Personal Theatrical Musings on Performances

Sunday, May 25, 2008

"Opening Night by Les SlovaKs at fabric Potsdam in Berlin on May 24


In the end, my gamble paid off. Turning down the concierge's suggestion that I go to the Berlin opera house to see the ballet "Sleeping Beauty," I took the train 45 minutes to the neighboring (and picturesque) town of Potsdam instead. There, I saw lots of Germans in the 20's and 30's with a few in their 40's watching a company from belgium called Les SlovaKs. Born in Slovakia but having emigrated to Belgium, the dancers, all well-trained and wonderful movers, found each other over time and created this company. I had never heard of them but was thrilled to see them. They had a combination of beautiful dancers' bodies, wonderful technique, surprising choreography, and charm enough to go around and still have some left over.

The company of five male dancers has created this piece with the help of a violinist who composed the music for the piece. The choreography was created by the collective of five male dancers. Perhaps the moments that most succinctly represents the piece is a violin solo where the violinist plays a series of quirky and short notes followed by a single note that he holds for a while. In that moment, the quirky is transformed into something beautiful. It's not that the quirky short notes are not beautiful and the long note is, but that the longer note, in its beauty, provides a context to experiencing the succession of shorter notes.
The piece looks like something the cowboy from "Midnight Cowboy" might choreograph, which is to say something choreograhed by amateurs making up something that they think looks like dance but with a certain energy and charm. Taking that kind of playfullness for its language, the piece plays those movements out to something that shows the beauty and skill involved in such movements and in playing them out to a certain end. The piece's movement, in fact, is comprised of quirky choreography (meant to look amateurish), folks dancing moves (ostensibly from Slovakia), and technique that comes from modern dance. The amateurish and folk movement are eventually because we see in them skill and beauty that are not evident at first.

The dancers and the violinist also appear to have a certain relationship that makes the piece even more charming. We get to watch them play together and it's a joy. At one point, one of the dancers begins to introduce one of his comrades. He tells us his name and explains that he's got a goodlooking Slavic face, which the dancer adorns with a mustache because he's young and wants to appear to be older. It's a kind of silliness that would be annoying if it weren't coupled with talent but that is endearing and funny because it is and because we like them. (When one enters the space, the six performers are all standing about 10 feet from the front row and just smile as we file in.) There are also moments of violence in the piece, as when one of the dancers begins to beat up on one that earlier had wanted his attention. The beating also turns into beautiful movement but is repeated and so we experience both pain and beauty at the same time. In one of these moments, one dance pounds the other's stomach as if hurting him and the dancer lands against the wall to the back of the stage. He lands on his back, feet up in the air and against the wall, and he begins to roll slowly, his body extended, towards the audience. In doing so, he transforms the movement of being beaten into something unexpected, in which we get to sympathize and then witness with awe.

The feeling of the entire piece might be describe as off balance but controlled. That's exemplified by a certain moment in which a dancer has has left arm extended straight. He brings his right arm over to the left but never extends it quite straight. He almost gets to that position that is common in dance but he never quite finshes it. He doesn't get to the point of balance. As a result, he seems in danger of losing his balance but he never does. And in not delivering for our expectation of balance and centeredness but also never losing his footing, he transforms our expectation and creates something new.

"Fram" at the national Theatre in London on May 24


Londoners have the benefit of the National Theatre, with many stagees in the same complex and seemingly unending access to wonderful playwrights, directors, actors, and state-provided big budgets. While big budgets in the United States often seem to go with an over reliance on expensive scenery and sloppy directing, I'd seen a few things at the National Theatre in the past and all were excellent. This included a production of Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tatto" that was incredibly well-acted and directed with impressive intergrity. This was a few years after seeing a silly production at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in which all of its eggs were put in a visual basket, taking the motif of the rose tattoo too far and attention to the direction not far enough.




"Fram" is about a real life explorer who once held the record for having travelled the farthest north and eventually turned in his adventuring ways for humanitarian, paying particular attention to raising money to battle a famine in Russia in the early 1920's. Written by Tony Harrison, a highly-respected British poet and playwright, the poem opens in the cemetary at Westminster Abby with an embittered dead poet/translator bitching about his bad reviews from T.S. Elliot, who happens to be lain fairly close to him in the cemetary. He decided to write a play about the explorer and he conjurs up a famous actress, the Fram (the explorer's boat), and a production. In the production, the poet and the actress interact with the explorer throughout the production.




The play deals with the issue of how one goes about doing good in a turbulent world. As the play-within-a-play opens, the explorer and his companion are stuck in the ice near the north pole. Tired of dealing with each others' scents and bad habits, they decide to divide their blanket and sleep separately. They realize that sleeping together under the same blanket they produce more heat and thus sleep more comfortably. Thus, depsite the farting and other disgusting habits, they snuggle together to survive.




The difficulties of life get more dire as the play goes on, including the famine in Russia, torture in the Middle East, and violence in parts of Africa. There is an argument in the play about the role art can play in producing empathy and thus a solution. The Americans, who claim to be playing the biggest part in alleviating starvation in Russia, fight with the actress and the explorer about how to raise support. When they suggest that poetry and theater are ineffective in representing the pain of the hungry, the acress gives a very compelling performance to the contrary. At the end of the performance, however, she walks away, more concerned with proving her skill than actually making a difference. The explorer's method is a slide show that show the bodies of children who have starved to death and the Americans have made films that one of the characters points out are fabricated.


Unfortunately, in the end the argument isn't expolored in a very compelling way, I don't think. The strength of the piece comes with the visuals (with the Fram coming up out of the bottom of the stage) and when the argument is made personal, as it was with the characters on the Fram. There's also a nice moment when a Middle Eastern poet arrives on the scene, his eyes and mouth sewn shut. The poet and actress believe he's purposely sewn them shut and see it as an intentional opposition to the mask of Tragedy, with it's eyes and mouth constantly open (but perhaps ineffective). As the Middle Eastern poet tries to speak and sing, however, we hear nothing but garbled sounds. The truth, of course, is that his eyes and mouth have been forced shut and he's lost his voice. He's not capable of representing himself. The explorer warns throughout the play that the entire world will eventually freeze over. Right before the end of the play, after seeing a series of more contemporary atrocities, we are reminded of the explorers' sharing a blanket. And then we see an image of London freezing over, perhaps a reminder that when the world does freeze over, as it certainly will in some way or another, than it's the individual's relationship to another that keeps us warm.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

"Our Town" by the Hypocrites on May 10th in Chicago

Apparently "Our Town" is the most performed show in the United States. I'd assumed that was because it calls for no set or costumes and because high school drama departments perform it so often. Having last seen and loving it in high school, I had no interest in every seeing it again -- the way those of us who have since discovered "The Sound and the Fury" and " Mrs. Dalloway" can't be bothered with "A Separate Peace." When the Hypocrites announced they were going to produce"Our Town" I was excited and scared. Excited to see what they would do with a play that I thought was such a dud and afraid that the play would out wrestle them with its over the top emotionality. What happened instead is that this production made clear what the Hypocrites do: bring the feeling of discovery to timeworn texts that audiences must have felt when they were still new. It's a rediscovery of texts that endless unimaginative productions have robbed of their vitality and originality. It's an incredible production with exuberance and restraint at the same time.

As you probably know, "Our Town" is a play in three acts. The first act gives a sense of what general life in the town is like, the second act is about love and marriage (including that of the protagonists), and the third acts deals with the death of some of the townspeople. Mostly, though, the play seems to be about the way that we live our lives blind to beauty and the things people "up there" live in little boxes, suggesting that we live in darkness and solitude, in a state akin to death. The third act, when Emily goes back to relive the day of her 13th birthday, makes that very clear. Her mother has gone to the trouble of getting her a gift she knows Emily will love but spends the whole morning cooking and never speaking directly to her daughter. There are other examples of this throughout the play, though. For example, the choir conductor who is likely gay but lives in a loveless marriage for the sake of societal convention. The loneliness of such a life has led him to alcoholism and despair.

Two things give this production its strength: the depth of the director's insight into the text and the production's restraint. Rather than playing the emotions large, the performances are controlled, almost quiet. In the scene where Emily goes back to her 13th birthday she doesn't scream and sob. Once she realizes that her time spent with her family won't be emotionally satisfying, she seems to want to get the hell out. She conveys this with a certain quality in her voice and an energy in her body but it's very controlled. The director, David Cromer, has cut about half the stage manager's lines, suggesting that audiences today are in a different place than they were in 1930's and didn't need to be told as much.

The action of the play alone is wonderful. This is a play, though, that calls for no sets or costumes. And the device of having a stage manager who speaks directly to the audience must have been quite a shocker when the play was first produced in 1938. What I found most interesting, though, is the way time works in the play. The third act is in some ways the future. In it, we see the past (Emily's return to her 13th birthday) and the future (the death of many of the townspeople). While times passes between each act and so the third act is rally just what happens after the second act, it feels as if the second act is the present. In Act III, when Emily decides to go back, the stage manager tells her that it won't be the same because she knows the future. We see the impact of the future on the past.

Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of the production is Cromer's stage manager. he not only sets up the scenes but by the second act he sort of comes out of the play. Rather than remaining detached, he seems emotionally involved with what's happening. Not so much in what he's seeing on stage but rather with what he's showing the audience. In Cromer's production, the action takes place in every square inch of the theater, which is to say very much among the audience. The play is a cautionary tale he is telling the audience and he tells it with an undercurrent of emotion. You see his frustration at our blindness and his warning to us. That might very well be the most jarring thing in the production. The play sets itself up as a play, constantly reminding us of its artifice. In this production, it goes one step further. It points out that this is indeed a play but one that exists to warn us about how little of life we experience and how much we throw away. The play exists not to entertain but to warn.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Northwest New Works Festival at On the Boards on May 9th in Seattle

Annually, On the Boards presents a series of new works from the Northwest region. I was really happy to be in town during the festival as it was an opportunity to see some of the region's most vibrant artists. I was curious to see what their interests were and who was influencing them. I guessed half the work would be atrocious and half surprising and wonderful.

On the Boards is like a regional and much smaller version of BAM. The staff brings incredible international artists to Seattle (this year, including Elevator Repair Service and Societas Raffaello Sanzio) and showcase the work of local/regional artists. It's the kind of resource anyone who likes contemporary art hopes to have in his/her city and that artists are grateful for. Seattle is lucky to have it.

At the Northwest New Works Festival I saw four performances. The first was by a woman from Portland. It was very Laurie Andersonesque in that she had a control box (doubling as a make up case) from which she controlled the sound and lighthing cues, including a device that recorded her voice and repeated it in order to layer sound. The piece was about Ondine, a woman who came mysteriously from the water, had a difficult life (which was somewhat romanticized in the piece -- the way heroines of fairy tales are romanticized), and was thrown back into the water by her sister. The performer played different roles through songs, with each songs describing an episode in Ondine's tragic life. The best parts were the her visual work, which came largely through costume. The story itself, while dark and dramatic, never quite provoked an emotional response. As with dark fairy takes, it seemed that fear and pity should at least have been present.

The second performance was by two young women who seemed to have been trained as dancers. It was a playful piece, bordering on wacky, about the tasks involved in getting to the earth's core. My favorite parts included dance/movement. Every now and then the two performers would move in unison, which was always surprising and lovely, perhaps precisely because it came against a backdrop of wackiness. At one point they performed in the style of poetry slam artists, mimicking their eponymous cadence and voicework. You know, that way of speaking poetry that makes it all sound like the same poem written by a Beat poet.

I enjoyed both performances and was very interested to see the way technology, spectacle, and storytelling came together in both pieces. The second two were less successful for me. The third piece was a dance performance about birds that, according to the notes, was inspired by an Edward Hopper painting. While we saw just an excerpt I can't imagine Hopper ever painting a bird. I could be wrong. In either case, the choreography was a bit rudimentary and the dancers lacked energy. The music was a combination of music, bird sounds, and city living sounds that was more interesting. The fourth piece was an alternative country trio of banjo, ukulele, and guitar players singing about small town Western Washington life. Parts of it were fun, especially the parts about Dairy Queen and Tasty Freeze (which I'm sure I'm spelling wrong), but overall it didn't go anywhere. It lacked the musical inventiveness of the first piece and its attempt of storytelling was underdeveloped.

While I didn't love everything, there was something to admire in each piece. More than anything, though, I thought it was fantastic that these artists got a chance to perform their pieces in front of an audience, something crucial as they continue to develop their ideas and aesthetics.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

"9 Parts of Desire" on May 5th at Next Theatre (at the MCA) in Chicago.


One of the nine characters Heather Raffo channels in her one-woman show is herself (I didn't count but I assume the title suggests there are nine characters). In that section, Raffo talks about her obsession with watching Iraq fall to pieces as the American and British invasion swings into action. As she obsessively watches the coverage on television, everyone else around her in New York says they're obsessed but they say so while getting their nails done. Raffo, of course, is also getting her nails done at the time. This is a reminder that American wars are never fought on American soil and thus we're spared from feeling the human impact of our imperialism. The Iraqi people we want to save from Saddam aren't really people to us. We might see them on television but we know nothing about them. Raffo's engaging play is not an argument for or against the war but an opportunity to get to know some Iraqis, the people deeply affected by our decision to wage war on Saddam.

One-person shows are always entertaining if for no other reason than the skill it requires to play a number of different characters convincingly is often dazzling to watch. One of Raffo's accomplishments is that her acting skills, which are impressive, become secondary and it's her characters who are compelling. And the characters all tell us something about what life is like in Iraq, both under Saddam's regime and under American occupation.

One character is an artist who sees freedom in her sexuality. She is unfaithful to her husband and takes other lovers. She argues that Western women aren't necessarily free and finds evidence of that in their sexual repression. Over time we come to realize that her sexual freedom is rather more complicated than it seems at first. Another character is a precocious young girl whose self-assuredness lands her father in Saddam's jail. Another character tells us that she throws the shoes of the dead into the river -- that the river is a collector of souls (soles). There are no martyrs under the water, she says, only the soles of dead people.

As with the Anna Devere Smith plays of the 90's, Raffo allows us to recognize the wisdom of her characters. Like Smith, Raffo interviews subjects and weaves their interviews into a performance. The performance allows us to witness the humanity of her subjects in a way that seems possible only with theater. Her representations of her subjects are never sentimental. Instead, she discovers the natural poetry of their voices and the wisdom of their thoughts. The character I loved listening to the most is a fat woman who says she sees with her heart. When Raffo allows her to tell her story, the woman finds so much joy in that connection, in being able to put her feelings into words for Raffo.

Near the end of the play, Raffo tells a story about her Iraqi relatives' attempts to reach her in New York after 9/11. Due to the overloading of the phone system in New York, they weren't able to get trough. They called her mother in Michigan for news of her well-being. Having gotten assurance that she wasn't killed in the explosions, they still keep calling until they finally hear her voice. They tell her how sorry they are that this has happened to her city. They empathize with the pain of 9/11 and worry about her. And they end their conversations by telling her "I love you." As Raffo echoes the voices of the Iraqi relatives who called, we get a succession of I love you's in similar and sometimes slightly different accents. Raffo's point is well made. There is great irony in the empathy of the Iraqis for Americans after 9/11 when 9/11 becomes the occasion for the war against their country. Her string of I love you's points out that irony but it's also a message to her Iraqi relatives, or maybe the women she portrays in the play.

It would have been a good ending for the piece, I think. After that, we learn more about characters we've seen before, much of it sad. I do think that it was largely unnecessary, though, and the performance started to feel a little long. I will say, however, that while I wanted the string of I love you's to end the play, the final image of an Iraqi woman whose life has been momentarily illuminated for us through Raffo's performance now fading into black is an apt closing image. We've come to see these women for a moment and then they fade back into obscurity. Maybe it's really a caution more than description of what is inevitable, though. A few nights later, the women are all still clear to me.

"Around the World in 80 Days" on April 26th at Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago, IL.


Having never read Jules Vern's "Around the World in 80 Days," I can't say for certain whether this was a good translation to the stage or not. I'm almost willing to argue, though, that it isn't. My sense is that the book must have been a whimsical story that relied on the exotic locations for much of its magic. The story is about a wealthy Brit who bets that he can go around the world in 80 days and has a singular focus to do so. Along the way, he encounters many fascinating scenes and falls in love. Over time he comes to realize that his focus has led him around the world but robbed him of actually seeing the world.

This is a typical Lookingglass production in that it's an adaptation of a much loved piece of literature. The fact that it's a children's story isn't uncommon. Mary Zimmerman's "The Secret in the Wings" was based on fairy tales and "Lookingglass Alice" was based on "Alice in Wonderland" (or is it "Through the Lookingglass?"). "Lookingglass Alice" translated the Lewis Carroll story partly through playful spectacle. The shenanigans of the story were translated into visual jokes that worked well. In this production, the magic of exotic lands was never well translated visually. While the performances were largely very good (I especially enjoyed watching Phil Smith), the production never felt delightful. It lacked the visual poetry of Mary Zimmerman's Lookingglass productions and what I could hear of the text wasn't enough to make the show terribly interesting. When Phineas Fogg (what a great name) reports that he's going around the world again because he never saw it the first time, the audience should feel something but I didn't. It wasn't the final point in an argument or exploration as it should have been. I left the production thinking it was kind of fun but slight.