A two-way mirror is reflective on one side and transparent on the other. Human Resources, a new play from Nashville Story Garden and local favorite Nate Eppler, works the same way: flipping between perspectives and forcing audiences to question what they see.
The play embeds its audience in a surreal corporate landscape. When audiences arrive at OZ Arts, they’ll split into two groups and watch two intersecting narratives from opposite sides of the performance space. When the stories overlap, so will the audience — but when the protagonists part, each group is left with only half the story.
The show is the most ambitious production in Nashville Story Garden’s 10-year history, thanks to a producing partnership with OZ Arts. It’s also fully homegrown, having germinated from ideas that Story Garden’s co-artistic director Lauren Berst began exploring with director Lauren Shouse during a movement workshop at Nashville Rep in the summer of 2023.
When they recruited Eppler to join the project as a writer, Berst and Shouse used the image of a two-way mirror to anchor their pitch. Together, they have crafted a rollicking satire that places its audience in the morally ambiguous world of a fictional pharmaceutical giant called Liminal.
One section of the play follows a low-level employee just beginning to question the company’s cult-like ideals; the other focuses on a midlevel human resources officer caught between protecting workers and protecting herself. Whenever these characters interact, the action shifts to a central room. As they go on their separate journeys, the scenes shift to smaller cubicles on the sides. That may sound overwhelming, but Eppler says each path offers a complete experience, building toward the same absurd climax.
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“I have had that experience in immersive theater, where I feel like I only saw part of it,” admits Eppler. “It’s this feeling of wandering through a guideless museum. I think that’s OK, but I’ve definitely come out of that feeling like, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I miss?’ In Human Resources, the audience is more designed and held in this structure.”
The structure may be complex, but first and foremost, Eppler believes the play is fun. “It’s like David Lynch made an episode of The Office where they all join a cult,” he says. Berst echoes that sentiment, saying Human Resources is a comedic take on “the cult of work” — a familiar theme to anyone watching Severance.
But the show also taps into sophisticated theatrical traditions. Eppler sees modern corporate culture as quasi-religious, and his script was partly inspired by medieval carnival plays that used satire to critique the church.
“Instead of a fool who becomes the pope, a low-level employee is over-promoted,” he says. “Instead of a big sermon at the end that sets it all back together, there is a TED Talk-style PowerPoint presentation in an all-hands meeting to set the world back right.”
The play’s other theatrical antecedents include avant-garde plays like Fefu and Her Friends, which experimented with multiple perspectives. As they developed the project, Berst and Shouse also put together movement workshops inspired by the one that first sparked their interest: a weeklong intensive on the physical theater work of Frantic Assembly, a British group that uses workshops to create a physical language for their productions before setting a script.
“It is hard to be a theater company in Music City,” says Berst. But she believes Nashville has room for innovative, boundary-pushing theater. Longtime fans of Nashville Story Garden have followed the company to venues across town, and OZ Arts subscribers have embraced experimental performances.
Still, Human Resources marks a new challenge for OZ Arts — funding and producing local theater. The organization has long supported local dance and music projects, but most of its past theater offerings have been short engagements from visiting artists. Now OZ is throwing its weight behind a local company. Lauren Berst says that kind of support “changes everything” for Nashville Story Garden.
“Part of being a producer is sitting there trying to figure out how to fund a show and make it happen,” says Berst. “Now we have an opportunity to let that rest for a minute because we have funding for the artists involved in the show. It’s hard to describe the relief and the freedom that provides. We are always going to be budget-minded, but now we have this wonderful cushion under us. I am so grateful for that, and that as producers, OZ sat back and believed in us — they just have said yes, in a way that is so incredible.”
Human Resources is a perfect example of what happens when artists get the support they need to push boundaries. This show is a testament to the power of collaboration and the unexpected places Nashville’s arts scene can go when the right people come together.
