Wednesday
Feb062008
The other thing I did on Thursday
Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 02:50PM
I also went and saw a show with Bret on Thursday night called Hey Girl! It pulsed with all these intense, dreamlike images and expensive electric props, and it was supposed to address issues of the feminine image, I think. It wasn't very good--as Bret pointed out after the show, it seemed to be stuck in the most shallow and obvious symbols and images, and failed to explore anything in a particularly involved way. It succeeded very well in pushing visceral buttons cheaply, though--a loud sound, a compelling trio of images, a violent, disturbing scene--and so it wrenched the gut in a sort of delightfully satisfying way, but without providing much real insight.
That said, there were some moments in it that took my breath away. At one point, there was an incredibly tight and bright green laser beam shooting directly into the ear of the main performer as she cocked her head, and words were projected on the back wall of the stage, one at a time, slowly at first and then faster and faster, pausing occasionally for a split second, apparently random but occasionally easy to make connections between. I was amazed at the ability of the brain to pick up so many of those words as they went flashing by so fast I could barely see them, but they made impressions anyway. I was overwhelmed with the sensation of mental tickling, my mouth was open, I felt like I was in the Matrix learning some new crazy mental skill, I was astonished. There was another beautiful moment at the very beginning when the woman emerged naked from a pile of flesh-colored, dripping goo (silicon? something crazy that oozed off the table in glops for the entire rest of the performance). An electric sword that burned whatever touched it, so that when the woman covered it in a folded-up sheet, a stripe was burned all the way through it so that when she picked it up and unfolded it there was a perfect, brown X on it, and she wore it like a cape while talking about the beheaded queens. Perfect circles everywhere. The black woman's body being coated by the white woman in silver paint so that she danced with the lights off and we saw the glowing body in the near-dark and nothing else. These things and more filled me with wonder.
So when you have a joyful experience, even if the thing that produced it was not what you would call great art, how do you react? I decided in the moment of the curtain call that I'd much rather live in a world where I respond to my delight than to my critical mind, and I gave the clunky piece a standing ovation. Later, I felt slightly guilty for doing so. Should I really inflate the value of that piece of theatre by publicly lauding it, potentially increasing its value in the minds of the theatregoers around me and increasing the likelihood that mediocre theatre will be praised as exceptional? Am I contributing to a sort of creeping complacence around theatre, allowing it to die an ugly death because I don't hold it to high standards that would demand better art?
But...I can't choose sitting down with my dour critic's mind, refusing to applaud when the child in me really wants to. And as a producer of theatre, I know how much pain and hope goes into even a terrible show, and surely my genuine joy can't really be hurting anything?
Oh, I don't know. What do you guys think? To deliver the unwarranted praise and be happy about it? Or to maintain a rigorous critical mind and, full of integrity, reserve my standing ovation for the rare piece that really changes everything?
Baffled by the ethics of having an opinion,
Alissa
That said, there were some moments in it that took my breath away. At one point, there was an incredibly tight and bright green laser beam shooting directly into the ear of the main performer as she cocked her head, and words were projected on the back wall of the stage, one at a time, slowly at first and then faster and faster, pausing occasionally for a split second, apparently random but occasionally easy to make connections between. I was amazed at the ability of the brain to pick up so many of those words as they went flashing by so fast I could barely see them, but they made impressions anyway. I was overwhelmed with the sensation of mental tickling, my mouth was open, I felt like I was in the Matrix learning some new crazy mental skill, I was astonished. There was another beautiful moment at the very beginning when the woman emerged naked from a pile of flesh-colored, dripping goo (silicon? something crazy that oozed off the table in glops for the entire rest of the performance). An electric sword that burned whatever touched it, so that when the woman covered it in a folded-up sheet, a stripe was burned all the way through it so that when she picked it up and unfolded it there was a perfect, brown X on it, and she wore it like a cape while talking about the beheaded queens. Perfect circles everywhere. The black woman's body being coated by the white woman in silver paint so that she danced with the lights off and we saw the glowing body in the near-dark and nothing else. These things and more filled me with wonder.
So when you have a joyful experience, even if the thing that produced it was not what you would call great art, how do you react? I decided in the moment of the curtain call that I'd much rather live in a world where I respond to my delight than to my critical mind, and I gave the clunky piece a standing ovation. Later, I felt slightly guilty for doing so. Should I really inflate the value of that piece of theatre by publicly lauding it, potentially increasing its value in the minds of the theatregoers around me and increasing the likelihood that mediocre theatre will be praised as exceptional? Am I contributing to a sort of creeping complacence around theatre, allowing it to die an ugly death because I don't hold it to high standards that would demand better art?
But...I can't choose sitting down with my dour critic's mind, refusing to applaud when the child in me really wants to. And as a producer of theatre, I know how much pain and hope goes into even a terrible show, and surely my genuine joy can't really be hurting anything?
Oh, I don't know. What do you guys think? To deliver the unwarranted praise and be happy about it? Or to maintain a rigorous critical mind and, full of integrity, reserve my standing ovation for the rare piece that really changes everything?
Baffled by the ethics of having an opinion,
Alissa
Reader Comments (2)
hoy! i saw this very same show last night in jersey, unknowing of your blog. hoy hoy!
yes that laser my god, i was pretty jawdropped at that. and the shattering.
i think youre right to follow your gut on this one...i really loved the show as more of a living art museum than a play. thought of the sex/race issues more as jumping off points then arrivals, things that were being culled from and riffed off of than analyzed. so much visual art is all about the aesthetics alone, why not let theater do that from time to time too? i mean if the design is that beautiful, why cant that be enough? why muck it up with meaningful things to say? (That sounds sarcastic, but its not). it just makes it a different kind of piece, more art than politic.
all that said, i did think the text was pretty vapid. and i did not stand.
hoy!
Critique must come from some world view assumption of what is "good" or morality, if you will. It is only relevant in comparison to some set of assumptions or standards. I applaud the spontaneity of heart and screw the mental evaluation. Guilt only stands when the moral code is accepted. (I'm STILL reading Atlas Shrugged). Drop the elitist attitude and be present for the experience. That is real! (I'm glad you have the courage to act on your truth despite what other erudite theatre-goers may think of your lack of sophistication).
To thine own self be true...