Created by Brooklyn based artist Andrew Schneider, YOUARENOWHERE has toured internationally to great renown. Its UK appearance is a collaboration between Gate Theatre, Shoreditch Town Hall and LIFT 2016.

YOUARENOWHERE is exactly how I feel right now. Fingertips poised above the keyboard trying to articulate a response to something out of this world…

At the start of the show, a lone male performer bundles about, blurting out introspective musings, memories and facts. I pick up love and death as revolving themes that are tangled in the nexus of time, reality, parallel universes and the theory of relativity.

A hairy chest, droplets of sweat, sparkling eyes seem at odds with the degrading white makeup and battery packs strapped to his arms. The cold, stark space, often flooded with blue or white light, heightens his humanness, his flesh and blood. A foot-wide square of LED light hangs centrally and offers a window, or perhaps a loophole, into this strange mechanical no man’s land. He sings and jokes as he contemplates love, death and science. The audience is bombarded with facts and thoughts chopping and changing in tone and tempo. We are plunged into this other world, disorientated by fast changing, frantic speech and sudden and terrifying changes in lighting states with soundscapes that rumble our chairs.

Schneider is often stopped in his tracks by an acknowledged stage manager and tech team somewhere up in the gods. Linear narrative begins to be deconstructed as he is told to speed up, or flooded in darkness, blacking out himself and re-entering his monologue at new moments or new physical places on the stage. As the show progresses, and the technology takes an alarming precedence, it feels like Schneider, the show and the audience are at the mercy of some higher being.

A video demonstration of simultaneity is sped up and played in two frames creating a diptych is sped up and played in two frames, creating a diptych. This constant challenging of the audience with speed, information overload, and the questioning of our knowledge is applied to every element of the work. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity is cleverly used to pose the notion of multiple realities.

If a man watches a moving train struck by lightning at the front and back, and a woman watched the lightning from the inside, the man will see both lightning strikes at the same time, and the woman will see one before the other. The result of special relativity demonstrates that from different reference frames, there can never be agreement on the simultaneity of events, and thus both interpretations are correct.

This concept sets the premise for us to legitimately consider that time and reality are not necessarily as we know it. We are emotionally engaged with Schneider and open to the idea of experiencing multiple realities. We are now putty in his hands. The team are meticulously precious about spoilers for the next section, so I will carefully skirt around it. Primed for new realities and parallel universes, the audience and Schneider are confronted by a new presence, which is unsettling, dark and subtly threatening beneath the humour that unfolds. Key moments in life and death and near-misses that change the course of history are explored. The revelations reinforce the already established emotional engagement between Schneider and the audience. As an exercise in timing, cues, and stage-teching the work is an impeccable demonstration. At one point we are advised that ‘it easier if you don’t think of time as being linear’, I heed that advice for my befuddled brain, grappling with the idea of being ‘nowhere’ and ‘now here’ at the same time.

Repetition of image, and dislocation of time is abundant and in every detail. From the LED window reflected in eyes that are like a gateway to the soul, to the increased tempo of the timer displayed, counting down towards a crescendo. Speech is played backwards and memories projected forwards. Everything is the same but different.

You will laugh, you will gasp, you will question your existence, you might even cry as you realise that everything works towards a given point, but not a given time. This point marks the end.

YOUARENOWHERE straddles art and science in theme and form. Schneider is a true artist, he challenges the human condition simply by asking questions and exploring the ‘what if’s’ within the framework of science. He also challenges theatre by doing the same. Evolving from playing with stage tech and its capabilities, he applies his mastery of technology to the making process, finding intuitive and emotive content that he can make possible with those tools. Moments where blackouts make you jump, to a starscape that brings tears to the eyes, truly exemplify how much can be achieved with lighting and sound.

You might be left with the lingering thought of everything working towards one single point in life – death. You might walk away trying to unravel how each feat in technology and each surprise was accomplished. You might contemplate whether that lightning bolt was meant for two people at one time who are destined to find each other on their journey. However you engage with YOUARENOWHERE, it will be long lasting as you continue to interrogate your experience of the show after you leave the auditorium.