I have decided to return to this blog. Perhaps it is because I am finally becoming settled into what has been my new lifestyle in New York City, or perhaps because I find the theatrical situation in the city at once so dire and so inspiring.
I have returned, but no one knows I'm here. Probably because I don't really tell people about this blog, nor do I participate in blogger communities, but perhaps I shall change that.
The goal in this blog is to provide critical reflections on theatre and the state of theatre in New York City (or wherever I happen to be at the time). I feel that it is necessary sometimes to engage with work honestly and openly through linguistic expression, and I also feel that I have not reflected enough on what is happening. Something, I feel I am beginning to regret - so many wonderful theatrical experiences this year (Prelude, Lipsynch, Witness Relocation, Int'l WOW among others) that memory is already beginning to tarnish. And, as I become more aware of my fellow community, I feel that there are so many debates I want to start taking part of, and learning more about.
So here is my birth, or rebirth if you will, into a world of reflection and art! Let us commence!
best,
- J
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Thursday, March 26, 2009
M4M, Chashama, 3/26 (Quality Meats)
My veritable panzada de teatro continued today with a visit to Chashama and Quality Meat's fascinating production of Measure for Measure named M4M.
First the location. Chashama, like so many heroic organizations in NYC helps young artists of all kinds, by offering spaces all around the city. The spaces themselves are scattered throughout. This one, in the heart of a truly non-theatrical area, the cold, business-like tall-building and expensive-hotel laden East midtown area. Forty-second street. The theatre is next to a pret a manger, one would look at it and think it were an out-of-business store. The theatre has a storefront window (more on that later). We enter with my two friends and it is an intimate welcoming environment with free-wine. It feels as if you've entered into a secret-area (out of Super Mario 3 or Zelda) in a totally unknown world (I excuse my years of nintendo for the videogame reference). Theatre was small, a chair, a television (of course it will be videotaped) and a camera. There are two levels. On the upper level a trunk stands.
The blurb promises a melding of an S&M situation between a man and a woman and Shakespeare's oft bizarre play about sex, the law and the quality of mercy (there are actually a few about that).
As a director of an at-times bizarre and experiemental Shakespearean production (King Lear! April 23 at Goodrich Hall!!) I'll tell you this, it's very hard (as in you should not try, usually) to out-bizarre Shakespeare. One quick glance at the Wikipedia page (get a nice quick plot-summary) of the play will show you that, one quick read will convince you.
The director Meiyin Wang, a young artist originally from Singapore, infuses the world of paid, controlled sex and ritual with this play about the limits of order, and does so eloquently and subtlely, quite humorously. The male character (Ben Verzbow) makes his entrance and gives us a good 10 minutes as he sets up the camera, sanitizes his hands (multiple times) and gives us a few glances at his concentrated, nearly psychotic face.
Soon, the entrance of the female character (Mary Jane Gibson) happens on an inopportune moment where the man tries to lock himself in his trunk. He sprints out (one of many times he'll do so), and we're immediately prefaced the awkward, slightly funny, slightly terrifying relationship they shall develop.
Money changes hands, she strips (only to her normal clothes, no nudity here), instructions are delivered. And we see the anxious man hand clothing and such to the woman. He then directs her, in a very costumed garb to imitate a blind liberty statue by holding two glasses up. We see her hands tire, trying to hold it up and him forcing her to continue. We wonder when the sick sex will begin. It doesn't. An ipod is played. And one could not imagine a more Renaissance-faire schlockly Shakespearean straight-from-the community theatre production of Romeo und Juliet lute inspired, insipid guitar in some medieval mode. Large credit to Mark Valadez's excellent sound-design which provides us with this wondeful punch-line in the beginning and later, helps mimic the breakdown perfectly with electronic touches.
Almost on cue, the man, begins reciting in perfect Shakespeare the lines from Measure for Measure. He, of course plays all the men. Mr. Verzbow recites his Shakespeare quite well, Peter Hall would be impressed. The delivery however is wonderfully doubled by the intense sexual pleasure or relief that this following of order leads. This manages to mimic Angelo's nearly perverted obsession with order wonderfully and brings the world of the play together. The woman, placed as an object (literally, her arms forced to remain non-moving though they fail at that as well). Her delivery starts, stilted and startled, her confusion echoed by the initial powerlessness of the Shakespearean heroines.
The play begins to unfold, and it becomes unsure, as the plot develops whether we are in the world of Measure for Measure or the paid S&M game of the man and woman, and the brilliance is that it's both. We get thrust rudely back into the world whenever the woman over-reaches her bounds and touches him. HE freaks out in OCD fashion and runs away or screams or nearly hits her. I wish there were more moments like this - the breaking almost became too ordered. The discipline of the production sometimes hindered the ability for Angelo/Man (who also played the Duke and Claudio) to break back into pure-Man, except for those weak, being touched moments.
The camera, was also not truly exploited, used a bit, but the screen was so small it almost became a nod to multimedia rather than a true exploitation. But to be honest this is a minor gripe of a spectacular staging of Shakespeare.
The end of the play wins the most theatrical moment I've seen all year award. We reach a point of tension, she leaves, he begs, she returns, but now the tables are turned. The play really loses its point here, the weak-seeming Isabella doesn't get to fool Angelo (the play ends way before we get to the trickery in the resolution) instead the woman comes back and she is the powerful ones. Lines are delivered out of spite and necessity. The man gives the word and lets her tie him up. We think she will kill him, she doesn't, in spite of its liminality, there is still the apex of control. Cold money has calculated (once again, when he offers her more money) that this will end with no bloodshed and a measured amount of perversion. She ties him up, leaving him strung up, left to his own order.
Here comes the theatrical moment of the year - Chashama reveals its shop-self, as the woman pulls away the curtain and reveals the street. The world of the street, the world of 42nd street blocks away from UN (the global law) and across the street from the law of money and power, and men in suits leaving work or going to a bar. The set, through a window becomes long and endless and rainy. A truck's lights backlight the set. As the people walk by (and we see a good 10 or 12 people walk by) nobody notices the man who is strung up like a stuck pig, nor do they see the crowd of people watching. They keep walking, perhaps performing their own fantasies of order.
Meiying (and her partner in crime in Quality Meats Javierantonio Gonzalez) graduated from Columbia school of directing and though I'm not sure if Viewpoints was actually used in the production there was certainly a Bogartian treatment of space and silence - though not to obnoxious effect (as happens when Vpoints is overused) but rather to highlight the tension and illustrate the role of space between these two characters. The play of bodies in a tightly controlled sexualized environment made not only for great Shakespeare, but great, effective, and thought provoking theatre.
It's refreshing to see theatre that makes one conscious that the people presenting are definitely thinking about something other than themselves or obsessing over the play they are presenting - they are thinking about people, they are thinking about praxis, and most importantly they are thinking about theatre, goddamnit.
If you are in New York tomorrow 3.27 or 3.28, take an hour and see this play! Get your tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com. Highly recommended.
Kudos again for the second shakespeare(esque) play that hasn't put me to sleep (Ostermeier's Hamlet at Avignon was the first).
All the best, next up on theaterfest-new york: Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players, People Without History
- J
First the location. Chashama, like so many heroic organizations in NYC helps young artists of all kinds, by offering spaces all around the city. The spaces themselves are scattered throughout. This one, in the heart of a truly non-theatrical area, the cold, business-like tall-building and expensive-hotel laden East midtown area. Forty-second street. The theatre is next to a pret a manger, one would look at it and think it were an out-of-business store. The theatre has a storefront window (more on that later). We enter with my two friends and it is an intimate welcoming environment with free-wine. It feels as if you've entered into a secret-area (out of Super Mario 3 or Zelda) in a totally unknown world (I excuse my years of nintendo for the videogame reference). Theatre was small, a chair, a television (of course it will be videotaped) and a camera. There are two levels. On the upper level a trunk stands.
The blurb promises a melding of an S&M situation between a man and a woman and Shakespeare's oft bizarre play about sex, the law and the quality of mercy (there are actually a few about that).
As a director of an at-times bizarre and experiemental Shakespearean production (King Lear! April 23 at Goodrich Hall!!) I'll tell you this, it's very hard (as in you should not try, usually) to out-bizarre Shakespeare. One quick glance at the Wikipedia page (get a nice quick plot-summary) of the play will show you that, one quick read will convince you.
The director Meiyin Wang, a young artist originally from Singapore, infuses the world of paid, controlled sex and ritual with this play about the limits of order, and does so eloquently and subtlely, quite humorously. The male character (Ben Verzbow) makes his entrance and gives us a good 10 minutes as he sets up the camera, sanitizes his hands (multiple times) and gives us a few glances at his concentrated, nearly psychotic face.
Soon, the entrance of the female character (Mary Jane Gibson) happens on an inopportune moment where the man tries to lock himself in his trunk. He sprints out (one of many times he'll do so), and we're immediately prefaced the awkward, slightly funny, slightly terrifying relationship they shall develop.
Money changes hands, she strips (only to her normal clothes, no nudity here), instructions are delivered. And we see the anxious man hand clothing and such to the woman. He then directs her, in a very costumed garb to imitate a blind liberty statue by holding two glasses up. We see her hands tire, trying to hold it up and him forcing her to continue. We wonder when the sick sex will begin. It doesn't. An ipod is played. And one could not imagine a more Renaissance-faire schlockly Shakespearean straight-from-the community theatre production of Romeo und Juliet lute inspired, insipid guitar in some medieval mode. Large credit to Mark Valadez's excellent sound-design which provides us with this wondeful punch-line in the beginning and later, helps mimic the breakdown perfectly with electronic touches.
Almost on cue, the man, begins reciting in perfect Shakespeare the lines from Measure for Measure. He, of course plays all the men. Mr. Verzbow recites his Shakespeare quite well, Peter Hall would be impressed. The delivery however is wonderfully doubled by the intense sexual pleasure or relief that this following of order leads. This manages to mimic Angelo's nearly perverted obsession with order wonderfully and brings the world of the play together. The woman, placed as an object (literally, her arms forced to remain non-moving though they fail at that as well). Her delivery starts, stilted and startled, her confusion echoed by the initial powerlessness of the Shakespearean heroines.
The play begins to unfold, and it becomes unsure, as the plot develops whether we are in the world of Measure for Measure or the paid S&M game of the man and woman, and the brilliance is that it's both. We get thrust rudely back into the world whenever the woman over-reaches her bounds and touches him. HE freaks out in OCD fashion and runs away or screams or nearly hits her. I wish there were more moments like this - the breaking almost became too ordered. The discipline of the production sometimes hindered the ability for Angelo/Man (who also played the Duke and Claudio) to break back into pure-Man, except for those weak, being touched moments.
The camera, was also not truly exploited, used a bit, but the screen was so small it almost became a nod to multimedia rather than a true exploitation. But to be honest this is a minor gripe of a spectacular staging of Shakespeare.
The end of the play wins the most theatrical moment I've seen all year award. We reach a point of tension, she leaves, he begs, she returns, but now the tables are turned. The play really loses its point here, the weak-seeming Isabella doesn't get to fool Angelo (the play ends way before we get to the trickery in the resolution) instead the woman comes back and she is the powerful ones. Lines are delivered out of spite and necessity. The man gives the word and lets her tie him up. We think she will kill him, she doesn't, in spite of its liminality, there is still the apex of control. Cold money has calculated (once again, when he offers her more money) that this will end with no bloodshed and a measured amount of perversion. She ties him up, leaving him strung up, left to his own order.
Here comes the theatrical moment of the year - Chashama reveals its shop-self, as the woman pulls away the curtain and reveals the street. The world of the street, the world of 42nd street blocks away from UN (the global law) and across the street from the law of money and power, and men in suits leaving work or going to a bar. The set, through a window becomes long and endless and rainy. A truck's lights backlight the set. As the people walk by (and we see a good 10 or 12 people walk by) nobody notices the man who is strung up like a stuck pig, nor do they see the crowd of people watching. They keep walking, perhaps performing their own fantasies of order.
Meiying (and her partner in crime in Quality Meats Javierantonio Gonzalez) graduated from Columbia school of directing and though I'm not sure if Viewpoints was actually used in the production there was certainly a Bogartian treatment of space and silence - though not to obnoxious effect (as happens when Vpoints is overused) but rather to highlight the tension and illustrate the role of space between these two characters. The play of bodies in a tightly controlled sexualized environment made not only for great Shakespeare, but great, effective, and thought provoking theatre.
It's refreshing to see theatre that makes one conscious that the people presenting are definitely thinking about something other than themselves or obsessing over the play they are presenting - they are thinking about people, they are thinking about praxis, and most importantly they are thinking about theatre, goddamnit.
If you are in New York tomorrow 3.27 or 3.28, take an hour and see this play! Get your tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com. Highly recommended.
Kudos again for the second shakespeare(esque) play that hasn't put me to sleep (Ostermeier's Hamlet at Avignon was the first).
All the best, next up on theaterfest-new york: Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players, People Without History
- J
Das Rheingold, Met Opera 3/25
Ok.
I never realized how onerous a task this blog could become. It stares at me from the corner of the room, while I'm just innocently brushing my teeth. Alright, alright. I'll put the ace of cakes on mute.
I've seen many more shows than this since I last posted, but I will start with the Wagner I saw yesterday, and then move on to the whacked out version of Measure for Measure.
I went to the Met and had spectacular seats for Das Rheingold, the 'preface' to the Ring Cycle. I didn't have the time or the budget for a 'Ring' yet, but since Tristan and Isolde last year nearly brought my artistic self to near-fulfillment I needed to sate my late-epic German Romantic opera with slightly overly ambitious tendencies.
I don't really know what to say much about Das Rheingold. It was fabulous, but it wasn't extraordinary, but it didn't have to be it was a preface. I would sum it up as a lord of the rings with better music (much better music) and a bit more obvious anti-semitism. The nationalism bursting at the seams even as the Rhinemaidens sang so sweetly was a bit sickening. Especially since the music was reused by Hitler (i'm pretty sure it was in a Leni Riefenstahl film)...
The production was the kind of production that makes you wonder how else anybody would want to produce it 'realistically'. That was it. Gorgeous, romantic, epic and sumptuously detailed and realistic. The sets seemed to go on for miles and had this epic-nearly starwars-like haze. (do you see how many times I've used the word 'epic' so far?).
the singing, was good of course (it was the Met), but once again it was a preface, it didn't reach the ecstatic unreal heights of Tristan, but then again it didn't have to. It certainly did whet my appetite and I have to give Wagner (and Otto Schenck the director) credit for not making me at all sleepy even at 2 hours and 45 minutes with no running time. Kudos.
Moment of the opera: when Donner (basically thor) starts up a storm, one could not choose more amazing flowing extravagant strings and building chromatic swerves that brought to mind not only a spectacular storm, but a divine one as well. The effects were very cool, but the music, as oft happens in Wagner, overshadows the action. If anything it made me certain that I must find myself a ring-cycle as soon as possible (I won't hold my breath for Bayreuth).
***********
I never realized how onerous a task this blog could become. It stares at me from the corner of the room, while I'm just innocently brushing my teeth. Alright, alright. I'll put the ace of cakes on mute.
I've seen many more shows than this since I last posted, but I will start with the Wagner I saw yesterday, and then move on to the whacked out version of Measure for Measure.
I went to the Met and had spectacular seats for Das Rheingold, the 'preface' to the Ring Cycle. I didn't have the time or the budget for a 'Ring' yet, but since Tristan and Isolde last year nearly brought my artistic self to near-fulfillment I needed to sate my late-epic German Romantic opera with slightly overly ambitious tendencies.
I don't really know what to say much about Das Rheingold. It was fabulous, but it wasn't extraordinary, but it didn't have to be it was a preface. I would sum it up as a lord of the rings with better music (much better music) and a bit more obvious anti-semitism. The nationalism bursting at the seams even as the Rhinemaidens sang so sweetly was a bit sickening. Especially since the music was reused by Hitler (i'm pretty sure it was in a Leni Riefenstahl film)...
The production was the kind of production that makes you wonder how else anybody would want to produce it 'realistically'. That was it. Gorgeous, romantic, epic and sumptuously detailed and realistic. The sets seemed to go on for miles and had this epic-nearly starwars-like haze. (do you see how many times I've used the word 'epic' so far?).
the singing, was good of course (it was the Met), but once again it was a preface, it didn't reach the ecstatic unreal heights of Tristan, but then again it didn't have to. It certainly did whet my appetite and I have to give Wagner (and Otto Schenck the director) credit for not making me at all sleepy even at 2 hours and 45 minutes with no running time. Kudos.
Moment of the opera: when Donner (basically thor) starts up a storm, one could not choose more amazing flowing extravagant strings and building chromatic swerves that brought to mind not only a spectacular storm, but a divine one as well. The effects were very cool, but the music, as oft happens in Wagner, overshadows the action. If anything it made me certain that I must find myself a ring-cycle as soon as possible (I won't hold my breath for Bayreuth).
***********
Friday, October 24, 2008
Machinal-Record Review (unedited draft)
Saw Machinal last night, real good production. Kudos to the actors and the design team.I had my problems with some choices/the play itself, but it was a worthwhile night of theatre, pretty raregoing in these here parts. Check it out:
We are led into the theater – no, scratch that, we are led out of the theater into the factory. Guided by the arm-signs of the 62 Center authorities into the machine-like interiors, a purple green light where the performers we never see are themselves before impregnating their souls with a role. Then we enter the theater, only we enter to find ourselves part of the factory, everything is part of the factory. Where is the Centerstage? We ask ourselves, but this is the Centerstage, it is all the Centerstage ever wanted to be.
In doing so, set designer David Morris has solved the riddle of the Centerstage and created a perfect setting for an albeit dated proto-feminist expressionistic pseudo-drama (the all too hyphenated Machinal, by Sophie Treadwell). Before, productions in the Centerstage always had to answer to the fact that the theatre itself had more personality than the design. The millions of dollars that went into the theatre became more a centerpiece than the raging artistic mind, trying to contain the monster of brick wire and stark, raving architecture. Morris does not decide to fight, he chooses to critique. Adding to where the stage has already given us the allusion of the factory, he shows modernity’s still all-too strong hold on us. It’s not that Morris uses factory motifs and brings the audience into the fray as a way of turning the Centerstage into a factory – it’s merely Morris using his visual aesthetic to show us, with a gentle nudge that it is that the Centerstage already is a factory, in theatre’s clothing (to say nothing of the wolf).
My only regret is that the rest of the production did not take this philosophy to heart. That is not to fault the production itself, it was a marvelously realized work of Expressionism that managed to keep me riveted (if a bit alienated) for the full hour and a half. The riveting aspect I feel was due to both a focused and impressively well-rounded cast, anchored by strong lead performances from Lizzie Fox, as Woman and Evan Maltby, as husband – whose anti-chemistry echoed the oppressive lull of it allTreadwell’s script in near-parable fashion tells us the somewhat true story of Helen Jones, a woman whose absolute alienation from her surroundings and frustration in life (as well as a poorly timed affair with a younger ‘rebel’ played with a charmingly dashing superficiality by Nathaniel Basch-Gould) lead her to ‘gasp’ murder her husband. It’s Lifetime with automatons. . Fox should be commended for bringing a vital humanity to a role that grates on cloying. The moments where we see her eyes light up and the inner rage step up, the cold directed scream of “I’ll kill you” to her mother; or, in one of my favorite scenes, straying from her husband accepting a rose from another man she choosed to bend and crack it, all with delicate grace, while still accepting it. I felt the tinge of character snap in that precise moment, a small but vital addition to a character that needs desperately to evolve from her sketch, and Fox does the best she can.
Director Rob Baker-White takes his cues right out of the early 20th century Expressionist playbook, narrowing down the difference between man and machine by literally putting the machines on the actors in the first scene. Many common social relations become mechanized through Treadwell’s too-structured sentences and Baker-White’s use of the vignette to show us the interchangeability of human emotions. In one particularly effective scene, while Woman talks to her Mother (Lisa Sloan, who plays a stern but loving mother better than anyone else I know) we have the playful arrest of horny townspeople pittering about; costume designer Deb Brothers further highlights their Eli-Whitneyish quality by coloring them in similar shades and patterns. In the blur of lighting one can barely tell one from the other.
One could call Treadwell’s piece feminist, in that it tries to revise the traditional narrative by casting this strong-willed, tortured woman in the main role, highlighting the nearly impossible conditions set out for her. However, though Treadwell saves us from the tendency of theatre to cast desperate maidens and strong-leading men, she still overly victimizes the Woman (to the point of near-patheticism) and when the main point of feminine power can be adduced, she almost frustratingly gives half the credit to this sort of wild-exotic Mexican-tinged fellow. The ‘liberation’ comes from an ideal postulated by a male-subject no better (dare I say interchangeable?) with Maltby’s ‘Man’. One could say we have moved on to better and stronger forms of liberation, those that require no male-bravado to spark up.
Treadwell’s play is revolutionary in terms of sound and Eric Kang’s use of it was a perfect counterpart to Morris’s set. Like Morris, Kang chooses to use the Centerstage for music rather than otherwise. His most terrfifying sound; a cross between a piano being sliced open with a sword and a chewed out xylophone comes from the playing of one of the stair-ways. Light designer Julie Seitel’s lights also bring out the quality of the theatre itself, taking some light from all the way in the top, having the grates of the catwalk reappear as patterns on the stage.
Perhaps the play was too old to be put back onstage without some of the alienation turning into curious detachment, or perhaps a more deviant choice should have been made in respect to the setting of the play (if we are on the subject of the Centerstage perhaps Williams College might have made a better setting than NYC); but these are minor ideological quarrels, anyone who desires to see an authentic theatrical experience – with all the potential that a space like the 62 Center offers, should make their way to Machinal sometime next week.
We are led into the theater – no, scratch that, we are led out of the theater into the factory. Guided by the arm-signs of the 62 Center authorities into the machine-like interiors, a purple green light where the performers we never see are themselves before impregnating their souls with a role. Then we enter the theater, only we enter to find ourselves part of the factory, everything is part of the factory. Where is the Centerstage? We ask ourselves, but this is the Centerstage, it is all the Centerstage ever wanted to be.
In doing so, set designer David Morris has solved the riddle of the Centerstage and created a perfect setting for an albeit dated proto-feminist expressionistic pseudo-drama (the all too hyphenated Machinal, by Sophie Treadwell). Before, productions in the Centerstage always had to answer to the fact that the theatre itself had more personality than the design. The millions of dollars that went into the theatre became more a centerpiece than the raging artistic mind, trying to contain the monster of brick wire and stark, raving architecture. Morris does not decide to fight, he chooses to critique. Adding to where the stage has already given us the allusion of the factory, he shows modernity’s still all-too strong hold on us. It’s not that Morris uses factory motifs and brings the audience into the fray as a way of turning the Centerstage into a factory – it’s merely Morris using his visual aesthetic to show us, with a gentle nudge that it is that the Centerstage already is a factory, in theatre’s clothing (to say nothing of the wolf).
My only regret is that the rest of the production did not take this philosophy to heart. That is not to fault the production itself, it was a marvelously realized work of Expressionism that managed to keep me riveted (if a bit alienated) for the full hour and a half. The riveting aspect I feel was due to both a focused and impressively well-rounded cast, anchored by strong lead performances from Lizzie Fox, as Woman and Evan Maltby, as husband – whose anti-chemistry echoed the oppressive lull of it allTreadwell’s script in near-parable fashion tells us the somewhat true story of Helen Jones, a woman whose absolute alienation from her surroundings and frustration in life (as well as a poorly timed affair with a younger ‘rebel’ played with a charmingly dashing superficiality by Nathaniel Basch-Gould) lead her to ‘gasp’ murder her husband. It’s Lifetime with automatons. . Fox should be commended for bringing a vital humanity to a role that grates on cloying. The moments where we see her eyes light up and the inner rage step up, the cold directed scream of “I’ll kill you” to her mother; or, in one of my favorite scenes, straying from her husband accepting a rose from another man she choosed to bend and crack it, all with delicate grace, while still accepting it. I felt the tinge of character snap in that precise moment, a small but vital addition to a character that needs desperately to evolve from her sketch, and Fox does the best she can.
Director Rob Baker-White takes his cues right out of the early 20th century Expressionist playbook, narrowing down the difference between man and machine by literally putting the machines on the actors in the first scene. Many common social relations become mechanized through Treadwell’s too-structured sentences and Baker-White’s use of the vignette to show us the interchangeability of human emotions. In one particularly effective scene, while Woman talks to her Mother (Lisa Sloan, who plays a stern but loving mother better than anyone else I know) we have the playful arrest of horny townspeople pittering about; costume designer Deb Brothers further highlights their Eli-Whitneyish quality by coloring them in similar shades and patterns. In the blur of lighting one can barely tell one from the other.
One could call Treadwell’s piece feminist, in that it tries to revise the traditional narrative by casting this strong-willed, tortured woman in the main role, highlighting the nearly impossible conditions set out for her. However, though Treadwell saves us from the tendency of theatre to cast desperate maidens and strong-leading men, she still overly victimizes the Woman (to the point of near-patheticism) and when the main point of feminine power can be adduced, she almost frustratingly gives half the credit to this sort of wild-exotic Mexican-tinged fellow. The ‘liberation’ comes from an ideal postulated by a male-subject no better (dare I say interchangeable?) with Maltby’s ‘Man’. One could say we have moved on to better and stronger forms of liberation, those that require no male-bravado to spark up.
Treadwell’s play is revolutionary in terms of sound and Eric Kang’s use of it was a perfect counterpart to Morris’s set. Like Morris, Kang chooses to use the Centerstage for music rather than otherwise. His most terrfifying sound; a cross between a piano being sliced open with a sword and a chewed out xylophone comes from the playing of one of the stair-ways. Light designer Julie Seitel’s lights also bring out the quality of the theatre itself, taking some light from all the way in the top, having the grates of the catwalk reappear as patterns on the stage.
Perhaps the play was too old to be put back onstage without some of the alienation turning into curious detachment, or perhaps a more deviant choice should have been made in respect to the setting of the play (if we are on the subject of the Centerstage perhaps Williams College might have made a better setting than NYC); but these are minor ideological quarrels, anyone who desires to see an authentic theatrical experience – with all the potential that a space like the 62 Center offers, should make their way to Machinal sometime next week.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
A Platonic Performance?
So, new developments. I am thinking of staging Socrates.
Why, you ask?
Well, I don't want to do it - boring style. I am not merely putting words to Plato's texts. I feel I need to try this sort of mad-directorness that Castorf is so good at and 'direct' the Dialogues to make something theatrical out of them. I will have to a) choose a dialogue, I wanted Phaedo for sheer dramatic capacity, but it's Phaedo talking the whole time and I'd have to transcribe the dialogue and that would take so long and I am too lazy. But the other stuff becomes very, how do you say...philosophical? No shit. I am trying to figure out a way to stage - or a vision with which to treat the texts that will completely subvert them. It's not so difficult - after all, if Plato's biggest problem is the dramatization that distracts from the real forms of the world, why dont we just dramatize the shit out of this play?
then again, this is work. I mean, serious - sit down with a text and have the director's cap on and a lot of close reading sort of work...goddamn it - why couldn't I have been a painter instead?
- J
Why, you ask?
Well, I don't want to do it - boring style. I am not merely putting words to Plato's texts. I feel I need to try this sort of mad-directorness that Castorf is so good at and 'direct' the Dialogues to make something theatrical out of them. I will have to a) choose a dialogue, I wanted Phaedo for sheer dramatic capacity, but it's Phaedo talking the whole time and I'd have to transcribe the dialogue and that would take so long and I am too lazy. But the other stuff becomes very, how do you say...philosophical? No shit. I am trying to figure out a way to stage - or a vision with which to treat the texts that will completely subvert them. It's not so difficult - after all, if Plato's biggest problem is the dramatization that distracts from the real forms of the world, why dont we just dramatize the shit out of this play?
then again, this is work. I mean, serious - sit down with a text and have the director's cap on and a lot of close reading sort of work...goddamn it - why couldn't I have been a painter instead?
- J
Saturday, August 16, 2008
7 actors but 12 Ophelias?
First of all: it's wonderful to be back in the states because I get to see my friends and family, get to sleep in my bed, get to watch soccer teams on the television, get to practice piano and be with my books, get to use dollars instead of Euros, but NOT because of the theatre.
Theatre in this country is dying. Is in a dismal state.
Who will pull the plug on theatre in this country and wheel it out to the morgue?
That might be the most theatrical act we have seen staged here in a while.
And that it should be fascinating! I mean imagine- new plays every day, they must all be great right? Or at least pull the limits of our imagination, right? RIGHT??
No. Wrong. So wrong. I'm sure there are wonderful playwrights, but they're the ones not getting their plays done. I'm sure of this because i have met a few - and I have seen too much crap to even begin to say.
That being said, this is a hopeful entry, because 12 Ophelias is NOT one of those plays that make me want to catch the next flight back to Berlin, thank goodness.
If I had to summarize it in a word I would say - excellently written, theatrically creative, but directorially and production-wise lacking.
Why would I say this? Well, first of all, if you were given an entire, emptied out swimming pool to do a show in - a show that isn't too demanding in terms of trueness to the text. The playwright, Caridad Svich has a wonderful imagination - and a more capable director could have given us some strange Lorca-ish landscape with exaggerated heroines and chilling music...though the music was a high-point in this production.
The play, which I will quickly describe right now - is a sort of continuation of Hamlet, already I become immediately doubtful. But, it's a smart, funny, and quite beautifully written continuation, forcing the Shakespearean era characters into our time period and, thank goodness into a bit of good old fashioned pragmatic common sense. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become R & G, androgynous clowns, while Hamlet becomes Rude Boy and Gertrude wins a bit of confidence on her road through Elysium. The plot is basically - Ophelia reappears, in the world of the dead (I can only guess) and has it out with Hamlet and life, and learns a lot about herself - enough to figure out to be herself and not some weird sort of obsessive harpie, and in doing so books the next walk out of the creepy alter-world of Hamlet. (surprisingly enough, Elysium looks and feels a lot like backwater Tennessee)
I'm not sure if it said in the script that everyone had to speak in a Southern accent - though it didn't hurt the production too much it was certainly a quirky choice. Some of the actors you could tell weren't too comfortable with the voicing, while some (Horatio, for example) wore it proudly and it actually enhanced their roughneck characteristics.
The acting was fine - well measured, dramatic in the right parts - but man, oh man, the directing. What can I say - it was a fine production, it was well measured and conveniently designed. We had a high rise and a low rise. There were tears there was a bit of fighting there was sex.
The lighting was well done, and it gave us the feeling that we weren't necessarily in a theatre or Tennessee, but somewhere in between.
The music by the Jones Street Boys was a mix of bluegrass and singer-songwriter My morning Jacket-ness which was actually quite beautiful and worked with the music.
It was fine - go see it, spend a lovely evening under the stars and enjoy some good music and lyrical language. jussst fine. (Aug. 20-22 and yes, no matter what rant follows, please go see it!)
But I am sick of 'fine' productions. I feel that's all I see here, and frankly I'm scared that that's all people here are capable of. Caridad's work, in my opinion, deserved better. A director who was willing to challenge and pull apart, while retainingteh aesthetic adornment - something that we haven't seen. We had a swimming pool for chrissakes and all you can manage is a moment where the lead actress walks off and we see her trail away - almost teasing us with what could have been.
The play is called 12 ophelias, there is a part where the playwright's words are - we are all Ophelia - oh my, it couldn't be easier. BAM 12 Ophelias, drowned or not, female or not, spread across the length of an olympic swimming pool. BAM that aesthetic image does not leave you. No way Jose.
My mother lamented the dear departed Reza Abdoh wasn't there to use this space - McCarren Park pool is a great space, for concerts and yes, for theatre. But this could have been done in a blackbox, just add a bit of outside ambience and maybe cool the theatre down and give a breeze.
I feel, that a director's job is quite simple. Be theatrical. Make something theatrical out of something that is inherently not. I.E. a bunch of writing. I feel this because I am too a playwright. When I write a play, sure I write for THEATRE, I direct my writing towards a stage, but that writing, as hard as it tries, cannot act. That writing is not the stage. The director is the one who writes theatre. Who uses the tools of drama to write the theatre onto the stage. The playwright supplies words and ideas and canvas tools that the director can slice into, but in teh end, the creation of the unbound image is what is the ultimate goal. Unbound because it moves, it breathes, it is living just as the audience is living. Bound images can be found in museums. bound images can be found in a limit that is a film. In a stage the only limit is the limit of life.
All in all Caridad Svich is a playwright whose text deserved better - though to be honest, the production was fine and a lovely work to see. But like I said, I'm tired of lovely works. Of things that are fine. The next time I see something fine I'm going to throw up.
I prefer a ramshackle absolute disaster that makes me so angry I have to write about than something fine. Please - someone! Now is the time to attack this theatre with all we have. Let us make the stage a dangerous place again! Let us make it a place where ideas are attacked, not fed chips and made to sit and watch television.
Onward, ho!
- J
Theatre in this country is dying. Is in a dismal state.
Who will pull the plug on theatre in this country and wheel it out to the morgue?
That might be the most theatrical act we have seen staged here in a while.
And that it should be fascinating! I mean imagine- new plays every day, they must all be great right? Or at least pull the limits of our imagination, right? RIGHT??
No. Wrong. So wrong. I'm sure there are wonderful playwrights, but they're the ones not getting their plays done. I'm sure of this because i have met a few - and I have seen too much crap to even begin to say.
That being said, this is a hopeful entry, because 12 Ophelias is NOT one of those plays that make me want to catch the next flight back to Berlin, thank goodness.
If I had to summarize it in a word I would say - excellently written, theatrically creative, but directorially and production-wise lacking.
Why would I say this? Well, first of all, if you were given an entire, emptied out swimming pool to do a show in - a show that isn't too demanding in terms of trueness to the text. The playwright, Caridad Svich has a wonderful imagination - and a more capable director could have given us some strange Lorca-ish landscape with exaggerated heroines and chilling music...though the music was a high-point in this production.
The play, which I will quickly describe right now - is a sort of continuation of Hamlet, already I become immediately doubtful. But, it's a smart, funny, and quite beautifully written continuation, forcing the Shakespearean era characters into our time period and, thank goodness into a bit of good old fashioned pragmatic common sense. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become R & G, androgynous clowns, while Hamlet becomes Rude Boy and Gertrude wins a bit of confidence on her road through Elysium. The plot is basically - Ophelia reappears, in the world of the dead (I can only guess) and has it out with Hamlet and life, and learns a lot about herself - enough to figure out to be herself and not some weird sort of obsessive harpie, and in doing so books the next walk out of the creepy alter-world of Hamlet. (surprisingly enough, Elysium looks and feels a lot like backwater Tennessee)
I'm not sure if it said in the script that everyone had to speak in a Southern accent - though it didn't hurt the production too much it was certainly a quirky choice. Some of the actors you could tell weren't too comfortable with the voicing, while some (Horatio, for example) wore it proudly and it actually enhanced their roughneck characteristics.
The acting was fine - well measured, dramatic in the right parts - but man, oh man, the directing. What can I say - it was a fine production, it was well measured and conveniently designed. We had a high rise and a low rise. There were tears there was a bit of fighting there was sex.
The lighting was well done, and it gave us the feeling that we weren't necessarily in a theatre or Tennessee, but somewhere in between.
The music by the Jones Street Boys was a mix of bluegrass and singer-songwriter My morning Jacket-ness which was actually quite beautiful and worked with the music.
It was fine - go see it, spend a lovely evening under the stars and enjoy some good music and lyrical language. jussst fine. (Aug. 20-22 and yes, no matter what rant follows, please go see it!)
But I am sick of 'fine' productions. I feel that's all I see here, and frankly I'm scared that that's all people here are capable of. Caridad's work, in my opinion, deserved better. A director who was willing to challenge and pull apart, while retainingteh aesthetic adornment - something that we haven't seen. We had a swimming pool for chrissakes and all you can manage is a moment where the lead actress walks off and we see her trail away - almost teasing us with what could have been.
The play is called 12 ophelias, there is a part where the playwright's words are - we are all Ophelia - oh my, it couldn't be easier. BAM 12 Ophelias, drowned or not, female or not, spread across the length of an olympic swimming pool. BAM that aesthetic image does not leave you. No way Jose.
My mother lamented the dear departed Reza Abdoh wasn't there to use this space - McCarren Park pool is a great space, for concerts and yes, for theatre. But this could have been done in a blackbox, just add a bit of outside ambience and maybe cool the theatre down and give a breeze.
I feel, that a director's job is quite simple. Be theatrical. Make something theatrical out of something that is inherently not. I.E. a bunch of writing. I feel this because I am too a playwright. When I write a play, sure I write for THEATRE, I direct my writing towards a stage, but that writing, as hard as it tries, cannot act. That writing is not the stage. The director is the one who writes theatre. Who uses the tools of drama to write the theatre onto the stage. The playwright supplies words and ideas and canvas tools that the director can slice into, but in teh end, the creation of the unbound image is what is the ultimate goal. Unbound because it moves, it breathes, it is living just as the audience is living. Bound images can be found in museums. bound images can be found in a limit that is a film. In a stage the only limit is the limit of life.
All in all Caridad Svich is a playwright whose text deserved better - though to be honest, the production was fine and a lovely work to see. But like I said, I'm tired of lovely works. Of things that are fine. The next time I see something fine I'm going to throw up.
I prefer a ramshackle absolute disaster that makes me so angry I have to write about than something fine. Please - someone! Now is the time to attack this theatre with all we have. Let us make the stage a dangerous place again! Let us make it a place where ideas are attacked, not fed chips and made to sit and watch television.
Onward, ho!
- J
to begin with...
"And now I am going to say something, which perhaps,
is going to stupify many people.
I am the enemy
of theatre.
I always have been.
As much as I love the theater,
I am, for this very reason, equally its enemy,"
- Antonin Artaud
...get it?
is going to stupify many people.
I am the enemy
of theatre.
I always have been.
As much as I love the theater,
I am, for this very reason, equally its enemy,"
- Antonin Artaud
...get it?
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