So what is Architecting, the opening show of Theatre Junction’s season, all about? Well, if you listen to the cast and director, it’s about: People who believe they’re on a certain trajectory, only to discover that’s not true, and how they deal with the consequences; the passage of time; whether change represents true progress; whether self-will can propel you; reconstruction of the self and the world amidst changing contexts.

In other words, this production, by the Theatre of the Emerging American Moment (TEAM), encompasses a fairly grand narrative about change. Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone With the Wind, is in it. So is an anarchist architect with dreams of blowing things up. This production prefers not to stick to one timeline.

Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, the pre-southern U.S. civil rights era and a gas station in Arkansas, the show is billed as a “road-tripping requiem for modern America.”

Incorporating music, video, dancing and acting, Architecting is a surreal, physical production. Some reviewers have highlighted the sweat dripping from the actors at the end of the production and suggested audiences will need a nap after viewing the production.

The show, a collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland, premièred in Edinburgh, where it won the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe First Award, before heading out on tour.

Ben Brantley, a reviewer for the New York Times, sums up the troupe in the most flattering and direct way.

“How stimulating,” he writes, “to wake up in 2009 in the hands of a present tense theatre company that knows what it’s doing.”

Architecting plays at the Grand Theatre until September 25.