Applied Mechanics presents Run Ben Run

Franklin (played by director Rebecca Wright, an Applied Mechanics founding company member) has called the Bens to produce a film about American Progress, a 19th-century painting by the artist John Gast which was mass-produced and distributed in America and Europe to encourage westward expansion and tourism. And over the course of the show, the Bens both reflect on other artworks and create their own, sometimes with audience assistance or intervention. It’s a remarkably dense premise—one whose layers don’t peel away like an onion’s so much as compound like granite.

It shouldn’t work. And yet somehow, it does.

A method to the scenic madness

To describe Run Ben Run, I have to start with the scenic design. When you enter the Christ Church Neighborhood House theater space, it’s not going to look like any theater you’ve ever seen. Seating is scattered all around the former basketball gym: no tidy rows or aisles. You sit on a train or in a stagecoach or you lounge in the grass or on a cloud.

One of the Bens might greet you when you enter. There might be some jostling for seats in certain sections. But there is a method to what might initially seem like scenic designer Sasha Jin Schwartz’s madness. Not only is the seating designed to evoke the painting at the center of Run Ben Run, but Schwartz also thoughtfully created a map to help members of the audience choose their seating based on their comfort both seated and on the move (some seats are “moving optional”, and the provided map also specifies which seats have back support).

Because move you likely will. Despite the option to stay in one place, it would be challenging to take in the totality of Run Ben Run if you stay in one place. Especially given the tricky acoustics of the venue’s DNA as a basketball gym, it’s probably tough to hear if you can’t meet the actors where they are.

Meet the Bens

Let me try to set the scene here without spoiling the experience. Run Ben Run starts with a long monologue by Benjamin Franklin—projected, documentary-style, on screens around the room. After Franklin memorably leaves the stage, we’re introduced to the rest of the Bens: the abolitionist Philadelphia Quaker Benjamin Lay (MK Tuomanen); notorious traitor Benedict Arnold (Chris Davis); song-and-dance man Ben Vereen (Brett Ashley Robinson); actor and filmmaker Ben Affleck (Izzy Sazak); and musical artist and Super Bowl Halftime MVP Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, AKA Bad Bunny (Anthony Martinez-Briggs). The Bens have been cast without regard to the performers’ genders or even their resemblance to the Bens they each portray (with one exception—Martinez-Briggs’s Bad Bunny might make you do a double-take). That they each embody their respective Bens on a spiritual level is enough.

Over the course of about 90 minutes, in a show collaboratively developed by the ensemble, the Bens will explore themes of loss and abandonment, the American experiment, and the nature of art. They will ad lib with each other and interact with the audience (Tuomanen, as Lay, asked me to smash a teacup with a brick). They get meta, break the fourth wall, and, as their performer-selves, reflect on other performances that have genuinely moved them.

It’s chaotic. It’s precise. It’s silly. It’s reverential. It’s, okay, yes, sometimes hard to hear. It’s also a helluva lot of fun. And despite the density of the concept, what more could you possibly want from a night of performance?

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