Lovecraft Festival (Photos by Aaron Pachesa Photography)

THE OLDEST and strongest emotion of mankind is fear,

and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.  

- H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature

When I think of Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft’s Weird Stories I think of very intelligent people, facing the unknown. An unknown that is not known for a reason, as if we as human beings had evolved a blindspot to these things in order to protect our sanityand allow us to keep functioning as a society – especially after the world turns out to be different than we had ever imagined it. The truly alien nature of the entities that cross the paths of the protagonists (as opposed to “heroes”, as they rarely have a resounding victory) of these stories reminds us of the fragments of dreams we might have which don’t make sense, but disturb us greatly for reasons we don’t quite understand.

RADIOTHEATRE has taken Lovecraft’s stories in this 3rd edition of their regular Lovecraft Festival, and made them more horrific by performing them as a radio play – where we are forced to believe the unbelievable because the story is being told to us aloud – instead of just letting us process the strange visions of Lovecraft only in our heads.  Unlike most of Lovecraft’s stories, which are generally written in the style of a tortured lone soul chronicling his story, the tales being told are split into 3 voices (or in the case of The Horror On Martin’s Beach, a town) so there is always someone we can truly connect and sympathize with – even as the monstrous consumes them (and us) with fear.

Frank Zilinyi (Photo by Aaron Pachesi Photography

As a radio play, the dramatic storytelling of the actors (R. Patrick Alberty, Kevin Gilligan, and Frank Zilinyi), the eerily accurate sound effects (designed by Dan Bianchi with Wes Shippee as Engineer), and moving music (by Dan Bianchi and Kevin Macleod) allowed you to just close your eyes and be swept up in the engrossing story.  However with expert subtly as well as extreme lighting effects pulling us into the other-worldliness of the stories as well as the animated actors who reflect every emotion from happy and adventurous to confused or crazed to saddened or terrified, we the audience gets further drawn in.  By the time the hour and fifteen minute show was done I was somewhat drained, but very touched by what the different characters had gone through.

Frank Zilinyi’s direction and adaption by Dan Bianchi are definitely to be credited: to be frightened by horror is one thing, but to be moved by it is a much greater thing, and that is what this production of The H.P. Lovecraft Festival has accomplished.

This Festival comes in two Programs of stories.

Program A includes The Moon Bog which is a story what happened when someone decided to drain a very special bog and the residents of that bog came out of obscurity to stop him, and The Shadow over Innsmouth  which is a tale of an Irish town mostly inhabited by beings who are half human and half “deep one” (of the Cthulu stories).

Program B has 4 tales including:  The Lurking Fear which begins with 3 men spending a night in an old isolated mansion to investigate disappearances nearby, and ends with the main character learning the horrible truth behind it all, Statement Of Randolph Carter  in which a man in an insane asylum is interviewed by Randolph Carter, and his story changes Randolph forever, The Horror at Martin’s Beach  where a local group of fisherman bring in a “sea monster” 50 ft long and sets up a museum around it’s corpse to gain a profit from it.  Biologists investigating it determine this is a juvenile speciman of an unknown species.  Later it appears it might not be alone…, and finally The Evil Clergyman where a package is sent to a man who is lead to the room of  a deceased priest who was a leader of  strange cult.  He is warned by the landlords of the room not to touch anything, and not to stay there at night.  He doesn’t listen.

In RADIOTHEATRE’s adaption, we particularly see the strength of the ensemble. Instead of a single speaker in The Lurking Fear and The Horror at Martin’s Beach it is more of a greek chorus. The camaraderie of the characters in The Lurking Fear and the diversity of personalities, makes the horror that is felt seem more human because we identify with them more than in the original story.  Particularly in our hero, it makes the story sadder when he realizes the secret behind it all, the madness that caused the disappearances that set them out to investigate in the first place.  Hearing them all tell the tall tales they heard from various people made it make more sense how it could have been ignored so long by the people in the surrounding areas.  How the horrors of a living tree, a snake, a demon were all more acceptable answers to the human mind than the misfortune of evolution that was faced in the end in his narrow escape with the truth.

In The Horror at Martin’s Beach  instead of being told in a dryer, more journalistic sense, as is the original, the cast tells us the story of the events leading up to the horror in an enjoyable dialogue among people of a small town who recount a turning point in their community.  Even in describing the emptiness and desolation left in the aftermath of the story, there is still a bittersweet tone of  appreciation of the beauty of the stark emptiness of the sea on a moonlit night after the horrific events of the story unfold.

The text is basically the same as the original, with slight editing by Dan Bianchi. Frank Zilinyi really shows a great deal of thought and consideration in the direction of this piece, making us feel less alienated by the otherworldly parts of these stories.   The focus seemed much more on being part of community even if the characters involved tended toward isolation in the end.

H.P. Lovecraft had a unique way of seeing the world that helped pave the way for later thoughtful types of almost every other horror/speculative fiction narrator.  We see his influence in works by Alfred Hitchcock and shows such as The Twilight Zone.  As is the moral in many of Lovecraft’s stories, often it is knowledge that is the most damaging element, and while a horrible death may await, there is always a hint that some fates are much, much worse.

What RADIOTHEATRE has done is not so much brought back an ancient artform, but rather redefined it and made two classics better by their reinvention.  If you have the chance (and the gumption), I definitely think it would be worth your while to see one or both of the nights of theatre in this festival while you can.  It’s an experience you won’t soon forget.

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The Thing About Dan, which ran last month, was the first play mounted by Slightly Altered States Theater Company,  written and directed by Sari Caine Glickstein, created in collaboration with actor Michael Hurst (Paul) and improviser Louis Kornfeld ( Zip).

The production was very warmly received and many of the nights the cast was playing to sold-out houses.  Talking with Sari Caine Glickstein before the show she said, “We want to show a reality that’s a little to the left — to show that everyone’s particular reality is questionable.”

The Thing About Dan is a very good  first show to highlight Slightly Altered Productions mission and niche, in that it is all about us asking ourselves “What is really real in this play?” and more than that, what is truly real in our beliefs, and in our interactions with others?  Though subtle at times, it is nevertheless very clever  and well-intentioned in the final calculation.   Sari’s vision brought to life with the help of the rest of the newly formed company has helped Slightly Altered Productions receive 501c3 status quickly and they have an exciting lineup of plays in the pipeline for the rest of the year.

The Thing About Dan was a very interesting play in that the two characters are quirky and amusing to watch.  They give us some insightful ideas to think about, but their Swiss cheesed personalities make it difficult to figure out what is really happening versus what they believe is happening.  The main theme of the play is – What do you do when you life suddenly “falls apart”?  You rely on your friends to help you find meaning.  But what if one of them helps you find out how little meaning  your life might actually have?

The play starts with two old friends waiting for Dan.  This is to be a special weekend of roasting a pig together while watching football – real guy time.  But what’s keeping Dan? We start to see the particular quirks that bind Zip and Paul to each other and alienate them from their wives.

Zip is quirky and almost insane in an eclectic yet friendly way.  He’s sincere and loyal to a fault, just passing through life.  This makes it so that the things which are important to most people – like intimacy  and normal social interaction – are left by the wayside as he focuses instead on his over-elaborate thoughts.

Paul by contrast seems remarkably normal until he starts bringing up his news about Dan.  Apparently Dan has been sleeping with both of their wives for the better part of a year and apparently these wives are leaving (or may have already left) their husbands for Dan on this very day of the big pig roast.  One note to each husband is offered as proof, and this prompts both men to conclude that the logical thing to do now is to wait in the empty house, both armed and ready to take out Dan once he arrives … if he arrives?

In the end we have two notes that seem to tie the unreal to their victims like some sort like of Waiting For Godot except instead of waiting for meaning to come to them, they are trapped by their meanings, their roles, their abilities to achieve what doesn’t need to be done.

The Thing About Dan poses an existential quandary, one in which Dan really doesn’t actually need to exist at all.  His friends could decide to blame him for their issues or they could choose to please him.  Who Dan is and what he does is actually besides the point.

We can see a lot of ourselves in the two characters we see on stage both from who they are as well as from the mirror of who they are.  What this play illustrates so specifically is that if two people aren’t talking about the same thing there’s no real meaning between them. Do you really have a problem if no one sees it?  Can you make a problem not a problem if you deny your own need to change so much?  Does it make sense to blame everything on someone else?

Dan could be whatever cypher we decide to place on him.  It’s an interesting play that makes you think hard about how well you might know anyone (even yourself) because the perceptional filter is skewed just enough to make us want to figure out what is wrong or right about their plight.

Before the play began a live  musician (Roosevelt Dime but others played on different nights) played the blues.  He sticks around in the corners of this drama – an observer who makes the story (a story where no one is sure of what is actually happening) True.   Dime did a great job imparting meaning to the audience with various ambient strums  and picks on the guitar which tell about the characters’ internal workings more than their words did.

Effective sound and lighting design (sound by Gary Ferrar and lighting by Derek Wright) created realistic tones of weather which helped the audience to perceive the environment Zip and Paul find themselves in.  Seeing the actors react at one loud crash or the wind or other noises makes us truly feel the isolation they feel both externally and internally.  The picture is rounded out by the great set design of Willie Groom, depicting an ideal bachelor pad. It included a variety of  strategy games like Risk and Settlers of Catan and other diversions we can tell the guys have spent many hours puzzling out together in the many years of their friendship both before and after meeting Dan.

If this play is remounted I urge you to go and see it, in order to see a new thing about yourself as Paul and Zip try to figure out The Thing About Dan in this punchy story about the hidden recesses of our friends.

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David Lawson’s solo show, VCR Love, had a limited engagement recently at The Brick Theater.  Bold and innovative, this show explored the consequences, both positive and negative, of the increasing availability of porn in American society as seen through his own experiences.

The story begins with Lawson’s first “exposure” to explicit nudity at the impressionable age of 11 (a quick calculation based on context would put the year at 1995) when Lawson saw his first pair of naked female breasts which made an appearance in the seminal classic Animal House.  The mental sensations of this discovery along with the struggle to replicate this initial thrill move him through the next few years of his life from stolen Victoria’s Secret catalogs to taping the “good parts” of MTV like Fiona Apple and Mariah Carey in there slinky skimpies.   “It meant more because of the time I spent waiting for those precious moments on tv, and it would now be preserved forever”. VCR love, indeed.

Lawson follows this up with the exploits he and his friends, Ben and Keith, went on at the age of 14 in search of the forbidden.  From stealing naked yoga videos, to waiting a few hours for their 56.6 k modem to download a 2 minute video on Ben’s parents computer, to calling as many random 1-800 sex lines they could think of  and listening before the charges would kick in.  Did this ruin them or did it lead them to appreciate things more in a simpler time? Because of the investment and the camaraderie of the shared experience something was present then that isn’t as common with porn in this day and age.

Lawson argues for and against the benefits of the modern ease of finding outlets for titillation by pointing at the diversity needed in order to stand out in a saturated marketplace.  It is this which has led to the rise of any imaginable niche through a few carefully crafted keywords at your favorite porn watering hole.  Be it ‘furry’, ‘she-male’ or ‘french threesomes’ the personalization of your predilection offers an ease and even the oddly solipsistic connection that being able to reach out anonymously can be.

For the uninitiated Lawson delves into the world of online porn with stories such as his friend’s “double reverse role-play” with his own sister as they meet in a chat room, each thinking the other is the opposite sex of what they actually are.  He includes anecdotes of viewing the masturbatory habits of strangers that is prevalent on a new social video network known as Chatroulette and other even more “interesting” sites.

Sasha Grey

In the end he advocates that all this is good, pointing to the benefits of becoming a better lover through being able to express more creativity by being truly open about what is most private with his new girlfriend  - who also has an interest in porn.  He relates a touching story of how he found out she liked porn – he said she looked just like Sasha Grey (a famous adult film actress) and she said,”That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever told me.”  That she not only knew the name but also that she found it a complement was what opened a special time of sharing between the two of them.

Now they can talk about different things they’ve seen or would like to try.  Lawson sees this as a way we all could benefit from this modern anonymous catalogue of human sexuality that is available right in our own homes.  By using these tools we could all become better, more capable lovers, engaging in more educated and interesting conversations about sex.  We would not have to be as afraid to talk about these issues in mixed company and not have these barriers that are so strong between the sexes when it comes to … well … sex.

All in all, VCR Love is a good night of comedy.  It takes you from the past to the present with a lot of good storytelling.  Great for a one man comedy night (even moreso than perhaps a theatrical piece).

Since 2/3rds of the audience were women on the night I attended, I’d say Lawson’s prediction of internet porn creating more transparency and more exploration may already be coming to pass.  So go ahead and do your part to help make the world a better place and bring your mixed company to the next production of VCR Love on March 23rd at the Lounge at Dixon Place or perhaps David’s next play Turning Atomic Tricks playing at the Parkside Lounge (March 10) and at  Simplestudios (March 11).  Find out more information from his personal web site at dtlawson.com,

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What do cell phones, natural disasters, and the industrial revolution have in common? LOL: The End (written and performed by Michi Ilona Osato, Una Aya Osato, and Yoshimasa “Sen” Osato) sets out to investigate how the world got to where it is, starting with Man’s earliest domination over nature in order to create shelter, and ending with the isolation that can occur as Man becomes more and more enmeshed in the virtual world of hand-held devices.  Though there are less than a dozen words squeaked out in this dense multimedia interaction (which includes curated new media samples from YouTube, ultramodern kabukesque pieces of clowning, and interpretive dance) the message of this show is still clearly vital, diversified, and meaningful.

The central push of this piece is to show how our scramble for comfort is never-ending and essentially the more we have the more our smaller problems require higher costs to avoid them. The end of the world has never been so engrossing as with the physical comedy and funny dramatic redirections of the audience by Michi as the personification of Greed with its quest to maintain power over others. She sets us in our place while we have pity for Una’s embodiment of the innocence of the havenots around the world and throughout history.

As the story progresses we are given an evolving view and review showing that sometimes those who don’t have the most (or are the  meekest – or most friendly) can actually be  the great causers of  disaster even if they are also the most abused.   They are like drowning victims who will desperately pull down anyone or anything along with them as they sink to the bottom.  Yoshimasa, as the face of the Earth  (or more elusive “Nature”) shows how the earth is patient, but can be irritated at the ridiculousness of Man’s desire to remake the world into something safer and easier to control yet only manages to make it less stable.   While LOL is light-hearted in its depiction of our moves toward disaster, the overall message is more hard-hitting than many documentaries on the subject.  This is perhaps because we can identify with the characters so readily.  With so much meaning laden on so little verbal communication, kudos must be given to the director Moises Belizario who had a lot to orchestrate in this piece. With the sheer number and requirement for precise arrangement, stage manager Clarissa Ligon should get a shout out as well.  The multimedia portions of the show were divided between the sometimes driving and sometimes serene music of Yuri Ryback and Jordan Battiste, as well as by the careful video curation and editing done by Una Aya Osato and Michi Ilona Osato.

Performers from left to right: Una Aya Osato, Michi Ilona Osato, and their father Yoshimasa "Sen" Osato

The beginning of this play, I believe, was intentionally a bit alien and hard to understand; the mysticism of the past which ruled us is so much less in control now-a-days. The dialogue between the three on stage at first seems almost like an abstract dance celebrating color and emotion. By the end of the show the audience is shown a postapocalyptic world where humankind is reduced back to their primal state by a believable set of circumstances.

We see the dance with death, the wonder and the magic of how we react to the power of “disasters” celebrated again by those now newly primitive, echoing the beginning of the play.  In this beautiful yet horrifying dance toward the end, we see the black veil of death alternating with the bright red of fire, blue of water disasters, and even white of disasters of the air in a way that clearly shows the sort of fear modern people could find if our filters of  intervening media of various types were removed.  In this very much the-end-is-the-beginning-is-the-end sort of moment, we realize that most likely, no matter what we do, it is possible the world will go on even if civilization is swept aside by human carelessness.  It becomes quite humbling to see the end where everything returns back to square one, except for the relics of the past strewn around a new landscape.  Like the myths of giants who caused the mountains, the somber peace that enshrouded the audience after the rush of symbolic destruction was palpable.

The image of Yoshimasa as the calmed Earth Spirit in the end  covering his children with a dark veil, with a look of compassion yet a hint of bewilderment and the remaining covering of bright pink hair (representing I think the lasting spiritual miasma which would stay with the earth) that ends the play is  one that will stay with me for a long time.  Try to fit this show in if you can, and you will likely get a lot to reflect on for many days to come.

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The 2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL will run February 22-March 4 at The Kraine Theater & The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st Ave and Ave A). Tickets to all shows may be purchased online at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444.

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Because Frigid slots are limited to 60 minutes some shows have needed to trim their original running time.  Cutting down some of the material can sometimes break a beautifully crafted piece, as you just can’t fit it all in. Not so for Emleigh Wolf who has been bringing The Terrible Manpain of Umberto MacDougal to various audiences on numerous occasions over the last few years, often in small 5-20 minutes sketches at open mics and other venues.  At its current Frigid run at UNDER St. Marks, Wolf really shines as these short skits are able to be united and lengthened.  While always humorous, putting Umberto in a full narrative with a beginning, a middle, and a triumphant end makes The Terrible Manpain of Umberto MacDougal something that I think we can all identify with by the conclusion of the performance.

The performance starts with an introduction as to what manpain actually is: (click here for a previous look at Umberto explaining this truth here) :

“Well, manpain is the pain that men feel.  Not just any pain but the true emotional depths of a man’s soul. While society may want to frown on it, I assure you, it is one of the more critical topics you will encounter.  I hope tonight, to help all the men here, cast off this idea of their unmentionable sentiments and emnbrace the feelings beneath the harsh exterior they’ve been branded with.”

We are then introduced to Umberto’s guitarist, Mike Hamilton, (played by Mike Ogletree)  and begin the process of hearing one story after another outlining how Umberto has gained the gifts to deal with his manpain so effectively that he can help us with ours.  Besides just being a “melancholy guitarist playing a sorrowful tune”, his accompanying guitarist (Mike Ogletree) really does a great acting job as well.  His character is inserted into different parts of the stories being told and interjects just enough to keep the dramatic tension building, and the plot progressing throughout.

Instead of Umberto simply being a character who is parading his troubles, he has trouble with that parade and it becomes overwhelming to him at times, adding a greater dimension to the work as a whole. Umberto talks of his father abandoning him at birth, of the “rental pony” that died at his one and only birthday party, and of his early rejections in love.  There was also the lack of success at many things along the way – except for his endeavors in chronicling his manpain (carefully excerpted sections of his journal are then read).

All seems to be a downer, one that drips manpain onto us so thoroughly that even as we laugh, we cry.  Then comes the first turning point in the story.  One Christmas Umberto, while staying home for Christmas evening alone (his unfortunate usual lot in life)  heard a singing, and a wailing in the street, and then the sounds of cops shouting, ready to pull a fellow sufferer of manpain off to jail.  This motivates Umberto to dash out to the street, to care for his fellow traveler along life’s dusty and tear-drenched highway, and to help this man fully express his manpain for the first time.  Together they cried and talked until the sun rose the next morning.  This gave him a friend and ally, Mike Hamilton, who encouraged Umberto to share his gift of understanding manpain to all the world.  And so began Umberto’s move away from isolation and toward the present day where we see him now telling his stories, sadly, but sadly in a charismatic way.  We are enthralled and want to hear more.

And the more we hear, the more the interaction between Umberto and Mike becomes intense.  More and more painful moments are brought up and the audience becomes invested and concerned as Umberto turns less serene in his moroseness, more desperate, confronting the truths he has yet to deal with.

Eventually the stories move to a climax, where Umberto looks like he might be willing to put all of his manpain behind him.  It looks like it could all begin to turn around finally, and then…

Well if I told you, I’d spoil the ending for you and rob you of the chance to see the great work that Emleigh Wolf and Mike Ogletree have put together, a capstone on the little journey that Umberto has been making at all the venues in the last few years, which the directing of Bricken Sparacino has helped to move to such a satisfying conclusion.

Well maybe I could give you the end but not the context, because Umberto would want to help us all find some better ways to handle our manpain:

“And now, my new friends, you’ve heard my whole story
The heartache, the torment, and even the glory
For every last man, there’s a pain deep inside
But how you handle that pain is for you to decide
You can allow it to keep you in a prison of woe
Or you can use it to help your inner self grow
Our despair has brought us the ultimate gain
And in that lies the essence of true manpain.
Well, manpain is the pain that men feel.
Not just any pain but the true emotional depths of a man’s soul.”

 

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The 2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL will run February 22-March 4 at The Kraine Theater & The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st Ave and Ave A). Tickets to all shows may be purchased online at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444.

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A pear is always more than just a pear and a man is more than the sum of his collaborations.

Coosje the story of Claes Oldenburg (played by Steven Conroy) and his long-time collaborator and wife Coosje van Bruggen (played by Julie Congress). It is also the story of a Pear who is “self-aware” (played by Haley Greenstein).

Like Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, Coosje is a story about how an artist’s process of creating helps them develop a new reality for themselves as well as for the people seeing it.  Coosje allows for intimate interaction with the elements of the creative process.  This play highlights the notion that every piece of art is the completion of a journey for an object (real or imagined, sentient or inanimate) to get to the place where its inclusion in the art creates the context and meaning of the art itself.

The play begins with a short film representing the Happenings of the 50′s and 60′s that occurred organically around the world with many people including Claes Oldenburg.  The Happenings collected people together to do a variety of thing to challenge the rules of convention (think of a more disorganized flash mob before the age of cell phones).  This film is a prequel, of sorts, which sets things up for when we meet our characters.  It is shot in sepia tones and we hear the sound of a clackity old projector. There are various miming people moving in jerky and unusual ways as well as over-graceful and melodramatic ways.  Every movement is laid with meaning  - even if it is to escape the normal meaning of it.

The story begins with the self-aware Pear singing of her journey of discovery as realizing that she is special: she is empowered by this significance to be more than just a snack:

“I’m a pear.  Self-aware … I’ll live 1.000 lives in one for every pear…
I’ll go everywhere…”

And so begins her journey around and around the world and beyond, as she discovers what it means to be human … even if she is a pear…but also searching for her purpose beyond just exploring the world for all those pears that never get beyond the fruitbowl.

This sets the stage for the type of performance that Claes was trying to achieve before he began his journey of challenging  convention by putting everyday objects in extraordinary contexts.  He meets Coosje and they reflect and react to each others’ view of what it means to see the world in terms of art – or art in terms of the world.  Cooje becomes Scully to Claes’ Mulder, and together they create art together unlike any the world has ever seen before.

Looking at the teasers for this show it may seem  like Coosje would be merely a celebration of the fantastic, the absurd, and the surreal — which it is– but the heroes’ journey our characters all go through help them find some very real and provoking truths that are important to be realized and shared in this production.

There is a Pear that sings, dances and – most importantly – explores the world, searching for her purpose. There is also a love story between an artist and a critic.  One wanting to break all conventions of form, the other wanting to figure out how  everything fits together.  Between  moving ballads and giant inflating flowers, there are the personal and spiritual ramifications of a blueberry pie. And much, much more! These all meld together to make some very deep and touching points on why we should all be more playful so as to learn to find out what our purpose in life really is.

Steven Conroy as Claes

The production of the piece is done with great mastery by many talented individuals starting with the short film Happenings (organically arising from the exploits of Giselle Chatelaine, Steven Conroy, Maura Cordial, Ryan Emmons, Haley Greenstein, Ryan Huenstein, Raena Hubbell, Maxwell Schneller, Danny Tieger, and Enrico De Trizio), to the plethora of fantastical art (Jen Neads and Maxwell Schneller) and of course the whimsical costumes (Loring Taoka).  According to actor Steven Conroy who I spoke with briefly after the show,  the writing was done by the ensemble collaboratively  (many of whom are visual artists themselves) after they were inspired by an installation of Oldenburg’s art they had seen together at the MOMA several months ago.  Director (Ryan Emmons) did a great job at orchestrating this complex show with it numerous moving parts, so it looked like it had months of rehersal time behind it.  The songs written by Danny Tieger and music expertly played by Enrico De Trizio (who also did the sound and projections which were an integral part of this piece) as well as the choreography (Olivia Wingerath) and light design (Ryan Hauanstein) put the final touches on this beautiful play premiering at Frigid.  I hope circumstances allow this play to continue on in the future.

Don’t miss out on this thoughtful critique on the nature of art-as- filtering-framework that creates meaning (but then allows that meaning to be flipped around at a moment’s notice).  If you’ve ever wondered what sort of story there could be behind big crazy public art, you need to experience Coosje.

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The 2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL will run February 22-March 4 at The Kraine Theater & The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st Ave and Ave A). Tickets to all shows may be purchased online at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444.

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15 months ago I had the opportunity to review 23 Feet In 12 Minutes as it premiered in the 2010 NYC Fringe Festival.   Since then this show has made it to New Orleans and back with some wonderful work-shopping in the Cape Cod Theatre Project along the way. It came back to New York as part of the All For One Festival and I was lucky enough to see the newly evolved work. While the show only had a 2 day run I thought I’d do an in-depth exploration of the piece highlighting the evolution from the version I saw 15 months ago. I hope 23 Feet In 12 Minutes will continue to be performed and developed in the future, and continue to have a wider and wider audience, because while it gives gripping stories of many of the tragic human consequences that happened following the touchdown of Hurricane Katrina, it also shows us the best of humanity.

Written by Mari Brown, performed by Deanna Pacelli, and directed by Pamela Berlin and David Travis this new revision moves from the free-flowing stream of conciousness writing and performing in the premiere version, to a well thought out piece where every action (or inaction) seems carefully weighted and balanced to tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and a NOW.  At the end I think anyone who sees this will want to do whatever they can to help prevent disasters – wherever they happen in the world – from getting this out of control again by emulating the people they’ve seen represented in this show.  Last time I wrote a review, I compared everyone to heroes.  This time I think it is more apt to compare them to saints both because the Saints are the New Orleans team, but also because I hope that these stories can help others learn to live by the examples given by Saints in the spiritual sense. The fact that all of these characters in 23 Feet In 12 Minutes came from interviews of real people makes it even more inspiring — and akin to the history of what elevates a person to sainthood.

In this new version, there is more of a sense of time passed than of time flowing.  It’s less frantic and more reflective.  We see a group of people who have been through a lot and had different ways of reacting in the end, all of them good, all of them bettering the world in small or larger ways, all seeing the world in a way that was transformed by the experience.

There seems to be more power done with less story, less scenes, giving the audience time to think and digest.  These silent omissions amplify the piece by giving us more time to think about what the story means similarly to the way the characters in this play had time to think since Hurricane Katrina.  An example of this is Robert, who lost 2 people in his family the night of the storm- his granddaughter and his mother.  The story is made some how stronger by the fact that this little girl is never mentioned after she is swept away; as if there is nothing more that could be said which could accurately sum up his grief.  Additionally, the urgency for the family to stay together and keep going is powerful enough to distract Robert, giving him no time to decompress and deal with the loss of his loved ones.  We just have just his own wonder at having arrived at his point in the future when he says in his last line:

If you had told me six years ago, when 85 % of the city was underwater that the Saints were going to win the Superbowl?  I woulda said ‘you crazy’.  But God is Good.

The recent Hurricane Irene is significant in the telling of this story in part because of its lack of significance.  Even though New York City has been hit by a number of hurricanes it has generally been very well prepared for themost contingencies with strong evacuation plans in place.  Looking at the history of hurricane damage in New Orleans, it seems it was truly a perfect storm due to the ill preparedness.

The character of Francisco seems like a perpetual tourist of sorts, so intoxicated is he by the beauty of New Orleans.  He’s never gone beyond the first dream of wanting to make it big taking pictures of the Big Easy.  This dream keeps him moving through all the odd jobs that he had to take to survive over the next 10 years.  He is so marginalized he can’t even afford  to evacuate on the $21 he has left in this world. So when the storm hits he interacts with some homeless people and is guided through the least quick way to get out of New Orleans.  Eventually he ends up as a refugee in San Antonio Texas and has lived there ever since.  Hearing how he kept a cool head throughout, and was ready to lay down his dream after surviving the nightmare is symbolic of many marginal people who either were native to New Orleans or who were attracted to its magic.

One poignant scene is when Francisco is in the airport, five days after Katrina struck.  He waits 3o hours to be evacuated with thousands of other people. Everyone filthy and exhausted by the horror of it all or running around like crazy in the ensuing anarchy.  He finds a guitar and takes it over to where a group of children are and plays “Happy Birthday” because it is the only song he knows.  The children laugh at the silliness of singing “Happy Birthday” again and again and it was the first time he laughed in a week.  Once they begin to board, everyone must go through security.  Seeing infants in dirty diapers being scanned by security greatly frustrates Francisco.  He says in his closing statement:

New Orleans is BROKE.  That’s what new Orleans is.  She is like a little old lady in a cheap fancy church hat who was walking down the street a little bit drunk who was carrying all her cash in her little white purse and she got attacked.  She got beat up.  They took all her money.  And now she has been begging in the street for six YEARS so she’s all dirty and smelly and people think she’s just totally BROKE.  And the irony is the only people who actually help are ALSO BROKE.

We can contrast Francisco with Max, our Saint of Charity, who came to New Orleans as just a tourist for his brother’s bachelor party.  The free living of New Orleans made him uncomfortable because of his devotion to being a strong Christian.  When they hear that the storm is coming they are evacuated in the first wave since they were affluent tourists with means to pay for alternate ways out.  As the disaster begins to unfold, a light dawns on Max that he should get back into the disaster.  What could he do to help?  WWJD? He stretches the truth and claims to work in Sanitation (he was in charge of trash at church).  He follows a somewhat crazed preacher, doing all matter of first aid to save those that are injured working as hard as he could to help as many people as he could.

I was scared.  The enormity of the situation was overwhelming.  But if you bring a prayer to God, you’ve got to be strong enough to leave it there.  You can’t keep running back to check on it, and ask God why he hasn’t done it yet.  You give him your burden and then you wait for his miracle to work.  That’s faith.

We see Louise, a doctor, who at the age of seven was on a ship in World War II which carried Italian soldiers whose wound were being kept open with plaster of Paris.  In her  we see a Saint of Vigilance.  Screams of agony made her very pragmatic, which she uses as her chief virtue in this story.  Whether working in a trauma ward for two days straight or arming the nurses to protect the children’s ward from looters, she is a tough character in this play.

New Orleans is my drug.  And like a junkie I will do anything to protect my stash.

Joseph and his wife made it through the initial storm surge by using a crow bar to hack a hole in their roof so they could be high up during the storm.  They are Our Saints of Collectedness (knowing when to rest). For the first days they walked with an overburdened garbage can on wheels.  They had to set it aside but were welcomed by a friendly stranger who they stayed with for the remaining days until they were evacuated to the Super Dome.  The conditions there were hellish – old people dying, rapes, lack of sanitation and sometimes children who had lost a parent.  A moment that Joseph sees as the defining moment of this time was after he put one of those lost babies onto an opened cardboard box to keep it safe. He and others surrounded the baby, added other babies, forming a ring of calm that spread out in waves throughout the whole place.  He says at the end:

And that’s what you should do if you’re in this situation.  Put a cardboard box on the ground.  You start the calm.  It’ll grow.

There is also Katie: an expert in mobilizing foreign aid, who want to go to New Orleans but is not allowed to go. She mobilizes aid which she is really good at, but is slowed down by all the layers of authorities.  She is our saint of the New Connections in a world too filled with the old and the stagnant ways of thinking.

I have ambulances from Tennessee, I have state troopers from Virginia, I have 15,000 MREs sitting in trucks outside a warehouse in Pennsylvania wating for a a fucking address from you people, I have France and Germany and SENEGAL calling me asking what they can do! BYPASS the fucking chain of command!

This emphasizes why much of the horror and deaths and damages could have been avoided by more efficient planning or by having more determined leadership.

Finally there is a singer, Delilah, who is the type of person you always expect to find in New Orleans, our Saint of Hope. Friendly, full of humor and ready to take on anything.  After she realizes no one is coming to help after  4 days waiting on their roof, and just seeing the helicopters fly by over head in reconnaissance missions, the band of people she was with decided to hotwire a bus and try to make it out.  Eventually they come to an area where there were hundred of reporters who don’t help her any at all, and clearly are there just to cash in on the misery of others.  This infuriates her.   A reporter who was drinking a bottle of water pointed refuses to share with the dehydrated people who haven’t had water in days.  “This is for me and my crew… I’m not giving you anything“. To this Delilah responded:

And you know, I had been really upbeat and trying to keep everybody happy, trying to make the kids laugh and trying to cook and feed people and do everything I could to stay positive, but when she said that to me, I lost it.  I COMPLETELY WENT MAD.

At this point a police officer, who was seeing the whole situation encourages her to go, because it is better to help save some of the people instead of being mad at others for inaction.  She just keeps driving, past  one barricade after another and sees other buses being guarded by national guardsman.  She drives and drives until almost out of gas and then finds a town, and another helpful police officer (showing again an ideal that people in authority should aim to live up to).  Finally she makes it to a place where she knows she’ll be able to start over.

The collaboration between Mari Brown’s writing, Deanna Pacelli expert portrayal of these characters, the new material added since work-shopping the piece, and the directors Pamela Berlin and David Travis have come together to create a strong piece of theatre — one that should continue to grow and evolve.  I could see 23 Feet in 12 Minutes being studied in ethics courses or being used to inspire those who feel like they are hopeless.  I wish the team putting this together all the best of luck and hope I can one day come up with a contribution to society just as good as 23 Feet in 12 Minutes. Many thanks.

~~~

23 Feet in 12 Minutes ran as part of the All For One Festival at Theatre 80 St. Marks.

23 Feet In 12 Minutes from Mari Brown on Vimeo.

Short

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When is a tragedy not a tragedy? When we realize the Only Way Is Forward and healing takes place on a lot of levels.

In the folk-rock musical Pawn, by Karmia Chan Cao (playwright, director, and composer) we see a Canadian family split apart twice in 10 years, first by the oldest son being taken from them in the crumbling of the Twin Towers on September 11th and later on when the younger son volunteers to go overseas for three years to Afghanistan.   The eldest son, Kai, is now just a picture on the top of a shelf in the family’s convenience store (the picture is of Eric Tran who plays piano with the rest of the band).

Now their other son, Abraham Niu (Alex Kaneko) will be finishing his second and final tour of duty in Afghanistan in 5 days and the story of this play circles around the end of his journey home and how he he finds resolution from his brother’s death by making a the most important choice of his life. It is a lush play with many different layers: cultural, spiritual, and that of personal redemption … of many types. It has truly been finely crafted and I hope this play get to “make it big” and spread its message:  to accept the moment we are in and use it to make the future brighter to a larger audience sooner rather than later.

We begin with this family singing forlornly;  they miss their sons terribly. The family is made up of  the mother (Ma played by Sarah Guerrero), the father (Ba played by Julian Kusnadi), and the daughter (Shea played by Alicia Triana).

At the same time, back in Afghanistan, Abraham’s unit finds out that they will have to guard the perimeter of a village they have been working to establish friendly relationships with for several months.  They’ll have to guard to make sure that no one gets out of the village.  They feel like they will be betraying both the villagers as well as themselves, but those are their orders.

[AK featuring Gator (played by Sam Julian) and the ensemble (played by Karen Young, Anna Gu, Christian Ollano, Katherine Neubauer, Mark Hammer Johnson, Rachel Purcell, and Troy Yang) in the Fringe cast]

Abraham has misses his home and this causes him to have a change of heart and he begins trying to warn some of the villagers of the coming danger after comparing the desert with his snowy native land of Alberta, and wishing he could make himself pure again after his time as a soldier in Afghanistan. He finds some children in the targeted area which is to be bombed and tries to get them to call off the run, but he can’t get Gator to stop the run before the first barrage.  He is order to get out of the impact zone before the plane comes back for it’s second pass.  Abraham rushes back in to get the children out and a dying mother presses her baby in his arms.

At the same time his mother, sensing her child is threatened, reaches out with her spirit to protect him however she could. She chants a song of protection as the bombs are zooming in on their targets.

The lights go down and then Abraham finds himself in the Pawn Shop of Time confronted by a stranger.

Once in the Pawn Shop of Time he is approached by someone who introduces himself as Lego (played by Graham Roth), who in part looks like his army buddy Gator but in part reminds him of a childhood toy.  He finds himself surrounded by bits and pieces of memories from his life.  Lego is some cross between Puck and a guardian angel or some personal incarnation of intuition slowed down enormously.

Lego reads from a book, apparently Abraham’s Book of Life which seems to be set the form of a poetic play dialogue with Lego as   narrator.  It explains that Abraham is in the Pawn Shop of Time, where time has been stretched.  What will only be the last few seconds before the bomb above him drops will feel as if it takes up the length of a night.  In that time Abraham will have to make the most important decision of his life: will he run away from the blast site thus saving himself  but dooming the native children to death?

It seems that the metaphor of  Pawn Shop works to bring across the idea that it a place where we have all the forgotten things in our lives, as well as a place to evaluate and decide what can be traded for what.  It also underscores that this is the time for him to no longer be just a pawn, but to finally take control of himself and truly make a decision. But before he makes this most difficult decision, he must look back at his life and see what brought him here.

At the end everyone sees that – as the title says – the “Only Way is Forward”. We see Abraham’s vision of the future and funeral inspirations and how his family finds closure.

In this great musical by Karmia Chan Cao we see a triumphant journey from pain to redemption as a family steps out from under the shadow casts by prejudice in their home in Alberta.  Since the final show was cancelled due to the oncoming Hurricane Irene, instead of a regular review I made a more of a compilation in order to tell a lot of the story, so more people could get a chance to see this. These clips are from an earlier version of the show, with a more basic production.  The Fringe production was very smooth with great sound (sound design by Jason Fang and assisted by Tamarind King) and music (played by this talented group of musicians: Eric Tran playing piano; Nathan Heng-chi Cheung, playing Liuqin, Melodica, and Glockenspiel;  Sterling Camden playing electrical guitar;  Stephen Quiñónez on acoustic guitar, and Karmia Cao on drums) as well as lively dance (choreographed by Alisha Mitchell) beautiful costumes (by Leanna Keyes) and a set that pulls together the many different locations of this play (the convenience store, Afghanistan, Chinatown, New York and The Pawn Shop of Time) in a very balanced and meaningful way (set design by Michael Cohen).

This play has had a lot of world wide critical acclaim, and a very heartfelt and meaningful storyline and I hope it gets the chance to be in the Fringe Encore  Series so we all get another chance to see it again.

~~~
Pawn ran until August 26, 2011 as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.
~~~

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Schadenfreude, the German word meaning  pleasure derived from the pain and suffering of others could almost be a word to describe the dry, witty, quite thoughtful, and generally dark comedy of  74 Minutes of Stereo Radio Theater. This concept was wonderfully explained in Avenue Q  in 2003, but has been referenced in many other places including the Simpsons in 1991. However I think this play requires the audience to utilize schadenfreude differently – as rather a recognition or appreciation of suffering (which would be something like Schäden Anerkennung OR recognition/appreciation of pain).  Since there is always a lesson to be learned or an observation to be had by the characters in Stereo Radio Theater, it plays much more like a parable than a satire of people’s lives.

In 74 Minutes of Stereo Radio Theater, we have a couple playing off the different funny combinations and disasters that can happen when two people have some sort of relationship to each other in the form of eight short one-act plays.  The male roles are played by Andrew Shulman who is also the director, and the female roles are played by Maureen Fitzgerald who is also the writer.

One thing that is very tantalizing about this show is that there is a twist in each of the stories where the essence of the relationship changes so it is different than it started and that becomes the essence of the relationship between the characters in the next piece.

In the beginning of the first play The Essentials there is a change from a couple fighting with each other about every little detail in their lives to the end where they realize the most important thing each of them has is each other.

In the second play, I Have A Really Good Feeling About This, we start with two friends who have never been anything more than friends.  The man continuously goes through a cycle where, when single, he creates an image of the perfect woman.  This image, however,  is so high on a pedestal that when he finally meets someone who will take him (with his plethora of emotional hangups) they can never live up to the fantasy so he quickly drives them away. His friend always tells him it will be okay and then cycle repeats.  They explore the idea of becoming more than just friends, and cheerfully run through the litany of reasons why this idea is such a bad one.  He says that their “sexual miscalculation” will be as bad for them as “a repressed necrophiliac with a skull fetish”.  In other the really GOOD feeling is a very BAD idea.

The third play begins with an obvious visual connection to the former play by having a witch doctor with a large feathered headdress with a skull in the center of it.  The bad idea of the second piece is that the witch doctor – in his need to “appease” the gods – has had the habit of sacrificing a rather large amount of virgin maidens for more and more trifling misfortunes of the society he lives in.  So much so that his once thriving civilization of a quarter of a million brilliant and beautiful people has gone down to 83 old people and children and 7 goats.  This has all been enabled by chief’s advisor – a woman who he has mistaken for a man all these years.  She decides to take a stand against this…

But then something strange happens which twists the story again. I’ll leave you to see what happens while you still can.  You won’t be disappointed.

~~~

74 Minutes of Stereo Radio Theater

Writer: Maureen FitzGerald

1h 15m

www.stereoradiotheater.com
VENUE #18: The Studio at Cherry Lane Theatre
Sat 27 @ 5

Sun 28 @ 2 (FINAL SHOW CANCELLED DUE TO HURRICANE)

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As we get closer and closer to the futuristic realm of cyberpunk, that has been active in our collective imaginations since we first started understanding what computing was or what it could be, one has to ask the questions:

What about the people it could hurt?  Would we even know what it meant to feel that way?  Would dysfunction be the first glimpse into a greater ability to truly live on or beyond “the net”?  If the first person in this new space were alone, would he make friends with virtual projections of himself?

Virtual Solitaire written and performed by Dawson Nichols is a  fast paced drama which does an amazing  job of exploring these themes in a very real and human way — in an artificial world.

To be sure there have been a fair amount of stories written about this.  Perhaps one could say even a majority of cyberpunk stories have a character who has been “burned” by the system or who uses virtual reality as a refuge from a harsh external or internal reality.  We’ve seen this in everything from Mona Lisa Overdrive to the Matrix.  However, even if this theme has been investigated before, the story and performance by Dawson Nichols of Virtual Solitaire is a polished and well thought out investigation of the theme of redefining what is meant by a dangerous experiment in a world where the boundaries between real life and virtual reality become blurry.

Virtual Solitaire is some of the best cyberpunk I’ve read or seen anywhere (and I’ve read a pretty good percentage of the genre).  I would love to see a sequel based in the same world as this.  Nichols came up with a logically consistent and enticing plot angle which explains exactly why there is only one person represented in this one man show. Like most solo pieces, Nichols embodies a range of characters in order to change things up for the audience as well as show off his range. In this show however, this is more than just a device, as others have essentially taken over his brain and all the people have been routed through him for testing.  Thus, everyone is him.  The lighting design (design by Dawson Nichols with Eric Beauzay running the board) creates dramatic transitions from character to character that really sucks you into the virtual world that is being portrayed.

The story begins with main character Nathan stumbling about the stage full of various “glitches in his continuity”. It seems obvious he is a bit messed up as he begins mumbling rapidly and somewhat incoherently until we realize he is not crazy, but actually talking to someone else. He begins to talk to Clarence, a corporate technologist who is trying to “hire” Nathan to do some “extreme prototyping” of a virtual reality mystery game about a murder in an asylum. Clarence, over a private channel, converses with Stanley (Nathan’s boss) who is in charge of the project and tells him about the setup.

At this point Nathan takes us to the beginning of the story, looking at profiles of people involved with the case. Nichols does an amazing job of transforming from one character to the next. The plot is supposed to be displayed in a read-only format and be completely non-interactive with the character, bue due to previous damage to Nathan’s brain from his addiction to bandwidth and early childhood trauma there are numerous break-off points where events from Nathan’s life are being channeled into the story. We see a human drama in the synthetic world of Virtual Solitaire, and a wish to be able to show compassion for Nathan’s character after the world seems to fail at this.

This is a not-to-be missed cyberpunk drama helmed by one talented man who channels a multitude.  Be sure to see Virtual Solitaire while you can.

~~~

Virtual Solitaire
Writer: Dawson Nichols
1h 50m    
facweb.northseattle.edu/gnichols/mycelium/
VENUE #16: Players Theatre
Thu 25 @ 4 Fri 26 @ 8

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