I’m not a theater expert; I’m comfortable saying only so much about the first half of Collaboraction‘s Sketchbook closing day all-fourteen-shorts marathon I saw this afternoon.
(I wanted to stay for the entire show, but as it was going to run close to five hours and I had huge piles of blogging and laundry waiting for me at home, I peaced out at intermission. The seven pieces I did see, though, were overall engaging and tight.)
Right off the bat, let me name a few things I love: The Building Stage, where I hadn’t been since the premiere of My Name is a Blackbird, is a terrific space. Non-standard house arrangements remind you that norms of theater architecture are literally ancient and don’t necessarily support new work in the realm. Neon green and black are a fantastic combination, and if you’re going to design a room using that as your palette, fine by me. Reduction of paper usage wherever possible is walking the walk; my visit to Sketchbook involved none whatsoever (credits for each piece rolled on multiple screens immediately following and the complete program notes are available online).
Movement-based enough to be relevant to this blog were Joseph Ravens’ Kattywampus, The Gist by Mark Comiskey, and Carolyn Hoerdemann’s and Atalee Judy’s collaboration Fix Your Teeth Bitch.
Kattywampus is a solo a few minutes in length Ravens intends to read as a glimpse of something neverending; even without his explication (in press materials) that would have been perfectly clear. He’s dragged into and out of the performance space on a disc of white artificial grass, dropped off short of the center of the floor. The not-quite-there arrival turns out to set a tone appropriate to the piece: The carpet is a purgatory of sorts, a prison in which Ravens, wearing a giant replica of his own head created by a mascot costume manufacturer, is trapped for, presumably, eternity. Compositionally it’s closed to cycles: To an electronic music score lush and looping, reminiscent of Owen Belton and Boards of Canada, Ravens rotates atop the disc executing movements from a menu of compulsive scratching, large slicing gestures, sitting in wait, and removing from his flesh-colored tights “knobby blobs,” heavy hunks of metal and rock covered in wool in vibrant colors. They’re like odd iron fruit from another world, or organs extracted from the viscera of a cartoon character. He offers them to the audience for a brief moment before they drop with a muted thud, discarded and forgotten. Read More…
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