Berlin, Berlin

I'm back, I'm back, I'm back from Berlin. A sprawling flat city that somehow reminded me of San Francisco pre-internet days: grimey and laid-back, funky and functional. I did not have much organizational time to plan out my theater-going itinerary, so it was basically pure luck that I found in my Ex-Berliner mag that the latest from Constanza Macras/Dorky Park was playing at The Prater in Prenzlauer Berg. Following a gorgeous Russian meal at Pasternak, I went to stand in line for an available ticket to the sold-out show of I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE PART TWO.


You may or may not recall that Dorky Park was the company that made one of my top 3 show in 2006 so I was excited to see this new one, and compare it to my experience of the other show. And, well I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but I do feel like I have now seen a clear isolation of the creative formula -- and like anything magical, once you see its mechanism clearly, a certain mystique and ineffable wonder wear off. back to the present, which I saw at DTW last year, was an explosive, sweaty, wild, youthful, funny, sexy collage of pop-culture and personal narratives. I'm not the only one presented a similar series of vignettes, at times invoking that same kind of indie-rock energy, but with a smaller cast. And the focus seemed to be on intimacy -- the strange desires and contradictions we experience one-on-one with each other, and as an individual within a group. There were vague references to Twin Peaks, violent dance duets, a massive cream pie fight, and a balls-to-the-wall karaoke singing session, a bizarre and beautiful contortionist Gail Sharrol Skrela pitting will against body performed by the intense Hyoung Min Kim. Unlike back to the present, this piece seemed to lose its steam and arc. back to the present, with all its randomness and schitzophrenic jumping around held together energetically and moved from a fun-kitsch to something more grounded and profound. I'm not spent a lot of time circling in a holding pattern, and by the time the amazing Korean singing burst out, the piece had lost my attention. Partly it could have been that I missed Part One, and also, the theater had become unbearably hot and uncomfortable. It certainly felt like the piece could have used an editor.

The following night I went to see another performance -- I'd come across a flyer for Mustafa-Woyzeck at the Theaterdiscounter. The theater was on the ground floor of this amazing building in Mitte. The show, which was, granted, entirely in German, seemed to be a very superficial deconstructed look at Buchner's incomplete play through the lens of a Turkish-German DJ. Language and jet-lag aside, the music was uninventive, the actors unengaging, and they certainly did not earn the final image in the show: a big pudgy Woyzeck pouring a bucket of blood on himself. Oh that just reminded me of another horrible Woyzeck I saw at St. Ann's Warehouse last year -- Daniel Kramer's London "rock and roll" production was, asides from the stark opening image, a dreadfully predictable and oversimplified plastic version of one of the most influential plays in Western theater.