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?

a jump in the pool

OK OK OK! So my show is finished, I went to Japan and back, and I have very little excuse for not having gone to see more shows, except that I'm entirely burnt out and don't want to go to the theater at all. That's why I went to see Headlong Dance Theater's Hotel Pool, because it takes place, well, in and around a pool. In this case, the body of water was located near the southern tip of Manhattan in a high-end luxury condo building called Rector Square.

The show was sold-out a while back, but Banana who has some roots in Philly, had made reservations early on. We arrived quite early on a rainy Thursday, and were one of the first people in the lobby, waiting. By the time they tarted opening the house and shuffling people into the pool area, we were at the end of the line. By the time we reached the performance space, we were one of the last ones in, and had to settle for a seat on the ground, right alongside the pool. There were rolled up towels placed along the poolside, suggesting what was to come.

The piece began with what I found to be an arresting, Murakami-esque premise. A business woman checks into a hotel, but somehow gets lost on her way to her room and ends up at the hotel pool, and locking herself in(out). She makes some frantic phone calls, in an attempt to get the hotel management to get her an actual room. She needs to take her medication and pops a pill into her mouth, when she realizes that her water bottle is empty. Looking around, the only water is... in the pool. Gingerly she kneels down and takes the water up to her mouth in cupped hands. She falls asleep at the poolside. Then a troupe of mysterious water-beings begin an underwater dance that continues throughout the piece, eventually tempting the woman into their universe.

What these water-creatures are, and what they represent, is never entirely clear -- they seem to be emblematic of the spirit of love/fun/life/joy, in contrast to the woman who is coming from a cold, corporate place. Although other stretches seemed lengthy, and there was a whole scene with dialogue in the middle which I couldn't comprehend at all (sound too low, dvd player not working). Plus I got my butt SOAKING WET (like peed-in-my-pants wet --- which is really one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world). The company always manages to achieve that sense of BIG LOVE that can usually only be created by companies of artists who really love and trust each other. Some of the movement really took me places in their simplicity and repetition.

Quarterly Report

It's sad how much this blogging thing can fall to the wayside. It's also because if you miss a few entries, you begin to feel like you can't possibly catch up, and writing seems like such an impossible task.

But here I am diligently carving out the time to report to whomever might be interested.

First some context -- so I am in the thick of rehearsing for oph3lia which opens June 11. I keep a decent record of rehearsals here, so feel free to check it out. At the end of April, Tmonkey and I moved into a new apartment (this of course somehow happened miraculously while I was working all day and rehearsing all night) and then almost immediately I got on a plane to rural Oregon to work on a new piece for a few days.

The new project, entitled IfDentity, is the brainchild of the International Theater Institute's New Project Group -- or more accurately it is one of the projects dreamt up by the ceaselessly inspiring Emilya Cachapero. She'd invited me to participate in the Borges Project a few years ago which took me to Manila with a whole bunch of other crazy theater folks. While at the heart of this international collaboration project is a complete mystery of unknowns and experimentation, it also represents a deep desire and hope for the future of theater and art.

Anyway, the reason I was flown out to Oregon (Medford -- near Ashland, to be exact) is because one of the other artists on the team is in the company of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I met the other artists for the first time last week -- Hana Sharif who is at Hartford Stage, and the aforementioned actor Juan Rivera Lebron. Both of whom turned out to be lovelier than I could have ever imagined.

We lived and rehearsed at Buckhorn Springs for 3-4 days where we did much of our own cooking and spent our days discussing identity and media. Here are some pix.

From the left, clockwise: Emilya, Hana, Kevin Bitterman who always makes me laugh, Liz Engelman the dramaturg (and my roommate in Manila!) and Juan.

So I'm back and rehearsing full swing. Still exhausted -- but I did manage to catch the much-talked about performance of the Elevator Repair Service's The Sound and the Fury. After being blown away by the company's Gatz, I have to say (also not having read Faulkner -- I did try once for about 10 minutes) the first act of Sound did not turn me on. In fact I fell asleep for a significant chunk of it. But honestly, that's not saying much because at my exhaustion level, I am constantly falling asleep whenever I have a moment to sit down and close my eyes.

Joan and I stayed for the second act, which was by far more invested, engaging and urgent. The performances were really nuanced and lovely, and the chaotic switches in time and narrative, compounded with the frequent switching of roles by the actors, were executed seamlessly. I thought after seeing the show I would be compelled to read the book, but in a way, this experience was so lucid and complete, I don't think I'll make it through the book.

HAPPY NEW YEAR?!

Um, hello, March 25, 2008. Yes so I've been MIA for 3 months, and probably Peter's the only one who cares. Hi Peter.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen lots of show between Jan 1 and now. So many that I can't even remember them all. I just spent the last hour filtering through all my crap (we're moving soon) and throwing away all my programs. So I'll just list some highlights that still stick in my memory.

At HERE's Culturemart:
The South Wing's The Gospel According to Jack VitroloA surprisingly funny & surreal journey of a man through the labyrinthian world of hospital/medicine/perversion in search of his kidnapped wife. Pulling from Kobo Abe and some other stuff, the ensemble of actors worked beautifully together. The Kafkaesque level of thwarted expectation and waylaid search reached its height in the sweltering heat of the theater, really wringing the audience through an appropriately torturous level of hellishness.

I also saw Faye Driscoll's 837 Venice Boulevard which was an easy to watch exploration of identity, perception and media. Again, really great performers, really funny.I don't know Faye really well, but she's super cool. And another cool project she worked on was YJL's Church -- the choreography for which was very different from what she usually does but is nonetheless effective in capturing this ineffable joy of religious/sacrilegious salvation.

Speaking of Church, which I saw again at the Public for Under the Radar, it was going through a rough spell. Several injuries suffered by the cast made me anxious to watch them try to execute movement. The show didn't quite have the electric sparkle it did at PS122, partially due to the way the theater felt -- cavernous.

Other things at UtR:

Michel Melamed is this Brazilian performance artist who I guess is friends with the Enrique Diaz of the Cia Dos Atores, a company I thought was so brilliant. I went to see Michel's show Regurgitophagy. He was set up a prisoner on-stage with electro-shock shackles attached to his limbs. It was very hard for me to sit through this show...

There was also NO DICE's Poetics: A Ballet Brute was very cute. Except what's up with these big group surprise endings? I find it heartwarming that this generation of seemingly glib, "so over it" "hip" artists are opting for joyful life-affirming endings and all, but somehow seeing this show, and CHURCH, in the same theater, made me feel a bit queasy. But seriously that bearded guy is a freaking amazing performer.

Oh yeah and then there was Jay Scheib's much talked about This Place Is a Desert. I know many people who work with him,but I'll forego any discussion about the drama around him/his work. Drama's probably not the right word for it. Anyhoo, the video/set design was truly remarkable. A marriage of all the great things about cinema colliding with great things about theater. Four screens in a row suspended above the playing space comprised of half obscured, some revealed rooms, hallways. Cameras set all around peeking into peoples' most intimate moments, even a camera guy who follows the action. The effect was pretty mesmerizing: hypnotic the way film is, yet with a rawness of live performance. Although generally the aesthetic seemed to be "sexy" in a very male-gaze kind of way, and I wasn't crazy about the script itself, the montages were great, and some of the actresses were great, in their forlorn women roles.

Gosh what else. There was the new Richard Foreman show... I dunno. His work, esp since he started working with projections seems more diluted every year.


There was the Romeo Castelucci's Hey Girl! which people were going ape-shit over. Overall I felt like I was beaten over the head with clunky ideas about women/femininity throughout history. There was Joan of Arc kind of, and she was beaten up by a gang of 30 Montclair University male students. And then there was a black woman who was mostly like naked, and chained up... OK i did fall asleep in the middle. But that's not to say there wasn't some cool-ass shit. Like the consistently and continually dripping goop and dripped so elegantly off the operating table for 70 minutes. And the crazy laser beam. Oh gosh I guess "you had to be there."

I'm about to start rehearsals for oph3lia so I won't be seeing much theater for a while, in fact I haven't gone to see a show since Hey Girl!, probably... But pls check out my other website if you haven't seen it already. www.knifeinc.org

Signing off.