Around the Coyote

My time playing uncle to a pair of small tigers has come to a close. Bonnie and Darcy got in last night, looking much relaxed and very happy. Which made me happy, and I'm almost certain made Franco and Elliot (the two kittens) very happy. Every time I told them "no" or picked them up by the scruff of the neck, they gave me this look that said, "Who are you, and why do you think you can pick me up by the scruff of my neck?" And when I sprayed them with water, I generally felt bad enough that I pet them shortly thereafter. I have a feeling that if I'm ever a dad, I'm going to be one of those pushover dads.

I spent this weekend at the Around the Coyote festival, which is a fringe theatre and arts festival in Chicago. Tantalus performed Sinister Puppetmen of the Fabrication Gallery, our outdoor summer show, on Saturday and Sunday night. The folks who ran the festival, Lynn and Cynthia, were fantastic—they were peaches. They ran the festival efficiently and cheerfully, which is a rare combination in theatre festival managers (they are, in my experience, either cheerful or efficient, but rarely both simultaneously), and they continuously thanked us, every time they saw us throughout the weekend, for helping them put their sign up. Anyway, they were lovely and I thank them heartily for helping to make the festival exist and be great fun.

I saw two shows on Sunday, one of them fabulous, the other kind of meh ("meh" being a technical term, which means, roughly, "not so very good at all, but not so awful that it made me regret having seen it/been involved with it/giving an hour of my life to it"). The fabulous piece, called From Tel Aviv to Ramallah: a Beatbox Journey, was a one-man show which told the story of two people living in Tel Aviv and Ramallah, a Jew and a Muslim, respectively, and of their lives and the tensions in Israel. Aside from the fact that it was a compelling story and script, what made it fantastic was that the performer started to beat-box (if you want a definition of beatboxing, here is one...it's just a lot easier than writing one, myself) from the moment he stepped on stage and, aside from two water breaks, he didn't stop until the show was over. Not just simple spit-and-thump sorts of beatboxing, either. No no...the man essentially created a disco on stage, before our very eyes, all the while acting every character—from a Russian immigrant, to an American Zionist Jew, to a Palestinian nationalist, and all of them extraordinarily well-defined— and setting each scene with such precision, such amazing energy that there were times that the sounds of cars on the street outside the theater were jarring, because I had forgotten I wasn't actually in Israel. In every festival there is a show like this: one which redefines what a good piece of theatre should be and makes everyone in the audience remember what they love about their art. And I was blessed to get to see it this time around.

Which might have had something to do with my disappointment with The Madman and the Nun, which was presented by Experimental Theater Chicago, and was (inexplicably) the critic's choice this year. The staging was dull and stiff, and the acting was so flat as to actually make declarations such as, "I love you," or, "I'm completely mad," seem as important as saying, "Yes, I'd like a taco." The actor playing Dr. Gruene, the psychoanalyst who knows everything about the madman's mind, chose to play him as a sort of Wallace Shawn styled good-natured idiot, which robbed his character, and subsequently any and all power-play between him and the madman, of any strength it might have had.

But what was particularly irksome to me is that Experimental Theater Chicago, whose mission statement says they stand against traditional styles of doing theater, chose a sort of Dr. Kaligari Expressionism (in the set and costumes, not in the acting, which was played very straight and true to Realism) to present this play. I generally don't like what ETC does, partially for personal reasons (my few dealings with their artistic director and principal member have consistently left me feeling as though someone just patted me on the back and said "You're cute kid, now go away."), but mostly because there isn't anything experimental at all about them. Their shows are Expressionist, Absurdist, Surrealist, nonlinear, abstract, Dadaist, and so forth, but although these styles are outside the realm of Realism, they aren't really experimental; indeed, by virtue of the fact that they are definable genres, they are actually tried and true. Experimentation requires risk. It requires stepping out of what we know to be good, what we know will work, and stepping into places where it's possible—even likely—that we will fail. ETC never does that; while they stand against American Realism, they aren't standing against it by testing any new boundaries. Instead, they're standing on the ground conquered by artistic revolutionaries decades ago and declaring the already-abandoned ground thereof new territory for the conquering. I for one, find that kind of cheap, and I find myself wondering when they are actually going to start living up to their company name and experimenting with something new.

My bewilderment and annoyance with ETC aside, though, the festival was magnificent and we plan to put a show together for their winter festival.

Tomorrow: links to an important holiday.