Butoh at SVT

Every 3rd Thursday, Butoh has been going down in Salvage Vanguard's art gallery/lobby. These performances by Spank Dance Company, under the leadership of Artistic Director Ellen Bartel, are more of a hybridization of Butoh than an absolute aesthetic perfection of this 20th century-contemporary Japanese dance and movement style. Butoh has a visually stunning repertoire with performers most notably covered head to toe in white ash, contorting their bodies in unfamiliar forms, appearing like ghosts rising from sunken darkness. Butoh is an expression of bodies moving in space, rather than a specific technique, rather than a vocabulary of terms. In fact, one could perform Butoh alone on a beach, without spectators, using the landscape and its surrounding elements to inspire movement or even intentional non-movement.

My perspective on Butoh is less about cerebral interpretation, and more about the essence of feeling evoked by watching performers elaborate their distortions in face, form, body and sound. I am not interested in understanding metaphors. It is Butoh's quintessential connection to, among many things, Artaudian cruelty that sparks my aesthetic engagement. So, last night, in a quick decision, I took a small group to see Spank's piece.

From a corner in the gallery, spreading out to make a loose square playing space, were layers of flat dull pink insulation slabs. A speaker, guitar, and effects machines backed to the wall. Dirty karaoke images played on flanking television sets, (though these were already set gallery space pieces). The performance begins simply with "dancers" walking and holding station upon the transitory pink floors. One, (Ellen Bartel) dressed in Gothic, gossamer black, stands crooked and erect. Another (Mari Akita), crouched still in a military jacket. The instrumentalist (Adam Sultan) is in all black, wearing a gimp mask to cover face and hair, perhaps a comment about Butoh's white ashes mutating into dark masochist submission.

It is nearly impossible to describe the images and the story that unfolds. I see something poignant in each second that passes. A dancer tapping the floor slowly, an upside down gaze, elbows in disarray, heads cocked awkwardly, tension and release, flow and destructive collapse. The insulation slabs were used as arbitrary props, as extended horizontal planes dangling from a dancer's feet; as crackling noises captured in reverb loops and tumbling falls of rupture. Noises and sounds of live bodies crunching the mats by the weight of their bodies mix with droning electronic aches and woes, a melancholic bliss. With the musician's back to the audience at all times, he appeared as slave, orchestrating the nearby creatures who vibrate a tense languidness, relentlessly pursuing an unobtainable goal.

From the corner, a sudden burst of fuzzy, colorful assorted sized balls rained on the playing space. More slow gestural associations and destruction of the space. The gothic dancer slowly drags the plastic grocery bag full of balls over the other dancer's head, slightly nodding at the profane. She exits while the other implodes back into her body with the sound hiccuping in and out of spectral existence.

The Wizard of Oz

It’s balmy and hot as we approach the East Austin home. Walking towards the entrance, there is a large yard with various brick-a-brack and run-down outdoor furniture, including a twin mattress, some rusty chairs, tires, and weathered wooden tables. As I enter the house, I see drapes of cloth hanging from walls. Moving deeper inside the home is like entering a cave, or a sultan’s secret hide-a-way brothel. Deep reds and blues, shimmering sheets of gold are strewn from every corner and perpendicular. I am in awe. Moving labyrinthine through the steamy home, an opening appears. The playing space! Loft-like levels and underneath seating spots are cozily crammed together. Schechner’s Dionysus in ’69 performance studies flashback.

We are here to watch Austin Drama Club perform The Wizard of Oz. As we wait for half an hour, sweating in the dank, stale air, I indulge in a little BYOB. Other spectators carry on conversations, using fans and handkerchiefs to cool the sweat. Finally, the show begins and I ignore the heat.

A velvet curtain opens in the tiny alcove spot within the half-arena space. Here’s Aunt Em, Dorothy, her Uncle, and her little dog, too. They count chicken eggs that did not hatch properly. Dorothy, dark hair, wide brown eyes, moves downstage to open with the Rainbow song. You know the one. The music is soft compared to her vocals, which seems to be a conscious choice since the volume for the recorded music stays the same throughout. In two corners are monitors to provide a vantage point for audience seated on the wings. The technology, along with the fun costumes, creates an aesthetic bordering on steam-punk and gothic industrial. And the camera and monitors do not overburden the live performance with excessive media.

I hold my tongue, desperately wanting to sing along with Dorothy. After the enchantment of the song, transitions move into plot and story as easily as a welcome breeze. Performers negotiate space with their dance numbers nimbly and also with a clunkiness that, as my friend says, reminds you of putting on a play for your family when you were a kid. However, these actors are working hard, and are well-oiled (eh, Tin Man?). There is no slacking.

At intermission, we step outside to witness another show. The sky is lighting up in the Northeast, storms are brewing! Tornados are approaching! The wind stirs the trees wildly, the temperature drops ten degrees. I am carried away to Oz.

Throughout, I had the sense that director Justin Lavergne’s intention is to recreate the filmic version of the show through a live performance that then drops down and out of expected notions of theater space. I mean to say that although there is most certainly a space for performance in this home, the atmosphere is funky and antique, as if we are reminded to gaze at theater with the eyes of a child again, to appreciate the wonder of costumes, songs, jumpy movement, laughter, and temporary communal space. It's this wonder that I long for, in life, and it's double, the theater.

The Long Now by Shrewd Productions

The Long Now

A soft piano lullaby with a lulling and feminine voice start the show. A woman sits downstage right, alone, and gently speaks out, “I have a secret.” And thus, The Long Now unfolds. This woman, Tish, played passionately by Shannon Grounds, is a social recluse, backing away from her super-friendly co-worker, Sherrie (Anne Hulsman) for lunch dates, or coiling in retreat from her sexually inappropriate and awkward boss. Tish lives in a haunted world, always lonely, preferring to live in memories from the past rather than approaching the present with awareness.

She speaks out again, “Time. Take me there.” On a white, framed scrim, a shadow puppet, hand and rod style, with a textured face in the shape of an old grandfather clock appears. A deep, female voice responds to her, “Tiiiiiish.” Time (voice elegantly done, and amplified live by T. Lynn Mikeska) is Tish’s only friend. Her toxic relationship with Time trains Tish to visit only happy memories and sweet exchanges. One of these moments from the past involves a school crush, Larry (Mason Stewart) whose mutual affection for Tish is rekindled and brought to fruition in the present by a happenstance reunion.

Now in a relationship with a man she adores, Tish denies Time, but the past lures her like an addiction until eventually, Tish retreats again, but the memory includes the tragic fatality of her mother and Larry’s passive involvement in the accident. The cycle of loneliness and depression begins again. Healing the past is on an unbreakable loop without the means to stop the pain. And this is fundamentally what The Long Now gives us: a play about trauma.

Using a shadow puppet as a character for Time is rather convenient and a good solution to a possibly esoteric force on stage. The puppet is also dynamic in its staging due to the other three screens, including a large central one, to display its shadowy grandeur. Shannon Grounds as Tish is often speaking to Time outward to the audience, with the silhouette cast behind her. It’s a highly theatricalized trick, but works well for this production.

The flow of the story moves along with good speed and agility, including quick set changes and scene transitions. Some of the more touching moments are when Grounds curls up into herself, seated on the floor, listening to loud death metal music—an affective sonic contrast that expresses her internal grieving against the hush-hush piano tunes’ reprise. Mason Stewart’s monologue about being a monster to his wife is heartfelt, engaging, and eerie. Director and writer Beth Burns accomplished a sturdy script and a solid piece with the help of Shrewd Productions.

The purpose of a new play is to explore and approach subjects with new perspectives or angles. Time travel and grief are certainly not new topics, but the unique personalization and individualized voice on the topic is the innovation here. Although there is room for excellence in this production, the attempt and execution of an old theme from a fresh voice is daring and exciting. And just like theater’s ephemeral “disappearing acts,” this piece reminds us that living in the past denies us the joy of the present. Make theater, perform outside cliché, strive for majesty, and move gently, compassionately onward through trauma.

GuruGuru

After a noon artists’ talk at Fusebox, I was approached to be a part of Rotozaza’s GuruGuru. I was told to grab an instruction sheet. This piece of paper instructed me to listen to what I was told in the headphones, and to freely interpret the “character” I was to become however I liked.

Five of us, including several of the artists involved (a test run for them), went into a closed room. Here there was a semi-circle of five chairs with name tags on them. I was “Bobby.” Arbitrarily chosen, I’d imagine. A television set flanked by two large fake plants was center, and a stream of headphone wires emerged underneath the t.v. podium. I put my headphones on, took my seat, and others did the same.

In my ears, a deep, soft voice speaks: “Hello Bobby.”

For the next 50 minutes or so, the group of us are co-creating an avatar on the television through a series of instructions. I speak when told by the headphones. I am “wired” the entire time. The “guru” is the face we are creating on the television set. We are instructed to decide how to shape the eyes, hair, nose, mouth, ect. But I never had agency in this; the voice in my head was telling me what to say, and sometimes how to say it. Essentially, five of us had a scripted conversation, not knowing what will come next, or who will speak next, or where the conversation will turn. I was passively speaking, all the while my real self was highly entertained by the innovation. I wondered what the others were hearing, and if their expressions were interpretations grown from their organic personalities, or if the facial gestures and movements were explicit instructions. After a while, the complication of character, will, identity, intention and performance blur into a heightened awareness of schizophrenic fervor.

When the machine had a “bungle,” (or a “bug") and the t.v. went grainy and fuzzy, or switched channels spontaneously to a home-shopping show, we were left not knowing how to respond, but we still had the headphone instructions to save us from being utterly lost and vulnerable. Once complete, we exit. I was dizzy from the whirl of it all. Thoughts of choice, market commerce, popular culture, and public identities jumble in the brain.

erection

Bright lights penetrate the iris as we wait for a much-lauded Fusebox Festival multi-media dance performance. It’s an import from Toulouse, France titled érection. (And yes, it does have the same meaning in French.) However, all innuendos aside, the piece is a conceptual musing of man’s journey from four-legged apes into upright and foot-walking homo sapiens using themes within science fiction extremes.

Dancer Pierre Rigal rests prone, lifeless, on a square with lights increasingly brightening beneath him like white prison gridlines. Suddenly, his chest thrusts like an arched heartbeat burst towards the heavens, and collapses. He slides on his back 180 degrees, and repeats. The lights beneath him play and stretch like a living canvas of color. Repeatedly, the sole man on stage frolics, struggles, and combats with a series of light sequences that dance with him in futuristic Tron-like coldness. He is alone in his constant quest for a more efficient means to move.

Rigal extends and contorts his body in most every conceivable way that might breach a method to upright movement. He tries elbows, shoulders, and belly to no avail. Soundscapes of white noise, bleeps and mechanical blurps dissolve into hypnotic drums and drones that crescendo towards the moment of discovery. Two feet on the ground and he’s off running. Strobes flicker as he sheds his clothing (mostly), building in intensity while he expresses grimacing faces with mouth agape. Suddenly, he suspends several feet above the stage. The trompe de l’oeil of the strobe is exhilarating: a floating man is before me. The magic is in the witnessing.

Then, he disappears into dark. Another electric grid work of green lines. A wavy pattern forms on the lines in upstage darkness. He steps forward and uses limbs to create geometry and angles. Then, centering himself, he faces the audience in stillness. A grainy green light grows on his flesh. The image shifts to a digitized replica of himself. His body provides the projection screen, and he aligns with this image with stunning precision. Slowly, he leans forward to look at us as his double does the same. He lowers to the ground again, his back toward us, but the image of himself looks at us from the vantage of his back. A dead image projects onto the live one like a ghost of the self haunting itself.

The Method Gun

Everyone is in the light, including the audience, as we watch the actors move about on stage. One plays a piano, another watches whimsically. Another rests. On the walls of the space are target practice silhouettes. A bird cage with a dangling gun inside sits center stage. Mini-blinds on rolling caster frames. A small bed frame, chairs, an overhead projector (the first-generation transparency type). Basically, the set is a mock studio/rehearsal space with the target practice figures as metonym: an actor must hit her mark like a bullet to the X spot. Precision in delivery, elegance in portrayal, he must dive in the depths of his own self to uncover the secrets of effective acting. Thus, we begin to understand the overarching theme of Rude Mechanicals' remounted/reworked original production, The Method Gun. To act is dangerous. An actor is guerilla artist, loaded with the artillery of emotions and physicality to puncture holes and injure spectator reception. In other words, an actor aims to move us by any means necessary.

The Method Gun is a semi-fictitious tale of a renowned acting coach loosely based on Stella Adler, the infamous teacher whose students include Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, and Peter Bogdanovich. She believed that an actor’s real life is the substance to use for performing, rather than simply working mimesis or substitution recall. Life and art are intertwined, as exemplified in this production’s blatant play with fourth wall disappearance/reappearance. In one scene, there is an interview with camera and boom microphone taking place. The texture of the scene is like those grainy and endearingly sloppy 16-millimeter stock footage outtakes. The boom operator shaking about, the light source wobbly. Here we see that theatre cannot be translated through film, that live bodies in space are more visceral and raw than any recorded media.

Performers wait for their guru, Stella Burden, through endless rehearsals of A Streetcar Named Desire, but as an experiment, not using the main characters. Their attempt becomes frustrating, futile, heroic, elegant, ridiculous and perilous— all reflections of acting techniques. They engage in various exercises to hone their skills in crying and kissing by setting a timer and mechanically running through physical expressions. Another exercise particularly pleasing to watch is Rasaboxes. They scrawl in chalk interlocked boxes on the floor with various emotional words written on them. As the performers hop, scoot, crawl or step into each box, they encapsulate the emotion to the fullest extent, making the spectacle a comedic hodge-podge of performer virtuosity. This ensemble Rude Mechanicals cast is spot on in their fast-paced, slick movement from one moment to the next. They all exude a wild-eyed stare and intensity that is all too familiar in the throngs of rehearsals. This makes me want to call them all, at least the “characters” they portray (sometimes the actual performer behind the performer) as ascetics of holy theatre.

There is so much wonderful, meaty material in Method Gun for those in the “know.” I mean to say, actors, directors, even writers. It’s about time we start talking about ourselves with all the humor, grace, and passion that the lay-folk may find off-putting. Yes, we do crazy things to manufacture emotions for an audience. Yes, sometimes we are wrong or have lost our way. But what fascinating art acting is when observed with compassionate scrutiny.

Dream Sequence

Dream journaling is a useful technique to understand our hopes and fears. Remembering and recording our dreams is a widely practiced method to unlocking doors of the psyche. From mystics to psychotherapists, they ask the question: why dream? What is the function of dreams in this linear, logical world of day jobs, bills, debts, relationships and responsibilities? Is it enough to dream without bothering to invest time in their messages, that is, if messages are their intent? In the space of a black box theater, performers in Dream Sequence tackle the unruly task of physically pulling out their uniquely personal dreams for an audience. With heavy emphasis on repetitive, specific gestures, a collage of sounds, and ensemble movements, this New Works Festival production successfully surpasses expectations.

The show opens with the ensemble posed in tableau vivant, switching to a new position every couple minutes or so as the audience enters. We are being watched as we watch them. A cowboy in black, with clinkity-clink spurs moves in dreamy slowness away from a tall blonde with cowboy hat in parallel form, flanked by mirroring women on two sides. There is a question posed in voiceover recording, a quote from Czech writer, Milan Kundera. Who is the dreamer here? How do we begin to identify or recognize ourselves in the nonsensical drama of dreams? Director Fadi Skeiker gives us a method: use the creative house of theater as vehicle for dream interpretation. Though a seemingly simple exercise, the mechanics of theater pose challenges that could overwhelm everyone involved. How might a woman’s escape from a lascivious lizard in a classroom play out? Or a young man’s whimsical walk with a past love reunited? Or another woman’s trauma of not being served the hamburger she salivated over in a deli line? On paper, these scenarios don’t seem too far-fetched, but contextually, following the full story line of a dream, the adventures turn epic. Simplicity expands into complexity until the dreamer wakes from the journey.

And it is a journey that Skeiker and his cast, including the eight dreamers, take us on. Although each monologue is an actual dream of the performer, the presentation of them as separate stories in one staged piece flows pleasantly. Transitions include multi-dimensional use of space, eerie sounds and crisp movement. Not an inch is left undiscovered on the floor. Droning white noise would shift to train engines screeching or background party gibberish to accompany dreamscapes. Lights of varying colors flickered rapidly during heights of tension.

Actors used only their bodies to convey images that were once so vivid in dreams. A gun pantomimed functions well in performance by emphasizing the people shot down rather than the object itself. An IPod becomes a holy thing through an actor’s focused longing in the distance. A ketchup dispenser she pushes down, down, down, faster, faster, faster, becomes an extension of a woman’s frustration with food. And here is where we, as the audience, have the perhaps awkward inclination, to act as little Jungs and Frueds. Does she have an eating disorder? Is this what the dream symbolizes? Does she have borderline personality disorder because she needs acceptance and approval of her dream audience in a dream musical she hasn’t rehearsed to validate her existence? Does he regret his immature actions that causes him to lose a true love?

Through Dream Sequence, we appreciate the intimate beauty and terror of our own metaphors of desire. Like the cowboy who rides the horse into the unknown expanse of the West, dreams are wild, untamed territory where dangers and shadows lurk, where demons and ghosts haunt abandoned or forgotten and dusty terrain, waiting to be brought to light and polished into love and acceptance of ourselves. Through dreams, we may stumble upon rivers of gold insight. Take a sip, indulge. Let dreams flow to wisdom.