By: Livewire Staff

What is Time? Does it really exist? Vashon Island’s UMO Ensemble has returned from a year long sabbatical to explore these questions in their most recent work entitled Final Broadcast.

Lauded locally, nationally and internationally for the creation of extraordinary new works of physical theatre including Caravan of Dreams, El Dorado, Millennium Circus, Fatal Peril and Rapunzel, UMO Ensemble has built this most recent work on over a decade of research and contemplation. Drawing from the work of a myriad of writers including Einstein, Kant, Julian Barbour, Italo Calvino and James Thurber, as well as theories of advanced physics, Final Broadcast will utilize stage clowns and traditions of absurdist theatre under the innovative and experienced direction of Christopher Petit.

“I really began researching this project in 1996. As I looked at the fervor that was building over the approaching Millennium, I began to notice and wonder why humans can get so preoccupied with matters of Time... Basically, I came to the belief that Time was a construct of our minds to attempt to give order to the random and unknowable chaos of existence,” explains UMO Ensemble founding member David Godsey.

The story of Final Broadcast is rooted in the isolated world of a late night radio talk show host and a devoted listener. When the talk show host declares that Time is an illusion, events are put in motion that propel him and his listener onto a powerful journey through the labyrinth of Time’s elusive nature. Traveling through surreal and strangely familiar worlds where Time takes on many forms, their quest for lost time brings them face to face with the most fundamental questions of human existence. In the end, they are forced to make a crucial and irreversible choice about their relationship with Time.