I felt very called out by Sapience, in addition to being emotionally rocked by it. The second full production staged by Artists Repertory Theatre in its newly renovated building—the company still has a ways to go—the new work by Diana Burbano presents a great example of Artists Rep getting back to one of the things it does best: commissioning and presenting premiere works by contemporary playwrights.

At this phase of the company's rebuild, they're throwing shows in the lobby, as they continue to raise funds for the next stage of construction. However, the set for Sapience is dressed well enough that attendees might feel like they're back in the old building's downstairs Alder Stage when it was arranged in a tri-riser configuration.

This play doesn't call for a dynamic setting—a zoo research lab, basically an office—but the lighting choices of purples and greens, and a stage encircled by verdant potted plants convey both cubicle coziness and a hint of the wild.

Orangutan Wookie (Barbie Wu) enters her onstage habitat before curtain rise, sliding into a tire swing to wave and mug for the crowd. Her studied movements are both graceful and long, assuaging the concerns of  those who wondered if watching a person play a great ape would be cringe-level uncomfortable. 

Wu is the undeniable star of Sapience's first half, delighting audiences with monkey-like mannerisms and a running monologue of comedically straight-forward lines, like "I would like to be held. I am also scared of being held." A nearby pair murmured softly that they might be content to have Wu be the whole show.

Cristi Miles (left) as Elsa and Barbie Wu (right) as Wookie in Sapience.

A particularly intelligent specimen of a particularly intelligent type of monkey, Wookie's training by primatologist Elsa (Cristi Miles) sparks the story's catalyst. And in Elsa's orbit we also meet the rest of the cast: Jason (John San Nicolas)—her boss and ex-boyfriend—her second cousin Miri (Tricia Castañeda-Guevara), and Miri's autistic teenage son AJ (played by Zachary Williams, an actor on the autism spectrum).

The city's theater scene has lately seen a welcome wave of bilingual performance, and Sapience also hops casually out of English, at times, and into Spanish or American Sign Language (ASL). Unlike the bullfighting comedy Faena, which we reviewed in January, Sapience doesn't bother to translate much of its non-English phrases, but nothing was so complicated that our high school-level Spanish couldn't sort it out.

Perhaps due to all the language switcheroos, we didn't put together that AJ isn’t always speaking aloud when we think he is until nearly the end. That's partly the reason why ASL is in the mix. Director Melory Mirashrafi explains that AJ’s communication methods are designed to adapt to the actor playing him—since Williams speaks, this AJ speaks. Yet AJ’s long conversations with Wookie mostly unfold on a deeper wavelength, where two beings truly listen and understand each other. While this could lean into the trope of disability as a superpower, it ultimately reinforces the play’s broader metaphor: that communication, abilities, and needs exist on a vast spectrum.

Zachary Williams (left) as AJ and Barbie Wu (right) as Wookie in Sapience.

While promo descriptions of this work highlight the relationship between AJ and Wookie as the main plot of Sapience, their scenes felt more like joyful pressure releases from the heavy love triangle of Elsa, her boss, and her cousin.

How you feel about the shakeout will likely depend on if you've ever been betrayed by a more personable cousin, and whether you've had to choose to let go of an important relationship because you knew you simply were not what someone needed.

Near the play's end, Miles takes the emotional reins, steering the story into heartbreak, as her character helplessly watches Jason face devastating danger. Fans of San Nicolas who wonder if he is as perfectly-charming and impeccably-timed as we've come to expect—he is, like a jaunty beat running under the action. San Nicolas is great at shining without taking the spotlight. 

Because this is a play and plays need conflict, Burbano's script paints Elsa as someone who can't support a person she loves, and we can accept this for her character without saying this is true for everyone she resembles. I choose to interpret Sapience as a story where Elsa doesn't help a person she cares deeply about; not one where she can't. Though the idea that she can't is what rocked me as hard as it did. 

Sapience plays at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison, through Sun March 23, $5-$60, tickets and showtimes at artistsrep.org, 90 minutes w/o intermission, content warning for mentions of sex and monkey masturbation.