Friday, June 08, 2007
The Blue Man Group Experience
Last night I attended a performance of The Blue Man Group (www.bluemangroup.com), at the Astor Place Theater in NYC. What a visual treat! The performance, titled Tubes, has no plot. In fact there isn’t even any dialogue. It was an event as much as a play—maybe more so. Thankfully the producers, now raking in the bucks I suppose, have retained a faintly anarchic, dingy “rave-like” quality that makes the evening seem subversive. The characters are the blue guys of course. Audience members are also brought onto the stage to interact with the players.
Making the “Contract With The Audience”
http://www.blueman.com/multimedia/video/index.php
The performance begins with drumming (in fact, to be cast in this show now franchised around the world you must first be a top-notch drummer). But the evening at the theater begins long beforehand. I entered the (rather small) theater and was directed to my seat on the mezzanine (an area above the “orchestra” seating on the main floor…you could call it the balcony). There was music playing over the sound system. It was somewhere between tribal rock and techno…think Rusted Root with electronic strings added, and ribbed plastic tubes throughout the space. There was a palpable sense of expectancy as we waited for the show to begin. The walls were dressed out in ribbed plastic tubes of various dimeters from an inch to six inches. The stage contained more tubes, drums, screens and constructions that raised a sense of expectancy. Walls and floors all painted black, and with a bit of urban grunge…a patina of use—wear—dirt, throughout.
The pre-show was designed to get the audience into an inter-active mode…breaking us away from a typically passive attitude prevalent in today’s theater-going culture. A scrolling message board of red LED lights reminded us to use the restrooms before the show began as there would be no intermission, and then proceeded to ask the audience to do things such as welcome some fellow audience members (by name they were asked to stand…probably gleaned from credit card sales records I’m guessing.). Each command was initiated with a “ready go” command, followed by a list of words we audience members chanted, spoke or yelled. The contract with the audience was set—we were an ACTIVE audience.
The sign indicated that the show would start, the music was raised a notch, and the three Blue Men showed up in their black garb and alienating makeup that turns them into bald, cobalt blue men with no ears. This is a form of mask-wearing and because they never speak, I “read” their faces as I might an actor wearing a full face mask. Without words—literature in scripted plays--to pay attention to, my attention is ever-increasingly drawn to the gestures and movements. But I digress.
Enter—The Aliens…Who’s the Alien?
Lights glowed from under two drums upstage (away from the audience, near the back wall of the theater, but really not very far from the audience). The center drummer began to play a rhythm, and the other two poured in turn yellow and blue paint onto the heads of the two drums. It was as if they were curious about what might happen…as if they were doing this for the first time—an essential ingredient for most theatrical performance. They were paradoxical, at once very human in their inquisitive way of beginning, and very primal and even alien in their appearance. The paint erupted in bottom-lit showers of color like fireworks, and the audience erupted in approving applause and cheers.
The Blue Men moved downstage toward the audience and looked around the space…it was as if they were discovering the space for the first time too—their bright eyes peering around the space, looking at the audience as if we were perhaps as foreign to them and they were to us. They spent the performance exploring the entire space, even coming into the audience and selecting people to come onstage for some scenes.
Structure of the Show And How It Affected Me
To call them scenes, though, is a bit off the mark. After the show, digesting what had just happened, I thought of the entire show as a spectacular evening of lazzi not unlike what Commedia del Arte players might have performed if moved forward in time from the streets of Renaissance Italy to New York City now. These lazzi, bits of spectacular tricks and “bits” improvised between the players, were the stock elements of a Commedia performance as the masked characters of that era displayed their acting and athletic virtuosity in the context of an over-arching scenario.
The difference is in the scenario…or in the case of the Blue Man Group, the absence of scenario. There was no story. Just a tribal activity we audience members watched and became involved in. In some sort of way it seemed an artistic-anthropological experiment. It was a complete evening of spectacle built along a theme of alienation…or bridging the alienation of modern living. What it means to be an alien…to encounter someone very much like us and very much different at the same time, seems to me a theme worth pursuing today. The world is still largely a tribal place. Perhaps the greatest conflict of our time is that between Western European democratic ideals, and tribal ideals of the developing world. The performance got me thinking about that anyway. Not a bad outcome to a bourgious theatrical setting of New York City’s theater district, and an audience that can afford $78 tickets—ouch! The show disrupted the status quo. Yay for the arts. Again.
Wouldn’t You Like to Be A Fly On the Wall?
I tried to imagine how the creators of this event could have broadened their minds to imagine this stuff. Where did the idea of concealing and transforming actors into blue guys come about? When did the notion of tossing jello into the audience become a “good idea?” How did the ensemble develop scenes such as inviting an audience member onstage to eat a twinkie…you’d have to experience it to see how compelling these actors can be to watch, improvising reactions to the cues given by the audience member. How long did it take to create, tune and learn to play the array of PVC pipes formed into an urban “organ?”
I think that will be the subject of my next blog…creative process.
Making the “Contract With The Audience”
http://www.blueman.com/multimedia/video/index.php
The performance begins with drumming (in fact, to be cast in this show now franchised around the world you must first be a top-notch drummer). But the evening at the theater begins long beforehand. I entered the (rather small) theater and was directed to my seat on the mezzanine (an area above the “orchestra” seating on the main floor…you could call it the balcony). There was music playing over the sound system. It was somewhere between tribal rock and techno…think Rusted Root with electronic strings added, and ribbed plastic tubes throughout the space. There was a palpable sense of expectancy as we waited for the show to begin. The walls were dressed out in ribbed plastic tubes of various dimeters from an inch to six inches. The stage contained more tubes, drums, screens and constructions that raised a sense of expectancy. Walls and floors all painted black, and with a bit of urban grunge…a patina of use—wear—dirt, throughout.
The pre-show was designed to get the audience into an inter-active mode…breaking us away from a typically passive attitude prevalent in today’s theater-going culture. A scrolling message board of red LED lights reminded us to use the restrooms before the show began as there would be no intermission, and then proceeded to ask the audience to do things such as welcome some fellow audience members (by name they were asked to stand…probably gleaned from credit card sales records I’m guessing.). Each command was initiated with a “ready go” command, followed by a list of words we audience members chanted, spoke or yelled. The contract with the audience was set—we were an ACTIVE audience.
The sign indicated that the show would start, the music was raised a notch, and the three Blue Men showed up in their black garb and alienating makeup that turns them into bald, cobalt blue men with no ears. This is a form of mask-wearing and because they never speak, I “read” their faces as I might an actor wearing a full face mask. Without words—literature in scripted plays--to pay attention to, my attention is ever-increasingly drawn to the gestures and movements. But I digress.
Enter—The Aliens…Who’s the Alien?
Lights glowed from under two drums upstage (away from the audience, near the back wall of the theater, but really not very far from the audience). The center drummer began to play a rhythm, and the other two poured in turn yellow and blue paint onto the heads of the two drums. It was as if they were curious about what might happen…as if they were doing this for the first time—an essential ingredient for most theatrical performance. They were paradoxical, at once very human in their inquisitive way of beginning, and very primal and even alien in their appearance. The paint erupted in bottom-lit showers of color like fireworks, and the audience erupted in approving applause and cheers.
The Blue Men moved downstage toward the audience and looked around the space…it was as if they were discovering the space for the first time too—their bright eyes peering around the space, looking at the audience as if we were perhaps as foreign to them and they were to us. They spent the performance exploring the entire space, even coming into the audience and selecting people to come onstage for some scenes.
Structure of the Show And How It Affected Me
To call them scenes, though, is a bit off the mark. After the show, digesting what had just happened, I thought of the entire show as a spectacular evening of lazzi not unlike what Commedia del Arte players might have performed if moved forward in time from the streets of Renaissance Italy to New York City now. These lazzi, bits of spectacular tricks and “bits” improvised between the players, were the stock elements of a Commedia performance as the masked characters of that era displayed their acting and athletic virtuosity in the context of an over-arching scenario.
The difference is in the scenario…or in the case of the Blue Man Group, the absence of scenario. There was no story. Just a tribal activity we audience members watched and became involved in. In some sort of way it seemed an artistic-anthropological experiment. It was a complete evening of spectacle built along a theme of alienation…or bridging the alienation of modern living. What it means to be an alien…to encounter someone very much like us and very much different at the same time, seems to me a theme worth pursuing today. The world is still largely a tribal place. Perhaps the greatest conflict of our time is that between Western European democratic ideals, and tribal ideals of the developing world. The performance got me thinking about that anyway. Not a bad outcome to a bourgious theatrical setting of New York City’s theater district, and an audience that can afford $78 tickets—ouch! The show disrupted the status quo. Yay for the arts. Again.
Wouldn’t You Like to Be A Fly On the Wall?
I tried to imagine how the creators of this event could have broadened their minds to imagine this stuff. Where did the idea of concealing and transforming actors into blue guys come about? When did the notion of tossing jello into the audience become a “good idea?” How did the ensemble develop scenes such as inviting an audience member onstage to eat a twinkie…you’d have to experience it to see how compelling these actors can be to watch, improvising reactions to the cues given by the audience member. How long did it take to create, tune and learn to play the array of PVC pipes formed into an urban “organ?”
I think that will be the subject of my next blog…creative process.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
My City Fix
What is it about cities? I love living in Indiana, PA in many ways, but from time to time I need my city fix. It's a habit...no, a feeding of my creative spirit...that is periodically necessary.
I'm on a trip to NYC to visit with the director of our season opener, The Beauty Queen of Leenane. I always look forward to trips to the city, and this time I took the train so that I could do some work on my laptop on the way. I was able to work on a set design for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and my contribution to Footlight Players Theater-for-Youth Company--a script for Stone Soup--Island Style (see www.arts.iup.edu for more about THAT).
Last night I rolled in and, after the familiar scent of New Jersey, was reacquainted with Penn Station at rush hour. Not too bad. The usual entertainment. Seems like the transit authority puts a "extreme" person every few hundred yards just to keep us amused. Found my way to the Westwind Diner on 9th Ave between 43rd and 44th street to meet with director of Beauty Queen, Jason Chimonides. He invited me to sit in on a staged reading of his newest play The Stone Age, at the Manhattan Theater Club (www.mcctheater.org). An off-Broadway theater company that specializes in fostering new plays from a collaborative of playwrights (like Jason), actors, and a few directors.
I love working on new plays, so what a TREAT! We gathered in a small conference room on the third floor, and under the buzz of flourescent lights around a long table with scripts, pads of paper and a few bottles of Poland Springs water the actors assembled gave voice to the printed words. This was Jason's third draft of the play, and its third reading. The actors had studied the script and gave their most confident (appearing) interpretations suggested by the words. I sat listening, compelled by an opening scene between a son (who we find out has returned from near death at a hospital--but we don't know why) and his father (a crude and forceful letch recently served divorce papers and wanting to move in with his son for a while). LOTS of unanswered questions, dramatic questions that I wanted to have answered. As the play unwound each answer to a question revealed lots of other questions. Walter (the son) has recently been left by his girlfriend Hannah, but we don't know why. It's a rather raw set of characters and circumstances (the son was beaten and left for dead by teenage thugs, the father turns out to be a brilliant (genius?) evolutionary psychologist who tries to confront his rival (his wife's lover) but does it so badly that the tables are turned and at the end of the first act he is left beaten and bleeding on the floor of his son's apartment, with an aghast Hannah (who has come by for some things...we know not what yet) looking on, and Walter going into a panic attack--something he's been experiencing since his stabbing.
It was a funny play. The first act is all about the father/son relationship, with continual references to Darwinic evolutionary "fitness" by the Dad (Francis) and Walter's nearly constant frustration with his father's theories that are so politically incorrect as to at once be hysterical and disgusting. (Men are not fit for monogamy...it's all about spreading around the semen, the DNA--referred to in the crudest ways sometimes). The second act is all about the lover/son relationship, with many of the same themes explored from a fundamentally different angle.
Jason's father, interestingly enough, is a behavioral psychologist. Much of what Jason writes about stems from what he's heard, what he's experienced, in living with HIS father. We can only create from the raw materials that we have experienced.
Which returns me to my earlier theme. My city fix. I went to a coffee shop this morning with Jason to discuss set design ideas for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, but couldn't seem to concentrate for the longest time about it because of the need to discuss everything else...life. As Jason put it, he's not as interested in theater as he is about life. That's what we study when we make theater. (His trait, as a playwright, is to create really well drawn, psychologically interesting, characters). I concur. On the way to the coffee shop we talked about Brooklyn (by population, about the size of Finland--could be its own country), museums, gardens, food...all kinds of things. When we got into The Tea House, I just kept looking around at new, stimulating images, textures, colors, that a stranger in a new place sees. The experience of being in a city is so rich and stimulating...THAT's my fix. In order to CREATE art...in order to look at the world and report on it as an artist...I need to continually refill my tank. I remember looking at something as simple as a mundane post--a large round column inside the coffee shop holding up the ceiling--it was plastered with playbills and posters advertising jazz groups and such. I thought, "how interesting...are there any plays in this upcoming season in which I can use this idea?" Perhaps. We'll see. By coming to the city and getting my well refilled with images and experiences, I'll be able to draw fuller buckets from it.
I'm on a trip to NYC to visit with the director of our season opener, The Beauty Queen of Leenane. I always look forward to trips to the city, and this time I took the train so that I could do some work on my laptop on the way. I was able to work on a set design for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and my contribution to Footlight Players Theater-for-Youth Company--a script for Stone Soup--Island Style (see www.arts.iup.edu for more about THAT).
Last night I rolled in and, after the familiar scent of New Jersey, was reacquainted with Penn Station at rush hour. Not too bad. The usual entertainment. Seems like the transit authority puts a "extreme" person every few hundred yards just to keep us amused. Found my way to the Westwind Diner on 9th Ave between 43rd and 44th street to meet with director of Beauty Queen, Jason Chimonides. He invited me to sit in on a staged reading of his newest play The Stone Age, at the Manhattan Theater Club (www.mcctheater.org). An off-Broadway theater company that specializes in fostering new plays from a collaborative of playwrights (like Jason), actors, and a few directors.
I love working on new plays, so what a TREAT! We gathered in a small conference room on the third floor, and under the buzz of flourescent lights around a long table with scripts, pads of paper and a few bottles of Poland Springs water the actors assembled gave voice to the printed words. This was Jason's third draft of the play, and its third reading. The actors had studied the script and gave their most confident (appearing) interpretations suggested by the words. I sat listening, compelled by an opening scene between a son (who we find out has returned from near death at a hospital--but we don't know why) and his father (a crude and forceful letch recently served divorce papers and wanting to move in with his son for a while). LOTS of unanswered questions, dramatic questions that I wanted to have answered. As the play unwound each answer to a question revealed lots of other questions. Walter (the son) has recently been left by his girlfriend Hannah, but we don't know why. It's a rather raw set of characters and circumstances (the son was beaten and left for dead by teenage thugs, the father turns out to be a brilliant (genius?) evolutionary psychologist who tries to confront his rival (his wife's lover) but does it so badly that the tables are turned and at the end of the first act he is left beaten and bleeding on the floor of his son's apartment, with an aghast Hannah (who has come by for some things...we know not what yet) looking on, and Walter going into a panic attack--something he's been experiencing since his stabbing.
It was a funny play. The first act is all about the father/son relationship, with continual references to Darwinic evolutionary "fitness" by the Dad (Francis) and Walter's nearly constant frustration with his father's theories that are so politically incorrect as to at once be hysterical and disgusting. (Men are not fit for monogamy...it's all about spreading around the semen, the DNA--referred to in the crudest ways sometimes). The second act is all about the lover/son relationship, with many of the same themes explored from a fundamentally different angle.
Jason's father, interestingly enough, is a behavioral psychologist. Much of what Jason writes about stems from what he's heard, what he's experienced, in living with HIS father. We can only create from the raw materials that we have experienced.
Which returns me to my earlier theme. My city fix. I went to a coffee shop this morning with Jason to discuss set design ideas for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, but couldn't seem to concentrate for the longest time about it because of the need to discuss everything else...life. As Jason put it, he's not as interested in theater as he is about life. That's what we study when we make theater. (His trait, as a playwright, is to create really well drawn, psychologically interesting, characters). I concur. On the way to the coffee shop we talked about Brooklyn (by population, about the size of Finland--could be its own country), museums, gardens, food...all kinds of things. When we got into The Tea House, I just kept looking around at new, stimulating images, textures, colors, that a stranger in a new place sees. The experience of being in a city is so rich and stimulating...THAT's my fix. In order to CREATE art...in order to look at the world and report on it as an artist...I need to continually refill my tank. I remember looking at something as simple as a mundane post--a large round column inside the coffee shop holding up the ceiling--it was plastered with playbills and posters advertising jazz groups and such. I thought, "how interesting...are there any plays in this upcoming season in which I can use this idea?" Perhaps. We'll see. By coming to the city and getting my well refilled with images and experiences, I'll be able to draw fuller buckets from it.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Landing on Intro Island, Day One
Dear THTR 101DE students,
You've made it. You landed on Intro Island. Now the fun begins. The first section of this class is titled NAVIGATING THE WORLD OF THEATER. Here you'll encounter my own journey as I go along with you through this course. I'll hopefully be modeling a way for you to do your Weekly Tasks, but of course my work will be slightly different.
Here I'll be thinking about the readings and experiences of the course while I reflect on my own work and play in theatre. Feel free to comment on what you find here. I'd like to know what you think. This is sorta like lectures--but sideways.
Enjoy!
Brian
You've made it. You landed on Intro Island. Now the fun begins. The first section of this class is titled NAVIGATING THE WORLD OF THEATER. Here you'll encounter my own journey as I go along with you through this course. I'll hopefully be modeling a way for you to do your Weekly Tasks, but of course my work will be slightly different.
Here I'll be thinking about the readings and experiences of the course while I reflect on my own work and play in theatre. Feel free to comment on what you find here. I'd like to know what you think. This is sorta like lectures--but sideways.
Enjoy!
Brian
