So I began watching this narrative style show taking everything these actors were saying at face value.  I thought this was a group of actors pretending to be a group of actors who had actually really existed.  The premise is that they are putting on a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, but without the characters Stanley, Stella, Mitch or Blanche.  Sure, it sounds weird, but not necessarily the weirdest idea for a show that I’ve ever heard.  Then the company starts describing some of the exercises Stella would have her own company perform.  For example, there’s crying practice, where all the actors stand silently in a line and try to make themselves cry, then there’s kissing practice, where they line up and take turns kissing one another.  Although the exercises are comical to watch, they aren’t completely off base.  So it wasn’t exactly the premise of the acting company or the zany methods they use that made me start to question the reality of the world, but more like a feeling that started creeping up that something wasn’t as it seemed.  First of all, while the actors are rehearsing there is supposedly a loaded gun in a birdcage in the corner of the room, just to remind the actors that they are capable of killing one another.  And the entire time, the attitude of the actors seems a little off.  Like they’re all sharing a secret that the audience isn’t in on.

The structure of the show itself is scenes delineated by how long the company has until opening night.  The set is pretty simple- a table and some chairs, a piano, an old-fashioned overhead projector, and that gun in the corner.  The floor has exaggeratedly large, colorful spike tape- it’s literally the stuff you’re “not supposed to see” behind a production.  Although there’s a fairly linear timeline, the show is also punctuated by events that are seemingly outside the world of “reality”, including a speaking tiger and men running around with balloons tied to their penises.  By the end, I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t, so I had to just experience the play as it happened.  There were moments of great humor, suspense, and sadness within The Method Gun.  One of my favorite parts is that at the top of the show, the audience is asked to write down the name of their mentor on a piece of paper and hand it to the actors.  At the end of the play, there is a slideshow of the names of people to which this show is dedicated, and we realize that it’s the names that the audience members contributed.

I purposely try not to research a show too much before I see it because I want to be able to have the experience without a lot of context first, and then layer in understanding later.  So after I finished watching The Method Gun I decided to google Stella Burden, half expecting her to be real, half not.  The first search item was a call for “research” on Stella Burden for the production of The Method Gun, and asked for submissions from people who had worked with her.  Then I realized that all of the search results for Stella Burden were for this show, and that Stella Burden probably is not a real person.  I love the idea that this company of actors created an alternate reality in order to share a story.  It’s fairly obvious that Stella Burden is sort of a stand- in for Stella Adler, but not the same person.  By establishing a “reality” and then exploding it, The Method Gun asks the question of what is truth, and is there a difference between truth once removed and truth four times removed?  Is one more “valid” than the other?  They pose the questions, but leave it to us to determine our own truth.

What I didn’t realize then is that there are two shows on Broadway generated by the Gershwin Estate: Porgy and Bess and Nice Work If You Can Get It, which is sort of a “Gershwin Comedy Fest” featuring lots and lots of Gershwin’s songs.   I read an article on NPR entitled Managing The Gershwins’ Lucrative Musical Legacy, which detailed what a lucrative business managing the Gershwin Estate has turned out to be.  A multi-million-dollar-a-year business.

My immediate response is distrust and sort of a grossed-out feeling.  It just seems like these people are pimping out grandpa’s great works to keep the cash coming.  But I realize there could be several schools of thought on this situation. As Ira Gershwin’s nephew describes it, “It’s our job to search out and find uses for this treasure-trove of music, and both the George Gershwin family and the Ira Gershwin family take this responsibility very seriously.”

I understand both sides of this issue- on one hand, the Gershwins are in charge of sharing this great body of work with the world, and they were directly handed this responsibility by Ira Gershwin.  I tried thinking of it like any other inheritance.  They inherited Gershwin’s Estate like someone might inherit a china cabinet, and it’s within their right to decide which room to display that china cabinet in.

However, it seems to me that what the Gershwins are doing is something more like chopping up the Ira Gershwin china cabinet and selling the parts because it’s more lucrative than leaving it intact.

I saw Café Variations on Sunday at Arts Emerson.  Directed by Anne Bogart, with Music and Lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin and words from Charles Mee, this musical is both full of heart and completely heartbreaking.  The set is beautiful- a shimmering silver curtain hides the orchestra and the paneled ceiling changes colors with the mood of the play.  It took me a while to get my bearings in this musical- the first several moments are silent- just movements, with characters moving in and out of a café that keeps morphing itself; tables and chairs are constantly being rearranged by a cast of characters that seems to never end.  Just when I think I’ve seen all the characters there could possibly be, a new face emerges, but they’re all dressed so similarly it’s hard to tell who’s who…  Eventually the rhythm of the musical got into my body and I understood the churning nature of this play, where relationships can come and go in the blink of an eye, or last a lifetime.  Although many of the characters look and dress alike, and many relationships flit past, two couples stand out.  First, the girl in the blue dress who is waiting in the café for the love of her life- only, she doesn’t know who he is yet.  Luckily, the love of her life is right in front of her- the grey haired waiter who falls (literally) head over heels for her.  The other relationship that stayed with me was between a big, burly man with a gruff disposition and a little, quirky old woman.  They cultivate their relationship over a game of strip poker and there’s something that’s deliciously offbeat about their love, as well as heartbreakingly honest.

The evolution of the mood of Café Variations is also quite interesting.  When the play begins, every couple is male-female, every interaction is politely flirtatious and “love” is in the air.  But something seems sort of off. There’s a feeling of something slightly menacing behind the polite gestures and frozen smiles.  As the musical progresses, relationships become less black and white and clear lines dissolve.  Men kiss men and men and women swap clothing, while interactions become less and less pristine.  The message I got from all of that?  That we have this idea of what love is, a picture perfect idea of the handsome man and beautiful woman falling in love and living happily, happily ever after.   But Café Variations reminds us that love doesn’t really work that way.  It can be amazing and overpowering and consuming but it can also be fleeting and amorphous and frustrating and stupid.  The two relationships that I will remember were two of the most flawed- the large man and old woman fought viciously at times over their game of cards and said horrible, hurtful things to one another and the waiter ended up leaving the woman in the blue dress because he thought he was too old for her and that he would be decrepit by the time she was fifty.  And while it sounds like a bitter message, somehow I left with a feeling of hope, and full of love.  Because even though those relationships were flawed, the love that they experienced, though brief, was so real and honest.

The movement in Café Variations is heavily influenced by Anne Bogart’s work with viewpoints.  A lot of the time an actor might be saying one thing, while the story that’s being told with their body is something completely different.  While most of the movement is very stylized, it isn’t always what I expected from the 1950’s era evoked by the costumes and set, and added an offbeat tone to the piece.  Sometimes the play did seem a little disjointed; a little bit jerky as far as pacing goes, and some of the musical numbers don’t quite seem to fit or be necessary, but I find myself eager to forgive and forget these few moments in a play so full of heart.

Hookman takes place in a small theatre at the Calderwood that I didn’t even know existed… upstairs right next to the entrances to the balcony for the main stage.  The space is set up to seat maybe 30 people, with “splash zone” seats in the front where the audience is provided with raincoats just in case you get sprinkled with… blood.  The set involves the front half of a car, which rotates into the background when the action takes place on the other half of the set, which is Lexi’s dorm room.  Most of the play takes place in these two locations with transitions occurring in the ambiguous empty space between the set and the audience.  The entire set is wallpapered with plastic sheeting that hints at splattering yet to come.  For the most part I found the set to be an effective vessel for this story, although something I was missing was a cohesive mood or point of view- I logically understood the set choices, but I think it was sort of right on the verge of being either completely straight-forward and realistic with the dorm room and the car, or embracing the horror/slasher feel of the play with the plastic sheeting and the gaping whole through which the car emerges.  I just couldn’t quite put my finger on the rules of the world of this play.

The aspect of Hookman that I appreciate most is the tough, and important topics it tackles, and the humor it brings to these issues.  A central theme of the play is female sexuality, which is a topic of huge importance right now; on a smaller scale here at BU with the men’s hockey team sexual assault investigation, and on a national scale with contraception and abortion rights being debated in all levels of politics.  The issues that are grappled with on-stage in “Hookman” with seemingly low stakes (Is this shirt slutty?  Well, was she asking for it?) reflect the way many people from the far right are currently approaching women’s rights.  A comment from Foster Friess really sums it up nicely, “Back in my days they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t costly.”  “Slut-shaming” has resurfaced as something that is socially acceptable for some conservative politicians and advocates, and that’s really scary.  “Hookman” tackles these issues through comedy, although a lot of the time I was laughing with sort of a sick feeling in my stomach, that feeling compounded by the fact that the Hookman was probably lurking somewhere nearby.  The repetitive nature of the scenes gave us insight into how Lexi, the protagonist, might be dealing with the recent death of her friend and a sexual encounter with a boy from out of town that she’s just now realizing might have been considered date rape.  Key scenes are repeated over and over, each time morphing a little, just as we can imagine Lexi might replay these conversations in her mind, becoming a little more distorted with every repetition, and the Hookman is always somewhere at the forefront of the audience’s (and probably Lexi’s) mind.

Another interesting topic wrestled with in “Hookman” is the recent explosion of social media, and the users presumed “right” to information about the other people they interact with online.  I found the story that Lauren Yee shared in her interview with Ilana to be particularly relatable.  Lauren talked about how part of her inspiration for Hookman grew from an experience where she learned that an acquaintance from high school had passed away via Facebook.  When she couldn’t find more information, Lauren felt indignant because she thought she had a right to know details about how this person had died. It disturbed her to recognize this impulse in herself.  Lexi announces several times that she is going to “quit” Facebook.  Our society has become one in which it’s really hard not to be connected. Either you are a user of social media or you aren’t, but either choice says something about you as a person.  I think this play comments on our dependency on social media, and asks us to question our relationship to it.

Overall, I appreciate the uncomfortable themes dealt with in Hookman, and the fresh approach Lauren Yee brings to them.  I think my main criticism of the production is similar to my criticism of the set- I didn’t feel like I totally understood the rules of this world.  The play vacillates between complete “realism” to stylized, clearly choreographed moments, like the bloody fights that occur between the Hookman and Lexi with planned moments for both characters to catch their breath, and a generally surreal tone.  I understood conceptually the idea of challenging theatrical norms, but sometimes instead of illuminating the text, I felt that the choices distracted me from the action of the play.  A lot of cool ideas were flirted with, but I think the production could have benefitted from fully committing to a few ideas, as opposed to sort of half realizing several realities.  For example, an expectation is set up with the “Splash Zone” and the plastic-covered walls that there will be a lot of blood, but the actual amount of blood used in the production really wasn’t proportionate to the hype.  At least in the production I saw, the “Splash Zone” wasn’t ever in danger.  I think we’re so desensitized to violence as a culture, that the amount of blood and the style of violence used in this production wasn’t enough to shock or provoke as I believe was the intention.  I think taking that choice to an extreme- soaking the stage with blood, or else using a less literal, more theatrical device would have made the world of the play more clear to me.  Instead, Hookman hovered somewhere in the middle.  Because of the blurred lines between the real and the surreal, I don’t think I ever understood what “actually happened” in the play and what was meant to be a fiction of Lexi’s imagination.  It’s possible that the audience is meant to leave the show not knowing, but I had this feeling that I was supposed to understand more than I did.  In general, I think a lot of my issues with the Hookman were problems that come with the first production of any new play.  Ilana even says in the program, “Even now, as you sit here in the theatre, the play is not finished.  Audiences in first productions show playwrights what they’ve made, and provide the platform for new insights.”  This play is in process, and things are still evolving.  I understand that and take it into consideration in my critique.  Just as we must consider the world of the play, we must also consider where a play is in its evolution.

In General, I think the story of a twenty-something year old woman is an important one to be shared at this time, not only with the world of theatre, but also with our nation as a whole.  Now’s a time that our rights as females are being questioned, and life-changing decisions about our reproductive rights are being decided by predominantly middle-aged male politicians.  I don’t know if it was Lauren Yee’s intent when she wrote this play, but I think it’s important to share stories about real, complicated women and remind the nation that we need be neither virgins nor whores.  I appreciate Hookman for this reason, and for its ambition and sense of humor.

But the thing is- I don’t think it’s as easy as pinning our problems on chauvinistic men- women perpetuate these stereotypes too.  There’s this idea that if a movie is about a man, it’s universal, where if the main character is a woman, often it’s classified as a chick flick or romcom and is automatically something less… The problem is that I think women often also subscribe to this idea… I’m even finding this annoying tendancy within myself.  My thesis is written by a female writer and features the story of a 25 year old woman and I’ve found myself worrying about male audience members- worrying that they will dismiss it as something less because it is a story about a woman.  I’m annoyed that I even have those doubts.

Anyways, this wasn’t the most succinct or articulate blog post but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about, and I know other people have been thinking about, and I think it’s something that’s important to cultivate conversation around.

Of course, we need to keep in mind that theatres are doing classic plays like Shakespeare and others, but even then the numbers are grossly uneven; the most recent research done by Sphinx Theatre Company shows that only 17% of produced plays are by women.

So how can we counteract this?  If the idea that female playwrights are inferior is somehow woven into the fabric of our society, so much so that female and artistic directors and literary managers hold an equal bias, what is there to be done?  Several theaters have begun operating under the  rule that plays be submitted anonymously so there is no chance for gender bias.  I think this is a good start and should become expected of theatres- why the heck not?  If we know that our view is going to be colored, even subconsciously, shouldn’t we remove the chance for bias if we are able to?  It seems like an easy choice to me.

As a kid I was an avid reader and Roald Dahl was always one of my favorites.  His books had a way of keeping me thoroughly entertained by the whimsical plot lines, but I also felt sort of adult reading them.  I never felt like Roald Dahl was talking down to me.  As a reader I was one of the good guys, one of the Matildas.  So when I heard that the West End production of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Matilda the Musical was actually a success, I was really excited.

With stuff like Shrek the Musical floating around, I can definitely get on board with Dennis Kelley’s adaptation of this Roald Dahl classic.  Tim Minchin, one of Australia’s top comedians wrote the music and the lyrics.  Amanda Conquy, the estate’s managing director was hesitant to give permission to adapt Matilda into a musical because “we know they have an incredible capacity to go wrong.”  Luckily, the production has been very successful in London.  Matt Wolf, a writer for the International Herald Tribune said, “With Time Minchin, that was totally out of left-feild — looking toward the world of comedy and Australian comedy, too — to write a show that in many ways is so quintessentially English.  I think his score is a major achievement.  It’s not imitative or suggestive of anyone else.  It has its own flavor, texture, wit, energy.”  It has won several awards to far including best musical production and best actor (Bertie Carvel) in the Theatre Awards UK, and in November 2011 it won the Ned Sherrin Award for Best Musical as part of The Evening Standard Awards. There’s even talk of taking Matilda to Broadway.  Basically my point is it sounds awesome and I’d really like the chance to see it.

One point producers made that I could understand was that these broadcasts would increase revenue and expand audiences.  As Michael Maso says, a theater with money can focus on theatre. A theater without money can only focus on money.  I understand the practical need for money.  But I cringe at the idea that we need to put theater on a screen to make people see it.  Indeed, the review of the production Hamet Live was not positive- the reviewer much preferred the in-person version.  I’d agree that filmed theater is just not the same.  Plays are not meant to be filmed. They are not written like film scripts, and for a good reason.  One does not receive a play the same way one receives a movie… they are two different beasts.

Now here comes a harder question for me to answer… if a potential audience member had the choice to either purchase a reduced-priced cinema “theater” ticket or not see a play at all… would I object to them seeing the filmed version?  I honestly don’t know.  And I’m sure I’d even appreciate the chance to see some shows that I’d never see otherwise because of cost or location… but what scares me is that people would see the filmed version instead of the live version.  If you don’t even have to leave the house to online stream a show… wouldn’t it seem that an “average american” might prefer his or her own couch?

I have many reactions to this new type of theatre.  Firstly, I think that intimacy and connection could be incredible.  Something I enjoy about film is the intimacy that can be achieved with the proximity of the camera and this type of theatre wouldn’t have the removal of the 3rd wall OR a TV screen.  I also imagine that having the audience a few feet from the actor would keep the actor on their toes, not let them “check out” mentally.  I guess the same probably goes for the audience; no napping or discreetly playing words with friends.

One fear I had was that Intimate Theatre might lose the community of the audience, the shared experience.  There can be something magical about going for a journey with an entire house of people.  I imagine, though, that connection might happen on a smaller scale, and in this case between actor and audience member.  One woman, Sarah Jane Norman, is doing a one-on-one piece where she leads an audience member into a dark space lit with fairy lights, lies down with them and spoons them silently.  I guess you can’t get much closer than that.  Some critics said her work was too touchy-feely to be theatre; it was too much like a therapy session.  I think that if theatre reminds an audience to feel, it’s doing its job.

As most of you probably know, this quarter Elaine Vaan Hogue is directing a play  by Emily Mann called Execution of Justice.  Most of the script is comprised of the trial of the People vs. Dan White.  White assassinated San Francisco mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk in November 1978.

I’m lucky enough to be part of this production, and I’ve been thinking about what it means to do this play at this point in time- why this story needs to be told now- so I was really excited to find that a similar play is currently emerging entitled ’8′ written by Dustin Lance Black, chronicling the 2010 federal court battle that dealt with the legality of Proposition 8 in California.  Its first production was on Broadway with a star-studded cast that included Morgan Freedman, and raised over $1 for American Foundation for Equal Rights. ’8′ then appeared in Los Angles with George Clooney, and is now “coming to a theatre near you”

’8′ seems to be in a very similar format to Execution of Justice, using text directly from the trial, which was actually recorded but its release was suppressed by supporters of Prop 8.  ’8′ is a chance for audience to see what actually happened in that trial.

I found it really interesting that ’8′ will be traveling to states that are marriage equality ‘hotspots’; I’m not sure if the goal is to change people’s minds on the issue of gay marriage or to raise awareness and money within the community that are already supporters. The later seems more probable to me, I imagine it would be very difficult to actually get conservative audiences into the theatre… although George Clooney might help.