I Am the Wind Reviews

Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended

"...Nobel laureate Jon Fosse's spare, incantatory 2007 cry of existentialist despair (translated by May-Brit Akerholt) is evocatively rendered at Theatre Y under the direction of Evan Hill. Two people, referred to only as The One (Hank Hilbert) and The Other (Melissa Lorraine), spend their time a couple feet above the floor on one or another plank of wood, suspended by heavy nautical ropes that hang from the ceiling high above. There are a couple of buckets that hide several objects and two white sheets that suggest sails. Other than that, there is only fog and darkness. (The scenic design was created by the company.)"

Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended

"...Theatre Y is celebrating 20 years of challenging expectations about what theatre can and should be. They make not so easy and artful works in an appealing and funky repurposed space at 3611 West Cermak and they don’t charge for tickets. They sit with you after the show to talk to you about what you saw. And right now they are doing a beautiful existential work on the fragility of life, the brevity of mortality, the complexity of communication and the soulfulness of relating to other human beings all in only 70 minutes."

Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended

"...Jon Fosse's I Am The Wind premiered last week at Theatre Y in North Lawndale. The Norwegian author won the 2023 Nobel Prize for his llife's work of plays and prose, for his skill and craft in saying the unsayable. This matters because Theatre Y produces work that drives liberation and revolution, like Charges (The Supplicants). They take theater to places where it usually isn't, like North Lawndale and Illinois prisons. I Am The Wind is raw, confrontational, and a brilliant mix of naturalism, existentialism, and the surreal."

Chicago On Stage - Recommended

"...Director Evan Hill’s production of Jon Fosse’s abstract play is not boisterous. The set consists of two planks suspended by rope and a few white sheets. There are two actors, dressed alike in blues and blacks, simply called The One (Hank Hilbert) and The Other (Melissa Lorraine). Fosse’s language is so simple that it sometimes seems child-like — I found myself wondering several times how many unique words there actually are in this play — not very many, I expect. Each actor seems to say the word “yes” upwards of 100 times in the 70-minute runtime. Yet, the play and the production are incredibly complicated."

Werner's Theatre Reviews - Recommended

"...Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse’s drama I Am the Wind is currently gracing Theatre Y’s venue. The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature winner’s works have been translated into more than fifty languages all over the world. With Fosse’s poetic script and Theatre Y’s innovative direction, the play moves its audiences with themes of friendship, mental health and the fragility of life."

NewCity Chicago - Recommended

"...In the boat of Jon Fosse’s “I Am the Wind,” words and experience don’t have to line up in the way the world expects. Words can sometimes give weight to life that is otherwise light, like silence is. Still, we can’t understand each without words, not entirely, and so we become heavy with them together. How frightening to see the abyss swing wide to you when it has been yawning in another’s eyes as long as they can remember. To hear it spoken aloud, the fear of making oneself nothing: becoming silence."