Tag Archive: theater

  1. In Perfect Unison

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    The Yaledancers performers’ precise yet grand movements strike a bit of awe as they leap and spin to the music, shaking the ground as they land in perfect unison. The bass shakes the ground, too, right after giving the impression that the music and the dancers have become one. And then they breathe out all as one, giving a percussive quality to their movements that further blends the visual, the physical and the musical.

    The Yaledancers put on an exciting and haunting show running from Nov. 14–Nov. 16, in the Educational Center for the Arts Theater at 55 Audubon St. The performance combines the traditional and the audacious, the classical and the modern, and the somber and the exuberant to create something memorable. The soundtrack complements the physicality and grace of the dancers in sometimes unexpected ways — who knew that Rihanna was made for ballet? — but the pairings were consistently effective and enjoyable.

    An early highlight is Marissa Galizia FES ’15 and Karlanna Lewis LAW ’15 dancing to “Good Day” by Nappy Roots in whimsical boxer shorts and socks. The duo demonstrates terrific athleticism and unity in the performance, a show of exultant friendship and love. On many occasions throughout, they link hands and support each other, staying perfectly still for just a moment before returning to their powerful movements.

    With songs by artists as big as Adele and Rihanna, a student-written song might not be expected, but Karlanna Lewis’s piece, set to a rap song she wrote and produced, was extremely strong. The intensity of the song — telling the story of a past relationship turned emotionally abusive — reinforced the beauty of the dance. Since Lewis was behind both the dance and the song, she was able to tell a unified story; this connection was strongest in the donning and removal of sweatpants. There was something visceral about the way the dancers would wrap the pants around their necks all together, or tear them off as Lewis would drive her anger through the speakers.

    The most memorable dance of the night was “Cerceau” by Gracie White ’15, a visually stunning acrobatic performance on an aerial lyra, a metal hoop suspended from the ceiling by a single rope. With the twist of a limb, White would spin the lyra around or shift the weight, so all of a sudden she was upside down and hanging from her feet. And then, to the swelling echoes of “Over the Love” by Florence + the Machine, she would pull her body up through the hoop and the whole apparatus would twirl, propelled by her tremendous energy.

    Florence’s voice has that incredible ability to seem so powerful and so vulnerable at once, and White managed to channel that spirit in her movements. At times she would hang, limp on the lyra like a dying angel in a pristine white dress. Then she would be a blur of movement, coiling around the hoop with complete control. The room was completely motionless save for the hanging, spinning metal disc, which White controlled with precision and intensity as the music pounded and the lights behind her glowed.

    Intermission came next, which felt right. A moment to breathe is needed after a piece like that.

    “Mein Herr,” an eight-person schmaltzy Broadway-style dance was a good way to get back into the spirit of the performance. The dancers did traditional moves with a modern flair and delivered a simply fun experience. Not every dance has to — or should — be deep. Sometimes it’s just good to see people kick the air to a song from “Cabaret.”

    The performance proved that Rihanna has a perfect complement: ballet. Michaela Vitigliano ’18 improvised to the singer’s “Roc Me Out,” gracefully leaping as the bass of the song made the earth shake. For a voice so filled with power, the quieter strength of ballet formed an invigorating combination.

    The performance came to an end with the Broadway classic, “One” from “A Chorus Line,” complete with the glimmering gold bow ties and the top hats. Even schmaltzier than in “Mein Herr,” the dancers grinned with the Broadway toothy smile that was unstoppably contagious. It was a truly satisfying way to end, and let the audience leave feeling totally exuberant.

    The Fall Show was not meant to have a unifying theme, but rather to follow the inspiration of the company’s members. The pieces shared, however, a constant passion for that balance of intentionality and power that makes dance so beautiful. These dancers share tremendous chemistry, seen in the ensemble pieces where they would leap in perfect unison and land inches away from one another with grace and style. They shared a common energy in their actions, and became a mesmerizing unity in pieces like “Takatada,” in which the dancers would take tiny, speedy steps to the beat of experimental music.

    Yaledancers forms an incredible body in this show, one that makes the trek past Koffee? and TDHeav to the theater well worth it.

  2. Is This Even Art?

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    “Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” asks this question and many others while taking us on a winding, self-referential journey. Though a certain darkness pervades most of Alejandro Iñàrritu’s movies, including Biutiful, Babel, and Amores Perros, this one also offers a comedic lightness without giving up on Life’s Big Questions.

    Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a washed-up superhero actor who forgoes a fourth movie series production to try his hand at a new art form.  As we watch him levitate in his St. James theater dressing room, we can only assume that this new art form, a Broadway play he writes, directs, and stars in, is his higher calling.  Like so many artistic types, he is searching for honesty amidst fraudulence, corruption, and the mainstream action-packed bullshit that people not only watch, but have been bred to enjoy.   Riggan’s alter-ego, or rather, the version of himself who plays Birdman in the movie series, recurs as an intimidating deep voice and is brutally upfront about the current trend towards lowbrow blockbusters. In metafilmic moments, the voice explodes: the common people don’t want to see philosophical dialogue, sentiment, or poetic musings!  Cue music, cue explosion, cue beloved hero’s entrance. The New York City streets turn into the site of the next great action movie’s final showdown.  The film operates in the liminal space  between the barebones truth of stage acting and the enhanced reality of cinema.

    Riggan’s hard-hitting daughter Sam is a breakthrough role for Emma Stone.  Recently released from rehab, Sam has gained a new understanding of “egocentric narcissism” and calls out Riggan for his embarrassing search for infamy. Humans have existed for a mere 150,000 years on this 5-billion year-old earth, she tells him, so why would it matter what we each do in a mere lifetime?  And, as she’s quick to point out, if he’s so obsessed with fame, how can he continue to exist in modern society without a Facebook page or Twitter handle?  No art form can popularize a nonexistent man.  At times,  it seems the hero is attacked from all angles.  The strikingly serious method actor, Riggan’s perfect last-minute addition to the show, is a sweet-faced Edward Norton playing Mike Shiner.  A rambunctious actor who lives for the stage, he critiques  Riggan’s thirst for popularity: “popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige.”   Riggan’s search for meaning through artistic creation is a familiar journey of frustration as he tries to make his way and leave his mark in a world teeming with talent.

    But it’s the internal references to the importance and function of criticism itself that make Birdman really interesting.  In an entanglement at a local bar, Mike tells the New York Times Theater critic, a sort of god to the city’s theater going population, that a critic is to an artist what an informant is to a soldier—in other words, neither  critic nor informant can achieve what they desire (art and glory, respectively) and so they settle for lesser versions. Ultimately, however, aren’t both actors and critics just trying to be as true to their ideals as possible in their preferred medium? It may not be the only art form available to them but it certainly is the one that lets them communicate most honestly.  Perhaps the unexpected virtue of ignorance (among other things) is that, by blindly romping through civilian life, we stumble upon something that has genuine emotion, something that make us question our lives, relationships, and innermost desires.

    Birdman does indeed offer us genuine, beautiful emotion. Iñàrritu shoots stunningly long takes,  following the characters’ every move, and gives his heroes and villains a particular immediacy. The audience shares in their triumphs and tribulations.  We feel the tensions between fading actors and young upstarts. We live the insanity of the  final rehearsals leading up to a Broadway opening. We gain an understanding of the characters’ psychological motivations and how those affect their personal and professional relationships. With spot-on casting, witty and sentimental writing, and Iñàrritu’s expert directing, Birdman is one of the best films of the year.

  3. Keeping the Balance: Funding Yale’s Dance Culture

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    Karlanna Lewis LAW ’15 knew that academics came first when she was considering her plans for graduate study. However, something else impacted her decision to attend Yale Law School as well: Yale’s dance program.

    “What I love about Yale’s dance program is the student-led charge as opposed to something faculty-led. It means that there’s something for everyone,” she said.

    Dance at Yale is on the upward trend. It’s growing and flourishing, with the Alliance for Dance at Yale now including more than 20 groups in its catalogue. Dance Studies is now a visible part of the Theater Studies curriculum, and a new studio space has just opened on Sachem Street.

    However, while students expressed their excitement about the growing dance opportunities on campus, the rapid growth led to a number of problems. Groups find themselves struggling for space, and the money to fund ambitious routines and exciting new projects seems to be in short supply.

    * * *

    Nicole Feng ’15 is co-president of Rhythmic Blue (RB), Yale’s first and only contemporary and hip-hop dance troupe, established in 1991. Feng said that the group’s options are often limited, simply because of inadequate funding.

    This past year, RB traveled to a dance competition at Stony Brook University. It was the first time the group had competed, and they were the only group representing the state of Connecticut. After struggling to find sufficient funding through Yale, the group turned to an online campaign. They managed to raise double the necessary funds.

    Although the online campaign was successful among students, Feng said that dance groups don’t benefit from the same alumni backing as a cappella and theater organizations. As a result, the group has to be cautious when considering their most basic expenses for the year.

    Feng expressed her disappointment that there are no local studios in New Haven offering hip-hop classes that her dancers could attend. Instead, like many other dance groups, RB brings in professionals for master classes. Individual members of the group must pay for these classes out of their own pockets.

    While there is University funding available, some groups have encountered problems in adhering to the funding guidelines. Groups have three main options: the Undergraduate Organizations Committee, the Arts Discretionary Fund and the Creative and Performing Arts Award (CPA).

    The CPA, administered by the Council of Masters, only offers funding to groups that agree to provide free admission to all their performances. But Rhythmic Blue and A Different Drum (ADD), another dance group on campus, both need the money made from their performances to survive — this rules out CPA as a source of funding.

    With the CPA award out of the picture, the UOC is usually the primary source of funding for RB. Feng noted that, although this is helpful to them, the committee tends to favor newer dance groups in order to help them find their footing.

    “It’s understandable that UOC wants to support new groups, but as one of the older groups, it doesn’t always help us,” she added.

    Tina Yuan ’16, chair of UOC, said that the committee does provide equal funding opportunities for all types of student organizations on campus. “There is no specific policy towards dance groups on campus, and we try to meet the funding requests of any organization that has demonstrated financial need,” she said.

    However, UOC and the groups themselves have differing understandings of what “demonstrated need” means. Hannah Leo ’15, president of A Different Drum, said that this semester the group would be primarily self-funded, following the rejections of their funding applications. The reason why? The lack of appropriate performance spaces has forced the group to look for alternatives off-campus, and yet rent for these spaces is not considered demonstrated need.

    “Performance-wise, there really is no dance theater. A lot of the spaces in the colleges are not good for dance at all. They’re small, sight-lines aren’t great, and they’re very limited in terms of tech,” Leo said, explaining why their group needs alternative spaces.

    Zoe Reich-Aviles ’16, ADD’s artistic director, said that the group’s desire to use off-campus performance spaces has caused funding difficulties. The Educational Center of the Arts, a local performing arts high school, has a stage that meets the needs of the group. However, even though its location is, according to Reich-Aviles, a “hop, skip and a jump away from TD,” its off-campus status prevents the group from receiving funding to cover a more expensive rent.

    * * *

    These two groups aren’t the only ones dissatisfied with on-campus performance and rehearsal spaces. Broadway Rehearsal Lofts is a Yale-owned rehearsal studio that a number of groups profited from in the past. Gracie White ’16, member of YaleDancers, described it as “the perfect rehearsal space” because it exceeded the size of any residential college space. However, the lofts are above the New Haven branch of Trailblazer, and continued noise complaints led to the closure of BRL during store hours.

    Evelina Zaragoza Medina ’17, co-president of RB, said that the closure of this space led to more tension in booking rehearsal spaces. The groups all look to rehearse in the same places: Most of these places are residential college basements. Medina noted that it is difficult to reserve these areas in competition with so many other groups, and that rehearsing in those spaces is like rehearsing in a box.

    “The spaces just aren’t ideal for groups of more than 25 people, which limits us as artists in our choreography and our rehearsal. In these spaces, it is difficult to understand what it is to move, dance big and eat up space,” Feng added.

    In response, Associate Dean of the Arts Susan Cahan spoke of a new space on Sachem Street that is about to open. She said that it’s just as well-equipped as BRL, and in many ways, superior to the lofts. “It’s a really inspiring space,” she said, “which is very open and provides a lot of light for the dancers to work with.” Cahan hopes to put up a photography installation there showcasing the history and progression of dance at Yale. She thinks the installation will inspire any students using the space.

    White, for one, is excited to explore the Sachem Street location this semester, but expressed a similar upset about the closure of BRL, since the space had a more convenient location.

    “When BRL was open, I could choreograph in my spare time, because BRL is so close to JE, and now I have to walk that little bit further to find the best space,” she said.

    * * *

    This Wednesday, Cahan received an update: Trailblazer has coordinated with the University administration, allowing the co-curricular initiative, Yale Dance Theater, to return and use the space.

    “This is an exciting and important development that will take pressure off the other spaces and allow them to be widely available for other groups,” Cahan said. “It is a result of a variety of different offices working together: the Provost’s Office, Undergraduate Productions, Elm City Properties, the Dean’s Office, the Theater Studies Departments and President Salovey.”

    For students who worry that the administration ignores Yale’s dance culture, this is a major development that should alleviate stress and lessen competition between groups.

    The return to Broadway Rehearsal Lofts also allows YDT to continue growing. Emily Coates, YDT’s faculty director, described the program as one merging artistic practice with intellectual thought through the resource of professional choreographers.

    “It gives students the opportunity to interact with great works of choreography, staged by professional artists during a rigorous, intensive rehearsal process,” she explained.

    Professional dancers and choreographers come to Yale from New York and other major cities to share pieces of famous dance repertoire with students.

    Cahan said that the initiative came about shortly after she arrived at Yale. At that time, groups primarily performed their own choreography.

    “It was incredible to watch, but for me, it was analogous to watching a symphony orchestra playing only student-written pieces,” she said.

    In a collaboration with Coates, who has performed with some of New York’s top dance companies, Cahan set up this unique, collaborative program.

    Reich-Aviles said the Yale Dance Theater experience offers unparalleled training.

    “It’s an amazing opportunity to unite theory and practice,” she said, but she also expressed her concern that the opportunity is not widely enough known. “Yale’s just not a place where you pursue dance. People will go somewhere else to do that.”

    Lewis, the Law student, agrees. Lewis studied her undergraduate degree at Florida State University, known for its professional dance program. The program’s national recognition allows for purpose-built facilities and a lot more available funding.

    So, is Yale suffering without a professional dance major? Lewis assures that it is not, because it allows for a range of groups to flourish, attracting dancers of all abilities. She spoke of how each group on campus has its own voice and character, instead of the top-down approach she experienced at FSU. She believes that anyone looking for a high-quality dance experience at Yale is capable of finding it. Lewis is part of YaleDancers, Yale Dance Theater and Yale Ballet Company and feels more than satisfied with her experience.

    Reich-Aviles agrees with her, and admits that while there are some great problems with the opportunities for dance at Yale, there is nothing else she would rather do.

    “Dance is such a source of joy for me, and ‘A Different Drum’ is one of the things that makes me feel at home here.”

  4. England’s Wilde West

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    The brief musical interludes you hear during the set changes in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” the Dramat’s Fall Ex which opened Thursday night, are mostly classical piano — the sort of whimsical, evocative music most strongly associated, at least in this reviewer’s millennial mind, with Harry Potter movies. The selections are oddly sentimental for so ruthlessly witty a play, but they also effectively transport the audience to 19th-century England, so they do the trick.

    But as the lights come up post-intermission, the tinkling piano notes are not the work of Handel or Purcell: We hear an instrumental version of Kanye West’s “All of the Lights,” an inspired choice in that it locates Wilde’s analog in contemporary pop culture: Despite his admiration of Steve Jobs, Kanye’s real forerunner is Oscar Wilde. Plays don’t have mass appeal today, and hip-hop didn’t exist in 1895, but Wilde, like West, was an unapologetic aesthete and brazen cultural critic whose flamboyance compensated for a defect of seriousness. Crass sexual humor is another commonality.

    Perhaps this production is a little more West than Wilde. Where British humor is usually associated with a deadpan delivery reflective of that society’s stiff upper lip, West is blunt, passionate and often angry. He’s a renowned entertainer and also a bit of a clown. Likewise, under Miranda Rizzolo’s direction, this cast hollers, shrieks, rolls their eyes, jumps onto furniture and otherwise hams it up. Which isn’t to say it’s bad. Rather, it’s a joy to watch, and there are wonderfully choreographed and tremendously energetic scenes. The actors have an exaggerated physicality: The women, for example, are forever holding things out toward men, haughtily looking the other direction, expecting the contents to be taken off their hands. Appropriately enough, the actors mostly stick to American accents. Some speak with a faux-British elocution, and one or two veer into and out of nationalities.

    Algernon and Jack, played by Otis Blum ’15 and Adam Lohman ’18 respectively, make a lively and likeable pair as two young bachelors, each romantically interested in a relative of the other. Gwendolyn, Algernon’s cousin, played by Lauren Modiano ’17, illuminates the stage with her strong comic presence (even if she does rely a little too much on tics, like screwball facial expressions and nervously fast talking). Lucy Fleming ’15 is convincing as Cecily, Ernest’s ward, bringing to her character the apathetic affect of a text-messaging teen. The pastor (Skyler Ross ’16) has a pleasantly Woody Allen-ish demeanor.

    There’s a standout here, however — one character whose sterling portrayal is beyond all reproach: Lady Bracknell. Played in drag by Eric Sirakian ’15, Bracknell is the play’s most enduring creation, and Sirakian’s performance is a memorable blend of terrifying and preposterous. His icy, disgusted glares and moral outrage are perfectly calibrated.

    “Earnest” stands the test of time. Sure, barbs directed at three-volume novels or society dinner parties can fall flat, but themes of hypocrisy, social climbing, romantic love, sex and religion have no expiration date. Not many plays are funnier.

    In a play overflowing with aphorisms, epigrams, zingers and disses — exposing pomposity at every turn — the cloying last line, famously impossible to pull off, feels like a final “f– you” from Wilde, not to the characters but, at long last, to the audience. From Wild, though, it feels like a heartfelt send-off. And as the lights go down on the awkward silence that follows, one feels like Cecily when she says, in a line brimming with the play’s signature irony, “The suspense is terrible; I hope it lasts.”

  5. "American Gothic" Brings Terror to Cabaret

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    American Gothic terrifies. I felt it from the moment the play began, when the sounds of muffled chanting filled the dark basement theater of 217 Park Street. As the actors walked behind me towards the center of the room, I shifted a little in my seat with discomfort. Warily, I watched them shuffle through with their faces covered by white veils and their arms outstretched holding candles.

    Conceived by Eli Epstein-Deutsch and Nahuel Telleria (who is also the director), the play is an experimental collaboration between students from the Yale Schools of Art, Music and Drama. Occult themes, true to the dark and brooding nature of the American Gothic genre, run throughout the work and fit in perfectly among the neo-Gothic buildings of Yale’s campus. The play’s write-up does a good job of keeping the plot vague while revealing what the experience will be like. When I sat down at my table in the Cabaret, I was expecting to be scared. An original score by students from the School of Music, featuring ominous piano riffs and eerie violin, only added to the atmosphere.

    In light of what’s been said, I should specify that this play does not horrify (American Gothic literature distinguishes between horror and terror: Horror is revulsion and disgust, terror the anxiety that accompanies impending horror). This is one of the most deftly crafted aspects of the work. When the murderer called “Misfit” finds himself alone on stage with the grandmother of the play’s main family, he tells her that the punishment he’s endured in his life is far worse than anything he could have done to deserve it. As she sits and prays for her life, the sense of fear on her face is palpable and radiates throughout the room. We almost wish that the Misfit would just get on it with — blow her brains out and let us deal with the trauma afterward, instead of having us sit in apprehension over what he’ll do next. But when the murder finally comes, there are no gunshots; there is no blood pooled on the floor. Instead, the scene is described by a narrator — cool, detached, simultaneously saving us from both the anxiety of the exchange and the horror of witnessing a grotesque scene.

    The narration was one of the play’s strong suits, and I found it impeccably well conceived and quite effective. Each of the three actors plays multiple roles and all of them serve as narrators as well. There are times when narration blends with performance as when actors play out a scene, but narrate it in the third person while maintaining their characters’ voices: When the family gets in a car crash, the grandmother continues to describe the scene even as she is thrown into the dash. The effect is to soften the blow of certain scenes by using the narrator to detach the audience from shocking visuals while still keeping them engaged.

    As for standout performances, Kevin Hourigan’s acting really made the play. He is a gifted actor, as shown by his remarkable and instantaneous transitions from little boy to father numerous times in one scene; Because a cast of three plays a family larger than that, actors must take on multiple roles in a single scene — something Hourigan does with gusto. He is especially creepy in his role as a cold-blooded killer (Suggs), when he really shows his impressive range and versatility. Even when he is not speaking, Hourigan commands attention onstage with his telling and sometimes humorous facial expressions.

    My only qualm with the play is that Telleria and Epstein-Deutsch seemed more intent on experimenting with different ways to convey a dramatic message than they did on tying the play together into a unified whole. This is forgivable, though, since I was impressed by the dynamism of the performance and the overall nature of the piece. As a whole, the play achieved what it set out to do: It was creepy and intriguing, and successfully blended music, dance and stagecraft. American Gothic has set some big expectations for its two co-creators, and we should look forward to what is to come.

  6. India Awakened

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    A girl bathed in green light, lying on her back, wailing as she dies of starvation. An elderly monk swathed in orange robes, singing into a megaphone as he leads a caravan of ecstatic festival-goers.

    The Indian Ensemble’s original play “Thook” has activist ends — it examines issues of “food security, international trade and hunger,” according to the playbill — but succeeds in creating searing images of individual human suffering, compassion and humor. With just five actors, the production leaps nimbly from Winston Churchill’s kitchen to a corporate marketing photo shoot to the slums of present-day India.

    The show is divided into four scenes: a man playing Winston Churchill’s Indian cook and Churchill himself; a hellish sequence wherein three children see their father beheaded and seek refuge in an abandoned warehouse; the filming of a soft-drink advertisement, at which corporate marketers show off their blissful ignorance of third-world life; and finally, an extended story of a Hindu businesswoman and a Muslim trader falling in love in contemporary India.

    Amazingly enough, it works. The disparate storylines don’t feel thrown together — in part because the costume and set changes are interwoven with interludes about global politics that are never boring or difficult to follow.

    The actors are utterly convincing. Just minutes before one man plays Mahatma Gandhi, he plays Winston Churchill’s dog Rufus with equal believability. One woman plays a dying girl, a monk-grandfather, a working adult woman, and, believe it or not, Franklin Roosevelt. And still, credibility is not strained for a second.

    While the viewing experience is smooth, the connections that we are supposed to intuit between the play’s many elements — the meaning of it all — are less than obvious. Much of the show concerns the parallel Bengal food crises of 1943 and 2008. During the former, Churchill refused to send aid, and history repeated itself five decades later when the West largely ignored the food riots. But the historical connection, while poignant, only emerges after some reflection.

    The ambivalence of Churchill’s cook toward his employer reflects the audience’s own mixed feelings. Was he gluttonous, hypocritical and cruel or heroic, charismatic and affectionate? And why does Churchill shoot his dog?! “Thook” is a play of ideas, but not of easy answers or didactic conclusions.

    The set’s only constant fixture is a set of clouds fashioned from cotton and rope. Everything else is fluid: Effects are achieved by subtle sounds, masterful lighting and force of personality. Dripping water, ominous pulsing and distant traffic sounds enhance different settings. The show is a collaboration between the Indian Ensemble of Bangalore, who flew in from India last week, and the Hartbeat Ensemble, a Hartford-based group that explores social justice issues. Whoever was in charge of tech knew precisely what they were doing.

    I did not know before seeing the show what language it was in, and I am still unsure. Most dialogue is Hindi, with English subtitles projected on screens far above the stage that force the audience to choose between watching the stage or reading the text. Many jokes were obviously lost in translation and transcription, as was obvious from the heavy and frequent chuckling of the Indian family seated next to me, at moments when the rest of the audience was silent. But at random times the actors broke into English, in varying degrees of consistency with the subtitles.  Despite the jumble, there were still moments of lyric intensity that were communicated clearly and powerfully.

    In the final scene, an old Indian woman confronts a young African man and tells him, “You’re too poor to die. Death is an expensive affair.” The tragic double-bind of poverty and hunger could not be stated with more economy. “Thook” translates to English as “spit” and over the course of the play comes to mean something vital — a sign of love and of human instinct. It is messy and visceral and compelling and therefore a fitting title for a play that is all these things.

    Correction, Sept. 17: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the Hartbeat Ensemble as being from New Haven. In fact, the group is from Hartford. 

  7. Real beyond reasonable doubt

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    This weekend’s production of “Twelve Angry Men” will undoubtedly face criticism for its deliberately exclusive male cast. Despite my skepticism of the original concept, upon seeing the show, I have to agree with the decision of director Gabe Greenspan ’14. The production would have excelled equally with an all female cast, or one with no gender boundaries, however, what Greenspan presents to us is something rarely seen in Yale theater: the unique dynamic between twelve very different men.

    The production, adapted from Reginald Rose’s 1954 teleplay, is the simple presentation of a jury deciding the fate of a 19-year-old accused of murder. They are abiding by their duty to separate “facts from fancy,” to decide whether he is guilty “beyond reasonable doubt,” whatever that means. Nineteen is not too distant from a Yale audience, so to see his life fall in the hands of strangers, those who often seem too preoccupied with their own lives to be concerned with the fate of another, is the most poignant arch of the show. What moral dilemmas are we evading to satisfy our own selfishness?

    A cast of 12 talented and established actors portrays this jury. The characters are not named; they are identified by number. These characters collectively expose every dimension of the everyman. These 12 angry men could be anyone, and the audience is just as much a part of the jury as the characters on stage. The play runs in real time with no entrances or exists. The men aren’t leaving the situation any time soon, and neither are we. With that comes an undeniable want to reach out and add our opinions and ask our own questions — the audience is frustratingly voiceless in a situation where each of us wants to be heard.

    The seamless distinction between audience and actor is partly due to the choice of space. The confined and narrow stage in the Davenport Auditorium means it doesn’t exactly spring to mind when one considers staging a piece of theater, especially with an ensemble cast of 12 fully grown men. However, the claustrophobia, bleakness and blankness of the set means that it truly feels like a juror’s room. There is nothing fantastical about this set. When the characters complain about the heat and the cramped nature of the room, the audience doesn’t have to imagine — we feel it too.

    However, Greenspan and his actors continue to make the space stimulating. The blocking is sometimes obtrusive, but continues to define this play as realist. We are watching it as it happens, and the authenticity of movement and speech doesn’t make it feel like an artificially staged piece of theater. This authenticity stems from the actors. It is ultimately an ensemble show and every performance is so accomplished that there is not one that stands out for either its exceptional quality or inability to keep up. There are 12 distinct characters played by 12 distinct actors, whose dynamic perfectly mirrors that of an actual jury: a conglomeration of strangers abiding by a common duty. It almost seems as though the script was written for these individual actors. While the tension in the room is high because of the subject matter, the actors appear relaxed in their performances — everything is a natural and logical action or dialogue for his character.

    The show’s title does not do justice to the play’s careful sentimentality and emotion. It is not 90 minutes of men yelling at each other. In fact, the show’s quiet ending can join the other incredibly moving moments we have seen in this semester’s theater season. Despite all the questions “Twelve Angry Men” raises, Greenspan does not force any answers onto us, but rather gives us the tools necessary to decide for ourselves. Everyone will react to this in their own way; my protagonist won’t be yours. As one character repeats, “It takes a great deal of courage to stand alone.” Greenspan is pushing us to do this: stand alone and ask questions; the courage and firmness of the men who do so drive the play and the jury to its ultimate conclusion.

    When the door closes at the end of the play, Greenspan leaves us with a haunting question: did they make the right choice? Guilty, or not guilty?

  8. What Cannot Be Described

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    “We find the words for what cannot be described,” says Duma Kumalo in the Yale Cabaret’s newest show, “He Left Quietly,” directed by Leora Morris DRA ’16. The words are “shit” and “blood.” The words are “noose” and “coffin.” And all of these are punchy, sure, but inadequate. Genocide is senseless and impenetrable. Our causal chains and linguistic nets will never fully capture slaughter. Who can explain why thousands were killed, abused and tortured? Playwright Yaël Farber doesn’t ignore the gap between word and reality. She studies it closely. “How to arrange the unarrangeable, order what is shattered?” her character asks, palms up, as if in surrender.

    Of course, Farber first establishes a semblance of order, a simple, skeletal narrative she later deconstructs. She tells the true, harrowing tale of Duma Joshua Kumalo, a black South African accused of murder following the 1984 riots in Sharpeville. Though he is innocent, not even a witness to the mayor’s death, Kumalo is condemned under the law of common purpose. (Because he rioted alongside the murderer, he is equally responsible.) He spends the next four years in prison, awaiting the gallows. The play unfolds and unwinds in a chronological limbo, swaying between the 80s and early 2000s, when Farber and Kumalo first meet. The older Kumalo, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II DRA ’15, sits downstage with a suitcase at his side, while his younger self, played by Ato Blankson-Wood DRA ’15, acts out the unsettling memories — nights spent talking to himself or sobbing hysterically. Hovering nearby, Farber’s character, played by Maura Hooper, gives the play its momentum. She prods Kumalo when the story slows and occasionally offers the audience inspirational takeaways.

    But Kumalo avoids generalities — instead, he gives us anecdotes so vivid they’re almost nauseating. In those moments, moments of claustrophobic intimacy, the play feels not only tragic but true. Kumalo admits that he extracted his own teeth. He pulls back his cheek to expose the gaps and says, “A trip to the dentist meant if I looked out the car window, I could see the sky.” Farber recoils and gasps. The audience recoils and gasps. Still, he is unashamed. He goes on to explain how prisoners communicate — they dry out their toilet bowls and whisper into the pipes. The plumbing, he says, is full of “secrets and shit.”

    When the script sinks to platitude, however, “He Left Quietly” becomes just another preachy war story. Breaking the fourth wall, Farber turns to the audience and pontificates, questioning the very nature of liability. Under the law of common purpose, who is to blame for the Apartheid? Who is to blame for all the bloodshed? Farber’s musings sound both simplistic and self-important — these are questions better left unsaid. And the final scene, which has cast and audience members sorting a pile of dead men’s shoes with reverence, feels like a gimmick. A successful war story is a detailed one, not a numbered list or a metaphor or an ethical debate.

    Yet the three actors bring the requisite complexity and depth to an imperfect script. Hooper can look apalled, listening to Kumalo’s story, and suddenly vicious, when she doubles as a prison guard. And with his sonorous voice and leisurely delivery, Abdul-Mateen is the perfect narrator and focal point. He makes deliberate eye contact with the audience and delivers choice phrases with a wry smile. Recalling his last meal, a boneless chicken, he pauses. “I ate that fucking chicken,” he adds. And Blankson-Wood is no puppet: In reenacting Kumalo’s past, he has energy and grace. He screams and tears at the metal gate upstage with astonishing ferocity, the brute, theatrical force that jolts a sleepy audience awake.

    “He Left Quietly” is savage, so honest and bloody you’ll sometimes want to turn away and examine your fingernails instead. Even the spare set and shaky projections on the back wall are painful. But, as the lights first go up, Kumalo asks: “If the truth falls on empty chairs, does it make a sound?” At the Cabaret this weekend, the chairs will not be empty, and the truth will not fall silent.

  9. Before the Curtain Rises

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    Oct. 13, 2013 was an eventful day for Jaime Sunwoo ’14. While the rest of the Yale community was busy reveling in the festivities and free water bottles that came with the inauguration of President Peter Salovey, Sunwoo was sitting in her art studio at 36 Edgewood with a lampshade on her head.

    An Art major interested in performance art, Sunwoo had placed the object there as part of the brainstorming process for her senior project. While wearing her new lampshade “hat,” she began thinking about the “coffee house” frequently hosted at the Saybrook Underbrook Theater and considered turning this avant garde outfit into a solo performance. I imagined myself doing a lampshade-themed burlesque where I would wear sexy Burlesque Outfits and flirt with a bunch of inanimate light fixtures in the room, she recalled.

    That thought was short-lived, but several weeks later, when the Yale Dramatic Association sent out a call for submissions for its spring experimental production, Sunwoo was inspired to revisit the lampshade. At 1 a.m., she met with her friend Austin Jung ’14 in the Saybrook Dining Hall, and together the pair replaced Sunwoo’s original burlesque concept with a tale of everyday objects come to life. Three months following that conversation, Sunwoo and Jung found themselves in the Davenport Auditorium, days away from the premiere of their now-complete play, “Household.”

    Everyone is familiar with the story of how Isaac Newton’s theories on gravity were inspired by an apple falling on his head. These tales tend to evoke skepticism because pure coincidence is associated with only miraculous events such as winning the lottery or not having to wait in line at the Elm Street Post Office. But for many of the 11 original student productions being put on this academic year, inspiration really did strike by chance.

    But unfortunately for these playwrights, the idea for a play may be the only part of the writing and staging processes where random inspiration is useful. The rest relies on hard work — lots of it. Each play must go through several stages of revision before the production process even begins, and playwrights must sacrifice countless hours of sleep and midterm-studying to the theater gods along the way. Then, dramatists must recruit teams of actors, designers and production staff in order to turn their ideas into reality.

    But if the challenges these projects face are unique, so too are the rewards at the end.

    ***

    Brin Solomon ’14 was unexpectedly hit with an idea for an original musical during their sophomore fall. Seemingly out of thin air, a melody emerged and floated into their head. As an aspiring composer, Solomon instinctively wrote down the mysterious tune. And instead of throwing the notes into a drawer and stowing them away, they asked themself two questions: “What kind of person would be singing a melody like this, and why?”

    Within a few months, Solomon had completed a rough character sketch of Susan, a fictional Physics major at Yale navigating the challenges of junior year. They had also created other characters for Susan to interact with, and by the beginning of their senior year, Solomon finally had in their hands a full draft of a new production, “Window Full of Moths.”

    It was a similar kind of serendipity that led Ruby Spiegel ’15 to the concept of her play, “Dry Land,” which would eventually be selected as this spring’s Dramat Experimental Production. Spiegel, who has a self-professed penchant for political controversy, was inspired by an article in The New Republic titled “The Rise of DIY Abortions.” She decided to let go of the play she had been working on at the time in favor of a new one based on the piece and other personal accounts of dangerous abortion methods online.

    “I’m really interested in the intricate, intimate realities of everyday experience that we wouldn’t imagine,” she said of the article’s subject matter.

    Spiegel spent sophomore spring and the following summer writing a script and researching the details of non-surgical abortions. By the end of the process, she had lost many hours of sleep and accumulated an unusual Google search history, full of nightmarish tales about women performing abortions on themselves. Before completing a draft, Spiegel said she deleted roughly 200 pages worth of writing.

    Spiegel was forced to grapple with the often-bleak realities of her research.

    “One of the hardest parts about writing is believing that I am not going crazy as a person in spite of the darkness in my work,” she said.

    ***

    While these original productions may differ in scope and content, the playwrights whose works are being performed this season share one experience: that of never having staged their own writing at Yale. “We are all kind of doing it for the first time,” Spiegel said.

    Dan Rubins ’16, creator of the musical “The Skylight Room” (which showed in November 2013) thought staging his show would be straightforward, and justifiably so. He had already written all of the script, music and lyrics for it. But a few weeks after finishing the text, he began to have formal conversations with his technical crew, and Rubins quickly became overwhelmed.

    “Basically at every production meeting, I’d hear about another piece of production or stagecraft that was being added on — the few chairs that were planned were now a full set, now we’ll have period costumes, we’re getting six projectors, and so on,” he recalled.

    His show was growing more complex each day, and Rubins found himself terrified. He did not have the time to oversee every aspect of his production, nor did he understand all of the technical elements that it required.

    “When you create something that’s so new, you feel that you want as much control as possible,” he said. “But as the process went on, I was getting less and less.”

    Unsure of what the future would hold for his brainchild, Rubins decided to entrust his production team with much of the decision-making. This choice yielded positive results, from the orchestration of his score to the addition of elaborate image projections around the venue.

    These independent production elements allowed Rubins to see his own creation in a new light.

    “Hearing orchestrations for music you’ve written is like clicking the ‘Enhance’ button on Photoshop on a photo you’ve taken,” Rubins said. “It’s still your photo, but there’s new colors and new stories you didn’t know were there.”

    ***

    Support from Yale’s performing arts community is essential for playwrights hoping to realize their creative visions.

    When Laurel Durning-Hammond ’14 and Alex Ratner ’14 approached Theater Studies lecturer Annette Jolles ’91 in the fall of 2012 with an idea for a musical, they knew they would need to gather a large team. Their proposal was shortly accepted by the Shen Curriculum for Musical Theater at Yale as a production seminar, which gives students course credit for enrolling in the class and participating in the show. It was the first time that a student-written musical had been accepted as the basis for such a course.

    While Durning-Hammond and Ratner were tasked with recruiting the majority of their production team — roughly a dozen students — they had little trouble putting together a crew because of their strong connections within the theater community.

    Persuading students to commit their time to a play of no established reputation, with a potential for failure, can pose a challenge. Several student playwrights interviewed said it is helpful to have friends in the performing arts who trust in their abilities enough to journey through uncharted territory.

    Spiegel convinced two members of her theater group “Common Room,” as well as her friend and former Whiffenpoof Henry Gottfried ’14, to participate in her production. She said Gottfried agreed to serve as the play’s director before even seeing her script. Between the two of them, Spiegel and Gottfried called on other students they knew, filling their cast and crew lists without difficulty.

    The importance of having a strong network in the theater community was especially apparent in the case of Sunwoo and Jung. An art major and a Spanish major respectively, neither has been particularly active in the theater scene, which posed a large obstacle for them in the recruitment process.

    “It’s hard for people to commit to this project when they don’t even know who we are,” Sunwoo said.

    But luckily for Sunwoo and Jung, there were risk-takers to be found in the undergraduate performing arts community who are willing to dress up like lamps and vacuums, as they will do in “Household.” After sending over 100 emails in search of student actors, musicians and designers, the duo finally assembled their cast and crew.

    “There are so many talented people here that someone will want to work on your show,” Solomon said.

    ***

    Of the original student works that have undergone the production process, each faced its own unique obstacles and anxiety-inducing moments. While all of them ultimately dazzled audiences, the cast and crew of these shows remember all too well the nerve-wracking moments when their chances of achieving success seemed uncertain at best.

    While Abigail Carney ’15 and Elliah Heifetz ’15 entered production following a fairly smooth writing process, they returned to campus after winter break with only three weeks to put the entire show together. The team set for themselves an extremely tight schedule, scrambling to fulfill the many technical and artistic demands of the show. But when the lights in the Crescent Theater illuminated the stage on the night of Feb. 6, everything was in place.

    “It was pretty insane trying to put up a musical in three weeks, especially since we were still making changes to it at the last minute,” Carney recalled.

    But the insanity that drove the team to persevere ultimately rewarded the cast and crew with a successful show, so successful that Carney and Heifetz are planning to propose “Dust Can’t Kill Me” as a production for the New York International Fringe Festival, the largest multi-arts festival in North America. Not long ago, Marina Keegan ’12’s “Independents,” another original Yale folk musical, won Best Overall Production at the Fringe.

    In the future, Yalies may have to take an Amtrak train into Manhattan if they wish to see “Dust Can’t Kill Me,” but fans of Carney and Heifetz will also have something else to look forward to. The two dramatists have already begun writing their next musical.

    Update, Jan. 3: This article has been updated to reflect Brin Solomon’s correct name and pronouns.

    Original Student Productions Take Center Stage

  10. A Social Education Onstage

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    The subway rattles overhead, with tilted lights flickering over the beige metal chairs tumbled across the stage, bolted up the walls and suspended from the ceiling, an ordinary American classroom twisted up into a nightmare. Before the story opens, the audience is sworn into the Superior Court of New York for a murder trial, but this school is exactly where “The Defendant” begins: with an 8-year-old girl wearing a pink jumper and a bow in her hair, meeting up with her friends to eat school-provided Cheerios before class.

    Minutes later, these kids are high school juniors whose drastic academic disadvantages are the least of their problems. Biology, poetry and Greek drama are foreign to these students; instead, they know poverty, gang violence and rape. Moreover, they have had six teachers give up on them, with the most recent calling one student a “sociopath,” snatching up her purse and storming out five minutes before the lunch bell.

    This weekend, “The Defendant,” written by former New York City public school teacher and current Yale School of Drama student Elia Monte-Brown DRA ’14 delivers its world premiere at the Yale Cabaret. “Champions adjust,” Serena (Melanie Field DRA ’16), the students’ new teacher, confidently informs her unruly students her first day on the job. “Truth is, we don’t really know what will happen in life, so it’s important to follow our passions.”

    To her students, these words likely ring hollow with false hope. But from Monte-Brown, Serena’s speech is perhaps a call to action: a reminder that the writer herself is working out a sense of social commitment through art. “The Defendant” develops with the same purpose, challenging the inadequacies of public education, while still exploring the deeply human experiences of friendship, family and first love. You’ll feel the play’s energy pounding in your ribcage, and you won’t be sure whether it’s trying to get in or out.

    This play bites. It knows how to tease, laugh and dance, but it’s not afraid to yell or push or point. Throughout the performance, we empathize with Serena  as she struggles to gain control and respect in her classroom. Amused by her own lack of preparation for her impossible job, she ponders, “I will somehow integrate bio and poetry. The study of life, as explored by Langston Hughes.” But at the same time, her rowdy and troubled students command our compassion. These actors embody their characters with a relentless ferocity that matches Monte-Brown’s script, through slouches and swaggers, bit lips and shy first kisses. This is a cast that believes its story. When a character pulls up a chair in the intimate Cabaret theater, stares you down and tells you how it feels to sit in the subway station imagining life on Park Avenue, you’d better listen.

    Extra credit goes to Idea (Chalia La Tour DRA ’16) and Ruben (Julian Elijah Martinez DRA ’16), whose blossoming romance, set against their own painful backstories, makes us chuckle and catches our breath. Ruben’s expressions flow seamlessly with his lines, creating a stage presence so endearing that you’ll simply want to hug him. Idea, too, strikes a remarkably credible chord with her youthful energy, repressed past and fear of a world that has already hurt her. Also be sure to look out for the many instances of double casting, a clever artistic touch that makes it even harder to break down this world in black and white.

    But after a fast hour-and-a-half, the lights click off. There’s applause and the audience files out of the Cabaret, leaving emptied glasses and forgotten programs on closely-packed round tables. It is in this moment, when “The Defendant” runs out of lines, that it is truly put to the test. Is it a choice between art and social awareness, or can a performance grapple with both? As “The Defendant” leaves us in discussion about both this school system nightmare and the depth of its characters, the play passes with honors.

  11. “Crave”-ing Understanding

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    In the words of A, “I keep trying to understand but I don’t.” Sarah Kane’s “Crave” is truly mysterious. The script itself includes only four characters of unspecified genders, identified only by initials — A, B, C and M — and this difficult casting is just the tip of the play’s idiosyncratic iceberg. Essentially plotless, Kane’s play requires a talented cast and production team if it is to make any sense at all.

    Kane gives no stage directions beyond occasional interrupting lines of dialogue, and the vagueness of the piece itself makes the work of the director, Hansol Jung, even more impressive. In Jung’s interpretation, the character of M is a tortured writer struggling to create, and A, B and C, clad in white, are the voices in her head. They begin offstage in their respective areas — B on one side of the room, hidden behind a black curtain; A far down the same wall, behind a paper screen; and C, occasionally emerging from a large trashcan à la Oscar the Grouch — and slowly emerge into the scene. Their developing physical presence echoes their growing prevalence in the writer’s head. At first, their recorded voices are only heard projected over a speaker, but ultimately, as the actors themselves come into the scene, their characters become realer to M, and begin to physically interact with her and each other. By the play’s end, their physical presence is as real as M’s is — they engage in hair-pulling, paper-throwing and even an onstage kiss.

    As is true in any cabaret, the audience is ever present in this action. When I was shown to my seat, the usher warned me to keep my legs out of the aisle, but despite my attempts at noninterference, about halfway through the production, character C clung to my arm as she moaned, “No one can hate me more than I hate myself.” In a similar instance, everyone roared with laughter as character A directed his line, “There’re worse things than being fat and 50” to a balding member of the audience. Throughout the production, the juxtaposition of well-dressed adults dining on lamb tagine and tortured drama students — who yelled out lines like “Rape me,” and “Satan, my lord, I am yours” — adds even more to the metaliterary elements of the production.

    Beyond just its venue, the show’s staging is impressive. When characters begin to discuss maggots, for example, images of crawling white larvae are projected on the walls. When character C declares, “No records,” M begins to feed pages through shredders, and the resulting confetti is dropped on audience members at three separate locations in the theater. M throws a paper airplane as she discusses a vision she has had of an inevitable plane crash. An alarm sound blares periodically. With these technological and creative staging instructions, Jung uses Kane’s lack of specific instructions to her advantage.

    The four actors — Helen Jaksch DRA ’15 (M), Taylor Barfield ’16 (A), David Clauson ’16 (B) and Ashley Chang ’16 (C) — also impressed in their challenging roles. The sole four cast members were fully dedicated to their respective identities, and took often outlandish actions in order to fulfill their director’s vision. At one point, Chang takes a napkin off an audience member’s table to mime wiping her bowels. Clauson slowly emerges from a paper screen as if from a womb. And Barfield, even in his extended monologues, managed to keep the audience engaged and amused.

    Despite the dedication and talent of the cast and crew, “Crave”, at least to me, remains incomprehensible. Kane expects a lot from her audience, inserting occasional phrases in Spanish, Serbo-Croatian and German, and multiple allusions to T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, the Bible and Camus. Though it touches on many rousing topics — rape, incest, suicide, adultery — these never rise to the level of themes, and so “Crave” ultimately feels aimless. The work is at times funny and at times poignant, but often random — as in the moment when all four characters inexplicably recite a series of nine digits. It often feels like the characters, instead of interacting with each other, are having conversations with themselves or perhaps unseen companions. One section consists only of seemingly patternless exclamations of “Yes” and “No,” ultimately evolving into what Kane describes in the script as “short one syllable screams.” But hey — as M, a writer herself, informs the audience, “If this makes no sense then you understand perfectly.”