I have seen a lot of Sam Shepard in venues in Boston, Providence, NY, small theaters, big productions. In the 70’s, La Tourista at the Boston Center for the Arts the actor walked naked into a white light at the end of the play delivering an amazing and incoherent Peyote driven monologue. In Inman Square 30 years ago Cowboy Mouth (written with Patty Smith) had the drum set on stage the whole time, like a Beat poetry recital. The really difficult Tooth of the Crime in NYC in 1995, with Vincent D’Onofrio and music by T-Bone Burnett was transcendent due to the amazing Kirk Acevedo (from Fringe) as Crow. David Wheeler, who always thoroughly understands the work he directs created an almost ritualistic event for the audience with Angel City. Granted I was in an altered state myself when I saw it.

Nevertheless, there is a way to direct and act his plays that creates a hypnotic state with the audience. If everyone is on pitch, it is a dizzying experience that leaves you shaken, thoughtful, and feeling as though you’ve experienced something special that only happens in live theater.
So when a production is mounted where all the elements of language, music, set design are in harmony, conducted a director who recognizes how to bring from every actor that heightened sense of performance is needed for Shepard, it is total joy. Directed by Ethan Hawke, this is one of those productions. The original production in 1985 featured Harvey Keitel, Geraldine Page, Will Patton, Amanda Plummer, Aidan Quinn, Ann Wedgeworth, and Karen Young. I bought tickets well ahead, drove down to NY, only to find one of the cast members was ill and the play was canceled that night only. Geraldine Page played two parts the next night! I waited 25 to see another production!!

I finally feel redeemed. Since I didn’t know these actors they created for me from scratch, personalities that shook me to the core. (However, if you check their collective credits they’re pretty hefty – Keith Carradine, Josh Hamilton, Marin Ireland, Laurie Metcalf, Alessandro Nivola, Maggie Siff, Frank Whaley and Karen Young)

It’s hard to qualify any one performance over the next because every actor is completely, boldly and imaginatively invested in creating characters that are frightening and spellbinding. Somewhere deep in the heart of all the dysfunction of the play, inside the increasingly disorienting story and brilliant interplay of images and motifs, is a lot of American family history. It may not be an easy journey, but it’s the best kind of theater.

A few weeks ago I saw‘Exit the King’ with Geoffrey Rush in NYC. (I saw a 1/2 price preview). It was a reasonable interpretation, if you accept Ionesco as shtick. Still, few plays are worth the exorbitant price of these star driven Broadway shows, when there is great stuff off and off off Broadway, and in Boston, and in any city where arts can thrive. To get the public to also patronize non-blockbuster theater and museums , be driven by curiosity into galleries, foriegn films, small dance and theater companies, and then get into fights in bars over art and not just over sports and politics – we obviously need a culture that supports and prioritizes artistic expression. If we’re going stay human in the post-human future taking arts programs from the schools is a really bad start.
Which leads me to this Tribeca Film Festival blurb regarding the film TRANSCENDENT MAN about Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology:

“Kurzweil predicts that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, humanity is fast approaching an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly non-biological and trillions of times more powerful than today. This will be the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations. In Kurzweil’s post-biological world, there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality. Human aging and illness will be reversed, world hunger and poverty will be solved, and we will ultimately cure death.”

Returning to the Ionesco and his take on the folly of power, the anxiety of death, in Exit the King and thinking about all his wonderful ‘absurdist’ comedy/dramas on the state of modern man (Rhinoceros, The Bald Soprano, The Chairs) – led me to find this quote:

“In all the cities of the world, it is the same. The universal and modern man is the man in a rush (i.e. a rhinoceros), a man who has no time, who is a prisoner of necessity, who cannot understand that a thing might perhaps be without usefulness; nor does he understand that, at bottom, it is the useful that may be a useless and backbreaking burden. If one does not understand the usefulness of the useless and the uselessness of the useful, one cannot understand art. And a country where art is not understood is a country of slaves and robots.”

- Notes et Contre Notes, Eugene Ionesco

We have been warned!!

The Wooster Group is a real gift to the theater. I first saw them in 1983 and they have been slaying me ever since. I saw La Didone in previews and Bill Brantley’s review goes a long way towards helping to clarify and making sense of the experience. These performances are not gimmicks, not “post-modern”, but a collision of brilliant theatrical and performative elements and storytelling possibilities. LeCompte is a genius and that she finds performers of the quality needed for her vision is amazing. This is world class stuff. These actors are transcendent, and hugely talented. It’s beautiful and scary. That it takes movie stars to get people into NY theaters is unfortunate when you have this right in Brooklyn. If you’re already in New York, do yourself a favor and go! (And then go to the Flea and the Rattlestick!)

Times Review