Don't Wake Me Up

Once every three years I'll go check out what Richard Foreman is doing. Just for kicks. Over the last decade I think I've seen three or four pieces; they could have been Permanent Brain Damage, Bad Boy Nietzsche, Cowboy Rufus something or other, and Now That Communism is Dead, My Life Feels Empty. I cannot tell you with any certainty which of these I actually saw, and which of these I just imagined I saw, because frankly, I could never tell any of his plays apart from each other (except occasionally by cast - he always had the downtown greats like my favorites James Urbaniak & T Ryder Smith) -- until now. I think Sophia Skiles worked with him for a while and she just loved it. I found this shocking because I'd assumed that an actor with her level of talent would feel humiliated by being reduced to a pawn of Foreman's theatro-masturbatory-subconscious universe. Don't get me wrong, I'd always found Mr. Foreman's pieces nerve-wracking, visually/aurally fascinating (to the point of excruciating pain), and the whole synergy of his work mysterious, beautiful, ugly, frustrating, funny and not fun. I'd fallen into the habit of describing his plays like what I would imagine it would be like to peer into the mind of an insane person. That's worth a visit every couple of years, don't you think? It's like choosing to sniff your dirty socks juuuust to remind yourself how bad your feet can smell. (metaphorically speaking, of course.)

Last night I went with Yoko and Ryo, who were both Foreman virgins, to WAKE UP MR. SLEEPY! YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND IS DEAD! At first glance, the theater appeared as I expected. White and black-and-white-striped string running across the plane between stage and audience; indecipherable texts scrawled on newspapered walls, stage full of clutter and chairs, white-faced mannequins fixing their blank stare on the house, secret compartments, and a large airplane model suspended from the ceiling, full of plastic baby dolls -- your typical gothic-flavored Foreman set. But what happened once the show began was not the typical Foreman nightmare I'd come to see; it was more of an unpleasant but innocuous lite nap.

I'd heard that he was using video now -- images of the same video projected on two walls, filmed with Portuguese actors (repeating lines in English). Five live actors, scuffling about on stage, gesturing and executing movements to the droning sound/lightscape of recorded repeated text, blind-the-audience lights, more gesturing.... on page this seems pretty standard. But the way in which everything was executed, with an utter blandness on top of blandness, proved how long 65 minutes can be. I'd come expecting to cringe and be repulsed by the focused intensity towards blandness that created such a disturbing and nauseating effect by precise performance. Instead, compositions were sloppy, performers were mediocre to the point of invisibility, video footage equally pedantic -- in the end 65 minutes without any tension. The most compelling performances came from the aforementioned blinding lights -- which, towards the end of the show were what were disturbing my slumber. I think I made eye contact with some actors a few times I forced myself to wake up and pay attention to the stage. The first time I was mildly embarrassed to be caught sleeping by the performer. After the second time, I just didn't care.