147 Questions About Love

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Do you eat sugar? How many press ups can you do? Do children smell good? Can you cook? Can you dance? Is there a natural law that draws a plastic bag to a small child?

You might call Volcano Theatre’s miniature a question-and-dancer format. Inspired by Padgett Powell’s questions-only novel The Interrogative Mood, artistic director Paul Davies fires a volley of queries—personal, trivial, philosophical, ponderous—at Catherine Bennett, who dances her replies in turn. There are dismissive stomps of rejection and coy shoulder rolls, but her answers are always elusive and open to interpretation.

That’s the beauty of Volcano theatre’s words-and-movement combo: it’s so ripe with metaphor. It makes love seem like the need to know everything about another person and like the urge to explore the entire world together, hand in hand. It catches the neediness of lovers—men in particular—and the impenetrability of others that means there’s always more to discover. Sometimes, it speaks about the banal practicalities that make a relationship seem like a job interview, the details that determine compatibility.

It’s not just about love, though, but language as well. The gap between question and answer—the one in words, the other in action; questions met with yet more questions—neatly conveys the fallibility of words, the way speakers and listeners talk at crossed purposes and language gets lost in transmission. A lovely little piece, content not to have all the answers.