Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons - Toronto Fringe

Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons written by British playwright Sam Steiner took to the Theatre Centre’s stage at the 2017 Toronto Fringe. Produced by the Toronto based Howland Theatre collective and directed by Toronto based actress originally from Ottawa, Harveen Sandhu, Lemons explores the relationship between a couple, Oliver and Bernadette, and their experience with free-speech and communication before and after the constraining effects of the 140 daily word limit law pending when the show starts and that is approved later in the show.

This piece gives a nod to Orwell’s 1984, especially in terms of the incorporation of a Big Brother-like entity. The law enforcers or as Bernadette said during the live performance on July 8th, “capital T, they” were established through the use of sound cues that would repeat whenever anyone reached their daily word limit. In this case, sound was used as a medium in the sense that Susan Kelly describes it: as, “operat[ing] as a channel, or as a means of manifesting thought, intention, or perhaps affect” (Kelly, 142). The specific sound cues announcing when the daily 140 was reached as a means of manifesting an unseen presence that communicated to the players, as well as to the audience, that someone was constantly watching. The sound signified that someone or many someones out there on another plane of theatrical existence had been listening in on all conversations, counting words and restricting anything further to be spoken once the 140 had been reached.

Lemons also grapples with issues of communication and how it is affected once it comes into contact with rigid restrictions. Furthermore, it aligns itself with oral history and how it is defined as “the mutual investment of tellers and listeners” (Pollock, 147). Once the law was passed, the characters were forced to edit and condense their own speech in desperate attempts to communicate. In this case, the sound working as a manifestation of the law enforcers became the listeners who then restricted the communication of the tellers. A pertinent concern for the couple in the play was the wonder of how one could connect romantically with each other with such a suffocating law. This law can be seen as a mirror to how histories were and are erased through means of an irresponsible or unethical listener and also how people with privilege (i.e. those with money and specific employment) can buy more words in a day, essentially buying their history into archival existence.

Works Cited

Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons. Directed by Sam Steiner. Theatre Centre, Toronto Fringe. July 8, 2017.

Kelly, Susan. Cartographies. – Terms for finding/charting the way(s). Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research. - Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies. Edited by Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter. Palgrave Macmillian, New York. 2009. 125-153. (Pdf)

Pollock, Della. Cartographies. – Terms for finding/charting the way(s). Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research. - Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies. Edited by Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter. Palgrave Macmillian, New York. 2009. 125-153. (Pdf)