BLOWN AWAY

Jon Fosse’s haunting meditation on life, companionship,
and depression becomes an extraordinary theatrical
experience in the hands of two remarkable actors

Hank Hilbert and Melissa Lorraine in I Am The Wind at Theatre Y in Chicago (photo by Karl Soderstrom)

In a misty space, two roughly hewn planks of wood swing from the ceiling, suspended by nautical ropes. Flanking the planks are wide swaths of white cloth stretching from ceiling to floor. Slumped on one of the planks is a person with their back to the audience. As Kimberly Sutton and Evan Hill’s remarkable soundscape swells, the person (Melissa Lorraine) rises to face the audience. Her face wracked with misery, she grabs a rope and leans forward. From the darkness on the other plank emerges a man (Hank Hilbert). His eyes fixed on Lorraine, he gingerly moves along the plank, slowly but steadily approaching her, lifting her back just when it seems gravity will pull her down, whether she wants it to or not.

Hank Hilbert and Melissa Lorraine (photo by Karl Soderstrom)

There is something about the space occupied by Theatre Y that unsettles me. Set in an early 20th-century building in Chicago’s Lawndale neighborhood, the entrance is so nondescript that each time I’ve visited, I’ve walked right by it before doubling back. You enter a large lobby that resembles nothing more than a ghostly speakeasy from the 1920s, complete with round tables, mood lighting, and a small stage. The atonal music adds to the hypnotic, off-kilter sense of having stepped outside time. So does the enormous wrought-iron vault door at the back of the room; where it leads, I do not know. At the allotted time, a company member appears and guides the hushed audience—it seems rude to speak above a whisper here—to the cavernous performance space in the back.

Melissa Lorraine (photo by Devron Enarson)

All this to say that when one settles in and takes in the scene, one is primed for the show that follows. Following the success of Charges (The Supplicants), Theatre Y has turned to the work of another Nobel laureate, Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse, for its second production of 2026. I Am the Wind, translated by May-Brit Akerholt, concerns two unnamed people on a boat in the ocean—the script identifies them as The One and The Other.

I honestly don’t know how to talk about the details of this show, except to say that I absolutely loved it.

Melissa Lorraine and Hank Hilbert (photo by Karl Soderstrom)

Fragmentary and richly allusive in every aspect, I Am the Wind is, to me—that qualification is important—a poetic meditation on life, companionship, and chronic depression. The dialogue is halting and incomplete. These characters speak in a shorthand that can only develop between two people who really know each other. And yet, they don’t know each other at all. The word “yes” appears more than a hundred times in the script, and Lorraine and Hilbert find astonishing vocal nuance in their delivery of that single word.

Hank Hilbert (photo by Devron Enarson)

This production is clearly a labor of love. Director Hill is also responsible for the sound design, along with Sutton, and the set design, along with Lorraine. The actors are exquisite, and that’s without taking into account the physical difficulty of their performances. They spend the entire seventy minutes suspended five feet above the ground—with no safety nets, real or metaphorical—balanced on two gently moving planks, which look to be only about a foot deep. Lorraine and Hilbert are perfectly matched; his physical stolidity provides a valuable counterpoint to her tremulous body language. But that same stolidity makes his emotional fragility especially moving. He broke my heart. Multiple times.

“You don’t want to be with the others? And you don’t want to be alone. Why don’t you want to be alone?

“Because if I’m alone, then I only see myself, and then I only hear myself. And I don’t like to see and hear myself.”

Melissa Lorraine and Hank Hilbert (photo by Karl Soderstrom)

For a show that begins with what appears to be an attempted suicide and ends with a death, I Am the Wind is striking in that it is not depressing. Some of that has to do with the otherworldly look and sound of the production, which creates a distance between the performers and the audience. Some of it has to do with the rhythm and quality of the dialogue. But what it mostly comes down to is the extraordinary connection between Lorraine and Hilbert as The Other and The One.

Melissa Lorraine (photo by Karl Soderstrom)

I’m not sure I’ve ever viewed a play where I wished there were no one else in the audience but me. This is a powerful, evocative piece of theatre that has much to say about the human condition. As I walked out into a cold, rainy Chicago night, I fretted about my review: How the hell would I write about this? But maybe that’s the point. There are no monologues here. No grand pronouncements. Even completed sentences are a rarity. But if you tune into its wavelength, it’s a theatrical experience that will shake you to your core.

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photos by Devron Enarson and Karl Soderstrom

I Am the Wind
Theatre Y
3611 W. Cermak Rd. in Chicago
Thu–Sat at 7; Sun at 5
70 minutes
ends on November 1, 2026 EXTENDED to November 8, 2026
free admission; reservations required at theatre-y.com

for more shows, visit Theater in Chicago

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