an off night, it doesn’t really function as anything other than an experience. The night I went, there were these common traits among the plays:

People interacting with food and liquids

“Guac-A-Mole”: The always-popular people-in-the-first-three-rows-will-get-wet scene. An ensemble member plays whack-a-mole with an avocado (get it?) until he finally smashes the fruit, spraying green streaks over himself and whoever made the mistake of sitting so close to the action.

“Mea-culpa Swirly”: An ensemble member performs a monologue in the spotlight with a large bowl of water in front of her. Her fellow actors pass by, fill it up more, and then shove her face in it.

“Intermittently Explosive”: The entire company gathers around a melon, stabbing it while coldly stating lines about a murder-suicide.

“Dinner With Our Family”: People prepare sandwiches and talk nonchalantly about supposedly offensive topics—like whether their scenemates know any black people.

"Pie Piece" from New York's Neo-Futurists chapter.

You’re part of the show too!

“The Cacophony Interviews Session 1, 2, & 3”: Audience members are brought onstage and simultaneously answer a series of questions or perform random tasks for the entire company, like taking a swig of water and then spitting in an ensemble member's face, who might be wearing a red clown nose.

“Sandy Winter”: A female Futurist wanders offstage and asks an audience member a series of increasingly personal and blunt questions like “when was the first time you fucked a woman?” The answers don’t really matter; they only serve as a set-up to the theater member’s upcoming joke.

Woah. Deep, man

“REASON”: Strange, indeterminable music plays with clips of politicians interspersed throughout, while the performers onstage shove each other.

“Target”: Tragic statistics about gang violence are recited over the PA system as a pile of actors lay motionless on top of each other. It suddenly comes to a close with the PA announcing, “Fortunately, we can bring the actors back.”

This night's performance was a little heavy-handed and too clumsy to sustain itself as a viable evening of entertainment. Is it supposed to work as drama? Comedy? Or is it even meant to be entertainment? The answer is probably none of the above: TML is obviously all about being visceral and nothing further. You can probe for a deeper meaning and probably find one, but the point is that TML is a crapshoot, yes, albeit an enduring one.

There is no other show in town like TML, and it’s entirely possible that you can go one weekend and see the worst show ever (which you’ll still remember for the rest of your life), or you can see the most transcendent and random 60 minutes of theater imaginable. It’s all a roll of the die, either way.