On Demand
The calm before the storm
By Claudia La Rocco
August 21, 2008
**WARNING: This post contains a very big photo of a man’s head**
Did you all see the sky last night, around 7:45? It was incredible - luminous, clear, and the air was at that perfect temperature where you forget that such a thing as temperatures exist. If New York weather were like this all the time we wouldn’t have any culture (insert joke about perfect climate of some city - you know the candidates - that we all secretly wished we lived in much of the year).
Thankfully, this weather has arrived at a time when there is, in relative terms, precious little to do around town, and when most of us, if we aren’t on vacation, have slipped into that dreamy, somewhat removed state known as “girding our loins in preparation for the madness that is the fall arts season in New York.” It’s a Quixotic effort to build up reserves of calm.
I’ve been reading Oscar Wilde’s “The Critic as Artist,” which, fittingly, opens “With Some Remarks Upon the Importance of Doing Nothing.” This should be required yearly reading for all New Yorkers (that phrase, at least). In fact, maybe it should be our book club pick - no, I haven’t forgotten. I’m just slow.
I’ve also been thinking about some of the art I’ve seen lately - being able to really reflect is a luxury that I don’t always have, especially if I’m reviewing every night. Truthfully, much of the work I encounter doesn’t engender an awful lot of reflecting; it’s not great, it’s not terrible, it’s just there, like a polite dinner guest whose name you keep forgetting.
This has been the case for most shows I’ve seen at the Fringe festival, this year and in past years. But it wasn’t true of “Zombie,” which I mentioned last week. Its run ends tonight at 7:15, and you should check it out if you have nothing to do, and want to be seriously disturbed:
And you wonder why he’s stuck in my head …
Bill Connington adapted this one-man show from Joyce Carol Oates’ novella about a sexual psychopath. Oates tends to annoy the hell out of me, but here her words were murderously good (though they do seem, at times, to be straying uncomfortable close to linking homosexual repression and pedophilia - made me a little squirmy). Connington’s adaptation and Thomas Caruso’s direction are old-fashioned in the best possible way: they don’t try to reinvent any wheels or be strange for strangeness’ sake. They’ve got powerful material, and they stay out of its way.
But thinking about the idea of solid, traditional theater made me think of one of the events that I’m most excited about for the fall, a highly opinionated festival that promises to offer a wholly experimental take on theater: “PRELUDE ‘08.” I’ll be writing more about this as we get closer to the September 24 start date, but just wanted to make sure it’s on everyone’s radar.
O.K. Go back to daydreaming - hope you can get this photo out of your head.
Comments
Comment from andy
Date: August 22, 2008, 1:05 am
thanks for the shout-out! PRELUDE is going to be fantastic! Our new website is up and all the info should be available soon. (www.preludenyc.org). It is our 5th anniversary and we have really pulled out all the stops - great artists, many of the movers and shakers in NYC contemporary performance/theater will be speaking on panels or talking to artists, we’ll be streaming the whole thing into Second Life and so much more. And it is all FREE.
Thanks again and hope to see you there!
All best-
Andy
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: August 22, 2008, 12:32 pm
You’re welcome! I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about the festival, people seem pretty jazzed about it.
Obviously you’re excited about the whole festival, but I’m curious: if there were one panel you would suggest people go to to really get a sense of what’s moving and shaking in NYC performance/theater today, which would it be?
Comment from Rebecca
Date: August 24, 2008, 7:38 pm
Hi Claudia- Rebecca from Prelude ‘08 here. A few of the big questions that came up as we were discussing how to frame the festival were “What makes something theatre as opposed to performance? Can theatre happen outside of the “black box” or does it then become something else? How do these distinctions change the way audiences approach what they are seeing?” For those who would like to enter into the conversation with us, the Prelude kick-off panel on September 24, “Between White Cubes and Black Boxes: Performance, Place & Context”, will address some of these questions, and give people a sense of how artists are creating, presenting and experiencing art in NYC in the 21st century. Plus- there’s going to be a fantastic party afterwards! All are welcome! http://www.preludenyc.org
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: August 25, 2008, 2:11 am
Hey Rebecca! Great questions .. although I would add to that first one, “why does the distinction matter?” (not as a rhetorical point, either)
Sept. 24, mark your calendars, everyone…
Comment from Bill Connington
Date: August 28, 2008, 1:46 pm
Hi Claudia -
I’m the adapter/performer in ZOMBIE at the Fringe Festival. You mentioned a concern you had about the script.
I can see why you would be concerned that Oates’ point might be that homosexual repression can lead to pedophilia. But my understanding of her character’s sexuality is quite different. His lack of human connection is total. He doesn’t even realize that other people are separate from him in any way. He has no understanding of other people’s feelings and needs. In essence, he is the only person who matters in the universe. So in a strange way, he probably doesn’t consider himself “gay” or “homosexual”. He is Quentin, and he wants what he wants- laws, morals, and human decency be damned.
Oates’ larger point in the novella is that Quentin experiences all kinds of impulses and feelings that are human - people feel them all the time. But they don’t act on them, because they are decent human beings. Quentin lacks any moral sense whatsoever, and takes his narcissistic needs to horrifying extremes.
Bill Connington
Comment from Claudia La Rocco
Date: August 28, 2008, 2:38 pm
Dear Bill,
Thanks so much for writing in - I was blown away by the adaptation, and your performance. Thank you for that, too.
I take all of your points, and I should stress, and should have said initially, that I did not read the original novella … but at a very few times during the play there seemed to be a suggestion in Oates’ writing that Quentin became what he is, in part, because of the repression of his homosexuality - as when he describes his father finding his stash of magazines with pictures of men, and expressing his outrage and disgust.
I am quite open to the possibility that I’m being oversensitive here, but I’m also well aware of how often this horrible linkage is made in our society.
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