Silence speaks volumes in Brandeis’ ‘Small Mouth Sounds’

By Mark Hickernell

Six people haul their baggage, literal and figurative, to a five-day retreat, where they hope to – find themselves?  Find someone else?  Leave themselves behind?  Leave someone else behind?  Suffice it to say that each of the six has a different goal, which is already enough of a premise for ​​“Small Mouth Sounds,” an interesting play by Bess Wohl, directed by Samantha Richert Boehm at Brandeis University last week.  But “Small Mouth Sounds” has a twist:  one of the rules of the retreat is that no talking is allowed.  Aside from the Teacher, a seventh character who is heard but not seen, the cast must tell their stories mostly in silence.

This is an unusual approach to stage drama.  Yet it works.

The cast’s attempts to make themselves understood to each other often result in hilarity.  Everyone gets a chance to, well, tell a story.  Joan (Eden Kates) and Judy (Rimas Youssef) arrive at the retreat bickering over directions, and later manage to carry on their familiar argument without speaking.  Alicia (Katherine Bulthuis) shows up wearing a shirt with “I’M NOT LISTENING” written across it, and sure enough breaks every stated rule of the retreat.  Sad sack Ned (Paul Weir) wastes his chance to ask the Teacher a question by getting so tangled in his tale of woe that he forgets what he wanted to ask.  Rodney (Ruben Seaman), a seductive yoga instructor, has a secret that makes his silence awfully convenient.  Only Jan (Kieran van Hooser) seems to successfully follow the Teacher’s rules. By the end of the play we discover why he’s able to do so.

Meanwhile, the Teacher (Andie Cohen) is a wordy mess, over-sharing her own problems amidst her pseudo-wise admonitions.  “All you have to do is listen,” she tells the class.  Or is she talking to the audience?  A strange instruction for a play where so much is unspoken.

Not entirely unspoken, though.  Much of the humor of “Small Mouth Sounds” – and presumably the title itself – emerges from the non-verbal noises made by the participants of the retreat in reaction to each other.  If a picture can speak a thousand words, how many words are contained in a sob, or a moan, or a suppressed laugh? 

And is that a bear growling in the distance?

The staging of “Small Mouth Sounds” made a virtue of necessity, with a stage crew repeatedly adjusting the small set from a classroom to bunks to a lakeside clearing in what becomes a ritual not unlike those you would find at such a retreat.  They deservedly joined the cast for bows at the end.

Part of the genius of this play is that it leaves it to the audience to decide how much of the Teacher’s lessons are meant to be taken seriously.  The Teacher herself is not a reliable narrator, distracted by her own personal losses.  She shares that she wishes she had said more to her dying father – tragic, but also funny in the context of the silent retreat.  Yet had she not told the class at the beginning that they did not have to go back to who they were?  And didn’t that turn out to be true?

Part of the 2026 Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Arts, “Small Mouth Sounds” was performed in one act on April 17–19 in the Spingold Theater Center at Brandeis University.  Further information about this production of “Small Mouth Sounds” is available at the Brandeis theater productions website. While you are waiting for next year’s Bernstein festival, consider attending one or more of the upcoming Senior Thesis Productions, which include Liam Delaney’s “Leave Me Alone” on April 24-25, Conor Papantony’s “Bobby Darin Is Going To Die” on April 24-25, and Kim Yaged’s “vessels” on May 1-2 (directed by Nina Korzekowski).  Visit the Brandeis Theater Productions Studio Series website for more information.