To open the show, the music sounds a heavy base, and the slowly the curtain draws and two men are revealed, one twisting, one shrinking and exploding with equal energy.  As this is revealed the music picks up into a fast paced electronic rhythm; haze machines go off, the glowing apple of a macbook is visible, the lights flash, the band wears white and black stripes.  The scene is extremely familiar; this kind of music, the style, it is indicative of the intense popularity of raves and electronic music in the United States and Europe currently.  The band and the eye makeup of the performers echoe A Clockwork Orange.  What drew me to watch this piece was what I read about the director and the style of the show.  It is an incredibly apt piece through which to discuss innovation in the story telling techniques of contemporary theatre, and whether they overwhelm or clarify the story.  The dealer (Wojciech Niemczyk) and the client (Tomasz Nosinski) speak, sing, whisper, scream, and beg into the microphone, one expounding on the value of his goods and his dependency on the exchange, the other extolling his virtues and why he should not make the deal.

The exact nature of the deal is unclear, but in a compelling, affecting way.  They could be a prostitute and a potential client, but the scene also recalls the current intense scrutiny the role of commerce in our culture.  The power of the seller versus the buyer is what’s at stake here, and that power shifts frequently, with stupendous energy, precision, and sense of stakes.  In addition to their tremendous control of their voices, the physical life of the performers is astounding.  They writhe, twitch, convulse with a wonderful balance of intensity and ease.  The movements stir questions regarding the relationship of physical images and the text of the story.  Their physicalities draw out the subtext.  They are not symbolic or natural in their representation of the images, they seem to embody the visceral feeling.  I also wondered about the balance of choreography versus improvised movement.  There was SO much movement, and it took place on such a scale that I felt it couldn’t all be set, but there was such a clear and specific vocabulary that they were using that I felt it had to be.  The movements of Nosinski are particularly vibrant yet precise.

What also struck me about the piece was the relationship between the actors and the audience.  As I said the performers spend the entirety of piece in their own pools of light, until they meet at the end.  All of their text the speak out to the audience, not at each other.  I really enjoyed that they were essentially bringing a poem to life by standing and speaking it into microphones, but with an effective sense of the stakes and the rise and fall of the action.  And the text itself is fantastic.  The images are striking and poignant.  The power of that is giving to natural elements; the land, the hour, the moon reminded me of Lorca.  Both the dealer and client give tremendous importance to the time at which they have encountered each other.  The music underscores the struggle between the two wonderfully, it highlights the rise and fall of the drama.  As a result, perhaps the most arresting moment of the piece comes when the dealer makes his final plea, the music goes out suddenly and we sit in total silence for a period.  Then the dealer tells the client that the other’s greatest power is the ability to reject, something the dealer cannot do.  He tells him the greatest cruelty is not destruction, but to leave a man unfinished, in mid-exchange, “the error of a gaze.”  A huge amount of significance is placed upon this gaze, for it is how they began this struggle.  In the silence the dealer says “the only thing that really matters is that you looked at me and our gaze met.”  When he says this the client turns to look at him for the first time, but the dealer stays facing the audience.  When he has finished his plea the dealer begins to wail, the sound building and building into the music returns, picking up the note of the dealers cry, the cry builds into a scream of pain and hate until the dealer abruptly turns and vanishes into the dark.

Up until this point I was riveted.  There are a lot of people trying to do what this piece does, but it too frequently the technical elements of formal experimentation become gimmicky, their use to the story becomes unclear.  Here I felt the form and the relationship to the audience worked really well because the piece was the exact opposite of what it looked like.  The actors are not drug addled ravers, they are in complete control of their instrument.  The piece does not indulge in shock value for no apparent reason.  It was like good stage combat, the more in-control and safe it is the more effective it is, and this piece held back from many of the traps of this kind of work.

UNTIL

After the dealer burns himself out and retreats the client gets completely naked.  At this point I was still bearing with, it seemed like the ordeal had scarred him in some way, the power of the connection between the two was such that I bought that the severing had severely damaged him.  But then the stage lights go out and a screen above the band comes on and for 15-minutes we are treated to a variety of sexual, violent, and just plain weird images that ruined the piece for me.  Control became indulgence, effective innovative storytelling became nonsensical shock value.  I really tried but the ties to story were hopeful at best, the piece fell face first and deep into all of the traps of this kind of theatre.  Eventually it returned to the two actors, and they either made a form of piece or consummated the exchange, but I had been so turned off by the previous section it really didn’t matter to me, I was thinking about what I was going to write and what I was going to do after, I waited for it to end.

Ultimately I was extremely excited to be introduced to the play itself, I think the language is beautiful and true to itself.  Furthermore I think the idea is fascinating.  The stakes of the encounter, the power of the seller and buyer is an extremely compelling relationship at this moment in time. I think if the relationship did not play on the sexuality as much though, I think it would be more effective.  That element is certainly present in the text, but personally I think it’s more exciting if you let it affect you there, beneath the surface, don’t indulge in it, it’s inherent.  Bottom line though, I really wish they didn’t have that section on the screen, because I think it could be a wonderful piece to look to as an example of how theatre can employ intensely modern conventions while valuing story above all, but it isn’t.

It’s designed to inflame one’s desire to improve the political process rather than provoke a laugh at its expense.

And I think this is where the potential lies in politically driven theatre.  That it can be fuel for change, not just a place to let out frustration at the ineptitude of the process.  And I believe the creation of more of this kind of work can have a reciprocal effect on theatre; that the relevance would bring freshness to the field, the form would be immersive and participatory, and the subject matter would attract new audiences, politically minded folks looking for a forum for their ideas.

Rogue Artists Ensemble is a collective of multi-disciplinary artists who create Hyper-theater, an innovative hybrid of theater traditions, puppetry, mask work, dance, music, and modern technology. Through a collaborative development process, with an emphasis on design and storytelling, the Rogues create original, thought-provoking performances. We cultivate unique audience experiences that appeal to multiple generations of theatergoers in order to expand the boundaries of contemporary American theater.

Last year, Michael Allen (BU SoT ’10) was in their new play D is for Dog, which won an Ovation Award for puppet design and was nominated for an LA Weekly Award for best Comedy Ensemble.  It will be remounted this summer for the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

I stumbled upon this company through my own research and then realized it was the same company that Mike had done a show with.  Over Spring break in LA through Mike I was able to have lunch with their Artistic Director Sean T. Cawelti.  We had a great conversation and the prospect of working with this company, in any capacity, is one of the things that most excites me about moving to Los Angeles.  They are innovative with the form their work takes, but primarily focused on the telling of a story.  Most recently they did Songs of Bilitis, the story of how in the late 19th century Pierre Louys produced a collection of erotic poetry that he attributed to an ancient Greek courtesan.  The command of the language, the beauty of the sensuous images sustained the popularity of the piece even after it was revealed that Louys had written it all himself.  Rogue Artists Ensemble was commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Museum to mount this piece.  It received a workshop production at the museum this Spring and will be remounted Spring of 2013.  When I meet with the Rogues they were working on this piece and I got to go backstage and into their shop.  The process by which they develop their pieces is awesome, they care immensely about the work but are willing to scratch ideas and start over.  They are wonderfully multidisciplinary and always trying to move their art forward.  It was incredibly exciting to meet a group, working professionally, who have no affiliation to BU SoT and find they have a vocabulary that resonates with me and I find compelling.  Here is a video of Artistic Director Sean T. Cawelti giving a brief overview of the Rogues use of objects and puppets: Object Work

I’ve been realizing I had the same stars in my eyes sensibility with regards to starting a theatre company after graduation.  It’s not an immediate goal of mine, but it is something that interests me down the line.  My interest in it is based in the philosophies that have become the most important to me in my time here, self-producing, creating work for oneself, being an artistic enterepenuer.  Taking Theatre Management this semester has been really encouraging in terms of understanding the logistics of this kind of endeavor.  However, when I step back to think about this goal, all I can think is “why?”  As this BRILLIANT article by Rebecca Novick from Grant Makers in the Arts points out, as theatre struggles to redefine itself and retain its audiences in this climate, starting structurally inflexible institutions according to a traditional model makes very little sense.  The article offers very compelling alternatives on how to make a flexible employment structure and pick and choose elements from different models that work for yours.  The sections I found particularly compelling were “Funders Speak Out,” where it analyzes how traditional funding models proliferate the structure not the work, and Part Three, where it further dissects the core problem and addresses how we can support the people not the structure.  This article churned up all sort of thoughts in my head.  The idea of being an artistic entrepenuer has been very exciting to me since I declared as a Theatre Arts Major, since that seems to be the trend in the professional world these days.  Lately I have been thinking a lot about what that entails and am realizing that in this climate it is not enough to be thinking a step ahead, you have to be a step ahead of the step ahead.

At face value a 2hr+ one-man does not seem like a practical undertaking, but what was so interesting about the construction of The Andersen Project was that ultimately it would not have worked as anything other than a one-man show.  This was due to the extreme use of technology and effects in the show.  The degree to which lights, sound, video, set and puppetry were put to use surrounded and supported Yves through the 2hrs in a way that was crucial to the structural success of the show.  In fact, it would not have been as successful if there were more bodies on stage.  The dynamic of a man in space surrounded by all these elements was an effective and clear storytelling device.  They are used in a nice balance of overwhelming and intimate ways.  In the drug infused sequence on the train the video, lights, and sound were more impressive than a lot of concerts I’ve been to.  When Arnaud, tucks his daughter in at night he tells her one of Andersen’s stories, using the bedroom lamp to illustrate his tale with shadow in a lovely, moving, fashion.  The scenes in the park were a wonderful combination of technical elements.  The huge columns dominated the space, impressing the audience and framing the sole actor in a powerful way.  At the same time, these were some of the most endearing scenes as they always featured the dog puppet on the cable across the stage, which I thought was one of the most effective uses of design.

The design and the actor functioned well with the writing of the piece to produce a meticulously layered story.  Themes slowly revealed themselves and dots were connected to present an immensely complex story.  Both Arnaud and Frederick’s lives slowly slip out of their grasp even as they attempt to wield a tighter grasp over them.  Their identities slip away from them and they get pulled into a world of darkness.  Their quests mirror that of Andersen’s as well as that of this story The Driad; we follow the big pretty lights in search of validation, but who can give that to us in a way that truly satisfies us?  In the meantime we lose our innocence and true sense of ourselves and from where we came.  I found the story and writing intellectually very stimulating but sometimes dry.  The whole piece was a very dark affair, literally and figuratively, and there was a period where I had to fight drowsiness but it picked up.  The fairy tale quality underscores the piece well but also creates a distance, I very much felt I was watching the journey not experiencing it.  I also felt there was just too much in it.  The story is very segmented, and you become more aware of the segmentation as the technology is used in different ways for each different episode.  It seems like we watch several different short plays, as a result of both the plot and the design, and try as I might I cannot for the life of me think of a reason why this piece does not have an intermission.  It does not make it easy on its audience, which on the one hand I greatly admire, but sometimes its rigid insistence that you come to it is taxing.

Something else that struck me about this particular experience of seeing The Andersen Project was seeing it in that particular space.  ArtsEmerson’s Cutler Majestic Theater is beautiful, a space anyone would love to perform in.  A little ways into the performance however, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the piece I was seeing and the style of the space.  The Andersen Project is such a distinctly modern piece, with it’s video and projection use and the contemporary electronic music the Cutler Majestic seemed like an odd venue.  It is so old, ornate, and delicate, it reminds me of some of the older Broadway houses.  It’s traditional beauty and layout reminded me of a place where one would see a classic musical, Shakespeare, or Miller.  It was odd to see such a distinctly contemporary piece with innovative conventions in a venue such as this.

Furthermore I don’t think I’ve ever seen something where I thought so much about the production execution during the performance.  For example the set pieces for the park scenes were these three massive columns that stretched up beyond the audiences view.  These pillars were moved on and off the stage often and easily however.  Same with the two big set pieces that made the peep show and were used facing the other way for the phone station.  Jacques went through his quick changes with blinding efficiency, and some of them were so dramatic you felt there had to be another actor involved.  The peep show, pillars, and screen rotated up and down the deck so smoothly you couldn’t help but be aware of the efficiency with which the production was being managed.  In the same way that although it is a one-man show but he is supported by impressive technical elements, he is also supported by an extremely capable crew that makes an incredible task seem strikingly easy.

Overall, the piece interweaves its themes clearly and succinctly; exploring the mind and message of Hans Christen Andersen’s tales through a contemporary story.  As the audience you encounter the ideas in vastly different ways over the course of the piece.  The use of technology and media does not cloud them however, but makes them very clear, and enables them to be layered over one another extensively.  I find this emphasis on story to be the most compelling element of work like LePage’s, Young Jean Lee, Tim Crouch, etc.  That while pushing the envelope of form they remain clear about and devoted to the story they set out to tell.  The other thing that really struck me about this piece, in thinking about the innovative theatre we’ve been discussing recently, was that the audience’s role was very traditional.  We sat in a dark house, not moving for 2+ hours, watching the story unfold before us on stage, yet it was completely compelling and different.  It was cool to see piece that presents itself in a dynamic new way tailored to a 21st century audience without focusing on moving the audience around or bringing them into the world.  I feel like all my thinking about this style of theatre has been limited by thoughts like “the audience HAS to move or HAS to be involved in some way.”

I was lucky enough get picked for the final question asked of Brustein; about balancing the naturalism in the action of Strindbergs texts with the expressionism of the imagery.  We had a very cool little exchange about how Strindberg explodes out of his own style and although he defined himself as a naturalist he is most certainly not one.  This idea with playing the boundaries and definitions of a style, or -isms, is now really on my mind as I prepare to go into rehearsal for my Thesis, Strindberg’s Creditors.  I’m very interested in blurring the line of naturalism in the play, and I think the themes and imagery totally support that.

This is a small part of a larger whole, I’ve been obsessed with the practice of re-imagination of old work all year, because I think it has a large place in the future of theatre in this country.  I love this article from the NY Times about Calixto Bieito and his work, Don’t focus on the orgies, he has vision. The central of idea of the article, to not dismiss him as a provocateur, is really important.  Seeing past the radicalness of a re-imagination to the core of what it is saying as a new piece is essential to the development of this style of theatre.  The greatest texts, Shakespeare, Strindberg, Ibsen, etc, lend themselves to this because they were at their time so epic and groundbreaking, they already exist on the edges of style.

This background, The King’s Speech On Stage on the screenwriter and the story now being put in play form makes me like it all the more.  Turns out the writer, David Seidler, is 74, has never had a project close to this magnitude, and grew up with a stutter.  When writing the movie he felt overwhelmed, and based off a suggestion from his wife he wrote the play to help himself focus on the essential relationships and their anchoring of the piece.  This is very important to note when considering the significance of the film’s success, it has superb sound design, editing, cinematography, and art direction (indeed it was nominated for an Oscar in all of these categories) but what carries it is the story and human connections (won oscars for best picture, screenplay, direction, and actor).  Focus on technology is driving story and character from film, and I hope lessons can be taken from the success of a film like this.  Audiences have been seduced by the scale on which film can tell story but the industry is so consumed with expanding that scope it’s forgetting the story.  The physical limitations of theatre focus the attention on story, relationships, and characters in the same way that anchors the most successful films.

Seidler remarks, “In my mind, the films’ function was to give me enough money to help me get the play done.”  There’s great honesty here, it remind me of the what Michael Maso said that Kate referenced in her last post as well, that a theatre with money can focus on theatre, a theatre without money focuses on money.”   I said in my last post that sometimes I feel there is an aversion within the arts to being accessible, and I think the same is clearly true of making money as well.  But as this example shows, that for the most part for art to be expansive and influential it has to consider the playing field.

Now, the “look at social media, look at how fast things change these days” point is very familiar at this juncture, but I don’t think it’s significance can be overstated.  I think when you look at what is happening in social, political, and economic arenas in the US and around the world it is not misguided to say that we are square in the middle of a crossroads, from which the path forward will be decided incrementally.  I think there is great potential for the arts to gain influence and awareness as the world re-adjusts itself.  Sometimes I feel like there is almost a desire within the arts to be a closed system, maybe because as people we tend to have such a difficult time coexisting with folks who aren’t artistically inclined.  The ways in which the world around us is changing though, is offering new opportunities for culture to find a more prominent place.

This article from HowlRound, Turning Our Eyes Forward, is a great example of artists experimenting to see what kind of new place culture can occupy in the communities of the 21st century.  What I love is that there project is born from assessing what it is that theatre has that it can offer a 21st century way of life, and how it can change to make that significance clearer to an audience outside of the typical fare for theatre in this country.  I love this quotation, “To survive, theater must rise to this challenge and think of itself not as a venue but as an incredibly rich resource with unique skill in cultivating collaboration, facilitating exchange, and creating dynamic new places in a constantly changing world” (Cullinan).  Theatre has so much to offer that it is not made apparent.  I think their notion that it is not that the general public does not value culture but that the way we interact with it needs to be updated is dead on.  This strikes a fairly similar theme as my last post on The Prospero Project, but as I inevitably look to the future day in and day out I think I am hoping that the changes the world is hinting at are realized and we move into a new enlightenment.  Within the arts especially we need to dream ambitiously that it can be true.

So I initially looked into this story because of it’s subtitle on ArtsJournalDaily: “Can theatre save Europe?”  Disclaimer, the piece does not really explore that idea it’s just the clever button on the end of it, I think it is a part of a larger conversation regarding the role of culture in reviving the European economy of which I at least am not up to speed on.  It is a little difficult to understand exactly what the project is, as I understand it the theaters involved engage in a “theatrical exchange” of sorts where they send actors, directors, interns, playwrights etc to work at each others theaters, but the centerpiece of the project, I believe, is that the six theaters produce pieces together that then tour each others cities.  What’s so exciting about it in my mind is the effect collaboration on this level could have on the proliferation of theatre around the world.  I’ve been thinking so much about the future lately and my feelings about what I want to do change daily.  The past week I’ve been thinking a lot about being bold with my aspirations and dreaming beyond “New York or LA?”  I think about classes like this one, Dramaturgy, Drama Crit, and I feel a strong pull towards a path that would allow me participate in the theatrical traditions and history we study in these classes, pursuing something in academia, looking into programs in Europe, etc.  In Theater Management Michael Maso was talking about the extremely minimal effects the recession has had on Broadway, I don’t think the question posed in the subtitle is a crazy one.  If more programs like this develop, that take place on a grand scale, are commercially viable, and not as artless as the majority of Broadway I think theater can be taken exciting new places recognized for it’s essential value to society.