"American Gothic" Brings Terror to Cabaret

Tag Archive: ” Yale Cabaret

"American Gothic" Brings Terror to Cabaret
October 10, 2014 3:05 am Leave a Comment
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.
Alice in Pageantland
September 19, 2014 2:47 am Leave a Comment
“Look up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers all the Time” runs twice tonight and twice tomorrow night. If you’re thinking of seeing the show, and you’ve read whatever headline is up there or seen the photo they ran, then you already know too much! Stop while you’re behind, and see the thing. I recommend it. That’s all you need to know.

And besides, it’s only one hour. One hour with about 45 seconds of normality — a girl playing innocently with a doll. Then her red-wig-wearing mother barges in, which is a hint that something is seriously off, because two minutes after that, you’re plunged into the surreal, campy world of Little Miss Teacup pageant, where contestants have split personalities, mothers have names like “The Ice Queen,” and men are hilarious — and sexually predatory.

Looking at the set before the show started — at the miniature door, the colorful, ugly 1970s-style clothes rack, the images of eerily made-up young girls being projected onto the wall— I began to wonder how odd a production I was in for. It suddenly occurred to me that it would be about drag queens. It wasn’t. But my premonition was not far off.

The show is half “Alice in Wonderland,” half “Cabaret” — a combination that should give you shudders but unquestionably won the audience over. The plot centers on a 9-year-old girl, Liddy (Sarah Williams DRA ’15), whose mother declares she must take her older sister Alice’s place in the Teacup pageant. Where is Alice? Mom (Celeste Williams DRA ‘15) won’t say.

Now in the world of the pageant, Liddy encounters a parade of outrageous characters. Everything is as new to her as to the people watching her, and so she acts as a tour guide and a stand-in for the audience. She speaks for everyone when, for example, she exclaims, rather 9-year-old-ly, “Everything is very strange and there’s so much happening here.”

Equal parts domineering and desperate, Williams is fantastic as Liddy’s mother. The pageant contestant (Shaunette Renée Wilson DRA ’16) with the split personality and yellow overalls — you know, her? She’s singularly hilarious, if mildly disturbing. The pageant’s MC (Aubie Merrylees DRA ’16), whose creepiness and androgyny are surely modeled on “Cabaret’”s famous MC, gives an appropriately affected performance. The alternate MC, MC Hattah (MC Hammer meets the Mad Hatter, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II DRA ’15), is a whirlwind of charm. He puts on as bravura a performance as anyone in the show, which is saying a great deal.

“Look up” does have a heart. The janitor (Andrej Visky DRA ’15) emerges as the only sane adult, and his appearance is one of a few moving scenes. But one of the strengths of “Look Up” is that once you’ve settled on an interpretation that suits you, the play subverts your expectations. Just as the show reaches its most fantastical, a reference to Bruce Jenner or a snippet of “Boss Ass Bitch” brings it back to the world of contemporary pop culture. “Look Up” rejects the premise that pop and American culture are mundane, preferring to tease out all the terrible, hilarious strangeness.

Really, the show itself rejects the mundane as a category. It weaves in and out of surreal moments; music and lights change from sentence to sentence. The mother screams at her daughter to pose, saying, “Off with your head! I mean, hand on your head!”

The way time is handled adds to the pile of contradictions: Liddy has half an hour to prepare for the pageant, while “Look Up” has an hour-long running time. The discrepancy could create the effect of drowsy slow-motion, but “Look Up” feels like what theater should feel like — fast, absorbing, dazzling. You have to be in the right mood — and probably of the right disposition — to enjoy this type of farce. I guess I was, because as the show ended, I thought, “I want to hug whoever created this.”
Joan of Brooklyn, Looking for Trouble
April 18, 2014 2:16 am Leave a Comment
God, a Caucasian middle-aged man of medium height and slim build, who dresses casually and slicks his hair back in grey paste, is disappointed with the current state of things. But he’s not yet ready to throw in the towel. This he explains to Joan of Arc the final scene of “A New Saint for a New World,” the only scene in which he appears in the flesh.

“A New Saint” opens in present-day Brooklyn in the apartment of Libby Wall (Maura Hooper DRA ’15) who is otherwise known as — and soon revealed to be — French Revolutionary Joan of Arc. Sitting in a wooden chair and sipping red wine out of a mug, Joan futilely attempts to comfort her boyfriend over the loss of his grandparents. After her attempts at consoling him fail, she deems it an appropriate moment to explain to him how, in 2010, she landed in New York City in the body of a 19-year-old girl called Libby. As punishment for successfully leading the French troops, and out of envy for her connection with God, religious opponents burned Joan at the stake when she was only 19. God admitted to her that this was not a part of his plan and allowed her to return to earth in the place of a deceased 19-year-old on one condition — that she did not involve herself in politics or revolutionize in any fashion.

After Joan’s boyfriend declares her crazy and storms out of the apartment, the play flashes forward to “Southeast and Midwest United States,” 2020. Joan is in jail for — you guessed it — leading a violent revolution of millions within the United States, causing the “Second Civil War” and the breakup of the United States into disparate territories. After explaining to a prison official that she is neither a murder nor terrorist in a futile attempt to get out of her execution, a pair of angels arrives in her prison cell. The two inform her that she is to be exiled to God’s new planet called Kaia. The final scenes take place in year “4XB39” on God’s new-and-improved ocean oasis where Joan is upset to find that “nothing is ugly.”

The lighting in “A New Saint” was powerful in and of itself. In the cozy Cabaret theatre, the burst of light prompted by the two angels simulating Joan’s last look at the sun before her departure from earth was striking. Additionally, the extremely bright and uncomfortably harsh lights in the questioning room of the prison created a pressurized environment. And in this intense light, Joan’s relaxed and unexcited demeanor was all-the-more excited. At the end of the play, God is illuminated by soft blue-green light as he talks with Joan across the theatre; the audience gets the sense that his presence is important without being intimidating.

The play, written by Ryan Campbell DRA ’15 is rich in its uncomplicated and straightforward plot. Shifts in time are projected on the back wall and obviously reflected by changes in dress. The play centers around dialogue as opposed to physical action, which would prove difficult on the tiny stage anyway. The blocking in the first scene when Joan expressively explains her history, however, makes the most of the available space. Her character is written a carefree, modern-day, rebel and her movement reflects this.

The joint, two-person character Okun (Annie Hagg DRA ’16 and Elizabeth Mak DRA ’16) on planet Kaia eerily reflects the joyous and community-oriented planet with its golden dress that drapes over both actors. As the characters thoughtlessly sway in unified movement in their attempt to uplift a frustrated Joan, the audience gets a glimpse of what God regards as an improved earth. The theme of change, which manifests in a variety of ways throughout the play, surfaces on Kaia. Okun explains their inability to understand the word “can’t,” which has only been brought to the planet by a discouraged and human Joan.

The use of modern colloquialisms by Joan when she refers to her historical past is hilarious and reflects her complete immersion in the present-day. The dialogue among angels was also well received by the audience. At one point, we learn that Raphael and Raguel are “f**king sh*t up” in heaven and that “starting the second American Civil War is a terrible look” on Joan.

Featuring the musical stylings of Kanye West and Lorde in its opening and closing scenes, “A New Saint for a New World” takes a definitively modern look at the age-old themes of faith and human nature. While the play boasts an unforgivingly optimistic ending — God and Joan agree to not give up on the ailing earth — there still remains the question of how and when we’ll all just get along.
What Cannot Be Described
February 28, 2014 2:15 am Leave a Comment
“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.
Debunking the Manderley Myth
February 14, 2014 2:56 am Leave a Comment
For those that crave the macabre over the cloying this Valentines’ Day weekend, try venturing into “The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs” at the Yale Cabaret — if you dare. Québécois playwright Carole Fréchette summons up echoes of Gothic romance (think Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel “Rebecca”) but ultimately conjures voices less supernatural than quotidien. Despite a familiar “girl meets great but mysterious man” premise, this unconventional tale becomes the ideal antidote to the over sugared-spiced-and-everything-niced love story.

The Cabaret’s intimate dinner theater setting makes the show a nearly eHarmony match for the space. Most of the action déroules on a small riser center stage, but occasionally transitions into the audienc e. In the first, and most striking, of one of the play’s movements, the two actors took seats at the heads of two long, banquet-style tables filled with real-life theater-goers. Customers’ chatter hushed. I saw one man try to talk to the actress now ensconced to his left. The thespians may have been exposed by their make-up and costumes, but their arrival nonetheless marked a subtle, masterful transition from real to performance. The space is transformed from restaurant to “a sitting room, Vienna 1900,” and, in the end, to a projection of the protagonist’s imagination.

If, as two characters chant, “the human mind is 90 percent unoccupied,” then that of level-headed newlywed Grace (Chasten Harmon DRA ’15) seems to be overbooked. Though seemingly infatuated with her husband Henry (Ryan Campbell DRA ’15), she sub-lets to powerful female voices. Her sister Anne (Elia Monte-Brown DRA ’14) surges forward with the most conviction and compassion, clashing against the spirit of her rather stereotypical mother, Joyce (Elivia Bovenzi DRA ’14). Where Joyce rejoices at the thought of domestic bliss for her daughter, Anne cautions Grace against falling for a stranger. Anne questions whether the couple’s commitment has substance and advises her sister against a cloistered life with Henry in his castle-like home. Anne later confesses she knows Grace thinks of her as a “dumb as dirt” sister who “oversimplifies” everything. As tension builds, though, we realize this perceived flaw of her sister’s could have been Grace’s best defense.

Grace’s most poignant character flaw — and the show’s most effective prop — seems to center around a distortion of the mundane. When Henry orders Grace never to go into the room at the top of the stairs, surprise, surprise — she does. Upon opening the door, though, (semi-spoiler alert but don’t worry you see an anti-climax coming) a chute of dirt cascades down on her, not a body, nor dismembered limbs. But Grace does hallucinate, during several trespasses into the room, that she sees a man and feels his face, and other parts of his body. If only she could’ve seen the dirt, or the simple explanation behind in the “spirit” she believes she confronts.

Grace, portrayed by Harmon with poise and intensity, almost dominates the plot as a dynamic female heroine (remember, in “Rebecca,” the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter doesn’t even get a first name!). Instead of succumbing as a Mrs. Danvers-bound victim, Grace manipulates her maid, Jenny (Mariko Parker DRA ’14) into keeping her trespass a secret from Henry. And, true to Fréchette’s pattern of non-convention, the cheerfully malignant Jenny betrays Grace in one of the play’s more gripping dramatic scenes. Intrigue!

Though the final chapter will be kept a mystery, Henry and Grace’s relationship illuminates a simple reality of love: that it’s terrifying on some level (with or without a Mrs. Danvers or Jenny breathing down your back) to move into another person’s thoughts. Maybe the “man” Grace sees, the one Henry’s afraid to let her see, is not Mr. Hyde, but Dr. Jekyll — not the Beast, but his human form. Maybe scary can be that “simple.” What, ultimately, isn’t frightening about leading someone into your hallowed ground, and letting another person see who you truly are?
A Social Education Onstage
January 24, 2014 1:53 am Leave a Comment
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.
A Dance Through the Fires of Love
December 6, 2013 1:39 am Leave a Comment
If you have yet to take Love Actually off the shelf of romcom sacredness this holiday season (or maybe you’ve already watched it and worry about overindulging), try tuning in to the Yale Cabaret’s production of Bound to Burn this weekend. The narrative structure even seems familiar: smaller plot strands instead of one cohesive story. Each of the three couples featured, though, communicates a different aspect of those amorous emotions that almost cannot be conveyed by words — the ones, perhaps, that can only be expressed through body language. Throughout the performance, none of the couples utter a single word. For those Hugh Grant fans especially fond of his Prime Minister dance sequence, you can expect your choreography appetite to be satisfied — just in a mellower, hot-chocolate-y sort of way, until the pieces start to … you guessed it … burn your tongue a little.

Though the level of technique may perhaps not be So You Think You Can Dance level, overall the dancers succeed in conveying intense, enthralling emotions. At first, I wondered if the show had been properly titled. There was an adorable duo locking eyes, holding hands, looking lovingly at each other from across the stage. Not to mention the soundtrack setting that stage: The Civil Wars’ “Poison and Wine,” which I had never heard before, but is now likely to take a spot in my Top 25 Most Played list. This first pair, Elizabeth Mak DRA ’16 and David Clauson DRA ’16, complemented one another. Mak’s facial expressions especially carried me into the scene, even while the plot was difficult to understand.

Later in the program, we learn that Mak was “Valerie, the Breadwinner” and Clauson played “Tim, Her Husband.” In the theme of the show, however, an unlikely wordlessness in the normally theatrical Cabaret, I wonder if these “role” words enhanced the atmosphere, or if these explanations are instead excessive. The subtlety in Mak’s movement revealed more about her personal state of mind. The second couple in the triptych, Chasten Harmon DRA ’15 and Daniel Reece DRA ’14, continued this theme of miscommunication for me — until, once again, looking at the program’s cast list. Without reading it, I saw the two as classic examples of the jilted girl and flirtatious guy — as stereotypes, even.

Then, I read: “Jessica, A Free Spirit” and “Mark: Her Heart.” Was Mark (Reese) really her soul mate? If so, their opening pas-de-deux seemed a little too light-hearted, so to speak, slightly too playful to have transformed into a Jamie and Aurelia kind of love. I could maybe see Jessica jumping in a lake to save the opening chapters of Mark’s first novel, but I definitely can’t see Mark marching into her family restaurant or, you know, reciting Portuguese phrases on escalators. The third team, Steven Rotramel DRA ’15 and Rob Chikar ’14, had mastered the art of pantomime. Just as they may normally inflect certain lines of dialogue with more emphasis, then shift pianissimo, then scream, so they triumphed by illuminating the stage with emotional force, their bodies the only instruments they needed. Rotramel stood downstage, gazing up with an expression of immeasurable satisfaction and awe. It was, simply put, beautiful.

Of course, as some love stories do, the “never saw true beauty ‘till this night” uplift ultimately unraveled and singed. Remember in the most recent film adaptation of Les Miserables when some criticized Russell Crowe’s untrained voice? I thought his rawness even more emotionally charged than some of the “trained” voices of his comrades. Rotramel touched me in a similar way, though he clearly does have some dance background. As the couples’ pieces intertwined, he remained in the moment. Discovering later that he portrayed “Ryan, A Prostitute” opposite “Braden, His Hope” added another dimension to the story — but, as before, the power of their amorous arc glimmered through even in the absence of that information.

“Bound to Burn,” with all of the inevitability embedded in its title, does not culminate in a coming-together of all its characters, or in a sweet kiss in an airport waiting room. It’s just not that kind of show. Its tale of love ends with more ambiguity, more tears, some home and redemption and in the end, maybe more gulps of reality.
“Crave”-ing Understanding
November 15, 2013 1:07 am Leave a Comment
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.”
What We Talk About When We Talk About Editing
October 18, 2013 3:43 am Leave a Comment
“Beginners by Raymond Carver; Or, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is a long title for a short drama. Based on Raymond Carver’s eponymous short story, the play was adapted by Phillip Howze and directed by András Visky, blending together elements of biography, theater and criticism. It’s both a play and a commentary on the machinery of editing.

Most of the piece is an adaptation of Carver’s short story about two couples who talk love over drinks. The conversation escalates when the older woman, Terri, talks about an old flame who nearly killed her for love. Arguments over the nature of love ensue. Carver’s short story is composed largely of dialogue, which explains its immediate appeal to a playwright. It’s easy material to convert, and it’s good material. His prose is shimmering, smooth, easy, and it captures the American idiom and rhythm of speech. It’s almost written like a screenplay — dialogue with brief pauses to describe gestures, lighting and movement. But a nearly word-for-word adaptation is a double-edged sword. You get the ease and fluidity of Carver’s dialogue, but a question arises: Does the adaptation do anything the short story doesn’t?

It does, of course, but its innovations only work some of the time. Spliced into the plot of the story are extended voiceovers, in which an unseen actor reads from correspondence Carver had with his editor, Gordon Lish. Carver defends the story as he wrote it, tells Lish he loves him, begs that nothing be changed and so on. Meanwhile text from the story is projected onto the back wall; little carrot-marks and cross-outs show the editing process at work. Unfortunately, the text swirling about can be difficult to see or process before more text replaces it. Nor is this move particularly original. It’s a rather literal demonstration of editing.

The direction does better when it explores editing through subtler means. For instance, characters occasionally step into the limelight, leaving the rest in the dark, embarking on monologues that Carver eventually cut from the final version of his story. We see blocks of crossed-out text behind the actors. Indeed, we see that Carver was right to excise these soliloquies, mostly poetic excurses on cattle and snow that have little to do with his minimalist and everyday style. The director sheds light on Carver’s maturation as a writer without breaking the rhythm of the play.

Elsewhere, the rhythm feels off. The adaptation tries too hard to shoehorn Carver’s smooth and understated prose into the standard forms of performance — monologue, banter and retort, rejoinder. Actors rush their delivery to swell a scene or raise their voices to show they’re agitated. The quiet, subdued rhythms of Carver’s prose are replaced with those of the capital-T Theater. The “human noise” made by Carver’s characters, ambiguous and rich, is forced to fit the confines of dramatic performance. The lines of dialogue in Carver’s story are so bare, so unmediated by narration. They could be caustic, gentle, tragic or humorous. Onstage every line has a too-specific intonation — sarcastic, or ironic, or effusive.

The play asks good questions, but does so imperfectly. The interruption of the plot with voiceovers, though jarring, raises interesting concerns about character. When the characters all freeze in the darkness and we hear Carver talking about them to his editor, we become acutely aware of the fraught power dynamics between a writer and his work. The excised monologues and material we’re shown on the screen reveal just how much Carver’s characters live and breathe in his consciousness. We see how almost maniacally possessive Carver is of his creation. We wonder whether he’s fully in control of his characters, or whether they’ve slipped out of his grasp. It’s painful to see entire pages of text pared down to a couple words, to see parts of characters pruned away, maimed by their author and his editor.

At the end of the play, the actors stare at a screen whose text describes their own movements. In moments like these, the play rises to the level of thought-provoking, textual self-consciousness. While this move isn’t new, it is interesting for its integration of biographical and historical context. But often this effort at incorporation is forced, or imperfectly executed. Despite the bold staging, the play’s directorial gambles don’t quite pay off.
At the Cabaret, ‘The Bird Bath’ gets surreal
March 1, 2013 3:27 am Leave a Comment
It’s not that hard to create a piece of theater that’s weird or disturbing. But it’s almost impossible to do that while making the work beautiful. This weekend at the Yale Cabaret, “The Bird Bath” manages to do just that.

“The Bird Bath” is a 35-minute work of experimental theater. The show is inspired by “Down Below,” the memoir of Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. In the book, Carrington suffers a mental breakdown after her husband is taken to a concentration camp. “The Bird Bath” recreates that hellish reality onstage.

“The Bird Bath” takes place on a stage divided into three zones by distinct black and white sections painted onto the walls of the theater itself. In these zones, three women play out the hallucinogenic agonies of Carrington’s story. On the left, Ariana Venturi carries out ambiguous science experiments. On the right, Chasten Harmon sometimes acts like a tiger, at other times, like a puppy. In the center, Hannah Leigh Sorenson takes a bath and puts on makeup. In sum, the performance feels like a full narrative, even without a traceable arc.

It is difficult to come to “The Bird Bath” without context, but it felt as if too much context would have been bad as well. When I spoke to director Monique Barbee after the show, I felt that there was no way I could have understood many of the concepts without hearing them directly from her. But I was glad I hadn’t heard them before seeing it. There is more than enough to occupy the audience’s attention even without a traditional narrative to focus on.

The work uses the cozy space of the Cabaret wonderfully, making use of the windows, and stretching the stage area lengthwise so that almost every seat is close to the action on stage. A clothesline hangs right over the heads of the first row of seats. In one of the first scenes, the three women shed their normal clothes, approach that clothesline and slip into brightly colored gowns that stand out against the grays and browns of the set design. Being so close to the stage, the audience does more than just see the action right in front of their faces – they can also smell it. During a particularly disturbing scene, I could smell the white powder a character was furiously applying to her face.

But most striking was what I could hear. The sound design replaced the voices of the actors. None of the women speak words during the show; instead, a voice-over narrates. But the actors are not silent. They emit screeches, puppy whimpers and hellish grunts of agony. Sorenson’s cavewoman grunts are completely believable as she explores her surroundings.

It feels odd to call it acting. The performance felt too real. One simply does not contort one’s body, thrash about and cry out in pain as believably as Sorenson does without feeling that torment inside oneself. Watching her agony, I began to experience it myself. After the show Barbee admitted that an actress had actually injured her hand banging on glass while rehearsing a scene where the character tries to escape a window.

But the anguish comes with a sort of ecstasy. Barbee told me after the show that when reading Carrington’s book, she was struck with how willfully it seemed Carrington put herself through this torment, for the sole sake of developing the perception of other Surrealist artists. “She goes through this obsessive image-making out of the things around her,” Barbee said.

That image-making is where the ecstasy lay. The creators of “The Bird Bath” brought something completely fresh to this world. The movements of the bodies, the sounds I was hearing, the emotions I was feeling — they all seemed new to me. Barbee saw the look of horror on my face when she was talking about Carrington’s book. “It’s an interesting question to ask as an artist,” she said. “Do I have to put myself through what she did?”

Maybe not, but it felt like it was happening anyway during the 35 minutes of the show. The actors and the audience feel the experience of going through anguish for the sake of art. There is a scene where the women repeatedly emulate Queen Elizabeth. In the bathtub, Sorenson goes through a cycle of giggles and smiles. In context, it is utterly disturbing.

Don’t let my talk of the audience’s pain keep you from seeing this show. It is not easy to watch. But it is impossible to let your mind drift away while watching it, and it is impossible to casually forget afterwards. How often do you see a show and not space out here and there? “The Bird Bath” is an original portrayal of art and the human body. I believe that the best art forces you to be changed by it. “The Bird Bath” made the cheerful disturbing and made the horrifying beautiful. I was changed.
At the Cabaret, “The Bird Bath” gets surreal
1:30 am Leave a Comment
It’s not that hard to create a piece of theater that’s weird, or disturbing. But it’s almost impossible to do that while making the work beautiful. This weekend at the Yale Cabaret, “The Bird Bath” manages to do just that.
“The Bird Bath” is a 35-minute work of experimental theater. The show is inspired by “Down Below,” the memoir of Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. In the book, Carrington suffers a mental breakdown after her husband is taken to a concentration camp. “The Bird Bath” recreates that hellish reality onstage.
“The Bird Bath” takes place on a stage divided into three zones by distinct black and white sections painted onto the walls of the theater itself. In these zones, three women play out the hallucinogenic agonies of Carrington’s book. On the left, Ariana Venturi carries out ambiguous science experiments. On the right, Chasten Harmon sometimes acts like a tiger, at other times, like a puppy. In the center, Hannah Leigh Sorenson takes a bath and puts on makeup. In total, the performance feels like a story, even without a traceable narrative.
It is difficult to come to “The Bird Bath” without context, but it felt as if too much context would have been bad as well. When I spoke to director Monique Barbee after the show, I felt that there was no way I could have understood many of the concepts without hearing it directly from her. But I was glad I hadn’t heard it before seeing it. There is more than enough to occupy the audience’s attention even without a traditional narrative to focus on.
The work uses the cozy space of the Cabaret wonderfully, making use of the windows, and stretching the stage area lengthwise so that almost every seat is close to the action on stage. A clothesline hangs right over the heads of the first row of seats. In one of the first scenes the three women shed their normal clothes, approach that clothesline and slip into brightly colored gowns that stand out against the grays and browns of the set design. Being so close to the stage, the audience can not only see the action right in front of their faces, but can also smell it. During a particularly disturbing scene, I could actually smell the white powder a character was furiously applying to her face.
But most striking was what I could hear. The sound design replaced the voices of the actors. None of the women speak words during the show; instead, a voice-over narrates. But the actors are not silent. They emit screeches, puppy whimpers and hellish grunts of agony. Sorenson’s cavewoman grunts are completely believable as she explores her surroundings.
It feels odd to call it acting. The performance felt too real. One simply does not contort one’s body, thrash about and cry out in pain as believably as Sorenson does without feeling that torment inside oneself. Watching her agony, I began to experience it myself. After the show Barbee admitted that an actress had actually injured her hand banging on glass, rehearsing a scene where the character tries to escape a window.
But the anguish comes with a sort of ecstasy. Barbee told me after the show that when reading Carrington’s book, she was struck with how willfully it seemed Carrington put herself through this torment, for the sole sake of developing the perception of other Surrealist artists. “She goes through this obsessive image-making out of the things around her,” Barbee said.
That image-making is where the ecstasy lay. The creators of “The Bird Bath” brought something completely fresh to this world. The movements of the bodies, the sounds I was hearing, the emotions I was feeling — they all seemed new to me. Barbee saw the look of horror on my face when she was talking about Carrington’s book. “It’s an interesting question to ask as an artist,” she said. “Do I have to put myself through what she did?”
Maybe not, but it felt like it was happening anyway during the 35 minutes of the show. The actors and the audience feel the experience of going through anguish for the sake of art. There is a scene where the women repeatedly emulate Queen Elizabeth. In the bathtub, Sorenson goes through a cycle of giggles and smiles. In context, it is utterly disturbing.
Don’t let my talk of the audience’s pain keep you from seeing this show. It is not easy to watch. But it is impossible to let your mind drift away while watching it, and it is impossible to casually forget afterwards. How often do you see a show and not space-out here and there? “The Bird Bath” is an original portrayal of art and the human body. I believe that the best art forces you to be changed by it. “The Bird Bath” made the cheerful disturbing, and made the horrifying beautiful. I was changed.

By Karolina Ksiazek