event logo 1808122 735434

The Exponential Festival Presents: I want to hold onto something beautiful and empty

event logo 1808122 735434

The Exponential Festival Presents: I want to hold onto something beautiful and empty

About the Show

The Exponential Festival and The Brick present
I want to hold onto something beautiful and empty
Hillary Gao
at The Brick Theater — 579 Metropolitan Ave
January 30 – February 7, 2026

One sexy office siren- performed by 4 performers – is trying to answer her daily email. As she hits reply all, she keeps being whisked away into more and more absurd worlds.

Hillary Gao (writer and director)
Josephine Chiang (performer)
Isabel Ebeid (performer)
Miranda Kang (performer)
Sam Xu (performer)
Ring Yang (performer)
Emily Lawrence (producer)
Leigh Honigman (line producer)
Hannah Bird (costume designer)
Forest Entsminger (set designer)
Emma Hasselbach (associate sound designer/programmer)
Miguel Lorenzo (sound designer)
Connor Sale (lighting designer) 
Anica Acuña (stage manager)
Joshua Chiang (image credit)

Find them: @hillarywgao​

[ASMR] Hello. Hellooo, Hello…… and welcome. To your safe. Space. Tonight I’m going to be helping you fall asleep. So relax, and decompress. Close your eyes for me. I’m going to play a few sounds, some things you might enjoy hearing. Some things about an office, about a tennis court, about a grandmother. How exciting. To prepare, think about how it might feel to you. Maybe it’ll feel like a recurring dream. Or a prophetic nightmare. Maybe it’ll feel cold and severe but also cocooned and warm. Maybe it’ll feel like an empty pool. Maybe it’ll feel like a day spent in a Korean spa – losing a sense of time and space. Maybe it’ll feel like right now, accumulated, and seeking history. Maybe it’ll feel like 10 hours of pretty girls trying to do a youtube makeup tutorial. Maybe it’ll feel like time is rubber. Take a deep breath. Feel free to fall asleep. Anything is possible, in this office. (compiled from responses from 24/25 ECWG cohort members, inspired by the pelagic School Process & Phenomenon Response Guidelines)

CW: This show contains mentions of death.​

I want to hold onto something beautiful and empty was developed as a part of Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers’ Group ’25 and workshopped/developed at The Bechdel Project.

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