Perhaps, Perhaps, Quizas-- 9/23/12

Full disclosure here: I saw the 20-minute version of Gabriela Munoz' show two years ago and loved it. I also helped Ms. Munoz and Audrey Crabtree a little last year on their piece called “Flocked.” Now that the disclosures are out of the way, let me tell you how much I loved the expanded, hour-long version of “Perhaps, Perhpas...”

This show heaves with equal parts gentleness and strength. Everything is so simple, yet so lived in. A ridiculous-yet-not-to-be-trifled-with creature has staged an event in the the theatre that she hopes, beyond all reasonable possibility, will actually turn into her wedding day. It doesn't, but not, maybe for the reasons one might initially suspect. It is a journey of folly that explores the nature of...what? Relationships? Love? Love as an object? The way in which we are always projecting the desire to become a particular image of ourselves onto our partners? Yes, maybe that. And maybe also the black hole that this tendency can sometimes lead us to.

In her search for the perfect wedding day, this silent charmer with gigantic hair and a white wedding dress starts simply: a wedding path gently laid on the floor with white toilet tissue, to a squaeky-voiced self-accompaniment of the marriage march. Then onto a wedding cake that she cannot resist eating, taking more with each bite, which, of course, leads to self-consciousness and a meager attempt to hit the gym, and then, because the “gym” she imagines is right next to the cake, a return to eating even more cake. There are some beautiful images here, and the situations build simply, starting with one proposition that eventually spills over into an absurd extreme without pushing.

Then onto working the audience to find a suitor, again with the same gentleness, artistry, and integrity.

Her softness has a hard core – always giving more than it asks for. And her images echo sometimes of the kind of distilled bleakness you expect more in Beckett's “Happy Days.”

I don't want to give away too much, as you should soak her journey in yourself.

I will mention that Ms. Munoz provides an example to us all in trusting the simplicity of both her approach and her narrative. She never describes, she simply does. And she never does too much. If you come to her show expecting juggling & acrobatics, you will leave disappointed. But if you come to her show hoping to get your soul juggled in amazingly contoured routine, then you will leave as full as a gorged boa constrictor.

Lauffiti - 9/19/12

Let me preface this post with a statement: This is a young a group with a lot of energy. I respect their efforts and encourage them to explore further. And I am glad they came all the way from Florida to share their work.

Now for the hard part:

There are many strands that could stay, but they are obscured sometimes by technical mistakes and sometimes by a certain lack of appetite and desperation. I think the show needs an experienced director to push each performer further (technically and emotionally) and make this group into a cohesive family with an identifiable hierarchy. As it is, these performers have little to do with one another, which keeps the show from gelling into anything that I could sink my teeth into, emotionally. Part of it is the setup: a clown, a breakdancer, and a dancer do pieces and have almost no interaction at all. It reminds me of another show with a similar setup I saw 15 years ago in Minneapolis called, “Triple Espresso” (which pays all over the place with a big rotating cast.) In that show, a mime, a sensitive lounge pianist, and an abrasive magician (played by Mark Mitten when I saw it) recount their history as a performing trio (I think—it's been a while.) That show was long on individual solos and short on comedy that grew out of the relationships, but it did hold together as a story because of the consistent relationship between the three and the emotional journey they took together. It's actually not a great model to aspire to;, as the show is a little tame; a better one would be the Dingbat Show, Chiche Capon, or any of the other successfully zany families that have graced the stage at The Brick.

A few things that I think need more work:

Costume: I do not think the costume of the clown serves him at all. I don't mean to be precious about it; clowns can get so weird about what they wear and how they choose it. However, the costume should somehow indicate ridiculousness, contradiction, naivete. This big suit on this big guy does nothing for him. It just looks like a suit. He has no relationship to it. It's not even clear that he likes it. This is not helped when he changes into jeans, a well-fitting colorful shirt, and colorful shoes. It just looks like everyday clothes.

The Clown: I am not sure this clown has arrived yet. There are a few things that work, such as the teaching moments with the whistle (although those do feel like a pale imitation of Bob Berky's use of his duck call). His walk is too cute, not vulnerable enough (and this is tough, of course, because his walk might be fine on someone else who WAS actually that naïve and cute.) For him it is a “sign” of clown, but does not feel fully lived-in. Perhaps there is someone else underneath? Someone more desperate?

The Dancer: The same could be said here. She moves very well, but the cat-lady piece goes nowhere. While technically clean, there seems to be a lack of compelling character or story: what is the character that informs the logic of this performance? Also, there is no real payoff in this bit. The magic tricks later on fare better, in terms of structure, but the character still needs work to transform it form something cute into something emotionally compelling.

The Breakdancer/Graffiti Artist: This guy has some dance chops! And the piece is cool. There is a technical problem, however, involving the engine of some of the movement. First, I think it was supposed to look like the spray paint can moved the dancer around. This did not work very convincingly. Second, the can was attached to his hand with some sort of fishing wire, and there is a bit where the can rotates around his hand. I think this is meant to look like the can is weightlessly rotating around his hand with a mind of its own. It doesn't look like that. It looks like he's swinging it around his own hand. I know this sounds nitpicky, but it seems like a lot of the choreography is built around the central illusion of the can moving the dancer, which is a GREAT idea. But it is not executed clearly here.

Logic problems and lack of dynamics deflate many of the games. For example, there is a rather long setup that involves the Clown trying to have a picnic lunch while litter keeps getting thrown behind him. Frustratedly, he finally picks up the litter, but can't manage to hold all the pieces simultaneously. So, he decides to get members from the audience to help him throw them in, in a sort of classic, “watch me as I do this, then you do it,” game. Sounds fine. Except that none of these bits are taken to their logical extremes. The Clown should ONLY go to the audience for help when he has tried every way imaginable to pick up and hold all the pieces of litter and spectacularly failed. That is a bit that could go on for ten minutes! Then, once he initiates the teaching scene with the audience members, THAT is a bit that could go on for another 10 minutes, hitting the highest highs and the lowest lows. The teaching and the subsequent frustration with an audience member who does not understand is an opportunity to push the clown's buttons and get him riled up (as in David's Shiner's classic variation on this theme), it's not funny in and of itself. This is what I mean above when I refer to things in this show feeling like “signs” of clown. The setups are right, but they are not lived-in yet. Every setup should be an opportunity to push both the dynamics of the bit – its use of space, timing, surprise, shape, etc. - and the EMOTIONAL dynamics of the clown. The real humor is to be mined there, not just in creating a scene with audience participation. The coffee cup lip-synch piece suffers from some of the same problems.

One final note: while the brick-breaking contest with the audience member was better and more lived-in than some other parts of the show, it was not handled responsibly on the night I went. Again, the setup is great, but you can't let the audience member ACTUALLY try to break a brick over his knee. That is not cool. The simple rule for the audience should be (and yes, rules are meant to be broken) that the audience wins, the clown looks more foolish that the audience member, and NO ONE GETS HURT.

I'd love to see this show again after some work with a hard-assed director who focused in clarifying the logic of the bits and pushing the emotional range of the characters.

The Dingbat Show - 9/19/12

Hipster Clowns Take Control of a Theatre and S*it all over It

Let me say first that I like this show. It's not for everyone. But I liked it. I did not LOVE it. Although I did love certain parts of it.

Is this a Clown Theatre Show? Yes! But the theatre for this show should definitely include a bar with rotgut specials and a floor encrusted with years of yeast, puke, and less identifiable bodily fluids. It is big, it is cool, it is knockabout, it is at times vile.

There's a sort of “fuck you” attitude that really works for the show. Their introductory line-up is a hot mess of anti-gags – not-so-spectacular bits of acrobacie that nevertheless fit perfectly for this chaotic band of knockabout perverts. (I wonder, however, if some of the chaos could be just a BIT more polished? Sometimes the stage picture and/or the structure of the gags gets a little clouded in all the chaos.)

And what a band! A self-important Emcee in a baggy suit; a pudgy, perverted naif escapee from a 2-bit circus, in full make-up; a spitfire younger sister in a poofy skirt always challenged to hold her own with her dumber brothers; and a white-faced Shakespearean fish out of water who is the most naïve of all. It's definitely a family, one firmly rooted in Rabelaisian grotesquerie and chaos. I like its dynamic. I love the way the brothers greet each other with a mimed splooge ritual. I love the way Tina masquerades as Pedro, the mysongynistic Mexican, in order to be one of the guys.

I think the lynchpin that keeps this family connected with the audience is the Shakespearean clown. In the midst of all the chaos and convex ribaldry (that word was invented for a show like this), it sometimes only those sad, confused eyes that keep an open window to the audience. This is a compliment both to the performer and to the company, who were smart enough to utilize his talents in this way.

It is a smart show. Or at least a “smart-ass” show. My biggest criticism about would be that it is sometimes a little too smart, a little too ironically detached, a little too tongue-in-cheek. There is a premise here about the clowns' mother having just died, which bookends the show. It is largely throwaway, engendering neither pathos nor interest, at least in me. How much more interesting would it be if these disgusting fools actually had a mother whose recent death they mourned? That's a hell of a way to start a clown show, but this family could do it, taking us on a journey with more flavors of the emotional spectrum.

This piece is recommended highly for those who like shows with big, sweaty balls, mostly metaphorically speaking.

Chain of Fools

Chain of Fools – 9/19/12

Hats off to Trav SD for bringing a tiny bit of history to the festival. Trav took us on a rapid-fire tour of some of the clowns of silent film, famous and obscure. It's interesting to take a stop-off at the early 1900's and get snapshot of the sketches, themes, characters, and structures that continue to swim in the blood of the clown/comedy performer. As Trav pointed out, those roots go back more than a couple of millennia. Remember that the next time your judgmental uncle or former theatre professor asks you, “when you gonna quit screwing around and get a real job/acting gig?” You tell that person, “listen, buddy! Screwing around is a time-honored tradition! It's older than the Internet! It's older than the prose novel! It's older than Christianity! It's older than Aristotle's Poetics! It's probably only slightly younger than screwing!”

In the Boudoir

"In the Boudoir" – Summer Shapiro – 9/16/12

I was a big fan of the last creation of Summer Shapiro I saw, a wonderful duet with the talented Peter Musante, called “Legs & All.” That piece had one foot planted in the world of the clown and the other just as firmly in a world that felt like “movement theatre.” The result was a moving and funny piece about relationships and love.

“In the Boudoir,” did not disappoint. A solo piece about play, fantasy, and love, Ms. Shapiro showed an even more refined sense of physical and emotional artistry. It's not quite as abstract as “Legs & All,” the bits being more familiar Clown setups that increase in scope as the show goes on. But they are played with a sense of precision & integrity that captivates.

A good example is the opening sequence, played to a swinging version of “Puttin' on the Ritz.” Part dance, part numero, part setup for many of the bits that follow, Ms. Shapiro moves through the piece with concentration of a wild animal – singular in purpose but occasionally distractible. And in the vacillation between those two states we see tremendous vulnerability. That is a big compliment. She gets the vulnerability just right: not from apologizing or shyness, but from commitment and desperation combined with great control. She was so good that, as I watched, I completely forgot the piece was choreographed to accompanying music.

I could go on about what a pleasure it is to watch Ms. Shapiro work, but you'll see what I mean if you get to her show on the 27^th. Suffice it to say, she performs with the precision of a juggler, the athleticism of a dancer, the sense of play of a young child.

And there is good structural work here, too. While the bits in the show are more traditionally “Clown,” they are organized in an arc, starting the show with the exploration of the self, followed with a developing ownership of the space, bringing an audience members into the space, and culminating in a scene where she has gotten a little too comfortable manipulating people in the space and risks some serious consequences.

I offer two small questions, one performative and one more about structure.

On the performative side, I wonder if this clown has yet found its voice. I don't mean in some esoteric way. I mean her actual voice. Her relationship to the audience, in terms of winks, grunts, small gestures is so present and so perfectly fits the world. But those few moments where voice is actually used to make words, something feels lacking, deflating. Its a small detail, but worth mentioning because so much of the performance is spot-on.

A larger question is a structural one, related to the clown's emotional arc: what change (if any), does this clown undergo in this piece? I am not arguing for some kind of trad dramatic ending, or some moral lesson, or anything else as aesthetically crass. And I'm not arguing for a trad dramatic structure, like some Arthur Miller play. Comedic structure, especially clown pieces, are often circular in nature. But that does not mean that the piece should be flat. Circular structure is about arriving back at the beginning after going as far up an down as possible.

In the piece's current iteration, there is a very strong sense of engagement throughout, but the stakes do not seem to get particularly higher as we move through it. This makes the ending a little unsatisfying.

SPOILER ALERT (don't read past this if you're planning on seeing it!): It's interesting to setup a duel between two suitors. Even more interesting to have a ricochet mortally wound you in the process. EVEN MORE interesting to see you have BOTH kiss you as a final gift to you before dying. But some little part of me, for a small moment, has to BELIEVE that you ACTUALLY were shot, and this REALLY is your dying wish. I think all the structural pieces are there for the arc of this clown to be rendered visible, but I think the stakes have to get higher, allowing the emotional range to go both higher and lower, especially as we reach the ending.

AWESOME SHOW!