Bird Shit Performance Review

-->

Bird Shit

A multimedia performative work

World premiere | April 7, 2013

MoMA PS1 | VW Dome

Producers: Shruti Ganguly, Anna Kooris

Upon entering MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, one cannot miss the massive VW Dome in the middle of the front courtyard. Inside the dome, Bird Shit is performed in the round, on an elevated white stage complete with a large overhead truss.

Bird Shit looks to portray celebrity culture with its empty promises and false connections through the use of theatrical dialogue, choreography, video projections, live band, lighting design, and various physical materials including paint and feathers. The show is primarily based off the play The Seagull by Anton Chekov (1895), as well as Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem, “Kaddish” (1959). The choice of The Seagull as basis for the content of the show was highly relevant, for the plights of the four main characters in how they relate to fame has not changed in today’s celebrity culture:

-       the young actress: willing to do whatever it takes to become famous (turning her back on those loyal to her, sharing her bed with an acclaimed director)

-       the aging starlet: who dates younger men for any attempt to hold onto her youth (including the director who is sleeping with the young actress)

-       the successful director: who admonishes his fame (easy to do when you are famous) and takes direction from his penis rather than his heart or head

-       the aspiring playwright: who claims to stay true to his art though his actions reflect that all he really wants is attention (exemplified by his numerous botched suicides)

Though generalizations, these characters represent archetypes of personalities we still see in celebrity culture today, and their relationships are heightened and enhanced by the video projections. The two characters who retain fame (the director and the aging starlet) are portrayed via video recordings, and projected at larger-than-life sizes on the inside of the dome walls, while the characters looking to achieve fame perform live and “interact” with the characters on the video. This structure proves successful in portraying the disconnect between those with true fame and those striving at all costs to attain it.

As far as the other multimedia aspects of the performance, they remain neither meaningful nor superfluous. Whenever the projections do not show pre-recorded video, they display a live-feed from the actions onstage. These recordings are taken from three perspectives onstage as well as a fourth angle from beneath the stage itself through some kind of window in the floor.

The choreography is interesting but far from prolific. Inspired by the Release Technique, the movements remain fluid and constantly moving, perhaps in an effort to represent the passing of time. The dancers—there are five including the actress playing the young starlet—become strangely sexualized when white paint and feathers drop on them from above the stage, and they begin to smear themselves with the materials. Considering the seagull itself in the narrative represents the free-spirited soul killed by the whims of the hunter as a metaphor for the ingénue being corrupted by the fame machine, having the girls roll around in “bird shit” crudely accomplishes this theme.

Other than these aforementioned elements, the rest of the performance turns into a highly self-righteous display of ego, starting first with the program. Actor James Franco, though he should be praised for extending his own celebrity by participating in less-mainstream work, is mentioned numerous times throughout the two pages of the pamphlet as “James Franco presents Bird Shit,” “special thanks to James Franco” and “under the guidance of James Franco.” As one then opens the pamphlet, it is revealed that Franco will also be playing the role of the successful director. It is extremely difficult to believe the character when the words “Fuck fame. Before I was famous, I was a broke asshole; now that I am famous, I’m still a broke asshole” as they come out of James Franco’s mouth when his face is twelve feet tall and projected in three places around the audience.  Any irony on the part of the writers is overshadowed by the exploitation of Mr. Franco’s name and face, and the arrogance of the character intended to shine through fails to do so.

Furthermore, the role of the aging starlet is performed by none other than Marina Abramovic, whose majority of screentime is spent on the brink of making out with James Franco. Intending to provoke the audience by showing sexuality between a notably older woman and young man feels over-the-top: is this even provocative anymore? we see it all the time on reality tv and newsstands. Additionally, the personalities of Abramovic and Franco are too prevalent, making the scene less artistic and more egocentric. Albeit the director and aging actress characters are supposed to be self-absorbed, and the massive projections certainly add to the spectacle, but Abramovic and Franco seem to want to challenge the audience with the subtext: “We are these two great, multimedia, artistic individuals… Do you want to see us make out?... Well, we are just going to tease you.” Here, the projections actually hurt the storyline by enhancing Abramovic and Franco so much that they no longer seem part of the cast.

If the live and recorded roles were inversed, with Abramovic and Franco performing live to the larger-than-life wannabe celebrity characters, the performance would have reached a much deeper level. Arrogance would be traded in for a yearning to connect. It would have been much easier to believe Franco’s “Fuck fame” comments if he were the small person trying to interact with the oversized “nobody” characters.

Unfortunately, the glimpses of artistic thought and development are not strong enough to shine through the momentum of the Franco (anti-)Fame Machine, and upon exiting the dome, one feels that all they did was simply encourage Mr. Franco’s celebrity status.

*A note must be made about the live band, aptly named Yeah Well, Whatever, who live up to their name but are excused since apathy seems to be their shtick.

Spring Awakening Performance Review

-->

Spring Awakening – A New Musical

New York University | Tisch School of the Arts

February 28, 2013

Director: Kenneth Noel Mitchell

NYU’s production of Spring Awakening (2006), originally by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, provided new interpretations of the well-known musical, including thematic and technological additions relating to the 21^st century.

The performance chose to preserve certain aesthetics of the popular Broadway production (which allude to the original 1891 work by Frank Wedekind) while attempting to juxtapose current day trends on the production. A cohesive example of this is the costuming. The cast is split into two groups, the teenagers and the adults. The teenagers all wear costumes consistent with the Broadway show: overly feminine frocks for the girls, and traditional military school uniforms for the boys. The costumes for the adults, however, deviate drastically from the Broadway show. On Broadway, the adults also wore costumes consistent with the 1891 Germany garb; in this production, they were clothed in overt S&M costumes: black/white pleather, corsets, fishnet thighhighs, with gothic make-up to match. This choice highlighted two of the main themes of the storyline well, if only a bit crudely: the isolation of one generation from the one prior, and sexual awakening.

What gave the performance a technological and multimedia angle was the inclusion of half-a-dozen monitors distributed throughout the set. The screens displayed visuals throughout the entire musical—names of each musical number, metaphoric images, and even live feed—as yet another layer of the current era juxtaposed on the original writing. These multimedia layers certainly enhanced the storyline at times, but not consistently throughout the performance.

When the video worked

“The Word of Your Body”

The most artistically successful use of the video occurred during the song “The Word of Your Body,” where the two teenage characters Wendla Bergmann and Melchior Gabor reunite under a tree after not seeing each other in some time. The lyrics talk of innocent interest in the opposite sex, and how each is slightly scared of potentially hurting the other during their path of sexual awareness. During the song, the video showed what seemed to be the two characters lovingly engaging in some rudimentary sexual activity (rolling on the floor, shifting positions); though with closer attention, the footage actually served as a forecast to an upcoming scene where Melchior is beating Wendla. The footage of the fight was slowed down to look like lovemaking, but the choreography was verbatim to the fight scene two songs later. This play on images served the story well, providing added visual information to the song that deepened the relationship between the characters.

“And Then There Were None”

The use of the monitors in “And Then There Were None,” a song that verbalizes a letter from Melchior’s Mother to her son’s friend Mortiz Steifel, highlight the theme of current trends versus older traditions. As the woman sings the lines of her letter, understood to have been handwritten in the original script, the monitors showed the exact letter being typed out in a Facebook message. A clear critique on communication modes of today, the imagery enhanced the gap between the generations, trivializing the content of her letter even more than the words already do.

When the video detracted

“All That’s Known”

The third song of the show, “All That’s Known” housed the only time a live-feedback loop was used during the show, and for good reason. The delay between the live and the looped was too large, and as a result, looked like a failed attempt at accomplishing new technology. Since this song is at the very beginning of the show, it set an amateurish tone basically from the get-go.

“Don’t Do Sadness”

The visuals during “Don’t Do Sadness” were a stark contrast to the success of “The Word of Your Body.” Moritz, in his depression, wishes to liken himself to the carefree life of a butterfly. It is clear that he is singing from a very dark place, yet the imagery on the monitors shows an animated literal interpretation of the metaphor. A brightly colored butterfly bouncing from flower to flower does not provide a play-on-words here, but rather trivializes the entire scene.

Together, the costuming and multimedia aspects, despite the times it destracted, of the NYU production gave it an individuality in comparison to the original musical, and the juxtaposition of the modern day paradigms over the traditional aesthetics elevated the meaning behind the storyline itself.