Kenita R. Miller in Animal Wisdom. Photo: Ben Arons

Animal Wisdom was never meant to take place in a theater. 

“This piece was SUPPOSED to happen in a defunct church or ‘holy space,’” our protagonist/spiritual guide/central mourner, H, tells us, punctuating the words like we’re her congregation. “But theaters are deconsecrated and reconsecrated all the time, so, I guess we’re not so far off.” 

It’s not often, in this day and age, that a performance feels like it defies categorization. And yet Animal Wisdom, which balances holy service with ghastly possession, feels–almost unbelievably–new. Across nearly two hours, composer/playwright/vocalist Heather Christian takes us on a spiritual journey punctuated by her genre-defying music, incorporating elements of gospel, blues, and choral to create a uniquely sacred whole. The piece, which premiered at the Bushwick Starr in 2017 and is now under new direction by Keenan Tyler Oliphant, resembles a requiem mass more than a piece of musical theater. Between and within the music, H narrates her relationship with the ghosts in her life–a childhood imaginary friend, her grandparents, a godfather taken by dementia–in a ritual that’s downright haunting. 

In this iteration, Signature Theatre is the church and Kenita Miller, as H, is our pastor. (At certain performances, the role is played by Emma Duncan.) This is an intensely personal show, and H is so autobiographical for Christian (who performed it at the Bushwick Starr) that she calls anyone else taking the role on an “olympian feat of radical empathy.” The piece revels in its small specificities–H’s grandfather feeding his wife little pieces of fruit with the smallest silver spoon in their kitchen, the restorative quality of a glass of Coke after times of summoning–that make the emotions feel, paradoxically, more universal. In the pre-show Miller tells us that these are “Heather’s stories,” not hers. It’s clear they’re someone’s. It’s easy to forget it’s not Miller with the warmth she brings to the role, performing with a vocal depth that marries and melds with the protean six piece band. 

This band (who also use their considerable acting and vocal talents) is introduced in an early section of the show, going around one by one to answer one of the “spiritually adjacent ice breaker questions” Miller has pulled from a glass cookie jar. On the night I attended, each explained which lyric they were “really sitting with” that night, previewing Christian’s poetic sensibility. “Forever is a long time/but never is longer my love,” said Kris Saint-Louis on the bass. Insightful language like this pop up between otherwise inscrutable lines, like “it’s the easiest way/playing possum until the elephant comes out.” The personal metaphors of the first song (“Grandma is a red bird,” “A pretty well made fish/Went masquerading as a vine”) are explained directly to us by H, as if to prove the rest of them also have meaning. Christian writes in her introductory note that what exists in the music will not be clear, and that this is intentional: she wants you to feel the ritual, not to understand it. Sometimes, unfortunately, this music buries its lyrics under rows and rows of sound, making it difficult to make out even the images we are supposed to understand.

Christian excels at crescendos. The visionary power in much of Animal Wisdom comes when a musical theme begins to soar, H and the band joining in a harmonic whole to create the kind of chorus usually limited to sacred spaces. It is no surprise, then, that the piece ends with one final ascension. The lights in the theater go dark–completely dark, as Christian notes in the script, every exit sign and crack in the wall completely covered–right as twenty new chorus members come onstage. Animal Wisdom’s previous harmonic power was a fraction of the haunting resonance of all their voices together. The full-bodied, sonorous sound they make (consolidated seamlessly by Nick Kourtides) is proof that music is, just as H believes, sacred. And yet, this section goes on for too long for us to really feel that, rather than just intellectually realize that’s what Christian is saying. This requiem mass takes up the last twenty minutes of the show’s runtime. Nine of the piece’s nineteen songs on Spotify are a part of this ritual; I wonder if a stronger emotional impact would only have taken three. 

This complete blackout, however, is a testament to the skills of the piece’s knockout creative team. Keenan Tyler Oliphant has imbued the production with more whimsy than the barebones Bushwick Starr iteration could afford–each corner of the theater is bursting with little artifacts of life, from a shrine to H’s great-grandmother to light-up figures of Joseph and Mary. Emmie Finckel’s set design is endearing and delighting, with new secrets (like a raining window or a pull-down projector screen) discovered with each new scene. One such hidden facet is the number of string lights run across the skeleton of Signature Theatre: they’re well-placed by lighting designer Masha Tsimring, and when they all come on, it’s as magical as the harmonies. 

Singing, H tells us, is invocation. It’s spiritual, it’s a way of communing with the dead, it’s a way of getting closer to God. Animal Wisdom will take you farther than you’ve been before, and you won’t even be in a church.