Sensory Overload

It's been a bleak few months for me -- primarily because I continue to feel burnt out about and by theater performances, and this apathy is reinforced by terrible performances I've seen. I'm at a point where I am almost trying to avoid shows entirely. Sad.

At The Kitchen I saw a Big Art Group show for the first time and found it kind of appalling. Lots of camera/video work in bright crazy costumes and digitally manipulated backgrounds, and culminating in a crazy extravaganza of people wrapped in a million 260 balloons (used for making balloon animals) and attacking each other.... or something. I gather it was a reflection of the self-destructive non-stop mega-consumerism in our American lives on every level, with everything being indistinguishable from the zippy colorful commercial breaks, and there was some kind of allegory with people dressed up in animal costumes trying to find their way through the forest. All of this mattered little to me, though, because their in-your-face litany of screaming indecipherable language and hallucinogenic imagery never changed in dynamics from the beginning to the end of the 90 minute show. It was kind of a form of torture.

I did manage to catch Ibsen's Dollhouse by Mabou Mines at St. Ann's before the show closed forever. Though I found some parts a bit draggy, there were remarkable elements -- the womb-like red velvet-walled house/set; over-sized piano; miniaturized furniture pieces (not to mention the obvious size differences between the actresses and the actors. but most amazing was Maude Mitchell's mind-blowingly phenomenal performance as Nora. The end of the play, including Nora's stripping down to the scalp sent shivers up my spine.

Both shows were very high-concept and chockful of surprises and nuggets of invention. Without dynamics, though, it can all disappear into a wash of tedium.

the importance of keeping your mouth shut

I insist I am not biased, just because I worked on the translation.
Dan Safer is one of those people I'm really glad I met. Despite his rockstar persona, over a tall cup of tea I learned he was extremely thoughtful, generous and perceptive.
To tell the truth I wasn't sure I fully embraced his production of Mikuni Yanaihara's The Blue Bird, because it seemed like the non-stop ADD break-neck game-show-like antics of catchy dances, song/screaming and theatrical nonsequitors were more gimmick than could be held together by the structure and actual meat of the play. And I'm not sure if I was convinced otherwise -- however in the last 15 minutes of the play, with a surprisingly simple but beautiful transformation of the space with the music and the video and the images, and the sequence that followed, he caught that bird and made it fully, unapologetically, poignantly his own. Not sure how Yanaihara felt since she went to see it 2 weeks ago, but I felt fully tricked and not half-way indignant about it.

Nothing New

Went to see Jan Fabre's Orgy of Tolerance.
Imagine an evening of competitive masturbation, cock-sucking, furniture-fucking, rifle-barrel-butt-fucking, a room full of guys getting hand jobs while discussing their collection of ethnic humans, torturing people for the sake of consumerism, and a litany of 'fuck you's aimed at every single conceivably religious/ethnic/gender/sexual orientation group you can think of.
Shocking?
On the contrary. It was sophomoric, predictable, shallow and also felt terribly outdated, by like 30 years. I couldn't believe that this was the new work by the leader of the Flemish Wave -- it felt more like some college student's first self-made dance-theater piece (in fact it did remind me of the works of a few college acquaintances), except with an enormous budget.
The performers were all very talented and could obviously move, but their energies were embarrassingly wasted on a fetid work.

The jokes on you, cracker mothafucka, and look who's laughing.

Saw YJL's The Shipment.
I say without reservation that Young Jean has a remarkable capacity for and agility with words, and a unique brand of wicked American humor that is based on irony/sarcasm. She also always goes after a disarming rhythm in her plays, one that teases, caresses, then pulls the rug from out under the audience. Watching her shows is like being tickled and being force-fed sliders while also being bashed in the head at the same time.
Though performed by an astoundingly beautiful and talented cast, I don't know if this was her most successful piece. Despite the NYT, I would say that the second half of the piece (which felt me like the play she really wanted to write) didn't earn its pay-off -- it's an extended cocktail party drama in which the host pretends to poison all his inane guests. The joke is supposed to be on the audience at the end when you find out that the black actors were playing white (read: racist) characters the whole time -- but this conceit was pretty apparent from the get-go.
I always wonder why her plays are so in-your-face, like to the point of being abusive to the audience, especially white ones. It's like she's tapped deeply into the fact that white people love to have their white guilt pumped up and paraded around and shat on publicly, particularly if in the hands of a such a witty wordsmith, because then they can feel absolved yet claim to have acknowledged their deep-seeded inherent racism and elitism and be able to laugh it all off in a neat package. There's a lot of racial shock-value to be mined and she's got a mainline to it, for sure.
My favorite part of the play was a song at the center of the play that was sung incredibly beautifully by three actors. That felt like the (literal) heart of the play to me.

Kicking off 2009

Let it be a year of succinct blog posts.

I was deeply disappointed with The Seagull on Broadway, particularly the performances by MacKenzie Crooke who seemed to shout all his lines at the same pitch, and Peter Saarsgaard, who seemed just totally bored out of his mind -- and not appealing at all.

I survived Yoshiko Chuma & Shirotama Hitsujiya's X2. I continue to be astounded by their (collective) audacity.

I have now made three failed attempts to see Witness Relocation's The Blue Bird. My only remaining chance this Friday.

I saw only one show at Under the Radar this year, and that was the bizarre show by the Netherlands' Kassys called LIGA 50% Reward 50% Punishment. The opening film is delightful, tracking a backstage view as one by one, the performers of a show make their exit and greet their director to celebrate how well the show had gone. The reactions vary subtly, but the general feeling is that of relief and elation. Then the performers' parents come out of the green room and begin to slowly zup up their children in their coats and escort them home. Somwhere, we've made a transition in perception. What we at first thought were 'normal' adults have turend out to be somehow mentally/psychologically impaired (autistic?) people. Then the play begins in earnest, rewinding back to the beginning of the show. Each actor makes his/her entrance and interacts with the stage props, audience and each other. We seem to be watching at once some kind of socialization experiment, a performance made of trying to teach 'normal' 'acceptable' behavior, and a reality tv show. At the height of the chaos, one girl begins to disrobe and flaunt herself and others flail about with large cushions, vying for the audiences' attention, until the director finally intervenes and demands that the group create a cohesive event together: a BBQ party.

Though rhythmically the show falters in the middle, and I started to feel like I had been a kindergarten class for about 3 hours (exhausting!) the show was a pretty committed (if shallow) commentary on social/societal acceptance and interaction.

Contrition 2008

How much do I suck for being the lamest blogger of 2008? A lot.
The fact is, I've felt no desire to see theater, especially after the ordeal of getting oph3lia on its feet. I have, however, found myself in the theaters (and, as it happens, pretty commercial theaters for some reason) a handful of times this autumn, and before the year ends I wanted to (b)log them briefly here.


I'd never seen a production by Robert LePage so I felt almost obligated to go see his The Damnation of Faust at the Metropolitan Opera. The set consisted of 5 or so levels of scaffolding, on which both upstage and downstage there were opaque and translucent projection surfaces that sometimes were retractable. There were some acrobatic flying, big epic images (people falling into water, full stage sunset), and repetition of stage pictures (the scaffolding and partitions created a dense grid of cubicles in which the a "man at a table" could be repeated 20, 30 times. all in all, though, I was not moved or impressed.


I went to see the Builder's Association at BAM, also because I'd never seen their work before, and, from what I heard, the narrative and themes in their latest work Continuous City. Really cool technology (hydraulic? screens that pop open and closed with projections or LED or something) kind of hackneyed concept (social networking -- i.e. mediated communication -- cannot be a substitute for real interaction... or can it?), and pretty loose story that kind of didn't have a drive. Actually I might argue that the reason why it felt so flat was that so much of the acting was pre-recorded, and so the live actors, when having to interact with recorded media, were forced to flatten themselves out. But I did find the lead actor incredibly handsome. Is that a really sexist thing to say? Oh well.

Last night I went to see Billy Elliot on Broadway. Not my choice. My friend had an extra ticket. Cute story. I imagine the movie was better able to communicate the context of the story (coal-miners in England on strike in the 1980s). The young actor playing Billy that night was a technically skilled dancer... but... and I know that this is harsh or whatever and that you're not really allowed to have criticisms about someone who is still "a kid" or whatever but, I just felt that there were limitations to his emotional range, and that his dancing, although executed with finesse, rang empty.

So, what I'm really excited about is that tomorrow, I am going to see The Seagull on Broadway, starring MACKENZIE CROOK (Gareth from the BBC The Office) who I am totally in love with. I happen to love that play too, my favorite of all the Chekhovs. Hopefully I won't be (too) disappointed...

2008 was a hell of a year. I hope 2009 is a bit calmer and happier.

The Reptilian Mind

Truth be told, I have not wanted to see any theater for many many many many months. I saw a play in Madrid, that was supposed to be the hottest show in town -- based on the Chechen takeover of a Russian theater several years back. It was kind of interesting, but hard to totally buy, esp with the translation etc.

But last night I saw something that was really fulfilling -- it's playing for another week in NYC and I highly recommend it. The show is, of course, Pig Iron's Chekhov Lizardbrain. A wonderfully funny/poignant/bizarre/fascinating layering of stories and realities -- Chekhov's Three Sisters, a botanist returning to his hometown of Oswego NY and buys the house of his childhood acquaintances, and the hypnotizing "logic" of the autistic mind. It faintly reminded me of the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time but way more adventurous in imagination. The actors are fan-fucking-tastic. Catch it if you can at the OHIO.

The Fat That Makes You Stronger

So I caught the first act of Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner by Luis Alfaro at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival tonight. A fun/ny play about Minerva, a woman who is growing increasingly and uncontrollably obese and the people around her who have to deal with her -- sports-minded himself a couch potato husband, her younger very sexually active sister, and her sister's new cop boyfriend. And, oh yeah, Mee Chee, an even fatter Chinese lady whom she befriended at the fat farm. Minerva sporadically writes letters to Mee Chee inviting her to come visit, and sends little treats (ho-ho's, licorice, funions) along as well. Well, Mee Chee does show up at the end of Act One, but she is not played by an actor, as far as I could tell. She was a large shadow that appeared against a scrim, accompanied by some chinky music. When someone asks her a question, Mee Chee answers as an erhu melody. It kind of gives that Charlie Brown effect, you know when the adults talk, it's this indecipherable "hwa-hwa-hwa" sound? I wasn't entirely sure what that was supposed to signify exactly, but somehow, the appearance of the Mee Chee doppelganger is a transitional moment for Minerva, as she actually begins to FLOAT over everybody and transcends her physical reality.

Still being on East Coast time, I couldn't bring myself to stay awake through the second hour of the show, so I may never find out what spiritual epiphanies awaited Minerva, and whether her obesity was a metaphor for something else.

I am feeling a great trepidation about theater right now, I must admit.
The whole convention of it -- the perfectly timed music to cover scene changes, the theatrical writing and character development... I feel so disconnected to it when I'm watching. May be time for something else... but what?