THE ? COLLECTIVE
Sonder
CURRENT PRODUCTION
Sonder is a piece of theatre created by The ? Collective to be premiered at the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival from August 14 - 24.
This show examines the privacy of the lives people lead and the events that occur unknown to the general public. The cast and director intend to create a portrait of what we can not know about people, simply by looking at them. We want to dig deeper to unearth the possibilties that lie in the lives of strangers.
"Freshly married, and already bored"
"Think of it as me blessing you Mexicano style!"
"Why don’t you go sit in a broccoli field?"
Where does the word “sonder” come from?
The word sonder was coined by John Koenig a bit over a year ago. He defined it on his tumblr blog Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and explored it on his youtube channel. As a recently-coined word, it doesn’t appear in many conventional contexts yet, but other internet posters have responded with Urban Dictionary definitions, blog posts, and proposals for video, film, theatre, and a local food initiative. Members of our company first encountered the word sonder when a classmate used it, and were immediately intrigued by having a word to express the concept. We hope that our production will make you think about the stories you don’t know that are taking place around you, and that our production will add to the growing repertoire of responses to Koenig’s original post that all encourage people to be aware of the lives around their own in all their joys, sorrows, and messy complexities.
Louise Mallory, Producer