Project Atom Boi

Did you get any of that?, my friend asks as we leave the theatre. …Yeah, I say reticently, still processing the hour-long postdramatic fever dream.

I’ve been waiting to see Project Atom Boi ever since it premiered at Vault Festival in 2023. This time, it’s back (and Arts Council funded!) at Camden People’s Theatre. The collage of text and script are dramaturgically aspirational; where the piece fully thrives, though, is its innovative video design and thoughtful storytelling-through-movement.

We begin in an abandoned nuclear production factory in China. A dolphin in a distant future parses through a forgotten biohazard suit. Onscreen, projected onto the backdrop: IN A FAR FUTURE/when human civilization is gone,/ALL THAT REMAINS OF US/IS RADIOACTIVE WASTE. As the show begins, we are catapulted back to a recent past. Two young children are investigating what could very well be the same suit. A Filmmaker (Francesca Marcolina), who has elements of Agent Smith from The Matrix in her black sunglasses, frames the action with her handheld camera. Throughout the production, she follows Yuanzi’s (Xiaonan Wang) story and her upbringing in a Chinese nuclear city, which holds a secret nuclear base the locals call Factory 404.

As Yuanzi’s narrative progresses, her tall tales get even taller. From a “secret mission” at the factory along with friend/sidekick Erdan (Kelvin Chan) to a midnight escape by train to Beijing, things pique when Yuanzi reveals her father’s execution. “There wasn’t anything so dramatic in my childhood,” she ultimately confesses. It’s difficult to separate fact from fiction, and what is initially posed as little-known history quickly devolves into a potentially revisionist one. Considering the setting and its history, the gears start to turn for me: Is this playing out government censorship in real time? Though the action is difficult to follow - I seem to recall Yuanzi’s father was sent to be executed in her story, but also a child? Was it her friend Erdan? - this very well may be the point. After discovering this, the Filmmaker reckons with her own ugly truth: does she even have a story to tell of her own? She seeks out adventure and intrigue, quickly realising she has none of this in her own history. The heart of the piece splits hairs at this point, examining the Filmmaker’s inner-workings— her making music videos from old footage to semi-well known Beach House songs, her inability to make meaningful connections in social spaces, her issues with her mother and her incessant need to win her mum’s approval. Ultimately, it takes a complete detour from the secret nuclear town we began with, but is this confusion, or, elaboration intentional?

Despite potential flaws within the text, the production ultimately won me over with its brave experimentation. The previously aforementioned “secret mission” bit, for instance, consists of a carefully choreographed (thanks to movement director Ting-Ning Wen) collaboration between Yuanzi and Erdan and a flashlight, maneuvered by the the Filmmaker. Comedic bits are interspliced, too, to remind the audience of the show’s cheeky tone: Ardan is caught by the flashlight and, after a pregnant pause, he pretends to pick up his phone, answering a fake call to take the light’s focus away.

Live cinema is also abound, as one scene shows us a hand drawn map of the secret city. As the Filmmaker pans to different venues on the map, Yuanzi and Erdan illuminate them physically: a Yuanzi/bird character shows the town’s zoo, then the two sit together, holding a tub of popcorn to show the cinema. They take pairs of chopsticks out of their pockets to pick up more popcorn from the tub, only to transition to the hot pot restaurant.

There is live drawing, too, which makes for a seamless transition when we are shown the map of the town later. The audience is asked to play a game of pictionary. Allowed only 45 seconds to draw scenes depicting “Doom,” “Hospital,” and “Soviet Union,” the impossibility of conveying some of these more than others immediately lightens the mood among the crowd and spurs curiosity about what is coming next.

And finally, the piece’s video design (kudos to He Zhang and Erin Guan) is fully-integrated across all the disparate avenues we are taken down: title cards indicate scene changes, the live cinema spearheaded by the Filmmaker allows for simultaneous action on stage and in different crevices behind the set completely invisible to the audience otherwise. And in a beautiful final moment, a disco ball hangs from the centre stage ceiling. Video of a nuclear test is projected. As the mushroom cloud forms, it rises just enough to touch the bottom of the disco ball, indicating that the test has created something shiny and new, euphoric and utopic. An apt ending to sum up what the audience is left with at the end of it all. Despite total destruction and annihilation, it’s all somehow beautiful and macabre, both terrifying and exhilarating.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Project Atom Boi is playing at Camden People’s Theatre until 18 May. More information and tickets can be found here. Check out Ensemble Not Found’s work here.