Now I wanted to see this play in part because I am of Irish descent.
I wear a Claddagh ring.
My son is named Declan.
I like green.
And this show is from The Abbey Theatre in Dublin.
But this show makes me want to apply for Irish citizenship.
(Full disclosure: I'd apply anyways, but I'm just sayin'.)
Three incredible actors stay in one solitary small platform each for the whole show. They speak in rhyming couplets that go back and forth bouncing and cascading throughout. As their stories progress, the narratives begin to intersect and crisscross. While the actors don't interact with each other directly, their emotions, yearnings, and desires certainly simmer with occasional explosions of revelations.
I have become jaded with theatre over the years. I get too analytical or picky and find that with many performances much of what I see is without depth. Not so with "Terminus." By the end I was weeping with both sorrow and joy. It is a fantastical tale full of demons and murder, dates gone wrong and vigilante justice, car chases and beatings. Sounds like a real crowd pleaser, doesn't it?
But here's the thing, Terminus is filled with so much humor, so much hope, and so much humanity that one leaves the play with a greater sense of being. While their journeys may end when the lights go out, you will be continuing the tale for long after.
Posted by Brian Costello
PICA
UTR Press Corps
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
200 Harry Caul's - Back to Back Theatre's small metal objects
Like the opening scene of Francis Ford Coppola's oft over-looked masterpiece "The Conversation," 200 of us sat with headphones attached to our heads and monitored a desperate conversation involving a Hitchcockian MacGuffin object hidden a locker within the bowels of the Whitehall Ferry Terminal.
We can't quite see the performers for a while, due to the ebb and flow of people coming and going to Staten Island; and we don't really know what they're talking about. Before long, we, as an audience sitting on risers in the middle of a busy ferry terminal become a performance ourselves with the hundreds of "innocent bystanders" watching us look back and watch them. It becomes a standoff of audience headphones vs. travellers' iPods. Surveillance vs. Participation. Reality vs. Fantasy. Who's watching who?
Through it all, the wizards at Back to Back seamlessly move between the throngs and as we get our bearings, we become engrossed in the rising stakes and emotional pull of the two friends. One wants to sell the item. The other is having an emotional crisis. The seller won't leave his friend. The buyer is anxious.
A simple equation that works to incredible effect with the backdrop of security, eavesdropping, and constant monitoring.As the final line in "The Conversation" ominously states,
"We'll be listening to you."
Posted by Brian Costello
PICA
UTR Press Corps
Superamas Superamas Superamas
Should I say it again? I think they would.
Superamas.
A piece that plays upon, deconstructs, and somewhat celebrates artifice, "BIG, 3rd Episode (happy/end)" at the Kitchen is, without a doubt, one of my highlights of UTR 2008. Beautiful actors presenting scenes with Americanized voices overdubbing their live pantomimes, Superamas replays scenes over and over again. Each derivation producing just a little bit different glint into the focus, the characters, and the awesomeness. With their precise dance-influenced movements, every step is perfect.
Interspersed throughout the live scenes and incredible music and set design are videos that play upon an idealized "Let's all put on a show in New York!" optimism (along with a killer Claude Wampler cameo) and a group of films with an affinity for cheerleaders, hockey, and some kind of sensual massage.
And then, of course, there are the naked people.
With a scene inspired in part by "Sex In The City," three actresses come into a locker room discussing their sexual exploits and desires with and for various men. It is a bookended counterpoint to the opening scene of a bunch of men rehearsing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and discussing a buddy's newly impregnated mistress. While we see it over and over, both scenes beg the questions:
But are they happy?
Is it all for show?
Posted by Brian Costello
PICA
UTR Press Corps
Regurgitophagy - I Sing The Body Electric
Michel Melamed attaches electric nodes to his wrists and ankles. He proceeds to go on a monologish trip covering politics, love, and food. However, every cough, laugh, murmur, or outburst from the audience is transmitted into shocks that shoot through Melamed's body.
And just when you think he's faking it, he hooks up an innocent audience member and gently shocks them. Much to their surprise.
It is a visceral piece, to say the least. Contested and contentious, one wonders if Melamed is in a battle with the audience. He wants your response and yet pays a price for it.
While it is shocking, it is not the shocking I would expect. And in the end, is it merely a trick? To what end does the shock of electricity take us?
I leave you with Walt Whitman to ponder it further:
I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
Whitman's "charge" takes on a whole new meaning with Melamed's enterprise.
Posted by Brian Costello
PICA
UTR Press Corps
And just when you think he's faking it, he hooks up an innocent audience member and gently shocks them. Much to their surprise.
It is a visceral piece, to say the least. Contested and contentious, one wonders if Melamed is in a battle with the audience. He wants your response and yet pays a price for it.
While it is shocking, it is not the shocking I would expect. And in the end, is it merely a trick? To what end does the shock of electricity take us?
I leave you with Walt Whitman to ponder it further:
I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
Whitman's "charge" takes on a whole new meaning with Melamed's enterprise.
Posted by Brian Costello
PICA
UTR Press Corps
Ring Ring RING! This Place Is A Desert for sure . . .
An ambitious and visually arresting piece, I was disappointed with TPAD. Bogged down a bit, perhaps, by opening festival jitters, it took a while for the performers to really get into the skin of their characters. Things felt actor-y and frantic. Coupled with this is the amazing set of massive projection screens simulcasting live feeds of scenes as they happen. Some are via placed cameras, other are via a handheld visual narrator who follows the action.
While I applaud the idea, I found the execution lacking. Many scenes were blocked and staged directly for the camera, rather than for the audience. This gives occasionally odd tableaus. But perhaps I'm missing something. Maybe some of this unsettling juxtaposition is exactly the point.
We're not entirely supposed to empathize with the characters struggling through their relationships and lives, we're only witness to the trainwreck of the journey.
That said, man, that ringing phone at the opening was maddening.
Posted by Brian Costello
PICA
UTR Press Corps
While I applaud the idea, I found the execution lacking. Many scenes were blocked and staged directly for the camera, rather than for the audience. This gives occasionally odd tableaus. But perhaps I'm missing something. Maybe some of this unsettling juxtaposition is exactly the point.
We're not entirely supposed to empathize with the characters struggling through their relationships and lives, we're only witness to the trainwreck of the journey.
That said, man, that ringing phone at the opening was maddening.
Posted by Brian Costello
PICA
UTR Press Corps
The Future of Future Aesthetics
Alas, my UTR Blogging is tardy. But blog I shall. For I saw many an amazing show
and have had plenty of time to think about them.
After walking into the Public lobby bleary-eeyed from an all night flight, I headed up to the symposium "Future Aesthetics/Hip Hop Theater - the next generation. Who's got next?" Let by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Kamillah Forbes, the discussion was collegial and more roundtably than didactic. Which was refreshing and invigorating to hear every one contribute.
A good chunk of the discussion revolved around not only who the next voices are and what will they say but also--and equally important--how do you, as a presenter/curator, help communicate that work to a broader audience. One wants to diversify audiences and market to both a theatre audience or a ballet audience, but what works for an older generation doesn't always translate for a younger.
One participant brought up the production of "Raisin In The Sun" with Puff Daddy. Was that hip hop? Was it just marketing? Was it good?
This brought up discussion again about reaching younger artists and audiences and what mechanism works best. Given that you want to hear something new but also want to expose audiences to something they're not expecting, a general consensus was built around the idea of contextualization. Context is everything.
And with that, we broke up to add greater context to the rest of UTR.
Posted by Brian Costello
PICA
UTR Press Corps
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Going Under : The 2008 Under the Radar Festival ( theater mania feature)
includes experimental and site-specific works such as Stoop Stories, Terminus, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, Etiquette
Friday, January 18, 2008
not for review
This is not a review. Dael Orlandersmith's showing of Stoop Stories at Under the Radar is a work in progress and it says right in the program that it is not open to review, but I am signed up to blog it, so hopefully Ms. O will not mind a few non-review words from this humble writer.
In a festival of multi-layered, multi-media and multi-disciplinary work, it is refreshing to hear this singular voice get back to some of the basics of theatre: language, story and character. Orlandersmith embodies a range of characters from a young African-American child to an elderly Jewish man, delivering their stories simply and compassionately through her voice as a writer and speaker. I imagine from the title that these might be the stories neighbors tell each other on their stoops - individuals striving to connect to the universal. These everyday people share stories of their close brushes with love, death, violence, fame and transcendence, some brief, some epic, all their own window into another human life.
- Erin from PICA
disinformation
In this pre-apocalyptic musical revue "anthropological humorist" Reggie Watts explores the lighter side of global climate change, consumerism, racism, and the end of the world as we know it. Punctuated by commercials for the show's ominously-named corporate sponsor Carnaidesai, Watts delivers a word salad of absurdist monologues, corporate sound bytes, spot-on beatboxing and faux-German rap. Just as I got traction on one of his ideas he switched directions, persona, accent or genre, always at least one step ahead of my comprehension. With a soulful voice and deadpan delivery, Watts remained cool as a cucumber as I sweated to keep up.
I wonder if New Yorkers notice the influence of the Pacific Northwest in his work. As a citizen of "Ecotopia" I am all too familiar with environmental and political content in art, although I cannot recall an example as delightfully effective, successful and subversive as "Disinformation." Watts and his group embody the collaborative d.i.y spirit (where do-it-yourself means get all your friends in on it, too) and effortlessly morph between dance, theatre, comedy, music, video and everything in between. They also manage to get their message across without the use of a 2x4. Although I watched most of the performance through tears of laughter, I must admit one line from the show still echoes through my head as I dutifully sort the remains from my lunch into the compost, recycling and landfill containers recently installed in our office: "The more that you use, the less that you are."
. . . edited to add that you can still catch this show (if it is not sold out yet, i assume it will be) at Under the Radar Jan 18th at 9:30, Jan 19th at 10:30 and Jan 20th at 4:30
- Erin from PICA
Theater of Resistance?
GENERATION JEANS
Belarus Free Theatre
The story of the Belarus Free Theatre is an inspiring and upsetting one. The current Belarusian government sponsors a culture of censored artistic freedoms. Performing quite literally under the radar in small apartments and basements, and each time risking the arrest of both the actors and the whole audience, the Free Theatre’s credo states that their task “will be ended when the situation in Belarus will be changed from dictatorial regime to democracy.”
Equally inspiring and upsetting is the story that Nikolai Khalezin tells when he takes to the Public’s less censoring stage. In an hour and a half long monologue underscored by a Velvet Revolution soundtrack mixed live by DJ Laurel, Khalezin tells of the path that led him to a life of political activism and resistance, of the political heroes that have inspired him, of time spent in prison, and of his trafficking of the durable trousers that have come to symbolize those individuals who eschew the luxury suite culture of “The Man” to speak out for rights of the people. His persistent optimism is striking, ultimately reaching out to his audience with a perhaps too easy, but nonetheless affecting plea—a kind of anointment of we participatory spectators as inheritors of the transgenerational, international jeans generation.
Particularly intriguing and thought provoking is the utter lack of the theatrical convention familiar to American theatre audiences. Khalezin simply tells it like it is, with performative flourish and theatrical gesture few and far between. The momentum of his tale can be labored, and his simplicity almost alienating at times, and yet there is a deeply welled honesty in his presentation. The raw minimalism of Khalezin’s performance brings to the fore an inevitable comparison, given the backstory to the Free Theatre of Belarus. What must it be like to view a piece like this in a Belarusian basement? I cannot claim to know much about Belarusian theatre beyond this one performance. But I wonder in a culture with a relative dearth of freely articulated storytelling, what is the experience of watching this sparsely theatrical tale?
Generation Jeans’s Under the Radar performances come now with a somewhat unfortunate preface. Festival producer Mark Russell begins each night with an apology: there is a moment late in the show when, ideally, Khalezin lights a hunk of flammable solid and stands holding a burning ball. Because of New York City fire code, Under the Radar cannot allow Khalezin to actual set anything ablaze. “Use your imagination,” Russell pleads. A friend of mine who is working for Under the Radar tells me that in their first performance, having never run the show fully during tech, Khalezin actually lit the hunk of flammable solid, much to the shock and mild heart attacks of the crew standing in the wings. The restriction was levied in subsequent performances, and so too Mark Russell’s introduction at the Free Theatre’s request. Am I the only one that finds this editing deeply, perhaps sadly ironic?
Really I think the qualification is unnecessary. I found the sans-flame moment perfectly theatrical and effective; the DJ brings up the music and Khalezin stands there with his characteristic stoicism. The point is made. But the acceptance of fire codes highlighted by Russell’s preface deepens the comparison between the two national theatres and up a concern that I find constantly plaguing as a young person making a way in theatre: Can theatre in America be an act of revolution? Seeing Generation Jeans at the Public feels less like an act of resistance and more like a diluted, but nonetheless important, lesson on artistic censorship in one corner of the world. In being presented in an openly advertised theatre, an in accepting New York City fire codes, is Khalezin’s performance not somewhat undermined? I can imagine the sensation of actively taking part in revolution that might be felt by a Belarusian audience member, but I certainly don’t feel it myself. If not here, where can we now find a forum for resistance?
Elliot B. Quick
Belarus Free Theatre
The story of the Belarus Free Theatre is an inspiring and upsetting one. The current Belarusian government sponsors a culture of censored artistic freedoms. Performing quite literally under the radar in small apartments and basements, and each time risking the arrest of both the actors and the whole audience, the Free Theatre’s credo states that their task “will be ended when the situation in Belarus will be changed from dictatorial regime to democracy.”
Equally inspiring and upsetting is the story that Nikolai Khalezin tells when he takes to the Public’s less censoring stage. In an hour and a half long monologue underscored by a Velvet Revolution soundtrack mixed live by DJ Laurel, Khalezin tells of the path that led him to a life of political activism and resistance, of the political heroes that have inspired him, of time spent in prison, and of his trafficking of the durable trousers that have come to symbolize those individuals who eschew the luxury suite culture of “The Man” to speak out for rights of the people. His persistent optimism is striking, ultimately reaching out to his audience with a perhaps too easy, but nonetheless affecting plea—a kind of anointment of we participatory spectators as inheritors of the transgenerational, international jeans generation.
Particularly intriguing and thought provoking is the utter lack of the theatrical convention familiar to American theatre audiences. Khalezin simply tells it like it is, with performative flourish and theatrical gesture few and far between. The momentum of his tale can be labored, and his simplicity almost alienating at times, and yet there is a deeply welled honesty in his presentation. The raw minimalism of Khalezin’s performance brings to the fore an inevitable comparison, given the backstory to the Free Theatre of Belarus. What must it be like to view a piece like this in a Belarusian basement? I cannot claim to know much about Belarusian theatre beyond this one performance. But I wonder in a culture with a relative dearth of freely articulated storytelling, what is the experience of watching this sparsely theatrical tale?
Generation Jeans’s Under the Radar performances come now with a somewhat unfortunate preface. Festival producer Mark Russell begins each night with an apology: there is a moment late in the show when, ideally, Khalezin lights a hunk of flammable solid and stands holding a burning ball. Because of New York City fire code, Under the Radar cannot allow Khalezin to actual set anything ablaze. “Use your imagination,” Russell pleads. A friend of mine who is working for Under the Radar tells me that in their first performance, having never run the show fully during tech, Khalezin actually lit the hunk of flammable solid, much to the shock and mild heart attacks of the crew standing in the wings. The restriction was levied in subsequent performances, and so too Mark Russell’s introduction at the Free Theatre’s request. Am I the only one that finds this editing deeply, perhaps sadly ironic?
Really I think the qualification is unnecessary. I found the sans-flame moment perfectly theatrical and effective; the DJ brings up the music and Khalezin stands there with his characteristic stoicism. The point is made. But the acceptance of fire codes highlighted by Russell’s preface deepens the comparison between the two national theatres and up a concern that I find constantly plaguing as a young person making a way in theatre: Can theatre in America be an act of revolution? Seeing Generation Jeans at the Public feels less like an act of resistance and more like a diluted, but nonetheless important, lesson on artistic censorship in one corner of the world. In being presented in an openly advertised theatre, an in accepting New York City fire codes, is Khalezin’s performance not somewhat undermined? I can imagine the sensation of actively taking part in revolution that might be felt by a Belarusian audience member, but I certainly don’t feel it myself. If not here, where can we now find a forum for resistance?
Elliot B. Quick
Consuming Regurgitophagy
REGURGITOPHAGY
Conceived, Written and Performed by Michel Melamed
Directed by Alessandra Colasanti, Marco Abujamra and Michel Melamed
By chance, twenty four hours before I saw Portuguese monologist Michel Melamed’s Regurgitophagy I sat in a nearby bookstore and reread Shirley Jackson’s hauntingly calculated story The Lottery. The 1948 short story about the an annual ritual in small town America levels a trenchant critique on the ways we all accept, allow, and perpetrate violence in our communities (it’s a wonderful and disturbing story, and if you haven’t read it you should). So it was with my mind already attuned to question of my own complacency that I sat down to view Melamed’s meditation on cultural brutality.
Regurgitophagy finds a way to complicate and make visceral the critique in Jackson’s story. At start, with the tattered clothing and stoic placidity that you might expect in guillotine scenes from the French revolution, Melamed walks out into the sparsely and simply designed stage and clamps the metal cuffs on his wrists and ankles into the interface cables hanging from the ceiling. The interface, known as ‘Pau-de-Arara,’ is set up thusly: microphones trained at the audience will transform every sound you make—laughter, cheers, sobbing and coughing—into electric shocks transmitted to Melamed’s body. As he launches into the cavalcade of streaming words that makes up the substance of Regurgitophagy, the audience sits in anxious anticipation, unsure if and how to interact with the performance.
Melamed, however, assures you that it is okay to respond. Even as his body is tautly contorted from the painful shocks, he encourages you to engage. He eggs you on. He almost seems to enjoy it. The content of Melamed’s performance—a fiercely intelligent and fast paced deluge of lyric word play performed with a mixture of wild abandon and intent focus—is frequently laugh inducing. His manic cycling through personas and subjects feels much like surfing through a litany of grotesque and perverse cable stations. Yet the pained convulsions of Melamed’s body with each vocal response might be enough to silence even the rowdiest audience if it weren’t for his absolute and direct insistence that we engage. When he is met by silence, Melamed points to a man near the front. “What’s your name,” he says. And he waits patiently until the man musters the courage to respond, delivering the shock that we all know is coming. At another point, stepping into the role of radio pundit, Melamed looks into the house, asks “Who’s there?” and then waits with the patiently honest look of a performer prompting audience interaction. When someone from our midst voices a response, I’m not sure if I should judge him for his willingness to enact this violence or respect him for being brave enough (braver than I) to give Melamed what he wants.
With as prevailing a concept as this, the show risks being overly reliant on the shocking (sorry) gimmick— Melamed uses the same machine in two other shows as well, and I’d be curious to see how well those shows play. What allows Regurgitography to broaden into a more complex cultural critique is the meaning of this somewhat cumbersome title. A program note breaks it down into its component parts: REGURGITATE-“to expel, to cast out that which in a cavity is in excess, especially in the stomach.” And PHAGY-“to eat.” Regurgitophagy is then the act of excising everything in order to decided what to re-consume. As Melamed throws out a litany of cultural touchstones, he highlights our selection of what to re-consume by allowing the decision to register physically on his body.
There are certainly moments in the performance that don’t always pack the emotional punch they might. The feverish pace of the text combined with Melamed’s thick Portuguese accent make the language sometimes feel impenetrable, ultimately diluting the visceral terror of being asked to commit this violence a muddling our ability to truly regurgitophagate. Feeling sometimes alienated from the content of Melamed’s words left me more invested in the intellectual and conceptual questions raised by the piece, than in the specific moments of highlighted consumption. But it is precisely in this task of interrogating the more easily digestible challenge to our everyday complacency that Regurgitophagy is most successful. I could write for pages on the philosophical quandaries that Melamed has me pondering—issues of martyrdom, questions of internationalism and the role of foreign cultures in both mediating and acknowledging violence, and of course the cyclical paradox of who is enacting the violence and who is having the violence enacted upon them (Melamed for the obvious reasons vs. me for being forced to commit violence). It’s a sprawling litany of cultural concerns and one that I will be sifting through for a while.
Elliot B. Quick
Conceived, Written and Performed by Michel Melamed
Directed by Alessandra Colasanti, Marco Abujamra and Michel Melamed
By chance, twenty four hours before I saw Portuguese monologist Michel Melamed’s Regurgitophagy I sat in a nearby bookstore and reread Shirley Jackson’s hauntingly calculated story The Lottery. The 1948 short story about the an annual ritual in small town America levels a trenchant critique on the ways we all accept, allow, and perpetrate violence in our communities (it’s a wonderful and disturbing story, and if you haven’t read it you should). So it was with my mind already attuned to question of my own complacency that I sat down to view Melamed’s meditation on cultural brutality.
Regurgitophagy finds a way to complicate and make visceral the critique in Jackson’s story. At start, with the tattered clothing and stoic placidity that you might expect in guillotine scenes from the French revolution, Melamed walks out into the sparsely and simply designed stage and clamps the metal cuffs on his wrists and ankles into the interface cables hanging from the ceiling. The interface, known as ‘Pau-de-Arara,’ is set up thusly: microphones trained at the audience will transform every sound you make—laughter, cheers, sobbing and coughing—into electric shocks transmitted to Melamed’s body. As he launches into the cavalcade of streaming words that makes up the substance of Regurgitophagy, the audience sits in anxious anticipation, unsure if and how to interact with the performance.
Melamed, however, assures you that it is okay to respond. Even as his body is tautly contorted from the painful shocks, he encourages you to engage. He eggs you on. He almost seems to enjoy it. The content of Melamed’s performance—a fiercely intelligent and fast paced deluge of lyric word play performed with a mixture of wild abandon and intent focus—is frequently laugh inducing. His manic cycling through personas and subjects feels much like surfing through a litany of grotesque and perverse cable stations. Yet the pained convulsions of Melamed’s body with each vocal response might be enough to silence even the rowdiest audience if it weren’t for his absolute and direct insistence that we engage. When he is met by silence, Melamed points to a man near the front. “What’s your name,” he says. And he waits patiently until the man musters the courage to respond, delivering the shock that we all know is coming. At another point, stepping into the role of radio pundit, Melamed looks into the house, asks “Who’s there?” and then waits with the patiently honest look of a performer prompting audience interaction. When someone from our midst voices a response, I’m not sure if I should judge him for his willingness to enact this violence or respect him for being brave enough (braver than I) to give Melamed what he wants.
With as prevailing a concept as this, the show risks being overly reliant on the shocking (sorry) gimmick— Melamed uses the same machine in two other shows as well, and I’d be curious to see how well those shows play. What allows Regurgitography to broaden into a more complex cultural critique is the meaning of this somewhat cumbersome title. A program note breaks it down into its component parts: REGURGITATE-“to expel, to cast out that which in a cavity is in excess, especially in the stomach.” And PHAGY-“to eat.” Regurgitophagy is then the act of excising everything in order to decided what to re-consume. As Melamed throws out a litany of cultural touchstones, he highlights our selection of what to re-consume by allowing the decision to register physically on his body.
There are certainly moments in the performance that don’t always pack the emotional punch they might. The feverish pace of the text combined with Melamed’s thick Portuguese accent make the language sometimes feel impenetrable, ultimately diluting the visceral terror of being asked to commit this violence a muddling our ability to truly regurgitophagate. Feeling sometimes alienated from the content of Melamed’s words left me more invested in the intellectual and conceptual questions raised by the piece, than in the specific moments of highlighted consumption. But it is precisely in this task of interrogating the more easily digestible challenge to our everyday complacency that Regurgitophagy is most successful. I could write for pages on the philosophical quandaries that Melamed has me pondering—issues of martyrdom, questions of internationalism and the role of foreign cultures in both mediating and acknowledging violence, and of course the cyclical paradox of who is enacting the violence and who is having the violence enacted upon them (Melamed for the obvious reasons vs. me for being forced to commit violence). It’s a sprawling litany of cultural concerns and one that I will be sifting through for a while.
Elliot B. Quick
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Part Italian modernist cinema, part MTV’s The Real World
THIS PLACE IS A DESERT
Conceived and Directed by Jay Scheib
In collaboration with media artist Leah Gelpe
Produced by Shoshana Polanco
Part Italian modernist cinema, part MTV’s The Real World, Jay Scheib’s mixed media portraiture This Place is a Desert pushes past the by now somewhat familiar The-21st-Century-is-oversaturated-with-media-and-surveilance critique to remind us that, while our private lives may be incessantly invaded by and broadcasted to the outside world, it is still possible (inevitable?) to be profoundly, painfully alone. On a set of obscured rooms behind rooms viewed through windows, around doors, and down a dead-ending hallway, eight desperately alone characters strive to fill their lives with meaning and surround themselves with connective tissue. They cheat on their spouses, they lie to their lovers, they yearn for physical contact and they try to disappear. All the while their peopled solitude is penetrated by 6 migrating cameras and one wryly voyeuristic cameraman that isolate and redouble their figures on the four-frame-wide projection screen that crowns the mutable domicile. Alternating between calculated, underperformative naturalism and hyper-aware presentationalism, and with balletic interludes of sometimes violent sometimes mechanical gestural expressionism, the aspiring movers and changers strive to focus their minds, and the camera’s chronicling gaze, on the good things, all the while reinforcing their own isolation. Sometimes delightfully spastic, often raw and affecting, it’s a physically lyrical sketch of the bodies that the 21st century seems to leave behind.
Actions speak louder than words here. There’s an intricate web of relationships, a story of sex and the culturally elite, and some clever, often hilariously self-aware and self-effacing turns of phrase. But for me the story and language mostly amounted to a meaningless wash—the incessant babble of party-speak hashes through bloated, familiar philosophy and a gleeful rave-turned-orgy descends into an untranslated deluge of mispronounced Italian, but the details of what’s said are never really at issue. And while select words and phrases may provoke fits of raucous laughter or clue us in to the thematic heart of Scheib’s meditation, the juxtaposition of flattening, deemphasized everyday speech patters with evocative, more illuminating gesture and penetrating cinematic framing assures that this is not a language play. It’s a hodgepodge of acting styles, but what at times feels like an uneven standard of performance serves to foreground the wrought figures in moments of more calculated composition. Early in the piece one characters wonders if an image can speak—if an image can remember. This Place is a Desert lets the images (both filmed and staged) do most of the work. While Scheib identifies the films of Antonioni as inspiration, This Place is s Desert is not purely an exercise in cinematic mise en scene; the raw immediacy of the expressive bodies on stage effectively counters the potential preoccupation with projected film. On screen the camera isolates characters in sometimes crowded rooms while on stage the attuned physicalities of unexpectedly graceful bodies cry out with a visceral, physicalized ennui, begging to be touched. I’m left ultimately awash in the various cultural references and critiques, but with a more primary collection of visceral responses—a catalogue of viscerally trenchant remembered images of human solitude: a reticent woman shrinking from the ringing phone at the end of a hallway, lovers pressing through a mattress to find one another’s touch, a businessman’s physically audacious showmanship on a flimsy folding table, a woman in her nightgown dancing with practiced grace and cyclic violence in the privacy of her own bedroom…
Elliot B. Quick
Conceived and Directed by Jay Scheib
In collaboration with media artist Leah Gelpe
Produced by Shoshana Polanco
Part Italian modernist cinema, part MTV’s The Real World, Jay Scheib’s mixed media portraiture This Place is a Desert pushes past the by now somewhat familiar The-21st-Century-is-oversaturated-with-media-and-surveilance critique to remind us that, while our private lives may be incessantly invaded by and broadcasted to the outside world, it is still possible (inevitable?) to be profoundly, painfully alone. On a set of obscured rooms behind rooms viewed through windows, around doors, and down a dead-ending hallway, eight desperately alone characters strive to fill their lives with meaning and surround themselves with connective tissue. They cheat on their spouses, they lie to their lovers, they yearn for physical contact and they try to disappear. All the while their peopled solitude is penetrated by 6 migrating cameras and one wryly voyeuristic cameraman that isolate and redouble their figures on the four-frame-wide projection screen that crowns the mutable domicile. Alternating between calculated, underperformative naturalism and hyper-aware presentationalism, and with balletic interludes of sometimes violent sometimes mechanical gestural expressionism, the aspiring movers and changers strive to focus their minds, and the camera’s chronicling gaze, on the good things, all the while reinforcing their own isolation. Sometimes delightfully spastic, often raw and affecting, it’s a physically lyrical sketch of the bodies that the 21st century seems to leave behind.
Actions speak louder than words here. There’s an intricate web of relationships, a story of sex and the culturally elite, and some clever, often hilariously self-aware and self-effacing turns of phrase. But for me the story and language mostly amounted to a meaningless wash—the incessant babble of party-speak hashes through bloated, familiar philosophy and a gleeful rave-turned-orgy descends into an untranslated deluge of mispronounced Italian, but the details of what’s said are never really at issue. And while select words and phrases may provoke fits of raucous laughter or clue us in to the thematic heart of Scheib’s meditation, the juxtaposition of flattening, deemphasized everyday speech patters with evocative, more illuminating gesture and penetrating cinematic framing assures that this is not a language play. It’s a hodgepodge of acting styles, but what at times feels like an uneven standard of performance serves to foreground the wrought figures in moments of more calculated composition. Early in the piece one characters wonders if an image can speak—if an image can remember. This Place is a Desert lets the images (both filmed and staged) do most of the work. While Scheib identifies the films of Antonioni as inspiration, This Place is s Desert is not purely an exercise in cinematic mise en scene; the raw immediacy of the expressive bodies on stage effectively counters the potential preoccupation with projected film. On screen the camera isolates characters in sometimes crowded rooms while on stage the attuned physicalities of unexpectedly graceful bodies cry out with a visceral, physicalized ennui, begging to be touched. I’m left ultimately awash in the various cultural references and critiques, but with a more primary collection of visceral responses—a catalogue of viscerally trenchant remembered images of human solitude: a reticent woman shrinking from the ringing phone at the end of a hallway, lovers pressing through a mattress to find one another’s touch, a businessman’s physically audacious showmanship on a flimsy folding table, a woman in her nightgown dancing with practiced grace and cyclic violence in the privacy of her own bedroom…
Elliot B. Quick
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
How Theater Failed America
How Theater Failed America
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
Mike Daisey is quick to answer this deep question.
I felt he really reached this the audience. He educated and entertained me for nearly an hour and half and that seemed to fly by.
I was laughing one minute and getting goosebumps the next.
His personal stories of his past I found to be most interesting. Also, I loved hearing about his struggles to work on his “Theatre on the Pond” after working at Monmouth doing summer stock.
Daisey a true monologist able to keep us at the edge of our seats. Wanting more of his thoughts of what theatre/America/himself have done wrong and what they are doing now.
You will have to find him in Seattle or go to Joe’s Pub to see him perform if you did not make it into this sold out show!
mikedaisey.com
Posted by Wilson from Portland. Oregon.
Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory
Mike Daisey is quick to answer this deep question.
I felt he really reached this the audience. He educated and entertained me for nearly an hour and half and that seemed to fly by.
I was laughing one minute and getting goosebumps the next.
His personal stories of his past I found to be most interesting. Also, I loved hearing about his struggles to work on his “Theatre on the Pond” after working at Monmouth doing summer stock.
Daisey a true monologist able to keep us at the edge of our seats. Wanting more of his thoughts of what theatre/America/himself have done wrong and what they are doing now.
You will have to find him in Seattle or go to Joe’s Pub to see him perform if you did not make it into this sold out show!
mikedaisey.com
Posted by Wilson from Portland. Oregon.
More to Learn
In Spite of Everything
The Suicide Kings Directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph
It has been a while since I have stepped into a classroom and next time that I do I will think about this show. The Story- The Suicide Kings are a team of three poetry workshop teachers that go into school, perform their work and teach. The day after one of their workshops a student in one of the classes they taught killed his entire class, including his teacher and himself. The Suicide Kings are called in for question about what they said to they student and each of their backgrounds as well.
As dark as this piece is it is the most relevant to me knowing that at this very moment there are students in school all over the world that don’t feel safe due to violence.
I remember like it was yesterday, over ten years ago when the Columbine Tragedy happened. Growing up, I was lucky. I felt more invincible than safe from all the bomb threats in my hometown, my highschool–I played audience to suicide, killing and hate too.
Who is at fault? What can we do to help?
Seeing this show really opened my eyes to how young people are affected by the voice of people they know and people they don’t.
Make time to see this ! We all have more to learn.
In Spite of Everything is playing until January 20, 2008 at The Public Theatre.
Wilson visiting from Portland, Oregon – raised in N.J.
The Suicide Kings Directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph
It has been a while since I have stepped into a classroom and next time that I do I will think about this show. The Story- The Suicide Kings are a team of three poetry workshop teachers that go into school, perform their work and teach. The day after one of their workshops a student in one of the classes they taught killed his entire class, including his teacher and himself. The Suicide Kings are called in for question about what they said to they student and each of their backgrounds as well.
As dark as this piece is it is the most relevant to me knowing that at this very moment there are students in school all over the world that don’t feel safe due to violence.
I remember like it was yesterday, over ten years ago when the Columbine Tragedy happened. Growing up, I was lucky. I felt more invincible than safe from all the bomb threats in my hometown, my highschool–I played audience to suicide, killing and hate too.
Who is at fault? What can we do to help?
Seeing this show really opened my eyes to how young people are affected by the voice of people they know and people they don’t.
Make time to see this ! We all have more to learn.
In Spite of Everything is playing until January 20, 2008 at The Public Theatre.
Wilson visiting from Portland, Oregon – raised in N.J.
Trojan Women=Heartache
Trojan Women
January 11, 2008
Harlem Stage
Wow. There exists hurt and heartbreak and tragedy in this world that just can’t be explained or approached in normal terms. Sometimes, in cases of extreme violence, racism, genocide, infanticide, war horrors and systematic enslavement of entire cultures, everyday attempts to come to an understanding of these things fails. So what do we do? We turn to other methods of coming to terms with our flaws, and in the process, attempt to undermine the logic of warfare and violence. For the Greeks, it was the dramatic form of tragedy. Tragedy became, for the Hellenic culture, a way to illuminate the excesses of our nature—and now, in the 21st Century, as we contend with a burgeoning population, a rapidly increasing global middle class, poverty, race wars and urban slums, there has never been a more appropriate time to turn to the old masters of tragedy to help us understand our base nature.
Which is what the Harlem Stage has done. Ostensibly a part of the Under the Radar Festival, this piece had a very different feeling than the rest of the Festival. Not only separated by geography—the Stage is in an old converted gatehouse in Harlem—this piece also distinguished itself by adhering to more traditional notions of plot, character and narrative arc. It was a nice change from the bulk of UTR performances, which, for the most part, actively break down these very notions.
So what the Harlem Stage has done with Trojan Women is to transplant the story, originally part of Grecian oral tradition and then adapted by Euripides into a play by the same name, into a contemporary setting and into a near post-apocalyptic future in which New York City has been destroyed by unknown invaders after a long war. The play is set in the rubble of Penn Station and a high chain link fence separates the audience from the play. A cage is positioned up high at the left side of the stage in which a beautiful woman lounges—it turns out this is Helen of Troy, the woman who, in Euripides play, was the object of desire for Paris.
Ok, a bit of background about the original story and then we’ll get back to the play. Helen is the daughter of Zeus and is so beautiful that she has many suitors from all over the Greek lands. Finally, the Greek Menelaus weds her and they settle down. But then Paris, who is, like Helen, Trojan, kidnaps Helen and brings her back to Troy, which ignites a ten-year long war that culminates in the defeat of Troy. Their husbands killed and their land sacked, the Trojan Women are all that are left. The characters that one needs to know in the play are Hecuba, the dethroned queen and the moral center of the group; her daughter Cassandra, who is blessed with the knowledge of the future but cursed because no one will believe her. Finally, Andromache, widower of Hector, is a Trojan princess and carries with her a little baby boy. These are the central Trojan Women. The male characters are Menelaus, husband of Helen who wins her back through battle; and Talthybius, a messenger who bears the bad news of the women’s fate.
So in the present version of this play, the soldiers are dressed in green Army fatigues and look like something from a Vietnam war movie. Talthybius, the messenger, has been reconfigured into a smarmy, duplicitous “diplomat” who is super corporate: slickly dressed, holding a clipboard and speaking a kind of business/diplomatic doubletalk.
The play’s main plot hasn’t been changed from Euripedes’ version. From what I can tell, and I’ve not seen a production of the old Greek play, the plot is essentially the same. What Alfred Preisser, the writer and director who adapted the play, has done is added excruciating testimony from the victims of civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. These moments are of course the most powerful of the play and really contextualize the piece in contemporary rhetoric of atrocity. When one of the women stands up and approaches the chain link fence, the audience understands that this woman is not only speaking the lines from a thousand year old play, but that she is speaking from a very recent time in which arms and hands are hacked off, girls are literally raped to death, and babies are skewered on sticks. A pretty deft political move by Mr. Preisser, I think, and one that connects the dots between victimized populations of women across time, country and ideology.
What’s so powerful about this piece is largely the lament of the women, especially the performance by the woman playing Hecuba. The actor, a woman in her sixties, is just wonderfully cast. Her face contorts with pain and agony with each fresh loss, and she powerfully serves as the mouthpiece for the women. She is given one line that nearly brought me to tears. As she considers the hubris of her former, pre-war and enslavement hubris of invincibility, she laments that while she understood that her country men fought in lands over “there,” she never thought that “there could become here.” A pointed reference to America’s own sense, even in a post 9/11 world, that we are immune to outside attack.
The play is a wonderful interpretation of Homer brought forward into the present and by so doing, shows us that atrocities are atrocities in any time period, and that after nearly three millennia of Western Civilization, we are still far from an atmosphere of tolerance, understanding and peace.
Scott McEachern
UTR Press Corps
PICA
scott@pica.org
January 11, 2008
Harlem Stage
Wow. There exists hurt and heartbreak and tragedy in this world that just can’t be explained or approached in normal terms. Sometimes, in cases of extreme violence, racism, genocide, infanticide, war horrors and systematic enslavement of entire cultures, everyday attempts to come to an understanding of these things fails. So what do we do? We turn to other methods of coming to terms with our flaws, and in the process, attempt to undermine the logic of warfare and violence. For the Greeks, it was the dramatic form of tragedy. Tragedy became, for the Hellenic culture, a way to illuminate the excesses of our nature—and now, in the 21st Century, as we contend with a burgeoning population, a rapidly increasing global middle class, poverty, race wars and urban slums, there has never been a more appropriate time to turn to the old masters of tragedy to help us understand our base nature.
Which is what the Harlem Stage has done. Ostensibly a part of the Under the Radar Festival, this piece had a very different feeling than the rest of the Festival. Not only separated by geography—the Stage is in an old converted gatehouse in Harlem—this piece also distinguished itself by adhering to more traditional notions of plot, character and narrative arc. It was a nice change from the bulk of UTR performances, which, for the most part, actively break down these very notions.
So what the Harlem Stage has done with Trojan Women is to transplant the story, originally part of Grecian oral tradition and then adapted by Euripides into a play by the same name, into a contemporary setting and into a near post-apocalyptic future in which New York City has been destroyed by unknown invaders after a long war. The play is set in the rubble of Penn Station and a high chain link fence separates the audience from the play. A cage is positioned up high at the left side of the stage in which a beautiful woman lounges—it turns out this is Helen of Troy, the woman who, in Euripides play, was the object of desire for Paris.
Ok, a bit of background about the original story and then we’ll get back to the play. Helen is the daughter of Zeus and is so beautiful that she has many suitors from all over the Greek lands. Finally, the Greek Menelaus weds her and they settle down. But then Paris, who is, like Helen, Trojan, kidnaps Helen and brings her back to Troy, which ignites a ten-year long war that culminates in the defeat of Troy. Their husbands killed and their land sacked, the Trojan Women are all that are left. The characters that one needs to know in the play are Hecuba, the dethroned queen and the moral center of the group; her daughter Cassandra, who is blessed with the knowledge of the future but cursed because no one will believe her. Finally, Andromache, widower of Hector, is a Trojan princess and carries with her a little baby boy. These are the central Trojan Women. The male characters are Menelaus, husband of Helen who wins her back through battle; and Talthybius, a messenger who bears the bad news of the women’s fate.
So in the present version of this play, the soldiers are dressed in green Army fatigues and look like something from a Vietnam war movie. Talthybius, the messenger, has been reconfigured into a smarmy, duplicitous “diplomat” who is super corporate: slickly dressed, holding a clipboard and speaking a kind of business/diplomatic doubletalk.
The play’s main plot hasn’t been changed from Euripedes’ version. From what I can tell, and I’ve not seen a production of the old Greek play, the plot is essentially the same. What Alfred Preisser, the writer and director who adapted the play, has done is added excruciating testimony from the victims of civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. These moments are of course the most powerful of the play and really contextualize the piece in contemporary rhetoric of atrocity. When one of the women stands up and approaches the chain link fence, the audience understands that this woman is not only speaking the lines from a thousand year old play, but that she is speaking from a very recent time in which arms and hands are hacked off, girls are literally raped to death, and babies are skewered on sticks. A pretty deft political move by Mr. Preisser, I think, and one that connects the dots between victimized populations of women across time, country and ideology.
What’s so powerful about this piece is largely the lament of the women, especially the performance by the woman playing Hecuba. The actor, a woman in her sixties, is just wonderfully cast. Her face contorts with pain and agony with each fresh loss, and she powerfully serves as the mouthpiece for the women. She is given one line that nearly brought me to tears. As she considers the hubris of her former, pre-war and enslavement hubris of invincibility, she laments that while she understood that her country men fought in lands over “there,” she never thought that “there could become here.” A pointed reference to America’s own sense, even in a post 9/11 world, that we are immune to outside attack.
The play is a wonderful interpretation of Homer brought forward into the present and by so doing, shows us that atrocities are atrocities in any time period, and that after nearly three millennia of Western Civilization, we are still far from an atmosphere of tolerance, understanding and peace.
Scott McEachern
UTR Press Corps
PICA
scott@pica.org
Regurgitogaphy
Regurgitogaphy
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The best thing about this performance was the wit and the humor of Brazilian writer and actor Michel Melamed and his incredibly dexterous wordplay. He nimbly navigated an astounding amount of pop culture ground, weaving us into and out of a kind of associational landscape. One of the best moments, not to ruin this piece for any one, is when he brings out a bean bag he names John, and proceeds to abuse “John”, kicking it and throwing it around, imbuing the thing with a character, before finally sinking down into “John’s” cushiony center and, well, performing what appears to be a masturbation scene. At any rate, “John” doesn’t seem to be any worse for wear and Brazilian dismisses the chair with a quick throw offstage.
The central element of the piece, the point, I guess of the creation of the piece, is the machine that supposedly picks up audience reactions and conducts these reactions directly through electrical cables into leads attached to the actor’s wrists and legs. When audience laughs, applauds, cheers, or even, apparently, coughs loudly, this is transferred to the actor in the form of electrical shocks.
While I am open to new forms of performance and enjoy, respect and admire experimental theater, I was at odds with myself over this audience meter and its effectiveness—both as a realistic machine (and its mechanism is never really revealed), and as it affected the audience. In other words, I became concerned that the machine was merely a gimmick: a circus trick, or sleight of hand, an illusion that wouldn’t withstand a deeper investigation into how the piece worked as a whole.
Well, of course the smart writer thought of this and about three quarters through the show, the actor stops the progression (in what I’m sure was a planned stoppage) and brings a volunteer up on stage, hooks her up to the leads (which in another life serve as jumper cables for someone’s car) and then directs someone in the booth to give her a short blast of the electricity. The charge comes, she shrieks, and the audience applauds, our skepticism allayed.
All of this said, there is a final observation that I’d like to muse upon, and this is a consideration of the stage setup and how much what we were looking at looked a little like the image of the hooded torture victim from Abu Gharib that emerged in the media a couple of years ago. The actor wore black, he kept his arms out from his body, and his legs splayed. He wore his hair long and it shrouded his face. Was all of this intentional? I don’t know. The piece was not overtly political, other than the fact that there was language describing certain idiocies of Bush and other politicians. So if not a political piece, then what do we make of the visual reference to torture? If planned, then the piece needs to clear up its message, so to speak. If unintentional, then this is a problem that shoots out the heart of the piece and something that needs to be fixed.
Scott McEachern
UTR Press Corps
PICA
scott@pica.org
Thursday, January 10, 2008
The best thing about this performance was the wit and the humor of Brazilian writer and actor Michel Melamed and his incredibly dexterous wordplay. He nimbly navigated an astounding amount of pop culture ground, weaving us into and out of a kind of associational landscape. One of the best moments, not to ruin this piece for any one, is when he brings out a bean bag he names John, and proceeds to abuse “John”, kicking it and throwing it around, imbuing the thing with a character, before finally sinking down into “John’s” cushiony center and, well, performing what appears to be a masturbation scene. At any rate, “John” doesn’t seem to be any worse for wear and Brazilian dismisses the chair with a quick throw offstage.
The central element of the piece, the point, I guess of the creation of the piece, is the machine that supposedly picks up audience reactions and conducts these reactions directly through electrical cables into leads attached to the actor’s wrists and legs. When audience laughs, applauds, cheers, or even, apparently, coughs loudly, this is transferred to the actor in the form of electrical shocks.
While I am open to new forms of performance and enjoy, respect and admire experimental theater, I was at odds with myself over this audience meter and its effectiveness—both as a realistic machine (and its mechanism is never really revealed), and as it affected the audience. In other words, I became concerned that the machine was merely a gimmick: a circus trick, or sleight of hand, an illusion that wouldn’t withstand a deeper investigation into how the piece worked as a whole.
Well, of course the smart writer thought of this and about three quarters through the show, the actor stops the progression (in what I’m sure was a planned stoppage) and brings a volunteer up on stage, hooks her up to the leads (which in another life serve as jumper cables for someone’s car) and then directs someone in the booth to give her a short blast of the electricity. The charge comes, she shrieks, and the audience applauds, our skepticism allayed.
All of this said, there is a final observation that I’d like to muse upon, and this is a consideration of the stage setup and how much what we were looking at looked a little like the image of the hooded torture victim from Abu Gharib that emerged in the media a couple of years ago. The actor wore black, he kept his arms out from his body, and his legs splayed. He wore his hair long and it shrouded his face. Was all of this intentional? I don’t know. The piece was not overtly political, other than the fact that there was language describing certain idiocies of Bush and other politicians. So if not a political piece, then what do we make of the visual reference to torture? If planned, then the piece needs to clear up its message, so to speak. If unintentional, then this is a problem that shoots out the heart of the piece and something that needs to be fixed.
Scott McEachern
UTR Press Corps
PICA
scott@pica.org
Sunday, January 13, 2008
A Ballet Brutiful
Full disclosure: I saw Poetics: A Ballet Brut for the first time in September 2006 in Portland, Oregon. I had no expectations for the performance, knew nothing about Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and bought a ticket because of a sexy promotional picture I saw of the company. (Yes that was all it took). That night I fell in love and it has been bliss ever since. What starts out as a series of deconstructed actions rotating between actors becomes the language for the show. The various pairings of one female and three male actors creates an endless number of love triangles for the audience to invent and dissect. These relationships persist and the vernacular expands until these actions are appropriated by what I can only assume implies the mainstream culture. I read the show as an abstraction of the act of creation (an optimistic one) with one awesome ending.
Enhancing the show's strong acting is a soundtrack so amazing (everything from Abba to Michael Jackson) that I can't believe I forgot about it since the last time I saw Poetics. Needless to say it was a delight to rediscover. So compelling is the music that at some moments members of the audience seated next to me began pumping their fists high in the air as their favorite song came on. Even the second time around, this show may have been more beautiful than when I first saw it. And who says love isn't forever?
Fall in love with Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Poetics: A Ballet Brut
The Public Theater 425 Lafayette Street
January 10 - 20, visit www.undertheradarfestival.com for times
$15 tickets: publictheater.org or 212.967.7555
Enhancing the show's strong acting is a soundtrack so amazing (everything from Abba to Michael Jackson) that I can't believe I forgot about it since the last time I saw Poetics. Needless to say it was a delight to rediscover. So compelling is the music that at some moments members of the audience seated next to me began pumping their fists high in the air as their favorite song came on. Even the second time around, this show may have been more beautiful than when I first saw it. And who says love isn't forever?
Fall in love with Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Poetics: A Ballet Brut
The Public Theater 425 Lafayette Street
January 10 - 20, visit www.undertheradarfestival.com for times
$15 tickets: publictheater.org or 212.967.7555
Church is Magic
I don't know why I wasn't expecting Young Jean Lee's Church to be quite so, well, Church-y, but in Lee's hands I became a quick convert. Church's polished costumes, minimal set and smart writing left me laughing until I sensed the gravity of what I was laughing about. My own sorry state of affairs. My own unresolved and godless but spiritual-in-my-own-way existence. Religion in America today is no easy topic and Church may be the sincerest satirical work I have ever witnessed. The humor in the work comes from a collection of universal truths about contemporary life that Church willingly exploits with the evangelical aim of conversion. What is unclear is what we will become converts to.
Taking cues from televangelism and the format of a typical Sunday sermon complete with lectern, pews and a choir, Church takes the audience on a journey from darkness to light and in the ultimate peripeteia Jesus Christ becomes a being of light, love and liberalism. Contemporary life in general, and the ego-centeric self in particular, is the source of our sin, and we are all declared guilty from the beginning. Church's climax is the joyous noise of a gospel choir (whose director steals the show). The ending of the work, and its ultimate meaning is left ambiguous. There were no dramatic conclusions. This approach is at once startling and refreshing as it becomes clear that Lee is aware there are no simple answers and perhaps just raising the question and creating a dialogue is what is most important.
Church
The Public Theater 425 Lafayette Street
January 9 - 19, visit www.undertheradarfestival.com for times
$15 tickets: publictheater.org or 212.967.7555
Taking cues from televangelism and the format of a typical Sunday sermon complete with lectern, pews and a choir, Church takes the audience on a journey from darkness to light and in the ultimate peripeteia Jesus Christ becomes a being of light, love and liberalism. Contemporary life in general, and the ego-centeric self in particular, is the source of our sin, and we are all declared guilty from the beginning. Church's climax is the joyous noise of a gospel choir (whose director steals the show). The ending of the work, and its ultimate meaning is left ambiguous. There were no dramatic conclusions. This approach is at once startling and refreshing as it becomes clear that Lee is aware there are no simple answers and perhaps just raising the question and creating a dialogue is what is most important.
Church
The Public Theater 425 Lafayette Street
January 9 - 19, visit www.undertheradarfestival.com for times
$15 tickets: publictheater.org or 212.967.7555
The word is a stage, Back to Back at the Whitehall Ferry Station
On the way to small metal objects we got caught in a classic east coast downpour. While dining on tea and crumpets at brown cafe a roar and a flash lit up the Bowery - as we savored our last crumb it was obvious we were about to step into a sheet of rain.
Liz hailed the cab while covered with a cardboard fruit box and Vic and I cowered in the doorway of a noodle shop. It was not much longer until we were in the cab arguing with the driver about how to get to the Whitehall South Ferry station. He dropped us off by the docks and not the entrance- so we puddle jumped until we reached the slick open cube that is the station. As I jockeyed for tickets, Liz and Vic grabbed up our soaking coats and started to dry them off with the bathroom hairdryers. If the train station is the stage- our show had already begun.
The space is expansive with a fuzzy white natural light cascading in. The crowd thins and swells as passengers arrive and leave on the Staten Island Ferry. There is a bank of seats on risers at the far end of the terminal, a single headset slung over each one. Soon those of us gathered for Back to Back Theater's small metal objects are seated facing out at the people strolling through the station. We take our seats and as the soundtrack begins we start to hear a conversation coming from the crowd. The dialogue is fed to us through the headsets, we are vulnerable, quiet and poised.
The drama that enfolds is a simple one, two friends speak to each other in hushed tones about their lives, and as it evolves their conversation is interrupted. One friend takes a business call about a drug deal - and a nefarious lawyer tries to score some blow for an "important" event. The passengers and inhabitants of the ferry terminal are acting as extras, roaming around, drinking coffee, reading the paper, and trying desperately to ignore the 150 people staring at this secret drama in front of them.
Some tough characters walk right in front of our group - they are glaring at us, their eyes speaking volumes. As the story and sound (an undulating soundtrack of extended tones) frames our view of the station the anxiety level starts inching up. Although I know I am safe, I can't help but think that every ferry passenger who stops to take something out of a backpack is going to turn a gun on us, we are after-all on their turf. I keep thinking the actors might be in danger, or that someone might walk up to them and interrupt their scene with questions. In the end the two friends are left on their own - appropriately casting out the drug hungry lawyer and his manipulative shrew of a co-worker, the next ferry docks and another few hundred people stumble on us applauding the actors whom have lined up before us to take their bow. Pigeons fly through the station cutting through the scene which is both poetic and strange.
When I re-connect with my co-workers a few of us shed tears not sure why we are crying. Perhaps the show was about how the love between friends defines character more than how we make our money, or perhaps it was how small dramas are unfolding in front of us all the time, or perhaps it was about paying attention to our role in the world, where we stand- how we act amongst others and who we value. In the end it does not matter. We have been profoundly touched by this show and the multiplicity of meaning presented to us.
Kristan Kennedy, PICA
The space is expansive with a fuzzy white natural light cascading in. The crowd thins and swells as passengers arrive and leave on the Staten Island Ferry. There is a bank of seats on risers at the far end of the terminal, a single headset slung over each one. Soon those of us gathered for Back to Back Theater's small metal objects are seated facing out at the people strolling through the station. We take our seats and as the soundtrack begins we start to hear a conversation coming from the crowd. The dialogue is fed to us through the headsets, we are vulnerable, quiet and poised.
The drama that enfolds is a simple one, two friends speak to each other in hushed tones about their lives, and as it evolves their conversation is interrupted. One friend takes a business call about a drug deal - and a nefarious lawyer tries to score some blow for an "important" event. The passengers and inhabitants of the ferry terminal are acting as extras, roaming around, drinking coffee, reading the paper, and trying desperately to ignore the 150 people staring at this secret drama in front of them.
Some tough characters walk right in front of our group - they are glaring at us, their eyes speaking volumes. As the story and sound (an undulating soundtrack of extended tones) frames our view of the station the anxiety level starts inching up. Although I know I am safe, I can't help but think that every ferry passenger who stops to take something out of a backpack is going to turn a gun on us, we are after-all on their turf. I keep thinking the actors might be in danger, or that someone might walk up to them and interrupt their scene with questions. In the end the two friends are left on their own - appropriately casting out the drug hungry lawyer and his manipulative shrew of a co-worker, the next ferry docks and another few hundred people stumble on us applauding the actors whom have lined up before us to take their bow. Pigeons fly through the station cutting through the scene which is both poetic and strange.
When I re-connect with my co-workers a few of us shed tears not sure why we are crying. Perhaps the show was about how the love between friends defines character more than how we make our money, or perhaps it was how small dramas are unfolding in front of us all the time, or perhaps it was about paying attention to our role in the world, where we stand- how we act amongst others and who we value. In the end it does not matter. We have been profoundly touched by this show and the multiplicity of meaning presented to us.
Kristan Kennedy, PICA
Speed dating
Artists meet presenters - presenters meet artists. Artists have fifteen minutes to present their project to a group of presenters, then move on to the next table and do it all over again.
Symposium Notes: Kristy Edmunds, James Yarker and Bruce Gladwin get site specific.
Under the Radar Festival Artistic Director, Mark Russell sounds the morning gong- as we all take our seats for the Symposium. He ushers Reggie Watts to the stage- who proceeds to pump up the crowd with massive beats and killer comedic stylings. His voice warbles from baby talk to gregorian chant and then devolves into beat box spasms. I could feel the crowd of presenters, funders and other members of the field all come awake at once- the moment was electric.
It's 10 am and you could not ask for more, although the mini bagle I grabbed in the lobby is not enuf' to soak this up.
The Public Theater’s Artistic Director Oskar Eustis is next to take the stage, we are after al- in his house. He welcomes us with a few powerful words that advocated for art that refuses to be categorized and that is the synthesis of different aesthetics. He talks about what it means to have a festival like UTR at the Public a space that has had many incarnations and a rich history - a place in which work can happen that defines our time.
Sandra Gibson. President of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters now takes the stage and describes how the festival came to be- based on the needs of artists it was a decade in the making and exists to support the work of new ensemble theater. It has had major support from the Ford, Duke and Mellon Foundations, as well as project support from Altria the British Council and many more. She praises the Artistic leadership of Mark Russell whom she describes as having a deep "love and devotion to the work"
Speaking of love and devotion for the work - Russell reclaims the stage and introduces Kristy Edmunds the Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Although jet lagged from her flight, Edmund's does not miss a beat as she leads a discussion with Bruce Gladwin of Back to Back Theater and James Yarker of Stan's Cafe.
Edmunds describes their site specific work as "teasing out issues" and mentions that although both pieces take place out In the world and not on stage they come from a theatrical form. She asks them to describe their company's missions and history.
Bruce describes that Back to Back has been working for 20 years and currently consists of 6 performers with intellectual dissabilities. After 1997 and de- instutionalization - people moved out of victorian institutions, an initiative was started to develop collaborations with artists and people with dissabilities. They produce one new show each year. Two decades later they must push against becomig an institution themselves as they continue to present an idiosyncratic view of the contemporary world.
James Yarker formed Stan's Cafe in 91- straight out of university- with the expectation that theater is a plaything. Their ideas strayed further away from the stage and towards the outside world. However, he does take issue with the term "site specific work" as he regards all work as site specific- including that that takes place on traditional stages.
Kristy asks both artists to talk about why they have decided to house their companies outside major metropolitan areas.
For Bruce it was not a choice, he inherited the community which is one of declining industry outside Melbourne, the work the company makes generally tours outside of the region and they operate a separate community arm which develops outreach work in the community in which they live.
Yarker describes his company as "childern of margaret thatcher" they resisted the gravitational pull of London, and its obscene cost of living. They put the energy it would take to survive there and put it towards making new theater in the post industrail city of Birmingham which Yarker describes as wanting to re-invent itself. He also half jokingly confesses that Birmingham was the biggest city with the smallest amount of people doing what he was-the classic big fish small pond theory.
Kristy who had- presented both works then went into the compex logistics of presenting projects which put forth unique logistical challenges. In the case of the world premiere of small metal objects- they had to secure a train station in the center of Melbourne - there are permits and security and endless other details- to which she replied "why let that stop you"
Bruce describes how the new work he makes answeres questions raised by the previous work. In the case of Back to Back the conventions of theater do not sit well with artists he works with - who have had no formal training - and their own communication style. How do you teach people to instantly project their voices etc and so forth. For their project Soft the company constructed their own inflatable theater... and with small metal objects they give the audience headphones to take in the dialogue- both have liberated them from the traditional modes of presenting. He describes theater as separating you from chaos- it is blacked out from the world- inhabiting a public space like a train station places their work in the spaces that people pass through.
Kristy then spoke about the tenderness in both pieces - she talks about the common ground- there are abstract narrative in each as well as an audience which become implicated as performers.
Bruce talks about the script for small metal objects which was based on a friendship one of the artists had with a drug dealer. It addresses the question "what is the relationship between human value and economics" They had a theory about the audience as participants - the abstraction comes in because the accidental audience (those passing through the station) add a second narrative, as they mirror, rebel or support the actors movements through space as well as the dialogue heard through the intended audiences headsets.
Kristy speaks of Stan's support through British Council and how she presented "All the people of the world. (Pacific Rim). She was affected by how Stan's installation of statistical data turns information that normally leaves us stone cold- into poetry. Here a single grain of rice is related to a population... for the installation in Melbourne close to 90, 000 tons of rice were used.
Yarker speaks about the inspiration for the project, he calls the UK a "small island". Having lived their all his life he never had a sense of the scale of the world. His company had a hit show and started touring, and he was hit with the notion that the world was bigger than he could possibly imagine. He faced this terrible existential moment - and thought " what is my place in the world" he thought to himself if he could look at 6.2 billion things and pick one up and say this is me - and this is everyone else he might start understanding the implications of being a part of something that complex.
He lived in an area of Birmingham where people from all over india had settled and when passing the shops and restaurants he started to think of the rice as that thing that could quantify the population. He went home and measured out 100 grams of rice and tediously counted them out he figured out that they needed 104 tons of rice for the world. Stan's Cafe had just gotten their fist arts council grant and while it was a big boost- they decided they could afford to do "all of the people of the word. (UK).
The company quickly found someone to present the piece- although when the company had requested to use the institutions gallery- they realized that the divide between the performance and visual art worlds was vast- and that dealing with that divide was not worth pursuing the space- the director lead them to a expansive foyer where people passed through each day- this was the space that the project came to life. It was about the public- it was about everyone - the public must be there to see it.
Kristy ends the discussion calling for questions and thanking the artists for their work which activates an audience with a sense of adventure allows them to seize upon the curious and does so with both poignancy and humor.
The crowd disperses, each of us grabbing a box lunch and heading to a breakout session in which presenters, producers and artists huddled together to break down important issues in the field- from the New Burlesque to International Collaborations. Later we will return to the theater or to the street to take in more of the festival - where art and life collide.
Kristan Kennedy, PICA
It's 10 am and you could not ask for more, although the mini bagle I grabbed in the lobby is not enuf' to soak this up.
The Public Theater’s Artistic Director Oskar Eustis is next to take the stage, we are after al- in his house. He welcomes us with a few powerful words that advocated for art that refuses to be categorized and that is the synthesis of different aesthetics. He talks about what it means to have a festival like UTR at the Public a space that has had many incarnations and a rich history - a place in which work can happen that defines our time.
Sandra Gibson. President of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters now takes the stage and describes how the festival came to be- based on the needs of artists it was a decade in the making and exists to support the work of new ensemble theater. It has had major support from the Ford, Duke and Mellon Foundations, as well as project support from Altria the British Council and many more. She praises the Artistic leadership of Mark Russell whom she describes as having a deep "love and devotion to the work"
Speaking of love and devotion for the work - Russell reclaims the stage and introduces Kristy Edmunds the Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Although jet lagged from her flight, Edmund's does not miss a beat as she leads a discussion with Bruce Gladwin of Back to Back Theater and James Yarker of Stan's Cafe.
Edmunds describes their site specific work as "teasing out issues" and mentions that although both pieces take place out In the world and not on stage they come from a theatrical form. She asks them to describe their company's missions and history.
Bruce describes that Back to Back has been working for 20 years and currently consists of 6 performers with intellectual dissabilities. After 1997 and de- instutionalization - people moved out of victorian institutions, an initiative was started to develop collaborations with artists and people with dissabilities. They produce one new show each year. Two decades later they must push against becomig an institution themselves as they continue to present an idiosyncratic view of the contemporary world.
James Yarker formed Stan's Cafe in 91- straight out of university- with the expectation that theater is a plaything. Their ideas strayed further away from the stage and towards the outside world. However, he does take issue with the term "site specific work" as he regards all work as site specific- including that that takes place on traditional stages.
Kristy asks both artists to talk about why they have decided to house their companies outside major metropolitan areas.
For Bruce it was not a choice, he inherited the community which is one of declining industry outside Melbourne, the work the company makes generally tours outside of the region and they operate a separate community arm which develops outreach work in the community in which they live.
Yarker describes his company as "childern of margaret thatcher" they resisted the gravitational pull of London, and its obscene cost of living. They put the energy it would take to survive there and put it towards making new theater in the post industrail city of Birmingham which Yarker describes as wanting to re-invent itself. He also half jokingly confesses that Birmingham was the biggest city with the smallest amount of people doing what he was-the classic big fish small pond theory.
Kristy who had- presented both works then went into the compex logistics of presenting projects which put forth unique logistical challenges. In the case of the world premiere of small metal objects- they had to secure a train station in the center of Melbourne - there are permits and security and endless other details- to which she replied "why let that stop you"
Bruce describes how the new work he makes answeres questions raised by the previous work. In the case of Back to Back the conventions of theater do not sit well with artists he works with - who have had no formal training - and their own communication style. How do you teach people to instantly project their voices etc and so forth. For their project Soft the company constructed their own inflatable theater... and with small metal objects they give the audience headphones to take in the dialogue- both have liberated them from the traditional modes of presenting. He describes theater as separating you from chaos- it is blacked out from the world- inhabiting a public space like a train station places their work in the spaces that people pass through.
Kristy then spoke about the tenderness in both pieces - she talks about the common ground- there are abstract narrative in each as well as an audience which become implicated as performers.
Bruce talks about the script for small metal objects which was based on a friendship one of the artists had with a drug dealer. It addresses the question "what is the relationship between human value and economics" They had a theory about the audience as participants - the abstraction comes in because the accidental audience (those passing through the station) add a second narrative, as they mirror, rebel or support the actors movements through space as well as the dialogue heard through the intended audiences headsets.
Kristy speaks of Stan's support through British Council and how she presented "All the people of the world. (Pacific Rim). She was affected by how Stan's installation of statistical data turns information that normally leaves us stone cold- into poetry. Here a single grain of rice is related to a population... for the installation in Melbourne close to 90, 000 tons of rice were used.
Yarker speaks about the inspiration for the project, he calls the UK a "small island". Having lived their all his life he never had a sense of the scale of the world. His company had a hit show and started touring, and he was hit with the notion that the world was bigger than he could possibly imagine. He faced this terrible existential moment - and thought " what is my place in the world" he thought to himself if he could look at 6.2 billion things and pick one up and say this is me - and this is everyone else he might start understanding the implications of being a part of something that complex.
He lived in an area of Birmingham where people from all over india had settled and when passing the shops and restaurants he started to think of the rice as that thing that could quantify the population. He went home and measured out 100 grams of rice and tediously counted them out he figured out that they needed 104 tons of rice for the world. Stan's Cafe had just gotten their fist arts council grant and while it was a big boost- they decided they could afford to do "all of the people of the word. (UK).
The company quickly found someone to present the piece- although when the company had requested to use the institutions gallery- they realized that the divide between the performance and visual art worlds was vast- and that dealing with that divide was not worth pursuing the space- the director lead them to a expansive foyer where people passed through each day- this was the space that the project came to life. It was about the public- it was about everyone - the public must be there to see it.
Kristy ends the discussion calling for questions and thanking the artists for their work which activates an audience with a sense of adventure allows them to seize upon the curious and does so with both poignancy and humor.
The crowd disperses, each of us grabbing a box lunch and heading to a breakout session in which presenters, producers and artists huddled together to break down important issues in the field- from the New Burlesque to International Collaborations. Later we will return to the theater or to the street to take in more of the festival - where art and life collide.
Kristan Kennedy, PICA
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Small Metal Objects
On their website, the Back to Back Theatre is described as making "locally devised, globally relevant and significant theatre." After seeing Small Metal Objects, I could not agree more. Apparently, Back to Back is Australia’s only theatre company with a full-time ensemble of actors considered to have an intellectual disability. One of their primary functions is to give these actors the opportunity to grow as performers, but also to create the work. And this particular work is exceptional.
Small Metal Objects is one of UTR's site-specific performances, taking place at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal. Grouped together towards the back of the terminal on a large seating embankment, each person in the audience is given a set of headphones through which music and dialogue is played. As the sounds emit from the headphones, everyone in the audience begins to look around the terminal, curious as to who is having this conversation. In truth, you almost feel like a voyeur, feeling as if you shouldn't be hearing this. Still you search onward, until out of nowhere, figures begin to materialize.
The plot of Small Metal Objects seems almost insignificant compared the experience itself, but I'll summarize. The first two men we see before us, Gary and Steve, become involved in what appears to be a drug transaction with two executives looking for $3000 worth of a good time. Gary cancels the transaction when Steve suddenly refuses to move from one spot, trying to overcome some sort of existential crisis.
The plot is quite simple. Almost mundane. Only perhaps slightly more exciting than any other conversation occurring in the ferry station. But therein lies the beauty of the piece. We are given the opportunity to eavesdrop on one tiny moment in a space filled with hundreds of people. Everyone else in the station may eventually guess what we are looking at, but none of them can hear the conversation. None of them know why we are laughing, smiling, and searching. You feel priveledged, yet connected to the audience you are experiencing this with.
Truly the most wonderous part of this theatrical event, is watching the commuters watch you. They curiously stare and ask one another "what is that all about?" They begin to search around the room too, trying desperately to be clued into the world. Some even assume that we are just sitting there, looking out at nothing. In fact, while I was there, a few people started to dance for us or sing, thinking we were their personal audience. It was slightly distracting at times, but only added to this fascinating social experiment.
Small Metal Objects doesn't feel like the theater you are used to. The audience and everyone in the ferry is so much a part of what is happening, it actually is more like technologically advanced people-watching. Still, this is theater. Wonderful theater, that should be experienced by anyone and everyone.
Katie Courtien
UTR Press Corps Volunteer
Hurry and get your tickets to Small Metal Objects!
Only 4 performances left: Sunday 1/13 @ 1:45 and 4:45
Monday 1/14 @ 2:45 and 6:45
The show is FREE!! You can just show up, but I would recommend making a reservation by calling 212.967.7555 by 5pm the day before the show you want.
Small Metal Objects is one of UTR's site-specific performances, taking place at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal. Grouped together towards the back of the terminal on a large seating embankment, each person in the audience is given a set of headphones through which music and dialogue is played. As the sounds emit from the headphones, everyone in the audience begins to look around the terminal, curious as to who is having this conversation. In truth, you almost feel like a voyeur, feeling as if you shouldn't be hearing this. Still you search onward, until out of nowhere, figures begin to materialize.
The plot of Small Metal Objects seems almost insignificant compared the experience itself, but I'll summarize. The first two men we see before us, Gary and Steve, become involved in what appears to be a drug transaction with two executives looking for $3000 worth of a good time. Gary cancels the transaction when Steve suddenly refuses to move from one spot, trying to overcome some sort of existential crisis.
The plot is quite simple. Almost mundane. Only perhaps slightly more exciting than any other conversation occurring in the ferry station. But therein lies the beauty of the piece. We are given the opportunity to eavesdrop on one tiny moment in a space filled with hundreds of people. Everyone else in the station may eventually guess what we are looking at, but none of them can hear the conversation. None of them know why we are laughing, smiling, and searching. You feel priveledged, yet connected to the audience you are experiencing this with.
Truly the most wonderous part of this theatrical event, is watching the commuters watch you. They curiously stare and ask one another "what is that all about?" They begin to search around the room too, trying desperately to be clued into the world. Some even assume that we are just sitting there, looking out at nothing. In fact, while I was there, a few people started to dance for us or sing, thinking we were their personal audience. It was slightly distracting at times, but only added to this fascinating social experiment.
Small Metal Objects doesn't feel like the theater you are used to. The audience and everyone in the ferry is so much a part of what is happening, it actually is more like technologically advanced people-watching. Still, this is theater. Wonderful theater, that should be experienced by anyone and everyone.
Katie Courtien
UTR Press Corps Volunteer
Hurry and get your tickets to Small Metal Objects!
Only 4 performances left: Sunday 1/13 @ 1:45 and 4:45
Monday 1/14 @ 2:45 and 6:45
The show is FREE!! You can just show up, but I would recommend making a reservation by calling 212.967.7555 by 5pm the day before the show you want.
Desert of the Real
This Place is a Desert
January 10, 2008
I’m going to begin the entry with a bit of a reversal to my normal review strategy. I usually give a brief summary of a piece, describe what I like about the piece, and then take a more critical stance at the end. It’s what some people who teach English Comp might call the “whites of your eyes” paper—the paper that delays the thesis until the end, when you’re close enough to see the whites of its eyes.
So I’ll begin with what I found technically troubling about the piece, just to get it out of the way. I saw Desert with several of my colleagues, and while I think I like this piece better than they, I still thought the performance had some serious issues. Acting, for one. Even if the acting was meant to be melodramatic, which I think it was, there were some serious inconsistencies with the acting. Ok, there’s one. The second was the business of the stage—there was just so much going on that it was impossible to take everything in. Intentional? Sure. Effective? Sure. Slightly overwhelming? Definitely.
Ultimately, in light of these criticisms, the piece for me was a success—at the very least at the theoretical level. The early reference to the philosophy of technology is a key to making sense of the performance: one of the main characters is having an affair with a married man, Marcello, and the woman is reading Virilio, a French philosopher who has created a body of work critiquing the ideology and effect of technology upon our lives and our perspective. The woman paraphrases at one point from her book “Images don’t speak, images don’t remember—therefore, we don’t remember.” Which, by the way, is a classic Aristotle logical structure. Here is the crux of the matter: humans created and cultivated technology as a help, a tool, a resource: and now we are the product (and, some might say, the victim), at this point in history, of our technologies. We are subject to the power of the image that we have created. In another sense, it boils down to pure Aristotelian spectacle: that which isn’t drama only serves to entertain and numb.
So images govern our memory and erase our recollections. Just take a walk down Times Square and there is the tyranny of the image. Well, ok, it’s pleasurable to be in Times Square at some kind of primal level, but I am getting off the point. Desert succeeds in outlining a theory about technology that I respond to. With the video screen bank across the top of the stage, jutting out over the performers, and blinking between angles, shots and it’s obvious that this was meant to underscore how the image has become supreme in our culture. The image rules, man, and there’s nothing we can do with our Frankenstein at this point but smile, nod and glaze over.
But bringing up Times Square may be more than just the childlike awe of a first time visitor to New York. There is the pleasure of the image, as I mentioned above, but there is also the flip side, the dark side of the force of the image. Times Square makes one feel uncomfortable, at some level. This discomfort is certainly different in each person, but I am certain that it is always present. So what I’m trying to float here is that the intention of the over-sized video screens in Desert is to effect a kind of disassociation from the normal theater experience, and from our baseline level of comfort. Effective.
And then there is the guy who is running the mobile camera. He is a really interesting character to me, because he is the guy behind the camera. At first, he isn’t really a character, just a tech guy, but as the piece progresses, he becomes increasingly involved—not as a speaking character who interacts with the others, but as the one who controls the camera; and to some extent, he controls the angles of the recorders. What this all means is that as the piece progresses, the videoman becomes more active, moving the cameras, bringing us closer or farther from the action. He is, in essence, drawing us into the action and making the audience a part of the narrative. The observer becomes implicated in the proceedings. In other words, the cameraman is a surrogate for our complicity in the performance. Another piece of the discomfort of the audience.
Ok, enough of the theoretical crap. What’s working here? It’s a story about excess and passion and about what happens when love fails to persevere and overcome the bumps and the extremes in our lives. This happens to everyone, regardless of nationality, race, gender, sexuality or political stance. What more does one person need?
Scott McEachern
UTR Press Corp
PICA
scott@pica.org
January 10, 2008
I’m going to begin the entry with a bit of a reversal to my normal review strategy. I usually give a brief summary of a piece, describe what I like about the piece, and then take a more critical stance at the end. It’s what some people who teach English Comp might call the “whites of your eyes” paper—the paper that delays the thesis until the end, when you’re close enough to see the whites of its eyes.
So I’ll begin with what I found technically troubling about the piece, just to get it out of the way. I saw Desert with several of my colleagues, and while I think I like this piece better than they, I still thought the performance had some serious issues. Acting, for one. Even if the acting was meant to be melodramatic, which I think it was, there were some serious inconsistencies with the acting. Ok, there’s one. The second was the business of the stage—there was just so much going on that it was impossible to take everything in. Intentional? Sure. Effective? Sure. Slightly overwhelming? Definitely.
Ultimately, in light of these criticisms, the piece for me was a success—at the very least at the theoretical level. The early reference to the philosophy of technology is a key to making sense of the performance: one of the main characters is having an affair with a married man, Marcello, and the woman is reading Virilio, a French philosopher who has created a body of work critiquing the ideology and effect of technology upon our lives and our perspective. The woman paraphrases at one point from her book “Images don’t speak, images don’t remember—therefore, we don’t remember.” Which, by the way, is a classic Aristotle logical structure. Here is the crux of the matter: humans created and cultivated technology as a help, a tool, a resource: and now we are the product (and, some might say, the victim), at this point in history, of our technologies. We are subject to the power of the image that we have created. In another sense, it boils down to pure Aristotelian spectacle: that which isn’t drama only serves to entertain and numb.
So images govern our memory and erase our recollections. Just take a walk down Times Square and there is the tyranny of the image. Well, ok, it’s pleasurable to be in Times Square at some kind of primal level, but I am getting off the point. Desert succeeds in outlining a theory about technology that I respond to. With the video screen bank across the top of the stage, jutting out over the performers, and blinking between angles, shots and it’s obvious that this was meant to underscore how the image has become supreme in our culture. The image rules, man, and there’s nothing we can do with our Frankenstein at this point but smile, nod and glaze over.
But bringing up Times Square may be more than just the childlike awe of a first time visitor to New York. There is the pleasure of the image, as I mentioned above, but there is also the flip side, the dark side of the force of the image. Times Square makes one feel uncomfortable, at some level. This discomfort is certainly different in each person, but I am certain that it is always present. So what I’m trying to float here is that the intention of the over-sized video screens in Desert is to effect a kind of disassociation from the normal theater experience, and from our baseline level of comfort. Effective.
And then there is the guy who is running the mobile camera. He is a really interesting character to me, because he is the guy behind the camera. At first, he isn’t really a character, just a tech guy, but as the piece progresses, he becomes increasingly involved—not as a speaking character who interacts with the others, but as the one who controls the camera; and to some extent, he controls the angles of the recorders. What this all means is that as the piece progresses, the videoman becomes more active, moving the cameras, bringing us closer or farther from the action. He is, in essence, drawing us into the action and making the audience a part of the narrative. The observer becomes implicated in the proceedings. In other words, the cameraman is a surrogate for our complicity in the performance. Another piece of the discomfort of the audience.
Ok, enough of the theoretical crap. What’s working here? It’s a story about excess and passion and about what happens when love fails to persevere and overcome the bumps and the extremes in our lives. This happens to everyone, regardless of nationality, race, gender, sexuality or political stance. What more does one person need?
Scott McEachern
UTR Press Corp
PICA
scott@pica.org
Friday, January 11, 2008
Theater of Resistance: A conversation with Belarus Free Theatre
If you missed the free talk today with the Belarus Free Theatre, you missed out. It was so touching and inspiring and you MUST go and see the performance so that you can find out what it is that makes this group of people my favorite at the festival so far. The persecution that they face is shocking. The fear that they feel is palpable. The risks that they take in order to make theater and to express themselves artistically should be an inspiration to us all. THANK YOU Belarus Free Theatre.
jb
jb
Cocktail Dresses and Cuckolds
My first performance at The Public Theater, This Place is a Desert, a part of Under The Radar, began with the irritating noise of a phone ringing for 15 minutes while the eight or so actors shuffle back and forth between 5 rooms on stage, their actions caught on camera and projected via a live-feed onto four screens above the stage. As such the set is elaborate. Each room a different bold color (Red, Blue, Green, Orange, Yellow) becomes a stunning backdrop for the instantly cinematic action. No stranger to experimental theater I disappointedly wondered if this were going to be the entire consistency of the show. Thankfully the phone stopped ringing and the action began.
Now, I have never seen Michelangelo Antonioni's film Red Desert, nor read much Faulkner, two seeming disparate sources of influence for This Place is a Desert, so as such my reading of the performance and its meaning is limited. That said, I found the greatest moments of delight when the actors were not restrained by the realism of their performance and slipped into strange and acrobatic movement. Most notable: a flirtation between a psychologically unstable wife and her husband's business associate. She begins tapping her shiny black high heels with her hand, alternating as she kicks them up in her cocktail dress. Also rewarding are the aggressively phony sex scenes where the actors propel clumsily toward one another fumbling with clothes in an exaggeration of every cliché of heterosex passion portrayed in any Hollywood blockbuster. It is unclear however, whether this exaggeration, this camp, was intended. I am willing to give this smart cast the benefit of the doubt.
Weaknesses are the heteronormative pairings throughout the work as married spouses cheat on their wife and husband, respectively. Also, the live feed plus live performance technique while novel fails to effectively translate stage acting to screen acting and ultimately undermines performances by literally magnifying them when subtlety is what the big screen ultimately requires. Again, this may have been the intent from the beginning but it is unclear. Overall, an interesting technique materializes as an interesting performance.
This Place is a Desert Conceived and Directed by Jay Scheib
The Public Theater 425 Lafayette Street
January 9 - 20, visit www.undertheradarfestival.com for times
$15 tickets: publictheater.org or 212.967.7555
Now, I have never seen Michelangelo Antonioni's film Red Desert, nor read much Faulkner, two seeming disparate sources of influence for This Place is a Desert, so as such my reading of the performance and its meaning is limited. That said, I found the greatest moments of delight when the actors were not restrained by the realism of their performance and slipped into strange and acrobatic movement. Most notable: a flirtation between a psychologically unstable wife and her husband's business associate. She begins tapping her shiny black high heels with her hand, alternating as she kicks them up in her cocktail dress. Also rewarding are the aggressively phony sex scenes where the actors propel clumsily toward one another fumbling with clothes in an exaggeration of every cliché of heterosex passion portrayed in any Hollywood blockbuster. It is unclear however, whether this exaggeration, this camp, was intended. I am willing to give this smart cast the benefit of the doubt.
Weaknesses are the heteronormative pairings throughout the work as married spouses cheat on their wife and husband, respectively. Also, the live feed plus live performance technique while novel fails to effectively translate stage acting to screen acting and ultimately undermines performances by literally magnifying them when subtlety is what the big screen ultimately requires. Again, this may have been the intent from the beginning but it is unclear. Overall, an interesting technique materializes as an interesting performance.
This Place is a Desert Conceived and Directed by Jay Scheib
The Public Theater 425 Lafayette Street
January 9 - 20, visit www.undertheradarfestival.com for times
$15 tickets: publictheater.org or 212.967.7555
Going Back to Church: A Flailing Roman Catholic's Jaded Perspective
From the moment I saw the title, a shiver ran up my spine. "I have to go to Church?" After a series of difficult incidents in my life, as well as consistent disagreements with doctrine, I'd been refusing to go to mass since I was about 19. Needless to say, I was none too thrilled that I was asked to go to a show with this title. Still, as a UTR staff member, I was obligated to attend services. So, I held my breath and hoped it would be "anti-church." To my surprise, it wasn't at all.
From the moment the lights went out, and I heard the preacher in the darkness, I immediately felt the familiarity I'd been avoiding for years. Yet something was different. The preacher wasn't talking about the evils of American Idol (yes I'd actually heard that at mass) he asked us to look at our lives and realize how unhappy we are. Now, I'm a New Yorker. Unhappiness is like breathing to me. But something in the sincerity in which he offered God as a solution to that unhappiness, made my ears perk up.
I have blamed fate and God for my suffering for years then suddenly this "preacher" made me come to understand that I am this way, because I choose to be this way. Suddenly I began to feel solidarity with playwright, Young Jean Lee. It was apparent in her writing that she too, like many of us, had struggled with faith in religious establishments but also with her pursuit of happiness. Instead of wallowing in doubt and sadness, she decided to create a forceful yet joyful, celebration of faith. More than that, she is making herself and all of those around her look at their lives and admit that we are all so very much full of ourselves and full of crap. The preacher exclaims at one point: "Your spiritual bankruptcy is reflected in your endlessly repeating conversations about your struggles to quit smoking, quit drinking, quit junk food, quit caffeine, quit unsatisfying jobs and relationships—and this is what you talk about when you are trying to be deep!" People around me were laughing but I thought solemnly, "Wow, I am so that guy." Later in the show, one of the "reverends" asks for prayers and guidance as she continues in her struggles of being a whiner. That one hit pretty close to home as well.
It is the constant ingratitude we carry around that is discussed so passionately in Church. I was in tears in the moment when another "reverend" began to pray and thanked God for her limbs. I had never heard a simpler prayer and it made me think of how I look for praise for all the good I do, but am never grateful for all the good that I have. I felt like a prize idiot. Yet, for the first time in a long time, I also felt great.
Church forced me to look in the mirror and say, "Hey, it's really not so bad." It forced me to recognize that perhaps my abandoning of faith was just an excuse to abandon the poor choices I have made. It forced me say, "Get over it already."
In truth, Church hasn't really changed my mind about the church itself, but it revealed to me sides of myself I was hiding from. Sides that we all hide from. Church revived me from being a cynical non-believer to someone with hope and perhaps even faith. In what, I'm not sure. Maybe God, maybe even theater. Maybe just me. If that is the case... it is about time.
Katie Courtien
UTR Press Corps Volunteer
From the moment the lights went out, and I heard the preacher in the darkness, I immediately felt the familiarity I'd been avoiding for years. Yet something was different. The preacher wasn't talking about the evils of American Idol (yes I'd actually heard that at mass) he asked us to look at our lives and realize how unhappy we are. Now, I'm a New Yorker. Unhappiness is like breathing to me. But something in the sincerity in which he offered God as a solution to that unhappiness, made my ears perk up.
I have blamed fate and God for my suffering for years then suddenly this "preacher" made me come to understand that I am this way, because I choose to be this way. Suddenly I began to feel solidarity with playwright, Young Jean Lee. It was apparent in her writing that she too, like many of us, had struggled with faith in religious establishments but also with her pursuit of happiness. Instead of wallowing in doubt and sadness, she decided to create a forceful yet joyful, celebration of faith. More than that, she is making herself and all of those around her look at their lives and admit that we are all so very much full of ourselves and full of crap. The preacher exclaims at one point: "Your spiritual bankruptcy is reflected in your endlessly repeating conversations about your struggles to quit smoking, quit drinking, quit junk food, quit caffeine, quit unsatisfying jobs and relationships—and this is what you talk about when you are trying to be deep!" People around me were laughing but I thought solemnly, "Wow, I am so that guy." Later in the show, one of the "reverends" asks for prayers and guidance as she continues in her struggles of being a whiner. That one hit pretty close to home as well.
It is the constant ingratitude we carry around that is discussed so passionately in Church. I was in tears in the moment when another "reverend" began to pray and thanked God for her limbs. I had never heard a simpler prayer and it made me think of how I look for praise for all the good I do, but am never grateful for all the good that I have. I felt like a prize idiot. Yet, for the first time in a long time, I also felt great.
Church forced me to look in the mirror and say, "Hey, it's really not so bad." It forced me to recognize that perhaps my abandoning of faith was just an excuse to abandon the poor choices I have made. It forced me say, "Get over it already."
In truth, Church hasn't really changed my mind about the church itself, but it revealed to me sides of myself I was hiding from. Sides that we all hide from. Church revived me from being a cynical non-believer to someone with hope and perhaps even faith. In what, I'm not sure. Maybe God, maybe even theater. Maybe just me. If that is the case... it is about time.
Katie Courtien
UTR Press Corps Volunteer
Rice Dream
I wasn't expecting Stan's Cafe's Of All The People In the World: USA and its mounds of rice to be so moving. I missed the performance two years ago in Portland as part of PICA's Time-Based Art Festival and was glad for the opportunity to witness the project I had heard so much about. Happily I made my way down to the World Financial Center on a crisp New York January day. I arrived almost an hour early (take note gallery hours for this project are from noon until 6 pm, Wednesday through Sunday) and actually considered leaving despite all my effort. Thankfully I was able to find enough distractions until the doors opened and it was definitely worth the wait.
I found the expected mounds of rice, each grain representing one person, neatly piled on sheets of white paper, but to my surprise and delight these UK-based artists have a sense of humor as well as gravity. Topics included money, natural disasters and security, among others. Near the middle of the project a massive mound of rice representing those people displaced by flooding in India in one year, right next to a comparatively diminutive mound of rice representing those people displaced by hurricane Katrina. In another section the amount of millionaires, gigantic, appears to equal refugees. Far off in another corner, hiding behind a pillar, a small pile of rice representing FBI secret agents was both cleverly placed and political, just blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center Twin Towers. Reading these mounds we see the number of terrorism suspects take a big leap from 2003 to 2006 next to a small pile of rice representing the people who perished on September 11, 2001.
My mind began racing and I'll admit my eyes a little watery as took in all these persuasive numbers. I began to imagine trading millionaires with refugees. Clearly the underlying message is one of global awareness and consideration. Let's find a solution for New Orleans without forgetting that India is dealing with this too, annually, and on a scale that makes it hard not to be humble. Forgive my optimism, but perhaps we (America) all need to give something up in this age of the global economy in order to balance the scales (pun intended) and I can only imagine what we could gain in return.
Don't miss Stan's Cafe Of All The People In The World: USA
World Financial Center, Courtyard Gallery
Open until January 20, 2008 : 12 - 6 pm, closed Monday and Tuesday
Free Admission
I found the expected mounds of rice, each grain representing one person, neatly piled on sheets of white paper, but to my surprise and delight these UK-based artists have a sense of humor as well as gravity. Topics included money, natural disasters and security, among others. Near the middle of the project a massive mound of rice representing those people displaced by flooding in India in one year, right next to a comparatively diminutive mound of rice representing those people displaced by hurricane Katrina. In another section the amount of millionaires, gigantic, appears to equal refugees. Far off in another corner, hiding behind a pillar, a small pile of rice representing FBI secret agents was both cleverly placed and political, just blocks away from the site of the former World Trade Center Twin Towers. Reading these mounds we see the number of terrorism suspects take a big leap from 2003 to 2006 next to a small pile of rice representing the people who perished on September 11, 2001.
My mind began racing and I'll admit my eyes a little watery as took in all these persuasive numbers. I began to imagine trading millionaires with refugees. Clearly the underlying message is one of global awareness and consideration. Let's find a solution for New Orleans without forgetting that India is dealing with this too, annually, and on a scale that makes it hard not to be humble. Forgive my optimism, but perhaps we (America) all need to give something up in this age of the global economy in order to balance the scales (pun intended) and I can only imagine what we could gain in return.
Don't miss Stan's Cafe Of All The People In The World: USA
World Financial Center, Courtyard Gallery
Open until January 20, 2008 : 12 - 6 pm, closed Monday and Tuesday
Free Admission
Go to Church. Young Jean Lee gets you to Heaven
For more years than I want to really admit I went to church every sunday, attended Catholic school and for a few years even spent some time at a religo' summer camp- where in the middle of a really competitive pre teen bocci ball game - a bell would ring and we would have to freeze, get the prayer hands on and say a little chant to the angels. Now a recovering Catholic I am haunted by guilt and after saying or doing something particularly ungodly I find myself begging forgiveness by mumbling to the air. " Sorry Jesus".
Starting in darkness and ending with a bright light YJL's Church spins you through the tenor, the vertigo inspiring ecstasy and the deep joy and sickness of the preacher and his followers.
Last fall I took in YJL's Songs of Dragons Flying to Heaven, which married sadistic / (slap)stick, a dissection of Korean American identity and the drone love perpetuated by over educated white kids. Anyone who can make me love Mariah Carey + mime in one scene deserves a close second look.
In Church I was unsettled by the glare from the house lights, left on purposefully I can only assume so one could not hide from themselves. A trio clad in calico frocks gives ripe testimony and a preacher names Jose spurt monologues that elicit memories of guitar mass compassion and slowly evolve into a fire and brimstone rant.
I was smitten by its simplicity, enamored by its raw honesty, tricked by its tricks, and revived by the choral surprises. In the end this lapsed devotee was saved by YJL- In her I have found a new religion.
Kristan Kennedy, PICA
Starting in darkness and ending with a bright light YJL's Church spins you through the tenor, the vertigo inspiring ecstasy and the deep joy and sickness of the preacher and his followers.
Last fall I took in YJL's Songs of Dragons Flying to Heaven, which married sadistic / (slap)stick, a dissection of Korean American identity and the drone love perpetuated by over educated white kids. Anyone who can make me love Mariah Carey + mime in one scene deserves a close second look.
In Church I was unsettled by the glare from the house lights, left on purposefully I can only assume so one could not hide from themselves. A trio clad in calico frocks gives ripe testimony and a preacher names Jose spurt monologues that elicit memories of guitar mass compassion and slowly evolve into a fire and brimstone rant.
I was smitten by its simplicity, enamored by its raw honesty, tricked by its tricks, and revived by the choral surprises. In the end this lapsed devotee was saved by YJL- In her I have found a new religion.
Kristan Kennedy, PICA
Poetics: a ballet brut
The Nature Theater of Oklahoma is undeniably one of the most innovative dance companies in New York. Ok, so they aren't your average dance company. None of the members would ever be seen in Swan Lake or even at the Martha Graham Dance Center. Yet, somehow, The Nature Theater of Oklahoma's version of dance is more joyous and revealing that anything I've seen in recent years.
Referred to as an "awesome and awkward tour de force," the dancing in Poetics: a ballet brut is comprised of everyday movement we use to communicate with one another. It combines simple gestures, like pounding your fist into your hand, brushing back someone's hair, or even eating a slice of pizza to create fluid and meaningful dance numbers. Each dance seems to evoke not only specific emotions, but also represent simple moments of interaction that we all experience in our daily lives.
In Poetics, the members of The Nature Theater of Oklahoma, have created a new vocabulary, devoid of almost any actual sound. There are many moments in the show when the actors gesture frantically, desperately trying to convey their feelings to us. In the process, we see them love, lose, cry, and laugh. Poetics shows us the beauty and heartbreak of life in it's simplest form.
Aiding in the simplicity of the show, is the interesting and innovative use of the space. The audience sits on risers positioned towards the very back of the stage itself. This leaves the dancers room to use not only the rest of the stage, but also to run free out in the house. This leads to several surprising and hilarious moments, which may include the occasional performer falling right off the stage.
But what are these performers dancing to? They are dancing to perhaps the most unusual and unexpected combination of semi-modern tunes, which are an immediate source of giggling. The soundtrack includes pop gems like "DreamWeaver" by Gary Wright, an instrumental rendition of "All by Myself" by Eric Carmen, as well as Donna Summer's "Last Dance."
Aside from the surprising and exhuberant finale (which I will mention nothing of to prevent spoiling it!) my favorite moment in the show is Robert Johanson's solo, leading into the "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats. The perfectly syncopated movement combined with perhaps one of the most ridiculously great songs from the 1980's, is perfection. It summerizes the awkward grace of not only Poetics, but also our daily lives.
Poetics: a ballet brut, will be playing at the Under The Radar Festival from January 10th through January 20th. Get your tickets while you can (go to publictheater.org or 212.967.7555) because this show is not to be missed!
Katie Courtien
UTR Press Corps Volunteer
You can learn more about NTO at their webpage www.oktheater.org AND by visiting our myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/utrfestival. Check them out on our blog and by viewing my vlog interview w/ NTO founders Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper!
Referred to as an "awesome and awkward tour de force," the dancing in Poetics: a ballet brut is comprised of everyday movement we use to communicate with one another. It combines simple gestures, like pounding your fist into your hand, brushing back someone's hair, or even eating a slice of pizza to create fluid and meaningful dance numbers. Each dance seems to evoke not only specific emotions, but also represent simple moments of interaction that we all experience in our daily lives.
In Poetics, the members of The Nature Theater of Oklahoma, have created a new vocabulary, devoid of almost any actual sound. There are many moments in the show when the actors gesture frantically, desperately trying to convey their feelings to us. In the process, we see them love, lose, cry, and laugh. Poetics shows us the beauty and heartbreak of life in it's simplest form.
Aiding in the simplicity of the show, is the interesting and innovative use of the space. The audience sits on risers positioned towards the very back of the stage itself. This leaves the dancers room to use not only the rest of the stage, but also to run free out in the house. This leads to several surprising and hilarious moments, which may include the occasional performer falling right off the stage.
But what are these performers dancing to? They are dancing to perhaps the most unusual and unexpected combination of semi-modern tunes, which are an immediate source of giggling. The soundtrack includes pop gems like "DreamWeaver" by Gary Wright, an instrumental rendition of "All by Myself" by Eric Carmen, as well as Donna Summer's "Last Dance."
Aside from the surprising and exhuberant finale (which I will mention nothing of to prevent spoiling it!) my favorite moment in the show is Robert Johanson's solo, leading into the "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats. The perfectly syncopated movement combined with perhaps one of the most ridiculously great songs from the 1980's, is perfection. It summerizes the awkward grace of not only Poetics, but also our daily lives.
Poetics: a ballet brut, will be playing at the Under The Radar Festival from January 10th through January 20th. Get your tickets while you can (go to publictheater.org or 212.967.7555) because this show is not to be missed!
Katie Courtien
UTR Press Corps Volunteer
You can learn more about NTO at their webpage www.oktheater.org AND by visiting our myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/utrfestival. Check them out on our blog and by viewing my vlog interview w/ NTO founders Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper!
Stoop Stories
Stoop Stories
Dael Orlandersmith
Thursday, January 10, 2008
This short performance of compelling short persona pieces is clearly unfinished, a “work-in-progress” as stated in the UTR guide. I admit, I was skeptical about attending an in progress piece—but once I settled into the seat and took one look at the joyous, pain-ridden, happy, broken, and etched face of Ms. Orlandersmith, I was hooked. She spun tales of lost dreams, truncated ambition, long lost glory, drugs, racism and the internal pain of disability. With each new scene, her face morphed into the character, her lips wide one character, tightly closed the next. Her eyes open wide in wonder as she performed in a child’s voice, and in the next, as she rocked back and forth in a fighter’s stance, her eyes squinted against an unfulfilled past and a future beset with nothing but heartache. The best of the lot she saved for last, as she took on the persona of a Holocaust survivor transplanted to New York, a man named Herman. Herman reminisces about a time when he met Billy Holiday at a club he frequented named Connie’s. Orlandersmith’s impression is spot-on, distilling down this man’s socially unacceptable desires and troubled history into a beautiful grimace of nostalgia and lost love.
Scott McEachern
UTR Press Corps
PICA
scott@pica.org
Dael Orlandersmith
Thursday, January 10, 2008
This short performance of compelling short persona pieces is clearly unfinished, a “work-in-progress” as stated in the UTR guide. I admit, I was skeptical about attending an in progress piece—but once I settled into the seat and took one look at the joyous, pain-ridden, happy, broken, and etched face of Ms. Orlandersmith, I was hooked. She spun tales of lost dreams, truncated ambition, long lost glory, drugs, racism and the internal pain of disability. With each new scene, her face morphed into the character, her lips wide one character, tightly closed the next. Her eyes open wide in wonder as she performed in a child’s voice, and in the next, as she rocked back and forth in a fighter’s stance, her eyes squinted against an unfulfilled past and a future beset with nothing but heartache. The best of the lot she saved for last, as she took on the persona of a Holocaust survivor transplanted to New York, a man named Herman. Herman reminisces about a time when he met Billy Holiday at a club he frequented named Connie’s. Orlandersmith’s impression is spot-on, distilling down this man’s socially unacceptable desires and troubled history into a beautiful grimace of nostalgia and lost love.
Scott McEachern
UTR Press Corps
PICA
scott@pica.org
Thursday, January 10, 2008
I want to be a Superamas
Big, 3rd Episode (happy/end) by Superamas opened at The Kitchen last night.
It has me up late thinking about time, words, music, and how I look art in the world around me.
How often I repeat a scene in my head or how things play out. So many times I have or haven't said the right thing at the right time.
I knew some music I heard tonight but never quite this special. Visually, I loved what I was seeing and wanted to see it again and again. And some I did. Each of the performers amazed me in their own way.
From the modest opening song to the journey I went on-they had me wanting more. Even now I have this craving. The video footage and effects really got me excited but also loved the natural beauty of the woman in the locker room. And yes the women with their "Sex in the City" conversation. I am seeing this show again. I want to see their other works too. check out superamas.com and arrive to the show early ! I want to be a Superamas!
Posted by Wilson from Portland, Oregon.
It has me up late thinking about time, words, music, and how I look art in the world around me.
How often I repeat a scene in my head or how things play out. So many times I have or haven't said the right thing at the right time.
I knew some music I heard tonight but never quite this special. Visually, I loved what I was seeing and wanted to see it again and again. And some I did. Each of the performers amazed me in their own way.
From the modest opening song to the journey I went on-they had me wanting more. Even now I have this craving. The video footage and effects really got me excited but also loved the natural beauty of the woman in the locker room. And yes the women with their "Sex in the City" conversation. I am seeing this show again. I want to see their other works too. check out superamas.com and arrive to the show early ! I want to be a Superamas!
Posted by Wilson from Portland, Oregon.
[insert statement, like "going to" or "praise the lord at" here] Church
Church
by Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company
January 9, 2008
The performance begins in darkness and there is silence for a few minutes, as if you’re given time to calm down, take a deep breath, and live with your own thoughts for a few moments. And then a voice, a man’s, begins with a forceful polemic about the craziness of modern life. As he continues, he becomes increasingly strident, his voice quavering with emotion. He lights on all of the flaws and extremes of living: overeating, alcoholism, smoking, fornicating, gambling. Pig, he calls us. We laugh, uncomfortably, understanding that this is the theater, and contemporary theater at that, and this moment, this rant, is meant to parody Christian rhetoric and belief.
The lights come on and the gentleman who has been speaking is joined by three other women, fresh-faced and clean, dressed simply in cotton dresses and pumps. Hairdos are non-descript, lanky brown hair or a close blonde bob on another. The foursome walks into the crowd, greeting the audience, smiling, thanking us for coming. It’s a fairly common theatrical technique that is meant, I think, to break down the proscenium, the fourth wall and interfere with our suspension of disbelief. The group interacts with the audience and thus creates the illusion that they are just like us, that we are not in a play, but in a scene from life.
They meet back on the stage and stand in a line, and the man introduces himself as Rev. Jose, and there are two Reverend Katies. We know that the parody is progressing in good order, and that we are in for a performance of laughs and pointed observations about American Religion. The final Reverend is hobbled at the foot, moving around with a crutch at her side—a perfect detail in a minimalist set, I thought at first.
Later, at the UTR Opening Night party, I ran into the actor and she was still wielding the crutch. “Obviously, this wasn’t part of the play,” I observed, helpfully. And she explained that she had hurt it somehow, in the process of dancing, and she had ignored the pain and the discomfort until it became too much to bear and the doctor told her that she had broken her foot. This happened Monday, and the performance was Wednesday. The company had one day, essentially, to prepare for the new development.
I would comment to Young Jean Lee to keep the crutch—even in future, full-bodied stagings of the performance. The crutched Reverend added something very human and bleak to the piece, and the detail, in my mind, was directly connected to tent revivals and faith healing, and I half expected one of her companions to touch her by the forehead and yell “Devil begone!” And the juxtaposition of this incredibly fit woman who is hobbled by an unexplained injury worked very well.
The rest of the play unfolds with a series of single monologues delivered by each member of the crew—and at this point it’s clear that this is a parody of the classic Christian Church Scene—where the reverends testify, give advice, cajole and judge their audiences into God’s Path.
The interesting thing about Church is that the group does a spot-on impression of the Church Scene. Their earnestness does not seem like a put-on or faked—in short, their performance does not seem staged. Only when one of the group enters into moments of total absurdism, when Reverend Jose, for example, begins his parable about the tuna and the snake, do we understand for certain that this is meant to poke fun at the methods and the logic by which Christians talk to each other.
And then at the end, when the group comes on stage to dance in a sort of managed ecstasy, we understand that while the performers and the playwright have been making fun of Christianity, there is something so honest and real about their portrayals that it’s hard to understand what the point of the parody might be. In the guide for UTR, the entry for Church explains that “Playwright and director Young Jean Lee transforms her lifelong struggle with Christianity into an exuberant church service designed to test the expectations of the religious and non-religious alike.” The part of this statement that I’m interested in is the part about how Young Jean Lee has struggled with Christianity, which clearly indicates that she’s got something to say about how Christian Logic can seem so attractive to so many people while, at the same time, riddled with fallacies, syllogisms and downright wrong information.
So what is it that she’s trying to say? That Christianity, while undeniably a system of mismatched myths, parables and values, is also a really, really compelling force in our society? That Christianity is here to stay and those atheists, agnostics, non-believers, no matter how much reason, money or power they hold, it’s no stronghold against the steamroller of Christian belief? Yes, certainly the play says all of these things and more.
However, still something is unresolved in the play—and while I don’t necessarily need my plays and entertainment to be resolved, even a little bit, I guess I was looking for some kind of “a-ha” moment, a muted epiphany that would give us some indication how (and if) problems of Christian Logic had come to a satisfying détente in her mind.
Scott McEachern
PICA
Portland, OR
scott@pica.org
by Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company
January 9, 2008
The performance begins in darkness and there is silence for a few minutes, as if you’re given time to calm down, take a deep breath, and live with your own thoughts for a few moments. And then a voice, a man’s, begins with a forceful polemic about the craziness of modern life. As he continues, he becomes increasingly strident, his voice quavering with emotion. He lights on all of the flaws and extremes of living: overeating, alcoholism, smoking, fornicating, gambling. Pig, he calls us. We laugh, uncomfortably, understanding that this is the theater, and contemporary theater at that, and this moment, this rant, is meant to parody Christian rhetoric and belief.
The lights come on and the gentleman who has been speaking is joined by three other women, fresh-faced and clean, dressed simply in cotton dresses and pumps. Hairdos are non-descript, lanky brown hair or a close blonde bob on another. The foursome walks into the crowd, greeting the audience, smiling, thanking us for coming. It’s a fairly common theatrical technique that is meant, I think, to break down the proscenium, the fourth wall and interfere with our suspension of disbelief. The group interacts with the audience and thus creates the illusion that they are just like us, that we are not in a play, but in a scene from life.
They meet back on the stage and stand in a line, and the man introduces himself as Rev. Jose, and there are two Reverend Katies. We know that the parody is progressing in good order, and that we are in for a performance of laughs and pointed observations about American Religion. The final Reverend is hobbled at the foot, moving around with a crutch at her side—a perfect detail in a minimalist set, I thought at first.
Later, at the UTR Opening Night party, I ran into the actor and she was still wielding the crutch. “Obviously, this wasn’t part of the play,” I observed, helpfully. And she explained that she had hurt it somehow, in the process of dancing, and she had ignored the pain and the discomfort until it became too much to bear and the doctor told her that she had broken her foot. This happened Monday, and the performance was Wednesday. The company had one day, essentially, to prepare for the new development.
I would comment to Young Jean Lee to keep the crutch—even in future, full-bodied stagings of the performance. The crutched Reverend added something very human and bleak to the piece, and the detail, in my mind, was directly connected to tent revivals and faith healing, and I half expected one of her companions to touch her by the forehead and yell “Devil begone!” And the juxtaposition of this incredibly fit woman who is hobbled by an unexplained injury worked very well.
The rest of the play unfolds with a series of single monologues delivered by each member of the crew—and at this point it’s clear that this is a parody of the classic Christian Church Scene—where the reverends testify, give advice, cajole and judge their audiences into God’s Path.
The interesting thing about Church is that the group does a spot-on impression of the Church Scene. Their earnestness does not seem like a put-on or faked—in short, their performance does not seem staged. Only when one of the group enters into moments of total absurdism, when Reverend Jose, for example, begins his parable about the tuna and the snake, do we understand for certain that this is meant to poke fun at the methods and the logic by which Christians talk to each other.
And then at the end, when the group comes on stage to dance in a sort of managed ecstasy, we understand that while the performers and the playwright have been making fun of Christianity, there is something so honest and real about their portrayals that it’s hard to understand what the point of the parody might be. In the guide for UTR, the entry for Church explains that “Playwright and director Young Jean Lee transforms her lifelong struggle with Christianity into an exuberant church service designed to test the expectations of the religious and non-religious alike.” The part of this statement that I’m interested in is the part about how Young Jean Lee has struggled with Christianity, which clearly indicates that she’s got something to say about how Christian Logic can seem so attractive to so many people while, at the same time, riddled with fallacies, syllogisms and downright wrong information.
So what is it that she’s trying to say? That Christianity, while undeniably a system of mismatched myths, parables and values, is also a really, really compelling force in our society? That Christianity is here to stay and those atheists, agnostics, non-believers, no matter how much reason, money or power they hold, it’s no stronghold against the steamroller of Christian belief? Yes, certainly the play says all of these things and more.
However, still something is unresolved in the play—and while I don’t necessarily need my plays and entertainment to be resolved, even a little bit, I guess I was looking for some kind of “a-ha” moment, a muted epiphany that would give us some indication how (and if) problems of Christian Logic had come to a satisfying détente in her mind.
Scott McEachern
PICA
Portland, OR
scott@pica.org
Bang a Gong - Get it on!
Attending a Festival in a city you only dip your foot in once and a while is a feat - your jet lagged and subway weary- and although you know you might just see everyone in your field in the lobby of the Public Theater - that might not be a good thing at this moment. Still as the day goes on and the calls and emails and text messages pour in from your colleagues around the world- and every one of them says "see you tonight"- you feel a bit restored and head out. Everything seems to become part of the show and as you get closer to the Public. From about ten blocks away you can start identifying your people the clear signifiers are the UTR tote bags, the head to toe black clad ensembles and then their are the haircuts. Have I mentioned that it is 60 degrees today. As you head to the lobby- more and more and more and more and more people start filtering in and the noise rises from chatter to clang. Wait- that is UTR's Artistic Director, Mark Russell standing on the coffee bar with a gong, he is ringing in the first night Everyone has filed into their shows, and now we are back in the lobby - champagne is poured and you start seeing the faces from the catalog come alive, there is Mike Daisey who will soon tell us how theater has failed us, there is Pavol Liska and his Nature Theater of Oklahoma entourage, Reggie Watts, Young Jean Lee- then there are the art world mavericks - I spied Rose Lee Goldberg, Chuck Helm, David Henry , Olga Garay and many more. We are here - together to have our minds bent, to make connections, to fall in love with a moment on stage (or off).
Kristan Kennedy, Visual Art Program Director, PICA
Kristan Kennedy, Visual Art Program Director, PICA
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)