« December 2001 | Main | February 2002 »
January 11, 2002
Fun with Absurdity
Friday, January 11, 2002
What a great evening.
Tonight, my friend Ann took a bunch of people and myself to a play that her friend, Matthew, was performing. So we (where we=Kirsten, Ann, Tommy, and myself) all go over to Tommy's house, pile into the car (after Ann cries about us not being dressed as nicely as she is...sorry, sweet, but NOBODY dresses as nicely as you do!) and head over to Matt's house. Not to be confused with Matthew, Ann's friend, Matt is a friend of mine through Rusty's. Now you know more than you could possibly want to about my friends.
Don't worry, this is all just exposition...the content comes later.
Find out that ol' Rusty is not feeling well, so Loun Loun stood in for him. She did a fine job. So we all head over to the Undermain Theater, where Our Endeavors was performing. Such a deal...we got two plays for the price of one. (Well, none, actually...Ann's name was on The List of Infinite Power. How cool is that?) We saw Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s "Fortitude", and Gertrude Stein's "What Happened".
Leaping headlong into why I'm writing this article, after the shows the six of us were chatting in the lobby, and some of the performers strolled out. I think that perhaps Matt and I were the only ones that even sorta grokked the second play, since it was pretty different from your run of the mill theatre. So, I was talking with Erin, one of the actresses, and I told her a joke that I thought was appropriate, considering the surrealist nature of the play we'd just seen. It's my favourite joke ever, so that tells you what kind of sense of humor I have. Here goes:
Why is there only one Eiffel Tower?
Give up?
Because they eat their young.
*waits for puzzled blank looks from audience, then cackles uproariously*
I love that joke, for one reason only: I love the looks I get after I lay down that punch line.
So anyhow, I told this joke to Erin. Instead of getting a TOTALLY blank look, I got a thoughtful one. She thought that the joke was pretty good, considering the surrealist play we'd just seen. That was why I enjoyed the play so much...it was a 45 minute Eiffel Tower joke. So Erin told me to be sure to put that in my review. I sorta laughed it off...until on the way home, I decided I'd do just that.
This is the content, people. Stick with me now.
Don't get me wrong...the play was ODD. That's not surprising, because Gertrude Stein was an odd woman who hung out with odd people. So am I, so it works out well. Well, I'm not a woman, but you get the point.
Right, so the play was ODD, and I liked it. Half way through, I felt like I had a weird epiphany...all of a sudden, instead of seeing a bunch of actors cavorting on stage spouting weird poetry, I got the joke...I felt like I was on the inside. Maybe I only appreciated it on a superficial, fish-joke level, but I did understand what we were doing now. We were, like many surrealists have done, trying to break the link between an image and its representation...between objects and symbols. It was only a little epiphany, and I only barely grabbed it with my fingernails, but through the rest of the show I was chuckling to myself, enjoying my cleverness at actually appreciating this very avant-garde (at least for my experience) performance.
The performers put a lot into the show. They did a great job conveying the confusion and the strain of drawing meaning from existence. The set was fairly minimal, but quite effective. The music was well done...haunting and confused, which is just what was needed for this material. I'm the furthest thing in the world from a drama connoisseur (or reviewer!) but I found the entire production quite enjoyable. Read some existential poetry, turn off your rationalization faculties, and go enjoy this very different performance.
First things second...the Vonnegut piece (which is the one that initially caught my interest) was very nicely done. The Undermain Theatre is, as you might guess from the name, under Main street in Deep Ellum. The space is broken up by huge load-bearing columns, which I thought at first were going to pose a real problem for the staging. However, the production very cleverly used the space as a theatre in the three-quarters round. Most interesting to me was the use of lighting to break up one stage, with fixed props, into three very distinct sets. Very clever and engaging. The performances were superb. The cast did a splendid job of illustrating the spaces they occupied with a fairly minimal set dressing. The performances were uniformly very strong, with special mention going to Dr. Frankenstein, played to the hilt by Mr. John Flores.
Right, so that's about it. I'm looking forward to seeing more from Our Endeavors, as they gave me access to a form of drama that I never would have thought I'd like. For me, Vonnegut is a pretty sure hit, but Gertrude Stein was something of a stretch. I'm just glad that I was paying enough attention to catch the joke.
Reminds me of another great surrealist joke. Hey, I've strung you along this far, right?
How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
HAH! I love that joke too.
Posted by Lee at 01:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack