One of the most haunting pieces I've seen in a while is Temporary Distortion's Welcome to Nowhere (Bullet Hole Road). A hybrid theater piece/road movie with entirely whispered dialogue, it's not as heady and intellectual as it sounds, but rather a visceral, lurid depiction of sex, greed, and life on the road. A friend and I caught allusions to On the Road and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues tucked into the extremely well-written text, and the film component legitimately evokes the cinematography of the Coen Brothers' gritty classic Blood Simple.

The plot concerns a young man who sets out on the road to make a life for himself. Along the way he encounters a devil-like character, who is either evil incarnate or simply the dark side of his own mind, and he spends the remainder of his travels alternately fleeing and succumbing to these dark temptations. Predictably, he encounters several women along the way, but what's brilliant about the production is that these women aren't merely sexual set-pieces, but rather complicated individual characters with their own dreams at stake. As the characters whisper their text into microphones augmented with light echo effects, the film component of the piece plays above them on a thin horizontal screen that cleverly suggests a rear-view mirror.  Here's an excerpt from the performance:

Welcome to Nowhere played a limited run in New York before Temporary Distortion decamped to perform the piece in Europe, but rumor has it they'll be back in the city before long. Keep an eye on New Roots for the scoop!