Review: Aurora Theatre’s ‘Lifespan of a Fact’ amusingly, pointedly explores the validity of truth
The real-life background to "The Lifespan of a Fact," a short, swift-moving and very talky (in a good way) drama now in a riveting production at Aurora Theatre Company: In 2002, 16-year-old Levi Presley committed suicide by jumping 1,149 feet from the 109th floor of the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas.
Essayist John D'Agata wrote about it initially for Harper's Magazine, which rejected it. He then submitted it to The Believer. There, intern Jim Fingal set about fact-checking, apparently challenging every minute detail of D'Agata's reportage. As for D'Agata, he has never claimed to be a journalist, only an essayist interested in exploring larger, poetic truths, in this case, a teenager's tragic death. After seven years of editing, the essay was finally published. And D'Agata and Fingal cowrote a book about the whole process.
Playwrights Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell based their play on that book, pitting John and Jim against each other in a battle of obsession and ideology. Emily, a third character, is a conflicted and anxiety-ridden New York editor who, in the play's scenario, accepted the essay, which she loves and considers a "prestige piece," and, in the first scene, hires eager-beaver intern Jim to fact-check it—over one intense weekend, prior to a high-stakes publication deadline.
The playwrights condensed the entire battle-of-the-facts into that one fraught weekend, as Jim and John fight it out initially over the phone, then in person in John's cluttered, low-rent house in Las Vegas.
At first seeming to be a satiric comedy—Hernán Angulo as Jim, the ambitious fact-checker, starts out by playing for comic effect, mugging, acting goofy; Elijah Alexander's John is the sort of truculent, self-satisfied important-writer-person you'd expect—the play soon enough turns serious.
In our social-media age when factoids and "truthiness" continually threaten our sense of reality, it's easy enough to dismiss a suspicious statement as somewhere on a continuum from "inaccurate" to "outright lie."
But plays like this challenge our very confidence in distinguishing between truth and falsehood. And, how creative is creative nonfiction allowed to be to, presumably, serve a higher purpose? Tell a meaningful story?
As writer and fact-checker battle it out, with the harried editor (Carrie Paff) caught in the middle—which is probably where those of us in the audience will be by play's end—we learn about the fact-checking process itself (the lengths to which nitpicking Jim goes to do his job seem absurd, but are they?), and about the existential issues facing print media today.
"The facts get in the way of the story!" roars John, which sounds ridiculous—at first. "I'm not interested in accuracy. I'm interested in truth," he says.
As "Lifespan" moves on, under Jessica Holt's astute direction, from funny to provocative to deeply touching, it proves to be insightful and intellectually stimulating, revealing to ourselves bits and pieces of our own confused thought processes. Aurora, with its intimate stage and superb actors and director, is perfectly suited for this kind of play.
