Obscene Jester

anatomy of autoperformance

I love Peggy Shaw: she is a performer that you want to see over and over again, maybe give her a hug and have a drink with after the show. Not only a brilliant writer, but a truly genuine performer—she is constantly there with you, in the moment, enjoying, giving, without a hint of irony or cynicism. She is the definition of a compassionate performer.

MUST: the inside story is no exception. Part anatomy lecture, part Beat reading, part Vegas lounge act, Shaw uses her biology as a touchstone to explore issues of birth, death, love, and intimacy. This is nothing new for her: in the past, Shaw has used allegories of biological determinism to expose the problems of gender, identity, and fate, such as You’re Just Like My Father.

MUST the inside story from UTRFestival on Vimeo.

Shaw’s words, co-written with Suzy Wilson, are the honest and somewhat oblique fare characteristic of Shaw’s body of work. (That’s right, Tweed uses puns unabashed.) We can an in-depth look at her skin cells, her bones, all in the service of the ever-evasive mind. She deftly maneuvers between a conversation with the audience, autobiographical reminiscence, and Tom-Waits-y songs about skeletons (see video), with delightful accompaniment from the Clod Ensemble.

But as always, the draw is Shaw’s persona. Her not-quite-virtuoso aesthetic is incredibly refreshing and charming. She is one of the few performers I feel that I really get to know through her performance. One doesn’t need a microscope, in the end, to get under Peggy’s skin. If anything, MUST is an obvious manifestation of Peggy’s work to date.

on the nature of physics and alienation

“We live and die rationally and productively.”

            —Herbert Marcuse

Anthony Black’s Invisible Atom  from the 2b theatre company takes place in a heartbeat: Black’s hand walks across a bridge, bends its knees and leaps. And hangs. It, he, and we are suspended in this moment, a moment poised between life and death, positive and negative, movement and stasis. According to Henri Bergson, time is indivisible, even in its nature of construction, and the Atom plays with this notion of stopping it, owning a frozen moment. But, as Black points out, this performance is impossible: “After all, who can own time?”

Invisible Atom from UTRFestival on Vimeo.

The rest of the play follows the events that lead to the bridge, from Atom’s adoption to meeting his partner to having a baby to abandoning his job for his search for a place in the universe. He takes us from his swank, stock-market financed apartment to London in search of his ruthless, biological father. All is peppered with ruminations on capital, physics, existentialism, and love. Atom seems to have become the Every-One-Dimensional Man of Marcuse, alienated from work, seamlessly woven into his family and social life. He is a man who has followed his path blindly, almost pre-determined, and the opportunity to chart his history leads to a chain of events that end at the beginning, hovering a foot away from the bridge, overlooking an inevitable demise.

The staging of Atom is quite wonderful: Black spends most of the performance stuck on a three-by-three foot platform, lending the piece a its claustrophobic feel, not to mention its relation to being raised up, hovering, with no way off but to leap. Leigh Ann Vardy’s lighting design is the piece’s largest asset—specific, fragmented, and divisive. Often Atom is only partially lit, divided piece by piece by the external forces that rule and command him. It plays amazingly with the false consciousness of indivisibility, progress, and outdated science. More of the innovative staging and lighting would have added quite a punch to the piece. Instead, the story, while intelligently crafted and honestly performed by Black, is a bit stodgy and cliché for our time. The alienation of man, in the finance sector no less, is too vague and well-worn to land any sort of visceral punch. Marx, Camus, and Marcuse are long gone, and Invisible Atom never really gets specific or timely enough to make its presence relatable. It’s an awful feeling to have come along on such a journey, when a man’s life is at an end, and to feel so little as he falls.

2010 is sexy

Happy New Year, OJ fans!

Goodness, I missed you so dearly. The past month has seen Tweed literally travel all over the country for occasions joyous, absurd, and not-so joyous. But he's back, back to cradle you in his critical arms! Come, rest your weary head upon the Jester!

I suppose this new year greeting is long overdue, so I'm going to go ahead and welcome the Year of the Tiger early: 

Welcome, Year of the Tiger! Rrrrrowrrrr!

 

Stay tuned my friends: we've got lots of excited plans for posts and podcasts that will make your performance cup runneth over. What do you want to see this year in performance? From us? Let us know! Leave a comment.

Only two years to the Mayan Apocalypse!

Bringing sexy back,

Tweed