Tag Archives: theater

day 1 report

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Woke up, got out of bed, realized I left my comb at home, so my hair was huge.

I always forget that bagels are really better here. I’m sure that in a few weeks I’ll have re-deluded myself into thinking the Posh Bagel is a good enough approximation, but the difference in quality is definitely marked.

I meandered over to the MOMA, where I saw an interesting exhibit by Thomas Demand, who is a German photographer. He takes found photographs of places and then reconstructs the whole scene, life-size, using cardboard and colored paper. The result is a lot like those fake cardboard model computers you see in office supply stores, but more cartoony. He then takes huge photographs of his scenes. A lot of attention is paid to detail, but it is still clearly fake. The pictures were by and large of banal places — office copy rooms, classrooms, a desk with coffee mug and papers strewn about. The flatness of everything reflected the flatness of corporate life.

From there to TKTS, where I stood in line to get somewhat mediocre seats to see Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. I’ve been a big fan of Bill Irwin since my parents taped his show The Regard of Flight off of PBS (onto Beta cassette, no less). His interpretation of George was intriguing — I question whether his mode of living with Martha in the play was an ultimately sustainable one in the world outside the play. Turner, for her part, was also good — less greedily domineering than one might expect from the script, which only worked to the play’s advantage. The first act was a bit slow, and Adam pointed out that the play needed to be more merciless to the audience. The way it played out in the theater made it too easy to laugh and then forget about the real brutality of the lines (e.g. “I’d divorce you if you existed”). The blocking felt like blocking a little too often. Sometimes I felt the tension justified the separation, other times I felt they were calling to each other from across the room for no reason at all. All in all though, definitely worth seeing, and it was nice to see it on stage instead of in the film, where your views are so constrained by the director.

Before the play though, I hit up a little Japanese hole-in-the-wall place recommended by Winnie called Otafuku. They serve okonomiyaki and takoyaki, which are both Kansai (West-central) specialities. I had the former, which is a sort of omelette-like concoction with cabbage and other veggies, meat, and some sort of sauce with Japanese mayo, bonito flakes, and other tastiness. Messy, but good. I want to try the takoyaki sometime, which are fried battered balls of octopus or other tasty fillings. The place is on 10th near 3rd and well worth it, especially for the $5-$10 range.

From there I went to the Strand and bought too many books. ‘Nuff said. Mmmm, plays.

Post-play we meandered down to the Yaffa Cafe, where my incipient headache made it impossible for me to finish my somewhat over-sauced pasta. Adam had a salmon thing with potatoes and brown rice that look ed a lot better. It made me wish there were more 24 hour places in the Bay Area, dammit.

Travesties

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by Tom Stoppard. I saw a production of this on Sunday by the Shotgun Players, and it truly made the play come alive. Reading the script of Travesties can drive one a bit crazy. Much of the play’s structure, which stems from its central questions of memory and the revision of history, has to be teased out in the reading but is crystal clear on stage. Sabrina Klein, the director, used a very light touch, which was both this production’s success and downfall.

The play is the tangled-up reminiscence of Henry Carr, a diplomat posted in Zurich in 1918. At that time, James Joyce, Tristan Tzara (the Dadaist) and Lenin were all in Zurich. The real Carr was approached by Joyce to play the part of Algernon in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest, which Carr accepted. All the actors were expected to sell a certain number of tickets, and Carr didn’t meet his quota, so Joyce sued him for the value of the unsold tickets. Carr filed a counter suit for for twelve times the amount to cover the cost of a pair of pants he had tailored for his costume. Joyce won and Carr lost, in what Carr believes is a travesty of justice.

Fast forward to the “present” (presumably 1974, when the play premiered), and Carr, who has led a very undistinguished life, is trying, in his semi-senility, to title his memoirs. Because he was there at a critical time when Dadaism was flourishing, Joyce was writing Ulysses, and Lenin was trying to get back to Russia to join the revolution, Carr seeks to place himself in history so that all these famous figures revolved around his actions. In the telling, he muddles up the truth with his fantasies and with the script Earnest. His travesty of justice is wrapped in with a travesty of Earnest.

Klein’s approach to Carr’s many revisions is mechanical choerography that suggests rewinding a videotape, although much less literal. The actor playing Carr negotiates the pages-long stop-and-go narrative monologues well, albeit too evenly. Carr is an affable fellow, eager to claim his stake in history, the sort of funny old man who you sit next to in the plane. When he tells you his life story, you just smile and nod. Carr’s claim at the end is that “if you can’t be revolutionary, you might as well be an artist,” and vice-versa. But Carr himself is neither artist nor revolutionary, and there is something a little crass in trying to throw himself into their company. What this production gives Carr is gentle understanding without critique. The bite is really what’s missing here.

However, the play is very funny, although the segments from Earnest could have been played up more. When reading it’s clear what lines are lifted from the play, especially if you know it well, but in performance some things have to be made a little clearer. This may be my bias, though. Joyce’s entrance with Bracknell’s line “arise sir, from that semi-recumbent position,” was hurried and lacked the stentorian oomph that the best Bracknell’s have (c.f. Dame Edith Evans). Lenin’s Bracknell reference was better — “to lose one revolution may be regarded as misfortune. To lose two seems like carelessness!”

The design was perfectly in tune with the production. The set, by Alf Pollard, is wonderfully cluttered with all manner of objects and furniture, including a toilet and several soapboxes on which Tzara and Lenin can rant. Since Carr’s obsession is with pants, the costumes feature prominently, and the designs of Christine Crook (with whom I acted in Marat/Sade) were spot on. Tzara’s suit coat had breast pockets with handkerchiefs on the arms, and his first crazy-man costume was hilarious. Joyce’s mismatching suits, a source of consternation for Carr, were excellent.

All in all, definitely a production worth seeing. Stoppard is very often done, but not often done well, and this production reminds you why he’s a great writer.

violence in Birmingham

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The play Behzti has been shut down due to fears of violence from the Sikh community in Birmingham. Here is the choice quote from Sewa Singh Mandha, a local bigwig in the Sikh community:

In a Sikh temple sexual abuse does not take place; kissing and dancing don’t take place; rape doesn’t take place; homosexual activity doesn’t take place; murders do not take place. I am bringing to the attention of the management of the theatre the sensitive nature of the play because by going into the public domain it will cause deep hurt to the Sikh community.

I’m pretty much at a loss for what to say about this, except that I think it’s horrific that people choose to express their displeasure over the content of a piece of theater by destroying “the front entrance and backstage equipment.” It has often been observed that it is nowhere guaranteed that a citizen has a right to not be offended.

Some might compare a play of this nature to one which depicts Jews as salcious usurers. Certainly if I read a one-line description of The Merchant of Venice I might be offended. Some wild-eyed demagogue might try to convince me that it is a bigoted attack on Judaism and should be protested against. But little I have read about this play says that it is a flatly racist screed against Sikhs, and I categorically refuse to accept violence as a means of expressing political displeasure. What is most disturbing to me is that “representatives of the Sikh community” have refused to condemn the violence, and in fact may be seen to be endorsing it. Perhaps if they wish to live somewhere which does not challenge their views or offer a multiplicity of opinions, they should not live in England?

I’m not saying “deport ’em” or any crap like that. But the expectation that a particular religious community can dictate by violence the artistic expression of citizens of the country in which they inhabit is not one which should be fulfilled.

tooth and nail

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The play I am in, Tooth and Nail, opens next week:

UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies presents the U.S. Premiere of:
TOOTH AND NAIL
Directed by Laura Levin
Puppets by Heather Crow
November 12 – 21
Durham Studio Theater (Dwinelle Hall, entrance near Dwinelle Annex)

Tooth and Nail conjures the specter of apartheid through a spellbinding procession of images, narrative fragments, and gigantic puppets. Written in the final years of apartheid by South Africa’s renowned collective, the Junction Avenue Theater Company, the play questions the place of art and political resistance in the “New South Africa.”

November 12 (8pm), November 13 (8pm), November 14 (7pm)
November 19 (8pm)*, November 20 (8pm), November 21 (2pm)
*Playwright/Director Malcom Purkey, a founding member of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company, will lead a post-performance discussion on November 19th. This event was made possible through the support of the Consortium for the Arts and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

Tickets prices are $14.00 general admission; $10.00 for UC faculty/staff; and $8.00 for students/seniors. Advance tickets may be purchased by phone at TicketWeb by calling (866) 468-3399 or online at www.ticketweb.com (search for UC Berkeley). Advance tickets may also be purchased in-person at the Zellerbach Playhouse box office on Fridays from 1pm to 4pm. Tickets may also be purchased at the door one hour prior to each performance.

PUBLIC LECTURE:
Playwright/Director Malcom Purkey, a founding member of the Junction Avenue Theatre Companyy will give a public lecture: “South African Theatre in Post-Apartheid Democracy” on November 17th at 4pm in the Durham Studio Theater. This event was made possible through the support of the Consortium for the Arts and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

karagoz

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In my aimless web-surfing today I learned about karagoz, a shadow-puppet theater form from Turkey. Although it started in court performances for the Ottoman Sultan, karagoz trickled down to become one of the most popular performing art forms in Turkey. Karagoz, or Black-Eye, is the main character in these plays, and is always cracking jokes at the expense of his friend Hacivad. In structure, it is similar to other folk theater forms — a prologue, set piece, the main play, and fixed epilogue. The plays use stock characters, similar to commedia dell’arte, although necessarily more germane to Turkey. Since I don’t know much about Indonesian puppet theater, I can’t compare it to that, but it would probably be cool to see a performance.

tooth and nail

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I have been cast in the Department of Theater, Dance and Perfomance Studies’ production of Tooth and Nail in the part of Angelo. Originally written by the Junction Avenue Theater Company, the play incorporates life-size puppets and a fragmented narrative to show the complexities of the end days of apartheid and the re-forming of political consciousness in the New South Africa. Angelo is the manservant to a white woman, and the theatrical convention employed in the play is that they only communicate with each other via operatic singing. I’m very excited! Hopefully it will spur me into accomplishing lots of things in my other endeavors as well.

black rider

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I saw The Black Rider at ACT last night. It’s a play by William S. Burroughs, music by Tom Waits, and directed by Robert Wilson.

It was AWESOME. So spot on in so many ways, and I learned many things about theater from it. Perhaps I’ll write about it later when I have more coherent thoughts.

300th post, hooray!

possible audition monologue

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from Lapin Lapin
by Coline Serrau

LAPIN:

[Lapin makes his way to the front of the stage.]

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to make you my monologue. I love my mother very much, I love my father very much, and my brothers and sisters too, I’m very glad I’ve landed in this family, they’re very nice to me, it’s really as if I was one of them, they’re even quite sure that I am.

I arrived here in a spaceship and the ethers injected my fertilized egg into my mother’s womb one day when she was fast asleep with her legs apart. Like a breath of fresh air, an invisible puff of wind, I entered her and grew, feeding on her.

I still don’t know why they sent me here. But I see everything that happens with the eye of a stranger. I have powers, but I’m not using them for the moment. One power I have is that I see everything. This completely changes the way I feel for people.

For example I know the cure for every illness, for every misfortune. It’s horrible, it’s as if it was written in white chalk on a blackboard in front of my eyes. And I also see written on this blackboard that for the moment it wouldn’t do any good if I were to tell these cures.

So I observe their misfortunes in silence, I watch them grow and flourish like beautiful plants and I don’t tell their cures. You, out there in front of me, I’ve learnt you. One day it may perhaps be written on my blackboard that it will do some good to tell these cures.

And now I can see something written on my blackboard that is a bit useful for me to tell you. The cataclysms that are going to descend on this planet won’t bother anybody. There’s nothing interesting for the ethers here. They already possess your resources. They observe you, and they don’t have any feeling for you.

The big difference between them and you is that they know they aren’t the center of anything. And now I can see it written on my blackboard that it won’t do any good to say what I still could say, and nor will the last thing I said mean anything. Right, I’ll go to bed. My love to you all.