Two of us went through The Russian Office, Denni Dennis’ Performance/Installation piece playing every half hour (6:30 – 9:30 p.m.) every night until the end of the festival. It is difficult to describe what happens during this half hour without ruining the surprise of it but a description of the process probably won’t hurt the experience.
The Russian Office is a short, bureaucratic walk through the passport registration process of a Russia that might exist in on the other end of the world but most certainly exists in the mind of its creator. As a Paper Pusher whose name you might not ever learn, Denni wears a soldier’s uniform, white face paint, and a ridiculously bushy mustache. He speaks no English. He sounds as though he’s speaking Russian, or some other Slavic language. He might be speaking Russian but I never got the opportunity to ask and, seeing as I don’t speak a language approximating the one he spoke, it was difficult to tell.
Dennis’ Bureaucrat – I will call him that until I discover his name – guides you to his office through a series of screening and searches. From time to time he encounters a neighbor from whom, male or female, he usually cowers. He is kind of shy and scared of something. Of what? I’m not sure. But it wasn’t necessary either. He involves you in his fear and by doing so makes carries it into the realm of humor.
He carries a satchel, out of which hangs women’s stockings. His office, which makes a lower east side studio look palatial, has clothing lines full of them too. Stockings yes, but slips, bras and assorted bits of lacey lingerie; all kind of cheap and some slightly torn. For reasons best discovered than explained, I got the sense that the Bureaucrat spent a lot of time thinking about women. Not in a lusty way, but as an objective diversion; one which might connect him to people. This tinges his humorous relationship to these objects and materials with an underlying sadness.
The piece is hysterical. The office is a spectacular mess but the Bureaucrat does his charming best to make you feel at home (Be warned: the vodka is real). The office many look hellishly Kafkaesque but it has been cleverly designed to accommodate both occupant and visitor. Dennis is a performer who enjoys pushing at his audience’s comfort zones. (I saw him perform a cabaret piece at last year’s festival that had the audience laughing and squirming.) There were several moments when the woman I went through the show with became a bit uncomfortable but when I spoke to her about it afterwards, she said she enjoyed the piece anyway. In this context, the discomfort is perfect.
Here is a man, alone in his office, doing a thankless job for little or no pay. It is not often we see where a clown comes from or where he spends most of his time. The Russian Office provides the audience a chance to see a clown perform his given task but also offers up the intimate tones of what happens behind the scenes and where the clown exists when you go away are no longer there to perform for. It’s a unique, funny, somewhat unsettling and oddly touching experience.
A word for the wise: Go in a large group; you’ll have a lot more fun that way. Bring your passport. And some chocolate. Or a pencil. Or some Chapstick. Or any bit of Americana. This is after all a bureaucracy. Things somehow move smoothly if the wheels are greased.
Office Hours:
9/13 through 9/27, by appointment from 6:30pm to 9:30pm
(no admittance 9/21, no admittance Mondays)
$10 One-Time Processing Fee
(Once you have been processed, you may return for free at any time. ID will be checked, so do not give your ticket to anyone else.)
Monday, September 22, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Manifesto
Eight years ago, at Kiklos Teatro, a physical theatre school in Padova, Italy run by Giovanni Fusetti, a woman from New Zealand and I decided it would be fun to take our clowns and have them reenact the balcony scene from Romeo & Juliet. We spent a week cutting, memorizing, rehearsing and developing the piece and when the time came to perform, we fell flat on our faces. I won’t bore you with the details but the main criticism was that it might be interesting to see that scene played out by clowns, we had totally lost touch with the clowns’ relationship to the material. In the professors’ view, we didn’t even need to finish the text as long as the audience got some insight as to how they felt about performing it.
I was reminded of this while watching Happenstance Theatre’s production of Manifesto. Inspired by exhibits of DADA art at the National Gallery and the Société Anonyme (Phillips Collection) they have, according to their program, “taken texts and fragments of manifestos from futurists, Dadaists, Communists and Capitalists, and put them in the hands and mouths of characters who inhabit a café created by surrealists and run by clowns.”
If the description suggests many layers, the presentation is deceptively simple. At the beginning of the show a character billed as Middleman enters the stage and turns the light up to reveal the café. A woman billed as New Girl enters nervously: it is her first day and she is late. Middleman gives her a broom, asking her to sweep the place before opening. He is brisk and demanding and she follows his orders without question. The world they inhabit is brought slightly off Kilter by the presence of Bar Tender, who resides unseen behind the café bar and instructs New Girl via his voice and hands as to how things work at her new job.
Things take a turn for the stranger with the entrance of Hostess, who oversees the café. She exerts her authority over both New Girl and Middleman and with a nifty visual trick involving a spinning wheel and a cutout of a cerebrally sectioned face, maps out the physical and intellectual territories of the piece. The map explodes with the arrival of the first Visionary though.
There are two Visionaries in Manifesto and they spend a lot of time arguing the merits of Capitalism, Communism and Socialism. Their presence in the play is never quite explained but their function in the café is made vividly clear: they are there to bust up the joint and they do so with flair. Their conflicting viewpoints call the given world of the café into question and act as a catalyst for the strange and desperate behavior of the café’s employees.
The play is full of symbols, propaganda, props and confusion. Every time one of the characters gains some kind of footage, the Visionaries rip the carpet from under them and send them hurling once again into the sticky unknown.
Happenstance Theatre presents all this with far more intelligence and skill than our attempts to present the balcony scene. They fill the stage with dynamic images – Middleman’s initial entrance onto the stage and his final exit from it are sublimely poetic – and at times the dialectic captures their anarchic spirit. But where the show seems to be lacking, and why it reminded me of our scene in Padova, was its use of the text in bringing out the humanity in its clowns.
It’s a show that appeals to the intellect. It challenges certain western social structures and while it attempts to show how its characters (its clowns) are manipulated by or lost in or play with the conflicting theories, it never quite touches the emotional consequences, the conflicts of the soul, that clowns are perfect for conveying.
This is not so say they don’t come close. There is a wonderful sequence in which the characters wage war and all end up dead on the stage. There is also a funny leap of faith that Middleman, New Girl and Hostess must make from the top of a very small box. (Middleman jumps from the box and flies through the air. The image is compelling.) But too often the clowns come across as characters in a play performing what the script requires to convey it’s ideas rather than characters reacting to a set of ideas that are pushing them in uncomfortable directions or into uncomfortable positions.
I realize Happenstance may subscribe to a differently nuanced form of clown than I am used to, and the show is definitely worth seeing, but clowns are capable of illustrating the purity of human experience – happiness, rage, anger, frustration, confusion, lust, passion – and Manifesto while being an enjoyable and challenging show, doesn’t use this resource to its full potential.
I was reminded of this while watching Happenstance Theatre’s production of Manifesto. Inspired by exhibits of DADA art at the National Gallery and the Société Anonyme (Phillips Collection) they have, according to their program, “taken texts and fragments of manifestos from futurists, Dadaists, Communists and Capitalists, and put them in the hands and mouths of characters who inhabit a café created by surrealists and run by clowns.”
If the description suggests many layers, the presentation is deceptively simple. At the beginning of the show a character billed as Middleman enters the stage and turns the light up to reveal the café. A woman billed as New Girl enters nervously: it is her first day and she is late. Middleman gives her a broom, asking her to sweep the place before opening. He is brisk and demanding and she follows his orders without question. The world they inhabit is brought slightly off Kilter by the presence of Bar Tender, who resides unseen behind the café bar and instructs New Girl via his voice and hands as to how things work at her new job.
Things take a turn for the stranger with the entrance of Hostess, who oversees the café. She exerts her authority over both New Girl and Middleman and with a nifty visual trick involving a spinning wheel and a cutout of a cerebrally sectioned face, maps out the physical and intellectual territories of the piece. The map explodes with the arrival of the first Visionary though.
There are two Visionaries in Manifesto and they spend a lot of time arguing the merits of Capitalism, Communism and Socialism. Their presence in the play is never quite explained but their function in the café is made vividly clear: they are there to bust up the joint and they do so with flair. Their conflicting viewpoints call the given world of the café into question and act as a catalyst for the strange and desperate behavior of the café’s employees.
The play is full of symbols, propaganda, props and confusion. Every time one of the characters gains some kind of footage, the Visionaries rip the carpet from under them and send them hurling once again into the sticky unknown.
Happenstance Theatre presents all this with far more intelligence and skill than our attempts to present the balcony scene. They fill the stage with dynamic images – Middleman’s initial entrance onto the stage and his final exit from it are sublimely poetic – and at times the dialectic captures their anarchic spirit. But where the show seems to be lacking, and why it reminded me of our scene in Padova, was its use of the text in bringing out the humanity in its clowns.
It’s a show that appeals to the intellect. It challenges certain western social structures and while it attempts to show how its characters (its clowns) are manipulated by or lost in or play with the conflicting theories, it never quite touches the emotional consequences, the conflicts of the soul, that clowns are perfect for conveying.
This is not so say they don’t come close. There is a wonderful sequence in which the characters wage war and all end up dead on the stage. There is also a funny leap of faith that Middleman, New Girl and Hostess must make from the top of a very small box. (Middleman jumps from the box and flies through the air. The image is compelling.) But too often the clowns come across as characters in a play performing what the script requires to convey it’s ideas rather than characters reacting to a set of ideas that are pushing them in uncomfortable directions or into uncomfortable positions.
I realize Happenstance may subscribe to a differently nuanced form of clown than I am used to, and the show is definitely worth seeing, but clowns are capable of illustrating the purity of human experience – happiness, rage, anger, frustration, confusion, lust, passion – and Manifesto while being an enjoyable and challenging show, doesn’t use this resource to its full potential.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
El Magnifico
El Magnifico, the magician at the center of the show bearing his name, reminded me the villain you’re supposed to boo every time he appears in an old time American melodrama. He wears a top hat, a cape, white gloves and a penciled on mustache. He sports the self satisfied grin of a man entirely too sure of himself but is saved from insufferable arrogance by the ridiculousness of his tricks: He uses a magic wand to make his own foot lift off the ground and to suspend his own hand in mid-air – and by his caring attitude toward his assistant, a woman who is at last ten months pregnant. He conjures a slice of pizza from his case of tricks and, in one nifty instance, a jar of pickles from his hat. Such gestures are genuinely sweet. They show a measure of affection and history between the two.
The parentage of the baby is under some dispute. El Magnifico claims it as his own. The assistant, flirting shamelessly (she is sucking on a pickle), claims the father to be a member of the audience. And there are times when the magician can be incredibly insensitive. Performing a trick, he lifts her off her feet and drags her around the stage, almost inducing the baby’s birth. He gets back in her good graces by presenting her flowers pulled from her sleeve. Other tricks include…well, to be honest, there was a lot happening in the shows fifteen minutes but the final trick involves a rather frisky stuffed raccoon and I can promise you at least one animal was hurt and damaged during the performance.
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif Engel and Hilary Chaplain as El Magnifico and the assistant respectively, are excellent in what amounts to magic show gone wrong. Engel plays the titular magician as a well intentioned buffoon who lives to show his talents and willing to do whatever it takes to demonstrate and be appreciated for his amazing skills. Chaplain makes the most of the Assistant’s “condition,” manipulating the act and the magician when necessary. She knows when to be coy with the Assistant and has no problems dropping her knowing façade to dive into the ridiculousness of the situation.
In fact, it’s this willingness to look foolish that makes these two such a good pair. Engel and Chaplain are hams in the best sense of the word: they possess the ability to charge into the comedy and to balance it with the wisdom to know when to go with the sometimes silent and highly charged consequences.
El Magnifico had it’s final performance at the Festival on September 11, 2008. Both are based in New York and this is a work in progress whose development I look forward to tracking. Future productions can be found on the following websites:
1) Hilary Chaplain's website
2) David Engel's website
The parentage of the baby is under some dispute. El Magnifico claims it as his own. The assistant, flirting shamelessly (she is sucking on a pickle), claims the father to be a member of the audience. And there are times when the magician can be incredibly insensitive. Performing a trick, he lifts her off her feet and drags her around the stage, almost inducing the baby’s birth. He gets back in her good graces by presenting her flowers pulled from her sleeve. Other tricks include…well, to be honest, there was a lot happening in the shows fifteen minutes but the final trick involves a rather frisky stuffed raccoon and I can promise you at least one animal was hurt and damaged during the performance.
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif Engel and Hilary Chaplain as El Magnifico and the assistant respectively, are excellent in what amounts to magic show gone wrong. Engel plays the titular magician as a well intentioned buffoon who lives to show his talents and willing to do whatever it takes to demonstrate and be appreciated for his amazing skills. Chaplain makes the most of the Assistant’s “condition,” manipulating the act and the magician when necessary. She knows when to be coy with the Assistant and has no problems dropping her knowing façade to dive into the ridiculousness of the situation.
In fact, it’s this willingness to look foolish that makes these two such a good pair. Engel and Chaplain are hams in the best sense of the word: they possess the ability to charge into the comedy and to balance it with the wisdom to know when to go with the sometimes silent and highly charged consequences.
El Magnifico had it’s final performance at the Festival on September 11, 2008. Both are based in New York and this is a work in progress whose development I look forward to tracking. Future productions can be found on the following websites:
1) Hilary Chaplain's website
2) David Engel's website
Big and Little
Live Action Set’s Big and Little begins with a set of fingers peeking through the Brick’s black curtain and ends with two friends seated side by side on a bare stage gazing on an exquisite sunset. The fingers belong a tall, thin unnamed clown (Big) who reveals himself slowly: first the fingers of one hand, then the other; an arm, a leg and finally, the most magnificent pair of boots it will ever be your privilege to see. We know this because of the way Big presents them to the audience. The fact of them make him smile, dance, point and celebrate. His joy knows no bounds. He dances off the stage, glad to be in possession of such wondrous boots.
Another clown appears. He is Little, short in height if not in stature. He is not joyful. He is after something. He follows Big off the stage and when big reappears wearing only one boot, we know exactly what Little is after. Big looks at his barefoot and he is sad. When he looks at his other foot though and sees a boot he is happy. Big is not very difficult to please. This bodes well for the rest of the play.
A friendship develops between the two and the rest of Big and Little consists of loosely related episodes chronicling a week in the life of these two friends. Coming in at a quick 25 minutes, each of day of the week reveals the deepening relationship and culminates in the aforementioned sunset.
It’s a simple scene. Quiet. Dimly lit. We never see the sun there is never any doubt that the pair are looking at it. The silence allows the pair the space to take in its beauty and in doing so, they become a reflection of it. It’s an incredibly effective and generous scene.
Live Action Set’s blurb in the festival brochure describes the two as “idiots” and “bumbling,” an assessment I find both harsh and, more importantly, misleading. The pair are clumsy and simple-minded but Director Sara Richardson does such a fine job highlighting the reality and the poetry of their relationship, that idiocy never comes into play.
Big and Little had its final showing at the Festival on Thursday, September 11, 2008. Further projects for this Minneapolis, Minnesota can be found on their website.
Another clown appears. He is Little, short in height if not in stature. He is not joyful. He is after something. He follows Big off the stage and when big reappears wearing only one boot, we know exactly what Little is after. Big looks at his barefoot and he is sad. When he looks at his other foot though and sees a boot he is happy. Big is not very difficult to please. This bodes well for the rest of the play.
A friendship develops between the two and the rest of Big and Little consists of loosely related episodes chronicling a week in the life of these two friends. Coming in at a quick 25 minutes, each of day of the week reveals the deepening relationship and culminates in the aforementioned sunset.
It’s a simple scene. Quiet. Dimly lit. We never see the sun there is never any doubt that the pair are looking at it. The silence allows the pair the space to take in its beauty and in doing so, they become a reflection of it. It’s an incredibly effective and generous scene.
Live Action Set’s blurb in the festival brochure describes the two as “idiots” and “bumbling,” an assessment I find both harsh and, more importantly, misleading. The pair are clumsy and simple-minded but Director Sara Richardson does such a fine job highlighting the reality and the poetry of their relationship, that idiocy never comes into play.
Big and Little had its final showing at the Festival on Thursday, September 11, 2008. Further projects for this Minneapolis, Minnesota can be found on their website.
Monday, September 8, 2008
PANTS! - The Best Show Ever & Three Others
My friend Alex Kipp, a blogger during last year’s festival and hopefully this year’s, said to me once that a clown relationship is based in need. Clowns need each other because they only exist on the stage for the benefit of an audience. They may see things offstage but they bring the impressions of those experiences onstage to share with the audience. A solo clown’s primary relationship is with the audience: they arrive on a stage to perform – to sing, to dance, to act, to soliloquize, to find a mate, to introduce a dog - and in the act of performing, a very pure set of reactions emerges – wants, needs, passions, obsessions – and the result is that a clown’s true personality is brought into the light.
A duo though brings with them a different set of circumstances. They come to the stage to perform as well but they are doing it together. They may carry with them an expertise in their given task but the joy in watching comes from not seeing them perform these actions but from the way they relate to the action and with each other doing them. We humans are not content to just perform. We want our efforts recognized. And anything that gets in the way of that stirs passions that bring out the best and the worst in us.
Tonight’s 7:30 p.m. slate at the Festival celebrated such relationships. It consists of four pieces from three different companies, each with a unique take on their relationships to the performance space and, more importantly, the courage to delve into the forces that can make life an unwieldy and beautiful mess. And funny. Very, very funny.
ME YMMIES Clown and Theatre Company’s Chalk It Up
As the lights go up, a clown appears from behind from behind a black flat. She looks around, searching for something but what? What does she seek? Looking down, she brightens and pulls out a piece of white chalk. She bends over, draws a box on the floor, and steps in the box and smiles. Stepping onto a stage floor without a box seriously stresses her out. She needs the order, the certainty of the space. Without it, she is very difficult to deal with.
There are three other clowns. They are giddy. They are clumsy. They are far more physical and chaotic. And the suffer from the exact same malady. One clown falls onto the floor, notices the lack of a chalk structure beneath him and screams, “CHALK!” Another clown with a piece of chalk runs to him and draws and outline - not unlike one which appears at a crime scene – around his fallen body and he breathes easier.
It turns out they have entered the space to give a presentation. The subject? I have no idea. Each time they begin to present, someone falls or trips or steps or pushes someone else into unstable territory and everyone rallies to place that person or push them further into the unknown.
Emily Newton, Monica Moreau, Adriana Chavez and Brian Kuwabara play the four clowns, (At least I think they were. There were no programs and I couldn’t find the actors afterwards to find out so I’m basing this information off the website) all of whom throw themselves into the action with giddy enthusiasm. My favorite part of the piece was the company’s inventive manipulation of their environment to compartmentalize their world and control each other. One clown, for example has a sneezing fit. Another clown tries to get her to stop sneezing by drawing a square on a black box and writing the word “FREEZE” above it. The clown then slams the square and the other clown immediately freezes mid-sneeze. Touches like this allows the company to enter into a battle to control the space. Tempers flare, feelings are hurt, and mayhem ensues. The game is fun but the tensions are better. It is not whether they win or lose but what’s beneath the game.
ME YMMIES Clown and Theatre Company’s 2 Chairs, 2 Clowns
2 clowns with chairs walk onto a stage. The music starts. The clowns dance. The music changes styles. The Clowns change their style. The music changes, the clowns change…on and on into sublime ridiculousness.
(The piece lasted roughly five minutes and the audience never stopped laughing. Megan Orwig and Erin Crites were the dancers. At least I think they were: Damn you Brick Theater and your lack of programs!…)
The CanCan Dew
Jenny Sargent and Aimee German play Birdie and Gladys, two mavericks who have worked together for 30 years as a famous Vaudeville Duo. Birdie speaks in a husky voice that reminded me of female James Cagney. Gladys speaks in a pip-squeaked nasal that sounds a lot like Gracie Allen. They both wear black outfits with gold sequins and spend the scene doing a song and dance routine reminiscent of the 1940’s.
But this performance is different from all others because Birdie is going through a crisis. She is tired of the old act and wants to tell another story through a different type of dance. The story is about a boy who wants to go to Pakistan and the way she was to dance is more interpretive. Gladys doesn’t want that though. She wants to keep things the way they are. They dance their routine but Birdie continually interrupts to develop her story. The more Birdie interrupts, the more nervous and impatient Galdys becomes until she finally pulls a gun. The result is both funny and tragic. These two have obviously done their homework.
The piece runs about seven minutes but I would have watched 60. The verbal and physical language they’ve created announces a history and a world that allows they play between the characters to include and play with the audience. It is a world rich with emotional and physical possibility. It’s cohesive enough to contain and swell with the crazy logic of its main characters. Sargent and German are patient with the material, letting the dance and the conflicts within develop at just the right pace so as not to force a single moment.
PANTS – The Best Show Ever
Creators Summer Shapiro and April Wagner call their clowns, Summer and April, International Ambassadors of Stupidity. They begin the show in their underwear and end the show fully clothed and then some. In between, they engage in a lettuce eating contest, blow up balloons, try to read letters, dance, fight in slow motion and in real time, yell, scream, negotiate, flirt with audience members, compete for attention, fall, bounce off the walls, chase each other with a broomstick, make up from their fighting and look for their pants.
Summer (the clown, not the character) is kind of intense. Her eyes are mostly wide open and her actions scream “LOOK AT ME!” She is the more controlling of the two and that desire for control makes the mayhem she creates all the more affecting.
April (see previous parenthetical phrase) is more subdued. She gets nervous reading a letter but if you knew the contents of the letter you’d totally understand. She is calm but don’t be fooled: she is just as capable of some serious eruptions.
The chemistry between the performers is strong. They compliment one another but individually possess enough rough edges to create a fair amount of friction. They compete for men, for attention, for space, for control, and aren’t afraid to voice their displeasure with one another. But underneath it all is love and a real need for one another that allows them to move beyond their disagreements. Most impressive though is that the need is full of sentiment without being sickly sweet. Their need is strong but never calls attention to itself.
2 Chairs, 2 Clowns/Chalk It Up had its one and only showing at The Festival on Sunday, September 17, 2008 at 8:30 p.m.
So did The CanCan Dew.
PANTS – The Best Show Ever will be playing on Friday, September 12, 2008 at 8:30 p.m. (on a double-bill with A Little Business Under the Big Top)
A duo though brings with them a different set of circumstances. They come to the stage to perform as well but they are doing it together. They may carry with them an expertise in their given task but the joy in watching comes from not seeing them perform these actions but from the way they relate to the action and with each other doing them. We humans are not content to just perform. We want our efforts recognized. And anything that gets in the way of that stirs passions that bring out the best and the worst in us.
Tonight’s 7:30 p.m. slate at the Festival celebrated such relationships. It consists of four pieces from three different companies, each with a unique take on their relationships to the performance space and, more importantly, the courage to delve into the forces that can make life an unwieldy and beautiful mess. And funny. Very, very funny.
ME YMMIES Clown and Theatre Company’s Chalk It Up
As the lights go up, a clown appears from behind from behind a black flat. She looks around, searching for something but what? What does she seek? Looking down, she brightens and pulls out a piece of white chalk. She bends over, draws a box on the floor, and steps in the box and smiles. Stepping onto a stage floor without a box seriously stresses her out. She needs the order, the certainty of the space. Without it, she is very difficult to deal with.
There are three other clowns. They are giddy. They are clumsy. They are far more physical and chaotic. And the suffer from the exact same malady. One clown falls onto the floor, notices the lack of a chalk structure beneath him and screams, “CHALK!” Another clown with a piece of chalk runs to him and draws and outline - not unlike one which appears at a crime scene – around his fallen body and he breathes easier.
It turns out they have entered the space to give a presentation. The subject? I have no idea. Each time they begin to present, someone falls or trips or steps or pushes someone else into unstable territory and everyone rallies to place that person or push them further into the unknown.
Emily Newton, Monica Moreau, Adriana Chavez and Brian Kuwabara play the four clowns, (At least I think they were. There were no programs and I couldn’t find the actors afterwards to find out so I’m basing this information off the website) all of whom throw themselves into the action with giddy enthusiasm. My favorite part of the piece was the company’s inventive manipulation of their environment to compartmentalize their world and control each other. One clown, for example has a sneezing fit. Another clown tries to get her to stop sneezing by drawing a square on a black box and writing the word “FREEZE” above it. The clown then slams the square and the other clown immediately freezes mid-sneeze. Touches like this allows the company to enter into a battle to control the space. Tempers flare, feelings are hurt, and mayhem ensues. The game is fun but the tensions are better. It is not whether they win or lose but what’s beneath the game.
ME YMMIES Clown and Theatre Company’s 2 Chairs, 2 Clowns
2 clowns with chairs walk onto a stage. The music starts. The clowns dance. The music changes styles. The Clowns change their style. The music changes, the clowns change…on and on into sublime ridiculousness.
(The piece lasted roughly five minutes and the audience never stopped laughing. Megan Orwig and Erin Crites were the dancers. At least I think they were: Damn you Brick Theater and your lack of programs!…)
The CanCan Dew
Jenny Sargent and Aimee German play Birdie and Gladys, two mavericks who have worked together for 30 years as a famous Vaudeville Duo. Birdie speaks in a husky voice that reminded me of female James Cagney. Gladys speaks in a pip-squeaked nasal that sounds a lot like Gracie Allen. They both wear black outfits with gold sequins and spend the scene doing a song and dance routine reminiscent of the 1940’s.
But this performance is different from all others because Birdie is going through a crisis. She is tired of the old act and wants to tell another story through a different type of dance. The story is about a boy who wants to go to Pakistan and the way she was to dance is more interpretive. Gladys doesn’t want that though. She wants to keep things the way they are. They dance their routine but Birdie continually interrupts to develop her story. The more Birdie interrupts, the more nervous and impatient Galdys becomes until she finally pulls a gun. The result is both funny and tragic. These two have obviously done their homework.
The piece runs about seven minutes but I would have watched 60. The verbal and physical language they’ve created announces a history and a world that allows they play between the characters to include and play with the audience. It is a world rich with emotional and physical possibility. It’s cohesive enough to contain and swell with the crazy logic of its main characters. Sargent and German are patient with the material, letting the dance and the conflicts within develop at just the right pace so as not to force a single moment.
PANTS – The Best Show Ever
Creators Summer Shapiro and April Wagner call their clowns, Summer and April, International Ambassadors of Stupidity. They begin the show in their underwear and end the show fully clothed and then some. In between, they engage in a lettuce eating contest, blow up balloons, try to read letters, dance, fight in slow motion and in real time, yell, scream, negotiate, flirt with audience members, compete for attention, fall, bounce off the walls, chase each other with a broomstick, make up from their fighting and look for their pants.
Summer (the clown, not the character) is kind of intense. Her eyes are mostly wide open and her actions scream “LOOK AT ME!” She is the more controlling of the two and that desire for control makes the mayhem she creates all the more affecting.
April (see previous parenthetical phrase) is more subdued. She gets nervous reading a letter but if you knew the contents of the letter you’d totally understand. She is calm but don’t be fooled: she is just as capable of some serious eruptions.
The chemistry between the performers is strong. They compliment one another but individually possess enough rough edges to create a fair amount of friction. They compete for men, for attention, for space, for control, and aren’t afraid to voice their displeasure with one another. But underneath it all is love and a real need for one another that allows them to move beyond their disagreements. Most impressive though is that the need is full of sentiment without being sickly sweet. Their need is strong but never calls attention to itself.
2 Chairs, 2 Clowns/Chalk It Up had its one and only showing at The Festival on Sunday, September 17, 2008 at 8:30 p.m.
So did The CanCan Dew.
PANTS – The Best Show Ever will be playing on Friday, September 12, 2008 at 8:30 p.m. (on a double-bill with A Little Business Under the Big Top)
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Pie Fights
The folks over at the Brick set up a tarp arena with a clear plastic window for their opening day pie fight. The tarp covered roughly two thirds of the stage and hung from the ceiling like the covering of a magic hat. This was not inappropriate as it protected the audience sitting in the rafters from realizing the pies being flung about were filled with shaving – not whipping - cream. (This gave the theatre a very clean smell and gave the floor the grip of a Slip-and-Slide. I kept wondering how it tasted though - the cream, not the floor). It also gave the impression of the arena being a secret to be revealed.
I cannot tell you the rules of the fight but the process went something like this: twelve participants (I can’t call them clowns because there were few red noses) line up back to back in two rows of six, each given a pie. Once situated, a referee, so designated by his black and white striped shirt and the fact that he was the only one anyone listened to, counted to three with each warrior taking a step away from his adversary on each number. And once the ref said go, all hell broke loose.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a pie fight outside the confines of a movie screen but it’s a mess. It doesn’t make any sense at all. There’s a lot of slipping, tossing, tripping, smearing, screaming, flinging and, above all, laughing. At some point in the proceeding, the ref began pulling people out of the arena, for reasons best known to no one but himself. One by one they exited through a slit in the tarp, covered in cream, wiping their eyes and sculpting their hair into Mohawks and other fashionable slants. In the end, one person is declared a winner and all the participants exited the theatre to be literally hosed down by a volunteer.
I saw three manifestations pie fight: one as described above, one in which everyone tossed pies wearing nothing but their underwear (which was fun and surprisingly asexual) and one in which a large group of people stood in a circle, surrounding a smaller circle of pies. At the signal, they all grabbed a pie and it was every man, woman and child for themselves. One kid walked around, picking up aluminum pie tins, stacking them on his head. A man grabbed a woman and kissed her passionately, if not deeply. A woman smeared handfuls of cream all over her friend as they laughed and laughed and laughed. A man walked up to the clear plastic window and smeared cream onto it like an giddy and amateurish Jackson Pollack. It was pure pandemonium.
Was it clown? Were there bides and relationship shifts and resolutions and poetry? I’m sure if you looked deeply enough, you’d find examples of all those things but then, the same would happen if you looked closely into a production of August: Osage County or a subway ride from Union Square to Grand Central Station on the 4 train. But was it Clown? I asked myself the question and then dismissed it immediately. Pies and clowns (and by extension, Clown Festivals) are a classic match. And in the absence of a torch lighting ceremony, it seemed like a perfect way to prepare the space for the coming mayhem.
∑ To get your geek on, here is a slight History of the Pie Fight from The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.
I cannot tell you the rules of the fight but the process went something like this: twelve participants (I can’t call them clowns because there were few red noses) line up back to back in two rows of six, each given a pie. Once situated, a referee, so designated by his black and white striped shirt and the fact that he was the only one anyone listened to, counted to three with each warrior taking a step away from his adversary on each number. And once the ref said go, all hell broke loose.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a pie fight outside the confines of a movie screen but it’s a mess. It doesn’t make any sense at all. There’s a lot of slipping, tossing, tripping, smearing, screaming, flinging and, above all, laughing. At some point in the proceeding, the ref began pulling people out of the arena, for reasons best known to no one but himself. One by one they exited through a slit in the tarp, covered in cream, wiping their eyes and sculpting their hair into Mohawks and other fashionable slants. In the end, one person is declared a winner and all the participants exited the theatre to be literally hosed down by a volunteer.
I saw three manifestations pie fight: one as described above, one in which everyone tossed pies wearing nothing but their underwear (which was fun and surprisingly asexual) and one in which a large group of people stood in a circle, surrounding a smaller circle of pies. At the signal, they all grabbed a pie and it was every man, woman and child for themselves. One kid walked around, picking up aluminum pie tins, stacking them on his head. A man grabbed a woman and kissed her passionately, if not deeply. A woman smeared handfuls of cream all over her friend as they laughed and laughed and laughed. A man walked up to the clear plastic window and smeared cream onto it like an giddy and amateurish Jackson Pollack. It was pure pandemonium.
Was it clown? Were there bides and relationship shifts and resolutions and poetry? I’m sure if you looked deeply enough, you’d find examples of all those things but then, the same would happen if you looked closely into a production of August: Osage County or a subway ride from Union Square to Grand Central Station on the 4 train. But was it Clown? I asked myself the question and then dismissed it immediately. Pies and clowns (and by extension, Clown Festivals) are a classic match. And in the absence of a torch lighting ceremony, it seemed like a perfect way to prepare the space for the coming mayhem.
∑ To get your geek on, here is a slight History of the Pie Fight from The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.
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