Barber Shop Chronicles at BAM: infectious? No, more like, healing!

(the title of the post refers to the fact that so much of our vocabulary that should be positive is in fact negative: infectious, battle, crusade, armed with, etc. Down with death, war and disease, up with team work, care, love and peace)

JOYOUS! VIBRANT! ENERGY! SINGING! TALENT! WORDS! BLACK LIVES MATTER! DANCE! INTELLIGENCE! AMBITION! COMEDY! FUN!

Well, why should the actors and playwright have all the fun, and a reviewer only the dull, rationalistic role?
The minute you walked in the BAM Harvey Theater (which has undergone some work, including a gallery, what a grand idea, you can meander through it during the interval or on your way out, or on your way in if you are the kind of person who arrives early at the theater rather than out of breath with your coat half buttoned, and that gallery shows When A Pot Finds Its Purpose, a work by japanese-american (how many of these can there be, but welcome?) artist Glenn Kaino, a radiant installation with a political commentary),
well the minute you walked into that theater you were hit by a vibrant energy, a joyous chaos: actors, techies, members of the audience buzzing on the stage, off the stage, romping music, actors seating people (mainly young women, hum) in the barber chair, selfie opportunities, hip swinging, laughing, smiles on every face, lots and lots of cellphones out and busy recording. Went on and on: was that going to be the show? The whole show?

But no. People were gently shoed off the stage, and the actors threw themselves in a short music dance piece. The play The Barber Shop Chronicles takes place in 6 cities, 5 in Africa, the 6th being London. Some of the vignettes carry a story, others are situations involving caring, forgiving, conflict, and lots and lots of discussions about fathering and politics (a welcome parallel is made between father figures and figures of state authority) politics politics, and sports! The play takes place during one day, the final of a soccer championship between Chelsea and Barcelona.

There is a change of mood through the play that is well controlled by super talented Nigerian Inua Ellams). At first, it's a lot of humor, and the situations and lines were damn funny. The scenes get more serious, more emotional. That's always a risk: everyone wants to laugh. But cry? The emotions of betrayal, and loneliness, and loss were  conveyed gently, by the talented cast.

The transition between the scenes/locales is made by picking a bit of a sentence, a bit of a mood and  turning it by turning into a short piece of dance (movements brilliantly orchestrated by Aline David) and song: pure joy.

Was the play perfect? No. It does not have to be. Some actors were less talented than others. Some moments did not hit their full potential.

It does not have perfect, because it gave so much to the audience. A gift. God these people on stage have talent, and the playwright captured what his people have to say: it's a lot. The African diaspora through Africa, pushed by necessity. What does it mean to be a man? What it mean to be a black man? What does it mean to be a strong black man?

Can't wait to see more work by the young playwright Inua Ellams who was elected to the Royal Society of Literature!

Hum. There were 12 actors on stage. 12 men. No women. Zero women. It's in a barber shop, you say? Someone as talented at Ellams could think of one hundred ways of featuring women in this play. No, having just men on stage is not cute, it enforces that the norm is male. Ellams had better follow this up with the Nail Salon Chronicles...

Will Broadway buy the rights? The concern is that they are going to edit some of the more political, more philosophical materials in order to speak down to their audience. Don't do it.

Friday and Saturday night: DJs will be spinning after the show!

Written fast and furiously by  - -  Arabella von Arx

The Second Woman at BAM - not a review!

Alia Shawkat live on the left, broadcast on the right

The winter/spring season has started at BAM, with the new curator David Binder. Great expectations! Joseph V Melillo brought shows with a constant quality to BAM: those that weren't good were excellent. OK, they were a few misfires, but few, so very few. Walked out on maybe 3 out of 100s of shows over the years.

The Second Woman is the first staged show of the season. Created by Nat Randall and Anna Breckon, two outstanding women that do a bunch of other things in the show too.

A red box. Neon signs reads "The Second Woman", the decor is 60s/70s living room, including liquor caddy. A woman walks in, Alia Shawkat, in a beautiful red dress and stilettos. Excitement! She's pulpy, topped with a Geena Rowland style blond wig. Two camerapeople sit outside the box, filming. Image is projected on a screen next to the box.
The camerapeople get up, she gets up from her seat and goes and stands in the corner. Man walks in. Kisses her. They talk. Voices are not amplified, hard to understand. The dialogue, apparently, is inspired by Cassavetes' Opening Night. She expresses her insecurities. The man replies, pretending to reassure her, but not really. She throws noodle dish at him. Then puts music on. They dance. She tries to drag the man down to the floor. He won't. She offers him $20 (says in an article $50, and that's what the men get paid for their performance, but I saw $20, maybe fee went down) and he leaves.

That's the basic scene that gets repeated over and over.  Over 24 hours. 100 men. The men are non actors, cast locally. Her dialogue is always the same. The men have a bit more leeway. They can choose between a few options, the most important one being their reaction when she says: "and I love you": they're all uncomfortable by the expectation she sets they respond. They either say: 'and you love me', or "I love you too". The last line has a similar weight: either "I love you", "I've always loved you", "I never loved you anyway"  She is the perfect woman according to stereopical men's expectations: beautiful, sexy, submissive, insecure. But then her sexuality, her insecurities get too much when she tries to drag them to the floor: she has to be beautiful, sexy,  submissive, insecure but within pre established parameters. She says: You don't think I'm capable when that's all I want to be, I just want to be capable. Well, that's exactly what she is not expected to be.

The purpose is clearly to subvert gender definitions. But this feminist show has 1 female actor for 100 male performers! Almost as bad as the Lehman Trilogy!  (winking face here)

The images shot by the camerapeople  are edited live, turning the theater scene into a film scene with alternating close ups, details, wider shots. Visually, the show is stunning. Visually, Shawkat is stunning.

The tension between the two forms, theater and film, is stimulating. The time conventions are different. On stage, normally, time elapses only when the actors are not on stage. The scene acted out here is neither theater nor cinema. It's too short to be either. And that's fine. The actors go through the motion, the woman reacting to each man, often aping him, or at least taking clues for her behavior from theirs. But their acting is not theater acting nor cinematic. It's a different form, not unlike Lepage's 10 hr show Lipsynch also at BAM.

The men are old, young, different ethnicities. One is gay, another is a woman. The repetition of the action, the improvised differences, Shawkat's comedy makes for humor that lacks subtlety.

As the dialogue is nearly fixed, it is the physical aspect of the scene that changes: the way he opens the bag of Chinese food, the way she throws the noodles, their dance. Sometimes he takes the $20, sometimes he doesn't. She's often playful, which antagonizes the agonizing content of the dialogue.

After over 23 hrs on stage, she's still going strong. Alert. Responsive. Spontaneous. It's astonishing. It's actually better because she's looser, and so are the interactions. Over twenty-three hours into the show, she danced a cancan, and these legs were going high up in the air, no cheating. She was also still wearing her stilettos, when her feet must have been jam. There must have been bloody toes constrained in these contraptions. Maybe that kept her awake! But when she went to the floor, she was lying down flat, and thinking: soon, soon I'll be in my bed. And got up again.

Alia Shawkat still going strong after over 23hrs on stage

Here I conclude: it's a compelling show. Pfew! Expectations are not let down. The experimental aspect, the visuals satisfy the curious mind. Somehow the show could be better, the relation between the dialogue and the action could be more meaningful. A piano accompaniment punctuates the series of scenes, and also plays before the show starts. It's intense, repetitive to obsession. Most apt. So is the music track for the dance,  Aura's "A taste of love".

Interestingly, the relationship to the audience plays an important part in the show: how long will people stay? how do they decide when to leave? When to come back? Somehow their lives are brought into the space, whether they took a break to go to the gym or to make love. There is also time to think, to chat in between iterations. The audience is markedly younger on average than the usual BAM theater audience, and many are friends of the male performers, or the male performers themselves. A ticket will get you a red ribbon around your wrist, - you're not supposed to shower for 24 hrs, I guess. At one point, I took a break, went to the bar:
A beer, a glass of white wine and a bag of cookies.
31.50, says the employee, without blinking. The bag of cookies is teeny tiny, like 5 crumbs.
Dollars? I ask.
She does not smile.
It does include these BAM reusable tumblers, so I guess I'll be saving on my next drinks when I bring my own brand of mescal or armagnac in my pre bought tumbler.
I know, this last part is not all that serious or relevant, but it's an experiential blog! I can be serious too, see here.



Written - fast and furiously by -  Arabella H. von Arx

It is entitled "not a review" because the format does not follow the regular review, or essay or article, structure, with their introduction, development, conclusion. It's looser, more spontaneous and aims primarily at reproducing the experience rather than analyzing it.

I was bored at Mark Morris’ Pepperland! I swear!

Take The Beatles superlative Sgt Peppers’ Lonely Heart Club Band album, have it turned into a modern dance show by super fun choreographer Mark Morris: we had to be in for a treat. Even if the show didn’t break the intellectual sound barrier, it was bound to be highly entertaining and pleasurable. Well, no, and I am compelled to introduce a sad face 😢to support this statement.

The costumes were super yummy, I admit.

The music was awesome, it was arranged by Ethan Iverson to sound more like a musical's score, and the Beatles music can go there without blushing.

The whole show came across as a homage to the American musicals of the 60s, think American in Paris. Don’t think West Side Story with its grand tragedies. So what about the Beatles? What about their genial breakthrough in terms of the history of music with that album?

The Sgt Peppers’ Lonely Heart Club Band was the band’s homage to their working class origin. They offered the music band culture’s naive artistry to the wild wild world of the 60s with drugs and yoga and crazy costumes and... and dark glasses. They paid homage to the working class’ sweet taste for tackiness, and at the same time they acknowledged the hardships of these Lonely Hearts. So little of that groundbreaking approach to making an album is conveyed by the show. The Penny Lane song does contribute some nice working class content, but again it’s all fun and eye candy.

Unfortunately, additionally to the lack of meaning, the choreography was so so so so repetitive. A little repetition is satisfying, a lot turns sedative. Lots and lots of pieces with couples, female/male couples, female/female couples, male/male couples, loving, having fun. How did that relate to the album?

The dance movements had some relevance to what is being done now, nothing very ground breaking, and to American musicals, as mentioned, and to 60s pop dance such as the twist – that last part most enjoyable, naturally. Some of the dancing was quite casual, a bit sloppy, without the usual perfection reached for in modern dance. Nice.

The cancan was fun. There was some interesting stuff about mathematical permutations of movements: at first the whole line does the same movements, then they get shifted so that one dancer does movement #1, 2^nd dancer movement #2, 3^rd dancer movement #1. At the next round, the movements shift across three dancers (easier to do than to explain) instead of two. That was fun. That type of permutation was applied to another part of the choreography too. Choreographers can get quite obsessed with mathematical patterns. But what’s that got to do with the Beatles? With the 60s?

The show was sprightly and pretty vacuous, it was like The Monkees to the Beatles. The sense of optimism hit the mark better. But the 60s were not just about being a pretty face, it was not just about sex, drugs and rock and roll, remember? Vietnam War protests. Women’s Lib. Civil Rights movements. An interest in other cultures. Non violence. Tolerance. Change. Imagination. The only part where this was alluded to, aside from the homosexual couples, was the interpretation of the song A Day In The Life aka “I heard the news today”. The choreography nailed the feeling of the song, the music supporting beautifully with the use of the theremin: a bit sad, a bit sloppy, and a bit political. The Beatles! How I wish the rest of the show had been in tune, a contemporary dance show offering us an interpretation of that genius album.

The musicians were great. The dancers were great. They’re all shapes and forms, that’s cool. One was pregnant! How about that?! A woman, I think.

Mark Morris bypassed Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds for this show. HOW ABOUT THAT?! I couldn’t believe it. But I respect that choice, it is an obvious iconic song to exploit, though the choreographer of the superlatively fun Nutcracker ballet is usually not too worried about subtlety.

written and published by  - -  Arabella von Arx

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers: An Ode to Woman

I wrote a blog entry a couple of weeks ago entitled it 'The Lehman Trilogy: An Ode to Patriarchy, Judaism, and Capitalism.'
That play was written by a man, based on a book by a man, directed by a man, and played by three male actors.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers, playing at the beautiful St Ann's Warehouse in Dumbo, shares these features: based on the best seller written by Max Porter, it is staged by the inventive Enda Walsh, and stars a man and two boys. But where the creators of the Lehman trilogy didn’t think the play needed women to tell the story of a family, ‘Grief’ tells of the disappearance of one woman as defining the whole story of that masculine family at that point in their life.   

Cillian Murphy plays a father who loses his wife abruptly. He, and his two young sons, are visited by Crow, which is also played by Murphy. Crow is evil and elegant. Crow is witty and articulate, cruel and detached. A black, hooded bathrobe turns Murphy into the mythical bird, and any evil creature associated with fear, with loss, with death: demons, ogres, henchman even. He is the one who imposes pain. As Crow, Murphy speaks with the literary English accented voice of fairy tales turned wrong, of horror films. The powerful male voice is further amplified, distorted until the beautiful text becomes incomprehensible. The book, and the play, are based in part on a body of poems, The Crow, that Ted Hughes wrote after the suicide of Sylvia Plath. 

Murphy is the fascinating actor of the Internet series ‘PeakyBlinders’. With his square jaw and stunning blue eyes, glamor is in his range. He leaves all that backstage as he turns into an Irish father, with an unflattering hair style, unfashionable moustache, drab clothes. H portrays the fallibility of a man, as a lover, as a husband, as a father. That requires modesty.

When the actor switches to being Crow, he recovers his potential for glamor, all brilliance, all aloofness from anything that ties humans down: emotions, fears, needs. His bird dance, trancelike, dazzles with its lightness, his delivery of the text seduces with its perfect articulation. He won the Irish Times award for this near one-man show in which streams of sweat literally jets out of his body from the physicality of the performance.

How can grief, that utterly internal experience, so huge, so overwhelming,  liquefying of the insides, be represented on stage which by definition shows only the exterior of a human body? In part, in this case, by projecting the pain onto the walls. They are scratched with the words, with scribbled words, that turn to pure scribble, that paint the walls black. The whole stage is plunged in darkness. Suddenly Crow is perched on the 2^nd floor, light strobes, throbs like sobs in the throat, like blood in the head. It’s terrifying as it looks like Crow might try to fly, and he would crash, being only human.

The moment of terror, the father’s madness passes thanks to the cathartic experience. Back to the mundane London apartment. The stage is mostly empty but for the bare necessities. A kitchen for food. Bunk beds for the boys to sleep. The father does not have a bed. A home movies is projected on the wall. Day trip to the beach. The mother’s face. She’s just a woman. One woman. But we know that every trait of her face, every expression is beloved by the three males in her life, who, dwarfed by her image and her presence, watch her. Her projection becomes huge, encompasses all three walls, the floor of the stage until it diffuses into the whole theater and can’t be read anymore.

The power of women. And isn’t that what they are forever being punished for by men? Girls as sisters, women as mothers, as life partners to men, loom huge over the male emotional landscape with their psychological powers, the power of their beauty, of their bodies, and at the same time, the power of their frailty, the innocence of not knowing their own power. However much material submission men impose on women, as they have done on other groups of human beings, whether they lock them indoor, deny them education, property, respect, whether they are beaten, the dependence of men’s happiness on women can never be reversed. In this play, the boys and their father's world turns to chaos and violence without the presence of the woman in their life.

The lights, the projections, the distorted voice turn the major part of the play into a noisy experience that could have done with a bit more modulation. In the end, the father recovers his sanity, is able to care for his young, and Grief might turn back into "Hope that thing with feathers". In an effective staging trick, the pantry that was empty because of the father’s incapacitation, has miraculously refilled with cans and jars of food: sustenance has been recovered.

written and published by    Arabella von Arx

The Lehman Trilogy: An ode to patriarchy, Judaism and capitalism

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I’ll keep it short, here is my take on that trilogy of patriarchy, Judaism and capitalism:

Patriarchy: the story of a family is told through three men and their descendants. This is the story of the American Dream: three hard working brothers, clever, zealous, with strong moral values, come to America and make it big: first selling cloth, then shoes, then banking, then investments. The perfect curve. 

Three men, three male actors: Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley, and Ben Miles. No women. From time to time, one of the actors plays a woman, a fiancée or a lover here and there, with the kind of obvious comedy that had already Greek audiences laughing in 500BC. Women, as far as Sam Mendes, the director, and the producers of this play are concerned, play such a minor role in a family dynasty that they are not worth representing.

It would have been much more interesting, and would have made a point, if the Lehmann brothers had been played by women actors, just as Caryl Churchill had in Cloud 9, a play in which men were played by women, and whites by blacks, and vice versa. But women playing men do not draw the laughs that the reverse cross gender acting does, just as women nowadays can dress as men (they look stylish!) without anyone blinking, when a man in a dress (they look ridiculous!) is a “crossdresser”.  

The set includes a revolving stage. Beware of revolving stages, they usually flag a production that is going to favor brassiness over reflection and creativity, except if handled by Robert Lepage. A sofa on stage is also a flag, this one usually guaranteeing a production that will not take any risks creatively. The various sides of the revolving stage were not really differentiated, so it did not serve the purpose of offering different sets for different scenes. On the other hand, the revolving did bring to mind effectively the passing of time. There were other good choices: no period costumes and accessories, and a stunning stage, empty but for the revolving gizmo, and very large (there’s plenty of room at the Armory) with a projection of live images on the curved back wall. Pretty spectacular. 
The content is not scripted into scenes, little dialogue takes place. That can make for a new interesting take on the theatrical form, but did not salvage this propaganda piece from turning into pantomime.

 Judaism

That’s the least objectionable of the three institutions which are promoted in the play. Judaism has generated a rich culture, and produced great thinkers (Marx! Beniamin! Arendt!), writers (so many: Proust! Roth! Singer! Cohen - several! Krauss!), and numerous other creators in the arts and science.

Moral values are presented in the play as arising from the brothers’ commitment to Judaism. This is propaganda for a religion, and I resent the promotion of any religion. Let people choose their religion and spare us its praise. In fact, historically, moral values have not been linked to religious bigotry, some religions having a worse track record than others, such as Christianity. The majority of the population in Israel is committed to Judaism, and that has not prevented the country from accumulating a shameful human rights record.

As it happens, and as the Washington Post pointed out, the immigrant Lehmann brothers’ moral values did not prevent them from owning slaves, at a time when objections were being expressed loudly across the Western world. The American dream has been built on the backs of ethnic minorities.

The author, Stefano Massini, is Jewish. I don’t find that exactly surprising. He wrote a play about Anna Politkovskaja, the woman journalist who was victim of Putin’s dictatorship. Seems like a worthy endeavor. Another play has not come to the USA: it’s called “Credo in unsolodio”, translated as “I believe in onlyonegod”, and is an indictment of Muslim terrorism. Given the bias in "The Lehman Trilogy", I fear Islam might not get a fair portrayal by Massini. Will the Armory bring that work to New York too? For the sake of peace in the world and in our city, how about not?

Capitalism

By the second interval, I had had enough.  We are told about the brothers financing railways (progress!), King Kong (culture!), but very little about the ills of the capitalist system: its false dreams, its false promises of happiness through possession of goods, its turning of human beings into efficient little working machines. 

I was waiting with trepidation to see how 2008 would be pictured: an apocalyptic armageddon, right? Terribly disappointing. The cast dances a frenzied twist through the 90s, convincingly. Just as in the 20s, it seemed like there was no end to miraculous speculations. Then the play fizzles into nothing much. Certainly nothing on the hyperbolic scale of the 00s mortgage scandal. The brothers did not respect shiva anymore, so they lost their company. No moral indictment of the criminals that brought about the crashing of an economy, and much hardship to the common people: loss of jobs, home repossessions. I don’t see how you can tell the story of the Lehman family and their company without alluding to the hardships caused by the greed and irresponsibility of the banking and investment world.

The New York Times raved. I enjoyed looking at Adam Godley's face and ears, they are seriously extraordinary, unlike the production.

written and published  - - by Arabella Hutter von Arx

Avignon Festival 2017: La Fiesta by Israel Galvan

When is it too much chaos to make for a show?

Hard to tell. I can't guarantee I did justice to the show. I was sitting too high up, why sell seats that will not let you enjoy fully the show? They were the only ones available. Plus, after a month of traveling through Europe, Paris, Venice, Lutry, Avignon, I went to see the Fiesta of Israel Galvan the night before my return to the United States. I was in between continents.

I liked the Fiesta concept, the end of a party when you're tired but you do not know if you want to leave, you're tired but you don't know if you want to sleep, when you've drunk all night, but you do not know if you're inebriate. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no organizing principle to the show, I only perceived noise. Noise when it came to sound, and to the staging. Discordant sounds. Small pieces of snippets of things, which seemed to happen by chance. Yes, in life, it's like that, but life happens to me, while there, I came to experience what the creator had to say, sitting on an uncomfortable seat that had cost me a round sum.

I had not come to see a classical flamenco show, the Avignon Festival is not the place. A few years ago, I attended a flamenco contest in Madrid, in a restaurant, an authentic experience of its own, even if not all dancers were gipsy.

The noise was so tiring, I lost patience and thought of something else. A little sketch to distract me, the courtyard of the Palace of the Popes is a marvel. The whole town is a marvel.

If there was some kind of plot, I did not pay enough attention to grasp it.

A woman sang a baroque tune admirably, while a man shouted druing the whole song in a strident voice. Throughout the show, every time he intervened, his grating voice ground my bones. At one point, he lay on his back, I hoped he was dead. But he got up. The last ten minutes of the show, Israel Galvan scraped his heels on a microphoned platform. I wanted to cry out, pity on us, pity on our ears! I would have left, as a number of spectators did throughout the show, but I was too curious to witness the reaction of the audience. The show seemed endless. Less than 2 hours in reality.

I wondered at one moment if it would continue until all the spectators had gone away, by snatches. A cool concept, a real end of the party where we are not sure why we decide to leave: fatigue, the prospect of rising the next day, the fray of pleasure, realization that probably nothing more exciting will happen.

Verdict from the public: I would say that about 2/3 was enthusiastic, ¼ booed, and the last portion (I will not calculate, this is a blog) either applauded weakly, or not at all. I belong to the last group. I did not boo, because I did not see in this creation dishonesty, a vice that I can not bear, nor pretentiousness. For me, it was a messy show, which had the potential to be successful if it had been more organized, more sequenced.

I loved :
The gigantic shadows of the dancers projected by lamps on the floor on the gigantic walls of the Palace of the Popes.

The woman in standard flamenco dress who not only does not dance, but ends up being tortured. We can see classic flamenco crucified, but I also thought about the condition of women in flamenco culture. Some gypsies allow their women to go to the saddle in the toilet only when they are not present at home, by repulsion.


The new forms of theater, whether dash circus, dash dance, dash cabaret, have brought vigor and freshness to the stage stage, as in the show The Great Tamer. During the Fiesta, I began to long for a story, any story, with a beginning, plot reversals, and an end, characters, suspense: what will happen next? Having limited patience and resilience, I was waiting for only one thing: the end.

Contributed by  - -  Arabella Hutter von Arx

Festival d'Avignon - The Great Tamer at the Fabrica

When I write an article for a publication, I start by jotting my ideas down on paper. Then I read them, I think, I try to organize them. I structure, I restructure, I cut, I develop. Finally, I polish the style. For my blog, I stop at the first stage of notes organized more or less randomly, because this is not a review. As usual.

Thrilling moment: the show begins. Will it please me? Will the creators meet the spectators expectations? A man is lying on the stage as the spectators walk in. I thought it was a great, disarticulated puppet. But when he gets up, we see that he is a real man, just a bit gray in his face. He stares at the spectators as they take their place. He removes his standard gray suit, then his underwear. A naked man, what a beautiful object. How fragile. He turns over one of the rubber plates that cover the gray scene: it is white on the other side. He lays down on it. A naked man is even more fragile. A bearded man arrives, also dressed in a standard grey suit. He lays a cloth on the naked man. Until then, I have been seduced, but I do not like much the fabric nor the way that the man drapes it over the naked man, it’s too self conscious. The bearded man leaves the stage, another arrives also dressed in a standard suit. He lifts a rubber plate and drops it. The draft lifts the tissue and moves it off the body. The man is naked again. This action recurs at least a dozen times, the men’s actions closer and closer together until they are on stage simultaneously.

I do not understand the meaning of this scene. At least not immediately. If I reflect, I put together that the man is submitted without recourse to the other two men’s actions. Either he's cold when the sheet is off, or he’s hot when he's covered, but the two men do not seem to care about his welfare.

Soon there are six men on stage, two women. Yes, I take a count. For many male creators, a human is a man. Women work as an accessory that define man as clothing or decor. But when a woman emerges from a astronaut costume, against all odds, I review my hasty judgment. He now has six men and three women. It's better, but we could have six women and four men, for example, though they would not wear the standard suit in the same way. They are either in long black dresses, or in alluring lingerie. 

Music: the famous waltz, slowed down at least 10 fold, by Johannes Strauss. An astronaut appears on the scene. Hello, 2001 A Space Odyssey, by Kubrick!

The show explores humans as individuals, their consciousness. A theme that I like very much. 

I argued that humans have a consciousness of themselves, and offered as a metaphor a novel. While it is made of words on paper, the novel still exists if one burns the paper. He argued back, what about a severed hand still alive and kicking, something science might achieve soon? Is it human? Dimitris Papaioannou seems to want to answer these questions. A woman appears advancing on legs that are too big, like a spider’s. The illusion is created by two men bent over who walk backwards while she rests on their bodies. One leg is naked, the other is black and disappears against the black background. During the show, limbs appear here and there on the stage, detached and then regrouping to form a human being. Witchcraft. The magic of the theater, Deus ex machina, Robert Lepage would approve.

The relationship between the body and the individual human being is explored. When is the body a human being, when does it stop being a human? Do the limbs scattered on stage add up to a person? The 17th century Puritans in Rembrandt's painting, reproduced by the dancers, thought it was fine dissecting a body, whereas it had been forbidden by the Catholic church. 

Papaioannou began his career by making comic books, and he certainly has an exceptional control of gestural language. The staging of the bodies and their movements across the stage shows great skill, great talent. A man puts on shoes that seem to lie on the stage. When he picks them up, they turn out to have roots. He walks on his hands, his feet waving their roots in the air. A memorable image. Pina Bausch. Is it in the tradition of gestural theater? Dance-theater? It's more delectable not to put a label on it.

The same position of an actor / dancer / acrobat evokes something else depending on the sequence in which it appears in the room. For example, an actor in a swimmer position between the legs of another actor reminds me of a boat prow. Later, this same position evokes a man floating in a state of weightlessness. Similarly, arrows  are thrown on the naked man who is protected by some rubber plates, these same arrows become ears of corn that the actors glean tenderly in a beautiful scene.

Visuals reference Botticelli’s Venus, Michelangelo’s David, the Lesson of Dissection by Rembrandt. I sometimes have the painful impression that as European creators, we have so much less to say in comparison with Africans, Asians, South Americans, that we resort to digging up references in our cultural past.

The actors undress and get dressed a lot. A LOT. Fortunately their jackets are not double breasted, nor their trousers with buttonholes.

At points, it felt like the creator wondered, what else could we do now? Some of the tricks he came up with, ingenious, should have been gotten rid of, because they did not contribute to the integrity of the show. As Steven King advised, the creator must be able to kill his little darlings. Sometimes, if I do not understand an action or an effect, I give them the benefit of the doubt. At other times, no, it does not convince me at all.

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Even during performances I relish, I look forward to the end, from being a prisoner of the spectator-creator relationship: what if I do not like the show? Help! What if an actor forgets his role and begins to cry on stage? What if I love it, and all the other spectators boo and whistle and all the actors begin to cry? The end comes as a relief. I do better during very long shows which I have a preference for. Either very long or very short. That longing embarrasses me, as if I forced myself to go to the theater, as if I preferred to drink a glass of wine while varnishing my toenails, when in fact, I love going, and leaving with my mind, my soul changed by what I have experienced.

Written and contributed by   - -  Arabella Hutter von Arx