Northwest New Works, Week 2: The Studio Showcase
The Satori Group. Photo credit Tim Summers.
Last weekend On the Boards hosted the second half of their Northwest New Works Festival, an annual event now in its 27th year. With sixteen short performances in all, NWNW allows local and regional artists to premiere new, original works in dance, music, and performance theatre.
The Satori Group, The Making of a Monster. Previously completely impressed with their creative approach to staging and space, we were really looking forward to seeing what Satori had put together for the festival. In The Making of a Monster, the theatre group tackles adolescent sexuality with their trademark inventive style.
Stuck with a stationary audience, Satori instead tells the story with scene-shifting screens, light, sound, and a strong visual style. Presented in stills, like a graphic novel, or with elements of Anime, The Making of a Monster combines live theatre with comic-style storytelling, or the idea of stationary frames. The creativity in conceptualization was through the roof, like the approach to a slow-motion underwater scene, or petals falling from a tree, or fighting, or yelling, or disgust, or anger. Even more interesting was the decision to tell the story with anthropomorphic characteristics: the jackass coach, the foxy pre-teen, the sex scene.
Already a strong piece, The Making of a Monster could still benefit from a slight tightening to its timing and execution.
Listen to Adam Standley and Laara Garcia (Pseudopod Interactive) talk about ensemble collaboration here.
Lily Verlaine, Magpie. Lily Verlaine begins her act by rolling onstage in a swath of black feathers, and she’s already undressed - the traditional burlesque “reveal” switched to the beginning. She pulls on a pair of stockings, stretching her dancer’s feet. She crawls to the wings and wiggles into a costume, festooned with unwound rolls of film.
Verlaine, who developed the piece, proceeds with this photography theme: pulling out a Polaroid camera, crawling into the audience, taking a picture. Ideas of objectification are explored here, as well as the “non-consensual” act of audience involvement.
But we longed for more exposure to Verlaine’s character in Magpie: one who collects shiny objects, maybe, or has an obsession with her own reflection, or a photography fetish. It felt like Verlaine had a great idea, but couldn't quite figure out her focus. (In other news, today we discovered another sexy woman formed from film.)
Our friend commented, though, that she liked the overall vintage dustiness of the piece, like the allure of grandma’s attic.
Listen to Lily Verlaine and Amy O’Neal talk about female empowerment and discovery here.
Erin Leddy, My Mind is Like an Open Meadow. The allure of grandma’s attic. Grandma’s memories: dusty, undiscovered treasures. Erin Leddy takes this fragile topic and handles it with love, care, and more than a little experience.
One of the few out-of-towners in this year’s festival, Leddy has worked with Portland’s Hand2Mouth Theatre for eight seasons. Leddy lived with her grandmother, Sarah, in 2001, recording over 20 hours of Sarah’s memories. My Mind is Like an Open Meadow, is woven together from sound clips of Sarah’s wavering voice, Sarah’s words sung or spoken or acted by Leddy; the piece’s excellent sound design handled by OtB’s very capable tech crew. The idea of Leddy at times “becoming” her grandmother was a transitive one, expounding on the familiar wisdom and peace of the elderly figures in all our lives, and the common human experience of aging. Very touching. We’d like to see this piece in a longer form.
The closing applause was meant to credit the success of Leddy’s concept and performance … but we sensed some of it was for Sarah, too.
Listen to Erin Leddy and Danny Herter interview each other here.
Charles Smith, Today I am a Zionist. Afterwards, we went to Wikipedia and read about the hammered dulcimer. Then, Zionism. Also Denny Hill, and Alki, and Googled whether or not “alchie” or “alky” is a derogatory term for Native Americans.
Charles Smith crams all these things together into his helter-skelter presentation of Seattle history, patriotism and “progress”. Smith plays the hammered dulcimer with a determined focus, singing a sort of mournful hymn while Seattle Municipal Archive photos of the Denny Hill Regrade screen behind him. He then transitions into a fast-talking auctioneer, a boat captain and later (we think) into a younger version of himself.
Most of the references went over our head - excepting the general message of “why do you hate progress?” Nevertheless, Smith as a performer is completely sound and self-assured; his vision steams full ahead, whether or not we, cognitively, are on board.
Smith will present Today I am a Zionist in full-length form (renamed My Arm is Up in the Air) during On the Boards’ 2010-11 season.
Listen to Charles Smith and Mark Haim talk about the difficulties they faced when creating their work here.
