The Goat Exchange revels in intentional technical difficulties. 

While Brecht popularized the idea of disrupting a production’s constructed artifice to remind the audience that they’re watching a performance, practitioners of his philosophy generally make clear that their breaking of the fourth wall is in fact a part of the show. 

But The Goat Exchange has the hutzpah to not clarify when a “hold, please” is deliberate.

Deadclass, OH introduced audiences to this theater-company predilection with a multi-minute delay midway through, during which co-director Mitchell Polonsky stomped down from the back of the house all while claiming The Tank’s computer system was on the fritz. We watched as he attempted to fix it for an awkward amount of time, with the house lights fully up. But a subsequent scene in The Goat Exchange’s New York debut revealed that the spazzing was scripted.  

By establishing this wont from the jump, their loyalists should’ve been suspicious when the first half of ESCAPED ALONE [not not not not not not enough oxygen] — The Goat Exchange’s second production — labeled itself as a documentary. 

We sure about that? 

And The Goat Exchange is back on its bullshit with their latest, Two Girls. The verbatim two-hander ostensibly begins with Chloe Claudel and Juliana Sass walking on stage, acting like they forgot something, and then exiting for another extended duration, as if to find a prop that was supposed to be pre-set.

Emphasis on acting. 

Finally, they return with…a cup. 

The two girls were missing their one cup. 

You’re telling me that’s merely a false start?

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Two Girls is Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns for the Internet Era (Mr. Burns was for the TV Era).

What we remember — and how we tell the stories about what we “remember” — reveals who we are, from Homer (the full title: TWO GIRLS: a homeric retelling in the oral tradition. And yes, “oral” double-entendres as sexual innuendo) to The Simpsons, and now viral videos.