12-22-06
Off the Screen and In Your Face
Brian Shaw and Mark Comiskey in Plasticene’s One Fal$e Note, which struck a good balance between words and movement.
I’m not big on words. I write them, I edit them. But when I can get away from them, I do.
Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to dance. I feel a little uncomfortable when people are talking on stage, as if they were doing something unseemly. As a result, I get assigned a lot of physical theatre.
I see the circuses, the puppet shows, the stories told without words. I’ve seen performances in a laundromat and a stable, where horses were the featured performers. I’ve seen actors throw themselves into walls repeatedly for no apparent reason, pretend to cook what looked like turds in a big pot of sawdust, and put vegetables on life support and dissect them with electric knives.
Of course all theatre is physical to some extent. But what’s called “physical theatre” has some distinctive characteristics. Unless it’s Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey, it tends to be original. There are few if any “classic” works of physical theatre. Maybe for that reason it’s often playful and avant-garde. Its creators, who frequently collaborate, go out on a limb. And physical theatre usually implies motion that’s big, not subtle.
What’s not to like? And apparently theatres are beginning to recognize the appeal of original stories creatively told through inventive, sometimes larger-than-life movement. As people increasingly view life on screen – on their laptops, TVs, cell phones, iPods – the impact of having a living, breathing human being in front of you can only increase. On the other hand, why get out of your chair, much less leave the house? That’s the challenge theatre faces today.
Maybe theatre that’s more physical – that’s literally in your face (hello! I’m not on a screen!) – is the provocation would-be stay-at-homes need. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to pull off.
Physical theatre can be especially difficult when there’s a serious point to be made and no clear method for making it. The epitome of that was a piece Goat Island did in late 2005, When Will the September Roses Bloom? Last Night Was Only a Comedy: A Double Performance. Though it purportedly aimed to comment on Iraq, torture, and loss, it was completely opaque. The intention behind Plasticene’s almost wordless Perimeter, performed in late 2004, was also obscure: people simply ran from here to there with portentous looks on their faces. They did things. We didn’t know why. This fall the troupe’s One Fal$e Note, or How to Rob a Bank was much better defined. It had a lot more words – almost too many – but overall it struck a nice balance between witty, thoughtful text and vigorous, pointed movement.
Live Action Cartoonists also tackled big issues in Performance of Sleep in One Long Act Without Intermission: mercy killings, the death penalty, the nature of death and dying. And like many companies doing physical theatre, they failed to negotiate shifts in emotional tone: playfully done sections early on made you want to laugh later when the vegetables being dissected started to scream. You weren’t supposed to laugh.
It’s hard to be both playful, even comic – which is what physical work lends itself to – and to make serious points. Heck, it’s hard just being funny. Without the handy tools of words, the temptation is to be silly, make faces, etc., and hope it works. Babes With Blades went that hopeful route in Choose Your Adventure. In Drag, the Neo-Futurists donned and doffed a lot of clothes and pranced around in them, which ended up distracting from any observations they wanted to make about gender identity. Ravenous Productions’ Sweet Release, which aimed to put a merry face on death, had nothing funny about it. And Compana Marta Carrasco’s Ga-Ga, performed late last summer at the Goodman, was so unfunny it was downright painful. While the clowns on stage yucked it up, we sat bewildered, knowing we should laugh but having no real occasion to do so.
Getting physical on stage pretty much requires childlike play. I don’t know how you get a knack for physical comedy – maybe the theatre gods have to smile on you. Last spring Jeff Jenkins and Julie Greenberg of the Midnight Circus put their considerable talents to work in Stilettos, Circus, and Soul! Both an acrobatic show and a spoof of acrobatic displays, it kept its tongue in its cheek from start to finish, with a big helping hand from Alexandra Billings. Corn Productions’ six-year-old Floss! has a similar appeal – though that view is controversial. The show’s Beboian dancers tread dangerously on the line between shameless brainlessness and wit. Much more noticeably accomplished was Eleffant Foot Co. in Mezza Verita (which is still running, through 12/23), a largely improvised hour-long show in which two expert mimes played dozens of characters wandering a fantastic landscape.
Aloft Aerial Dance is one of several dance troupes – Chicago Dance Crash, Breakbone DanceCo., and Chicago Tap Theatre are among the others – that have ventured into theatre. Ghost Stories!, which Aloft did with Strange Tree Group this fall, was a slight evening, but who could forget the specter of artistic director Shayna Swanson in hideous makeup and wig, taunting the audience while hovering above their heads on trapeze?
Now that’s in your face. Redmoon in The Golden Truffle created a similarly immersive interactive environment – and actually interacted with audience members by serving them chocolates. Maybe my inner child is overdeveloped, but I think most people respond to appeals to the body. And if a show can also make a serious point, as I believe The Golden Truffle did, almost as an afterthought, a sort of byproduct, that’s all the better.
Laura Molzahn is a senior editor at the Chicago Reader, where she also writes about dance and theatre.
Off the Screen and In Your Face
The Lost Art of Listening: Can You Hear Me?