In the beginning

In the next few days/posts I'll attempt a (hopefully) short recap of the productions I've seen so far in NYC and their effect on my hypothèse de théâtre that is currently still under revision. Of course that will probably always be. First off: (and I am deeply unhappy to admit it) my very first, and most awful, theatrical experience in NYC.

AS YET THOU ART YOUNG AND RASH
Target Margin Theater @ the Ohio Theater
Grade: D

Target Margin Theater has devoted its season to a reinvestigation/reimagination of the Greeks. As Yet Thou Art Young and Rash is the company’s retitled version of The Suppliants by Euripides, which depicts the women of the defeated Troy begging for the bodies of their dead, and the leader who initially refuses their request but is ultimately swayed and moved by their grief and war-weariness. David Herskovits directed a five person ensemble cast, which collaborated on the writing and creation of the final piece.

This production, for me, defied comprehension and any genuine conversation with its audience. From the very first moment of the piece, when one of the actresses entered and surveyed the stage very slowly, I felt it: I just knew it would be awful; but I said to myself, “Stay open, stay alert, and give it a chance.” There was still something somewhat exciting about those first moments, the chance that it might be amazing, or that it might not. But as soon as this actress was joined by three others, and all began dancing in a vaguely tribal manner, the piece was over for me.

Interesting, however, was their mélange of formal and contemporary language (with contemporary instances used sparingly, mostly as comments or self-references). However, the ineptly non-poetical, semi-classical language spoken the majority of the time was delivered in a stilted, determinedly performative manner, with stops and starts inserted at random. Evidently this was meaningful to the actors and their director, though this was hardly communicated to the audience (much like most of the non-plot). The pauses were epic!: one could commandeer the fucking Titanic right through them and never notice a play was even happening at all. Curiously, this was my actual physical sensation during those seventy bygone minutes of my life.

I’d like to make clear that, in theory, none of what was attempted in this piece bothered me or my sensibilities. A collaborative, performative style; a reinvestigation of our oldest Western stories; a (somewhat thankfully) oblique critique of war (and the war in Iraq in particular, obviously): all of these are fine by me. What was not was their execution. Rigorously nonrealistic yet stubbornly nontheatrical, the piece simply failed to engage. Toward the end of the play (which attempted to happen eighty-nine different times), I was particularly offended by a last-ditch attempt at a deeper meaning/emotional connection: as photographs of random, multi-cultural and –sexual families and pairings were projected onto the back wall, the cast sang endless repetitions of “Home on the Range.” The song struck a peculiar nostalgia within me that the production then unscrupulously attempted to attach to my death experience watching them, which only angered me, though I suppose I was thankful for a moment’s attention from this selfish, impenetrable performance.