Performing Arts

“The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928)” at New York Theater Workshop features, in foreground, Susie Sokol and Vin Knight. Photo by: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

I was so pleased to wake up this morning and read Chief New York Times Theater Critic Ben Brantley's rave review of our friends Elevator Repair Service's production of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (April 7, 1928). The Walker has long been in ERS's corner, ever since I first saw their deliciously ridiculous Cab Legs at PS122 in 1998. On their first Minneapolis visit, we presented their odd-ball, ecstatic Total Fictional Lie as part of Walker’s 2000 Out There series. They returned with Room Tone (2003 Out There) and, most recently, we co-commissioned their audacious, every-word-of-the-novel marathon production of The Great Gatsby (GATZ) ,which received its U.S. debut here in September 2006.

Rights issues with the Fitzgerald estate have tragically not allowed the brilliant GATZ to yet be seen in New York City, but a year after the Walker introduced the work to the U.S., it did successfully tour to cities like Portland OR (at PICA's TBA Festival), Philadelphia (at the Philly Live Art Fest.) and Seattle (On The Boards). So, it's a bit irritating that both Brantley and Justin Bergman (who wrote an ERS preview last Sunday in the Times) seem oblivious to the fact that GATZ ever came to the U.S. at all ("the famously venturesome Elevator Repair Service" wrote Brantley "...toured Europe with a seven-hour rendering of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby" ...).

While Brantley and Bergman maintained the Times' long-standing New York parochialism (assuming nothing of cultural interest takes place West of the Hudson), Brantley did do a nice job of articulating the steep challenge that director John Collins and ERS set up for themselves in taking on the notoriously dense and, at first read, confusing, first section of The Sound and Fury, which is told from the point of view Benjy Compson, a 33-year old mentally disabled man. "Trying to translate this perspective from the page to the stage would seem to be an act of folly and hubris," wrote Brantley... "Benjy's nonlinear, noninterpretive point of view has been the bane of uninitiated English students for decades. But reading this account of a Mississippi family's decline is like looking at an impressionistic painting that at first seems to lack discernible forms, but stare long enough, and details emerge so precisely that it's finally sharper than any photograph....". In the end, the company's rigor and ingenuity wins over Brantley completely - "(ERS) brings a sanity, humility and theatrical ingenuity to their interpretation that, like the novel, illuminates the clarity within apparent chaos."

Congratulations again to director John Collins all our friends at ERS. I can't wait to catch up with the production (and all of our ERS pals) on my next trip to New York in mid-May.

Click here for the NY Times article on ERS Faulkner's Haunted Family, Moving in and Out of Time April 30, 2008.

I just returned from New York where it seemed everyone involved in modern dance or contemporary art was talking (or perhaps "raving" is more accurate) about the Jérôme Bel project that won over full houses at Dance Theater Workshop and was the unanimous critical hit of the Performa '07 visual art-performance festival. In last Friday's New York Times Jennifer Dunning called Jérôme Bel and Pichet Klunchun's performance "funny, touching and provocative... (which) says a great deal about the subtleties of skilled performing and the nature of dance." She went on "the fascination of the must-see Pichet Klunchun and Myself should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Mr. Bel's career" (full review below.)

Alas, this difficult-to-describe (or at least difficult-to-make-interesting-sounding) show has not yet fully found its audience and I am afraid it will come and go quickly and many will regret not making a point to come. The piece speaks directly to our artistic times, turning a seemingly simple exchange into an illumination of issues spanning globalization, conceptual art, cross-cultural understanding, post-modern dance, the place of tradition in artistic practice and other key subjects. And, Jérôme and Pichet do all this in the most witty, sometimes moving, often beguiling ways.

I think the work also helps illuminate where contemporary dance, performance work and even conceptual visual art practice has been heading in recent years. In other words, seeing this work I think helps one gain a different kind of understanding around other artists also coming to the Walker - from Miguel Gutierrez (opening Out There) to Romeo Castellucci, from Tino Sehgal (exhibition opens in December) to Back to Back Theater (June '08).

I recently scanned reviews and on-line comments from other international cities (the piece is only making three stops in America) where this two-year old work has toured and could not find a single negative response. One critic picked it as her favorite show of the massive 2006 Melbourne Festival (involving scores of remarkable projects). Another, a guy writing on the "countercritic" web site was perhaps my favorite. He began by summing up how many people probably felt when they read descriptions of the work before seeing it:

"When I walked into the theater and I saw two chairs facing each other, separated by about 20 feet, two bottles of water and a laptop, I was sure this was going to be an utter disaster, a pretentious piece of shit, and something unduly excruciating that I would not be able to escape..." Instead, he says he found "an altogether mesmerizing and soul-filling experience...It's also very entertaining, and it communicates massive amounts of information, in a way that works of art cannot always communicate on their own. This is art about art. Dance about dance. And, mainly, its about today." click here to read the rest of this thoughtful review.

click here for tickets