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This Is Just A Box
By River Timms
Directed by Timber Rosencrantz
Review by Kate Barry
Entire contents are copyright @2025 by Kate Barry. All rights reserved.
What if an ordinary object could do something powerful? So powerful, in fact that it could save people and relieve pain. Should such a powerful thing exist? This Is Just a Box by Nashville playwright, River Timms, places ethical questions in a futuristic landscape as right and wrong collide with dire consequences. The play made its world premiere with CompanyOutcast at Highview Arts Center this weekend.
The play focuses on two scientist sisters, Meg and Sonya, played by Jay Marie Padilla-Hayter and Jordan Aikin. Meg and Sonya begin the play discussing the purposes of the box. Described as a small gas chamber with mask and a soothing voice to lull the user into a sense of ease as they pass on, the two characters debate if this object can help those in pain or if it’s uses are nothing but evil. Fact based, research driven scientists, Meg holds on to her convictions that this device is an answer to a problem while Sonia is shocked, calling the box evil.
The script’s focus on assisted suicide and euthanasia is not easy to handle yet the tone of the play keeps a steady balance between drama and dark comedy. Society in this play exists on so-called three plates. While not firmly described as literal levels of land or structures, exposition informs us that second plate residents wear blue jump suits and maintain a middle class life while third plate residents are in a lower class. With check points and surveillance, life on these plates exists like a police state yet it is easy to move from one level to another. Costumes and set pieces are effectively used to establish who exist on what plate and who is desperate to move up in society.
Dual scenes occur frequently throughout the play with smartly timed light cues. Jay Marie Padilla-Hayter brings drive and enthusiasm to Meg which is evident from the top of the play. Through her failed experimentations and the active effect of her device, Padilla-Hayter makes smart, defined choices that mark a descent into guilt and trauma. Jordan Aikin’s Sonya is scheming yet logical. Aikin delivers a powerful monologue about a childhood story which plays nicely against a tense scene involving law enforcement from Kimby Taylor-Peterson. Aikin’s performance is strongest as Sonya discovers life giving possibilities from her research as she initially finds a way to change the three plated-society for the better.
With such an object like the box, other themes come into play. Michael Mina Guarnieri’s Johnny seeks to get rich while putting the pressure on Meg for a quick turn around for a final product. Guarnieri brings plenty of corporate greed and slick attitude that gives a motive for his character to move up to the first plate. As a potential user of the box, Anna Meade’s performance of Katerina is heartbreaking. Wistful in her cherry blossom monologue and tragic in her attempts to use the box, Meade delivers a harrowing emotional performance. Kimby Taylor-Peterson’s intimidating presence as Ivy, a first plate law enforcer brings conflict for Sonya. While Taylor-Peterson rough and tough performance does well to crack down on any possible insurgence, the overall correlation between the importance of this hierarchical society, identifying on the plate which you reside and a box that serve as a gas chamber leaves room for many unanswered questions.
As I watched this play, the likes of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos came to mind. The faux deus ex machina promised to help the world. And just like that hoax, This is Just a Box explores what can help society and what can cause harm and at what cost.
This is Just a Box
CompanyOutcast
June 20,21, 28-30 at 7:30 pm
June 22 at 2:30 pm
Highview Arts Center
7406 Fegenbush Lane
Louisville, KY40228
