Why do we tell stories? Humans have been doing it as long as there has been language. Strictly speaking, we don’t need them to survive—not like we need water or shelter—but generation after generation continues to tell and retell stories. This question sits at the center of Annie Baker’s The Antipodes.
Set in a Hollywood-style writing room, a group of brainstormers work tirelessly, concepting for a project that’s never defined. By design, The Antipodes is a script that’s difficult to summarize, but Shaking the Tree’s captivating production will reward audiences who enjoy sitting with big questions.
Samantha Van Der Merwe, who designed the set and directed the show, has staged the story in an oppressive windowless gray conference room. The only bright color comes from a small mountain of seltzer water boxes, stacked against one of the walls. But there’s an unsettling element: Van Der Merwe has incorporated vanishing point perspective to the set and the action unfolds around a table and within a room that both widen as they extend towards the audience. It creates a sense of wrongness about the situation, which only increases as the play continues.
Sitting at the table’s head, like Christ in a Renaissance painting, is Sandy (Duffy Epstein), the undefined project’s leader. He introduces himself as a “pretty nice boss” to the new hires—an immediate red flag that he follows up with several more. Epstein plays Sandy as indifferent and waiting to be impressed, wielding silence like a weapon against even his most local disciples. However, while the dynamics of toxic workplaces, especially creative ones, play out in the show, The Antipodes isn’t a story about toxic workplaces. It’s a story about stories.
Everything we learn about the characters comes from the stories they tell, or refuse to tell. We see how they see themselves, how they construct their own realities. Enclosed in this small workspace, there’s no privacy for personal connection, yet despite that, the characters and their relationships feel real. Storytelling is a vulnerable act, and the intimate staging means the audience sees every micro reaction of the characters listening. The ensemble includes a promising collection of local talent—Rebby Yuer Foster, Ken Yoshikawa, Rocco Weyer, among others—and always shines during these moments, but one of the most affecting is when Danny #2 (Darius Pierce) tells a seemingly inane story about chickens. It’s at this point when the production begins to break with reality and more meta-theatrical elements take hold.
A production of The Antipodes was meant to play at Shaking the Tree in April 2020, but was cancelled when COVID shuttered Oregon venues. The remount, here in 2025, seems to step into an eerily similar moment. Both years saw a Trump presidency and the emergence of a highly contagious disease. Indeed, characters often refer to unspecified “dark times,” the idea of which seems to anxiously creep around the edges of the work. Faced with looming deadlines and pressures from financiers, the room’s tension turns to desperation as the characters seek a story so original it will change storytelling forever and also save their jobs.
Joan Didion famously said “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And while stories are how we make sense of the world, our brains are also hardwired to enjoy them. When someone is telling you a really good story, it’s irresistible. Shaking the Tree’s production of The Antipodes, is a work of constant stories that overlap, interrupt, and spiral into each other—it’s irresistible. It may not exactly answer the question of why we tell stories—but provides a masterful example to sit with it, creating awe at the fact that we do.
The Antipodes plays at Shaking the Tree Theatre, 823 SE Grant, through Sat March 22, $10-50, tickets here, 2.5 hour runtime w/ intermission, content warning for graphic language and references to suicide.
