The theater becomes silent as a spotlight shines down on a woman rocking back and forth in a rocking chair. 

The rest of the room is dark, the focus being on her face which looks distant, as if she’s in her own world, remembering something. The silence stretches on until the audience is on their toes, heads forward in anticipation. Then more lights come up, and we are introduced to Fiona, a grieving mother, and Guy, her reasoning husband. 

“in a word,” written by Lauren Yee, is a play that is both tragic and comedic, conveying how words can be interpreted in more ways than one. The play is intentionally disjointed and can confuse audience members who don’t follow along. Though the style is very frantic, there are slight pauses throughout the play that gives viewers time to breathe and let the dialogue sink in.

“It (the play) has so many different layers and it has both whimsy and also deep grief and sadness,” co-director and head of the BFA acting program Emily Vitrano said. 

The play takes place in one location – Fiona and Guy’s living room. Several different rocking chairs covered the stage which showed different locations briefly throughout the play. 

“I had gone to the Milwaukee Museum of Art and I saw a rocking chair as part of an exhibit and it just sparked something in me and I said ‘that’s the play’. The play is going to be rocking chairs,” co-director and associate acting professor Kay Martinovich said. 

Cornelia Hayes, a first-year MFA acting candidate, plays Fiona, and stands out with her impeccable acting abilities. Fiona is grieving her son who has been missing for two years, and the play centers around her memories of the past. 

Hardy Louihis, a first-year MFA acting candidate, plays Guy, Fiona’s husband who is trying to get her out of the house and work her through her jumbled memories. Both Hayes and Louihis portray the raw emotions needed for Fiona and Guy’s characters and capture the audience with their dramatic range. 

J. Cody Hunt, a first-year MFA in acting, stole the show with his multiple character performances such as Fiona and Guy’s son Tristan, a detective and Fiona’s boss. 

“One of the favorites is always Tristan because he’s super funny and brings light and life to it (the play),” Derrick Longstreet, the assistant director and a second-year theater and arts major, said. “He was just so playful and such a joy to watch.”

The play consists of three actors, creating a personal, compelling story. “in a word” doesn’t have a clear ending or resolution, but the meaning of the play is known by the end.

“I really really liked it,” said Allison Banks, a sophomore accounting major. “It wasn’t at all what I was expecting and I love that about that.” 

The production uses lots of wordplay as the audience members, along with Fiona and Guy, try to connect missing pieces and phrases to solve what happened the day the couple’s son went missing. Language is a big theme in the play and how, more specifically, we hear and interpret words. For example, “brown and sticky” is a recurring phrase that means both love and joy and anger and frustration depending on which character is saying it. 

Tickets can be bought on NIU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts website. Tickets are free for NIU students. Final showings for “in a word” are March 2 and 3 at 7:30 p.m. and March 4 at 2 p.m.