Review: A Transcriber's Tale

In the 1990s, Joanna Parson moved to New York from small-town Connecticut to fulfil her dreams as a “fashion-obsessed comedy folkie” in the clubs of New York. Like many others who do a similar thing, she had a great time but didn’t really get anywhere with the dreams, instead settling into building a career out of her make-ends-meet day job for an NY transcription service. Here, she typed the onscreen text for pre-recorded entertainment and news programmes.

As someone who does a lot of transcription in their own job, I feel comfortable in saying that typing out another’s verbatim words creates magical results, a very personal experience which takes the person doing it into the heart of another’s testimony, as Parson discovers. Yet it’s also a truly boring as hell task, so kudos to her for turning her job into a pleasingly light-hearted one-woman play with songs.

A nostalgically personal coming-of-age tale about aspiration, dating, professional fulfilment and navigating 9/11-era New York, there’s also a deeply-hidden but resonant subtext about how one-to-one communication ultimately builds a deeper experience of life than hanging off rolling news soundbites as “a link in the information chain”. Parson’s songs aren’t deeply rich in comedy, but they do bring a refreshing liveliness to her monologue.