Weekend Performing Arts: Water, Water, Booze, and Lichen(?)

Marissa Rae Niederhauser’s tableaux vivants at P:SA; photo by Dave Hanagan.

Another big weekend of performing arts events. First up, I have to mention the two big openings that happened last weekend:  God of Carnage at the Rep and Sextet at Washington Ensemble. We’re going to have our own reviews of both up shortly, and so I don’t want to put words in my own writer’s mouth, but based on what we’ve discussed (and what I sort of expected to hear), I’m going to point readers to Brendan Kiley’s review in The Stranger, which is entitled: “God of Carnage at Seattle Rep is a well-polished turd.”

Honestly, I didn’t expect much more from Yasmina Reza, whose other most notable play, Art, always struck me as an ironic comment on itself: It centers on three people viciously arguing over the fact that one of them has bought a very large, very white painted canvas for a lot of money. The big argument–for no reason–is whether there’s anything to it at all, which is pretty much the discussion over the play itself. Kiley nails, well, both plays when he writes (addressing the actors): “Your characters all clearly hate each other, and yet we can see the front door throughout the whole play. How could Reza think none of you would just leave the room?”

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And then there’s Tommy Smith’s Sextet at the Ensemble, which brings me to water. Water, water, water! I can’t seem to escape it. Not two weeks ago (and I don’t mean to show off here) I was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the late Pina Bausch’s Vollmond, and damn if I’ve never seen quite that much water onstage: flowing in rivers, raining down (for well over an hour of the show), and being tossed about, swam in, and dumped over heads by the amazing cast of twelve dancers.

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I’ve seen more than my fair share of dance at this point in my life (and frankly, I’m probably taken more seriously as a dance critic than a theatre critic now), but I have to say: I’ve never sat, for a full two-and-some hours, quite so utterly transfixed by choreography as I did at Vollmond. The movement, the spectacle, and the imagery was all simply incredible, which made up for the fact that thematically, the show was nothing more than the sort of European cultural kitsch that Americans love to eat up in movies about “the way things used to be,”and what’s more, not for the first time I was downright shocked by Bausch’s less-than-contemporary gender portrayals. As charming as I’m sure some women find it to be led around by their hair by men…well, you get the picture.

So why am I bringing this up? Because the Ensemble has set Smith’s play, directed by Roger Benington and designed by Andrea Bryn Bush, on a stage covered in water, so that as the triptych of couples featuring disturbed wives and separated by time and space move about and copulate, there’s a big, wet background to all their sexing. Which sounds amazing, and by all counts is a better bet than God of Carnage–unsurprising given that the Ensemble is consistently strong and Smith is a quite good playwright. My one question, though, and which I haven’t seen raised elsewhere, is that the concept sure sounds a lot like their production of Sarah Kane’s Crave several years ago, designed by Jen Zeyl (and coincidentally, directed by the same guy), the show that essentially put them on the map and that people still gush over. Not having seen either, I’d be very interested to know if they’ve really done something different this time, or whether they’re trying to live up to their now-lost acronym “WET.”

Hannah Victoria Franklin and Chris Macdonald at “Sextet,” photo by Laurie Clark Photography

Water also featured prominently in part 1 of Marissa Rae Niederhauser‘s performance-installation at Project: Space Available a few weeks ago. The show, a series of tableaux vivants, entitled somewhat wordily i don’t care if it has been said before some things bear repeating, has unfolded as a triptych over time, each performance being recorded and somehow reintroduced as an installation opposite the new iteration. In the first, On second thought maybe i don’t want to be your trophy wife, Niederhauser set the feminist tone of the work by setting herself center-stage in a red cocktail dress and having actor Paul Budraitis pour successive bottles of champagne (well, some champagne–mostly it was water) over her head. Situated in front of a series of fans which continually and visibly chill her, Niederhauser simply kept trying to keep up a big, fake smile and laughing as though the abuse and objectification were just hunky-dory.

I saw the video a week or two later, and I have to admit, it was actually quite hard to watch. As a performance, it’s based on the very simple idea that the longer you look at an image, the more its meaning changes and develops. Given that her subject is the objectification and abuse of women, the bluntness of the image serves the purpose of forcing people–many of whom enter in political agreement with the sentiment even as they turn a blind-eye in daily life–to take in the act of suffering and victimization and consider its unpleasantness.

She followed trophy up a few weeks later with Your morality tales are ignorant and arrogant and i’m sick of hearing them, which featured a scene of a sexual assault aftermath. I’m not sure exactly what the final installation, Gaslit, which opens tonight at 8 and runs Fri. and Sat. at 7 p.m., will be, but it is your chance to see all three at once, and tonight it’s part of the Blitz Capitol Hill Art Walk, so check out their website for a full set of listings and make a night of it (you may well need a drink to stop thinking what sort of person you are when you’re done).

Otherwise, there’s a few other noteworthy events. Spectrum Dance Theater is presenting the second weekend of what’s essentially a Donald Byrd retrospective, wherein the legendary choreographer returns to and re-thinks (or at re-explores) shorter works spanning his career. Byrd is a damn smart guy, and as our own MvB has pointed out, reading his blog is a downright humbling experience, at least for me, the purported critic who clearly doesn’t know half of what he should. Also, it’s the closing weekend of Men in Dance at the Broadway Performance Hall.

And also worth noting is that this weekend is the grand-opening bash of INSCAPE Arts, which has taken over the old INS building in the International District. The open house featuring performances and installations is Sat. and Sun. 12-6, and amongst others features Manifold Motion. MM, the company founded by dancer and choreographer Keely Isaak Meehan, will be launching a new evening-length work this November called Under, and you can get a sneak-peak at INSCAPE. MM’s work in the past has been visually stunning and imaginative in a way that few other dance companies have been, and it’s definitely worth checking out. And I’m just going to point you to Jen Graves’ loving review of Implied Violence‘s show and retrospective at the Frye for more info.

Last, I should have mentioned this before but I’m overwhelmed: don’t forget that the newest iteration of Cafe Nordo, another project of which I’m more than passingly fond, is underway through Nov. 13 in the old Circus Contraption space at Fremont’s Theo Chocolate. The theme this time is cocktails, and it still features some of my favorite performers, so go! It’s worth the ticket price.