A monologue-heavy two-hander with a bare set has become all the post-Covid rage.

Even if it’s pragmatic producing in these precarious times, the art itself still needs to dramaturgically justify this structure.

For example: Shayan Lotfi’s What Became of Us, now at the Atlantic Theater Company.

The text is partially designed to be about an unspecified location — to universalize the immigrant experience, no matter where the immigrants originate and end up? — which seems resonant with the ambiguous set lacking clear markers of place; the siblings’ relationship defines their lives more than any solid setting. 

And the long-distance nature of their love relates to the play’s reliance on monologues. They are always in each other’s minds, even when corporeally separated. The monologues convey how family dynamics can operate: we live our own individual lives apart, yet still interconnected. Even when we’re in the same room, are we fully on the same page? 

The production’s artwork illustrates this idea: individual hands reaching for each other, almost touching, but not.