An eager young intern for a famous magazine agrees to take on a new, fast turnaround assignment: fact-checking an important essay by a famous writer. The essay is to be the lead article in the magazine’s next issue; the fact-checking must be completed by Monday morning. It’s now late Wednesday.
The intern eagerly agrees to take it on; he wants to do a good job and make a good impression on his boss and the editor-in-chief. And no, he has no weekend obligations that would conflict with his working. The famous writer, the editor implies, may be a bit difficult to work with. He’s known to push boundaries, she says. But he always has time for people who are polite and intelligent. And you are polite and intelligent, aren’t you?
That’s the premise of the play, The Lifespan of a Fact, directed by Mechelle Moe for Timeline Theatre. The intern is Jim Fingal (Alex Benito Rodriguez) and the editor is Emily Penrose (Juliet Hart). The famous writer is John D’Agata (P.J. Powers). The play was written by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell, based on the book of the same title by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. The book and the play are based on actual events.
The facts concern the suicide of a young man who jumped from the observation deck of a Las Vegas hotel tower and died 108 stories below. The essay sets the scene by describing other events and scenes of the day of the death. The writer ponders the topic of suicide and the nature of the city of Las Vegas and its residents. The intern sets about checking each fact, like how many strip clubs were operating in Las Vegas that day, and the exact color of the brick at the tower’s base. Faced with these suggestions for change, the writer says, no thanks. I like the rhythm of my version better. But it’s wrong, the intern sputters.
Jim sets up a spreadsheet of every fact in question; it sits on the magazine’s shared drive. Emily follows his progress and admires this organization method at first, but soon finds that the spreadsheet has ballooned to 130 pages. And Jim has five notebooks filled with his notes—for a 15-page essay. Has fact-checking bloomed into obsession?
At the beginning, my sympathies were with the intern, eager to do things right and have the magazine publish an error-free essay by the maybe-arrogant writer. About 45 minutes in to the play, I found myself considering the viewpoint of the writer, who just wanted to get the work published, while the fact-checker was drawing an intricate map of a traffic jam.
The plot has some loose ends and inconsistencies that are hard to ignore. How did Jim end up in Las Vegas supposedly for a friend’s wedding party when he told his editor he had no weekend conflicts? Why is John so set against having errors corrected? Most writers want to have the best version of their work published; John’s attitude is hard to justify with reality. Is there an underlying social class difference here that makes John more resistant to Jim’s relentless fact-checking? Jim is a Harvard grad and was a Harvard Crimson staffer. John is a rumpled writer, living in his late mom’s plain old ranch house in Las Vegas.
Lifespan is briskly staged and directed and makes good use of projections to advance the storytelling. The three actors bring a believable style to their performances. The play opens in the magazine's office but is primarily set in John’s Las Vegas home. The scenic design is by Jeffrey D. Kmiec, with lighting design by Brandon Wardell and projections by Anthony Churchill and Vija Lapp. Sound design is by Andrew Hansen. Costume design is by Kotryna Hilko. Olivia Sullam is stage manager.
The Lifespan of a Fact was adapted from a book of the same title by the writer and the fact-checker. John and Jim, two real people, apparently worked on this essay for five years, even though it was published in the magazine (the real one) early in the process—with many of Jim’s fact questions unresolved. The finished essay appears in D’Agata’s 2011 book, About a Mountain.
D’Agata considers himself an advocate for the essay, which he believes does not receive the recognition it deserves as a work of literature. Merriam-Webster defines the essay as “an analytic or interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view.” You could argue that some familiar literary forms are essays—such as a newspaper opinion column or the theater review you are now reading. (D’Agata may not agree.) In either of those examples, the writer will be careful about the accuracy of the facts contained—names, dates, theatrical or historical references, etc. If there’s a factual error in this review, someone will point it out and we’ll correct it.
The Lifespan of a Fact by Timeline Theatre continues through December 23 at the theater’s longtime home at 615 W. Wellington Ave. (The company is currently working to develop its new home at 5035 N. Broadway in Uptown.) Running time is 90 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are $57-$72.
For more information on this and other plays, see theatreinchicago.com.
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