Review: “Chaos Theory”

Jessica Creane tackles the misogyny of the scientific community, sexual liberation and the fear of velociraptors while inviting the audience to play games.

Unlike the randomness generated by a system with many variables, chaos has its own pattern, a peculiar kind of order. This pattern is known whimsically as a strange attractor, because the chaotic system seems to be strangely attracted to an ideal behavior.

Gary Taubes

Jessica Creane in Chaos Theory (in FringeNYC run). Photo courtesy of Jessica Creane.

Upon entering the Mathematical Scientists Annual meetup, we are offered name tags, pretzels, and Oreos, and asked to sign in. When I notice that, in addition to my name and my email, I am required to provide the name of my first crush, I suspect that things might not be strictly scientific. And boy am I right. Chaos Theory, an interactive solo show, developed and performed by Jessica Creane, is back in town. After its initial run at FringeNYC in October, Chaos Theory gets a way-too-short extension at HERE. In a strange way, it's a perfect show for those who’d like to reassess their goals and values before stepping into 2019. But don’t get into a meditative mood—with this blend of games and theatre, it’s about to get a bit chaotic.

The keynote (and only) speaker, Dr. Genevieve Saoch (Jessica Creane), radiates enthusiasm the minute she enters. Her elegant black sheath dress is paired with white heels, silly white ruffle socks, and dinosaur earrings (costumes by Evelyn Langley). This free-spirited woman is passionate in science and love alike, something that has apparently gotten her into trouble and out of her dress on stage. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, some chaos theory. While I can’t attest to the accuracy of the scientific component, terms like the butterfly effect, fractals, and self-similarity seem familiar. Dr. Saoch refreshes our knowledge about “the science of surprises,” sometimes speeding up to the point where it is impossible to distinguish words. 

To illustrate her point, this Chaologist tells a story about her childhood crush in a mathematical formula, reads poetry, sings, and leads volunteers into games. In one, two teams of four are tasked with drawing a perfect circle. One person on the team must, at all costs, ensure that the circle is drawn, while another person is tasked with preventing that. The third person is told to perform the minimum work and take all of the credit, and the fourth person doesn’t care about the circle at all—their only task is to seduce everybody in the room. Sounds a lot like a dysfunctional scientific research group.

When it comes to human relationships and the ethics of the academic community, it is not always clear what is orderly and what is chaotic. In another “game” the audience is encouraged to yell “order” or “chaos” at different objects and events Saoch calls out. But the hubbub and laughter quiets down as the survey becomes a confession. Is it “order” or “chaos” when the “room full of penises” at a cigar club determines who gets to be published? Or when, because of a single embarrassing incident, a female researcher loses her career while her male counterpart gets glorified? 

During this scene, Saoch stands in front of the audience completely naked and vulnerable, clenching the clipboard with her shaking hands. This after a spontaneous disrobing that is empowering and freeing—while talking about a sex game involving a velociraptor (don’t ask). Science, much like romance, can lift you to a new plane of existence. But when the variable of the institutional “order” comes into the equation, be it academia or the patriarchy, one might be smacked on the concrete, crushed by the powerful. Luckily, there are ways to conquer crippling depression, like moving towards your passion, however strange it is, and forming community bonds along the way. 

For the last part, Dr. Saoch presents the concept of “Strange Attraction” and invites the entire audience on stage. This becomes highly interactive and potentially quite personal, but anybody can opt out by using the safe word “dildo.” On the surface this might all seem like a bunch of nonsense tasks, but the sheer silliness of these games, as well as of Chaos Theory overall, has a refreshing, even life-assuring, aftertaste. Jessica Creane gives an electric performance and is especially good when she interacts with the audience (which is all the time). Creane extends her invitation to play even after the show via Instagram, and in the back of the program is the game “At Any Point A Velociraptor Might Enter This Room.” Chaos Theory is a phenomenally successful theatrical experiment, and I hope to see this Philadelphia-based artist back in New York soon.

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Chaos Theory plays at Here Arts Center, 145 Sixth Avenue, through December 20, 2018. The running time is 75 minutes with no intermission. Performances are 12/18-12/20 at 8:30. Tickets are $20. For more information and to purchase tickets visit here.org and ikantkoan.com.

Chaos Theory is written and performed by Jessica Creane. Directed by Joseph Ahmed and Amy Blumberg. Costume and Prop Design by Evelyn Langley.

Review: “NERVOUS/SYSTEM”

This technological marvel with an incredibly successful lead performer is necessary shock therapy for every millennial.

Nobody ever has time for a survey on the street, especially if the questions are along the lines of “How jazzed are you about the state of the sun?” and “How many lovers do you currently have?” NERVOUS/SYSTEMinvites its audience to see the world from a perspective of a pollster who becomes an unexpected and poetical allegory of a modern urban millennial. T.L. Thompson (who uses the pronouns they/their) nails the lead character in this experimental theatre piece, written, directed and designed by Andrew Schneider. But it is the tech, namely lighting and sound, design that steals the show. I came out of the theater shaking as if I’d been shocked a dozen times. But the visceral physical experience is so meticulously designed, and so seamlessly woven into the narrative, that I would gladly subject myself to this electric chair of a play again.

TL Thompson and Kedian Keohan in NERVOUS/SYSTEM. Photo by PC Rebecca Smeyne.

We first meet the main character through their voice, reading from a long list of questions. The stage area between two opposite sections of the audience is empty. Only slivers of light are thrown across it from behind the wings, turning on and off with a click, like slide projectors in the hazy air. This hypnotic dance of light goes on for a while, contrasted by the soothing voice of Thompson. The warmth, liveliness, flirtatiousness and power embodied in their timbre will keep clashing against the mechanization of life throughout the show, which balances between theatre, performance, and light/sound installation.

It’s hard to put a finger on what exactly happened to the unnamed pollster, but something broke inside of them. In the myriad half-encounters on the street, they met somebody and then somebody went missing. There might have been a mass shooting at a party, or a plane crash. And maybe others might be more successful in piecing this story together. But the choppy structure is timely and atmospheric—of value by itself. The less-than-a-minute-long scenes race as swift as thoughts. Sharp blackouts cut off dialogue and TV announcements mid-sentence. But these aren't your regular cozy blankets of darkness, descending softly like in most theater. Schneider’s darkness is that of a black hole, of nothingness, and it feels like the air is sucked out of the room along with the light for a second or two. This must be how a sudden loss feels.

Something is eating the protagonist, as their life feels like “a list of what’s happening with no emotional connection to it.” But according to their shrink, it’s just a sign of our time; everything else appears to be normal. The stage gets emptied of scarce furniture after each of the many psychotherapy sessions during the “blink” of darkness. And then, under the penetrating white light, the street life resumes, portrayed by the cast members storming across the stage. A girl in a wheel chair runs away from her aide, a hipster comes from a grocery store, a woman falls down unconscious and unnoticed: it's the flow of city life, surreal and familiar at the same time. This same sequence is performed every single time with vigor and precision. 

It’s hard to tell if we are in a groundhog day of the depressed pollster’s monotonous life or if we are stuck in their head, scrolling through the memory of one day over and over again, the day of the encounter with the girl (Kedian Keohan). The song bleeding out of her headphones has its own rhythm, making her invincible to the ever-rushing environment. The sound design plays an equally important part—its nuance and three-dimensionality is breath taking. At times the sound is so violent that it shakes the chairs; other times it is subtle and lyrical, like a soft song leaking out of somebody’s headphones. NERVOUS/SYSTEM is a case of sound design not simply enhancing the verbal narrative, but actually moving the story forward.

NERVOUS/SYSTEM is all about rhythm, patterns, and how we break them in order to preserve our human nature. The show is at times physically uncomfortable because of the lighting, especially during the second part of the prologue, when the rapid switches of complete darkness and the razor-sharp light are first introduced. However Andrew Schneider and his associate director Alicia ayo Ohs use this dramatic effect to the fullest extent. The ominous stop-motion scene of bodies laying face down is one of the most disturbing and hauntingly beautiful things I’ve seen lately.

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NERVOUS/SYSTEM played at BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Place, December 12 through 15, 2018. The running time was 70 minutes with no intermission. Tickets were $25. For more information visit bam.org and andrewjs.com.

NERVOUS/SYSTEM is written, directed and designed by Andrew Schneider. Associate Director/ Community Accountability Coordinator is Alicia ayo Ohs. Associate Lighting Designer is Chu-hsuan Chang. Associate Sound Designer is Sadah Espii Proctor. Sound Engineering by Duncan Woodbury. Stage Manager is Marisa Blankier. Commissioned by LUMBERYARD Contemporary Performing Arts Center.

The cast is T.L. Thompson, Lindsay Head, Antonio Irizarry, Kedian Keohan, Peter Musante, Ashley Marie Ortiz, Jamie Roach, Kate Athol, Chelsea Barker, John Gutierrez, Cecillia Lynn-Jacobs, Talia Paulette Oliveras, and Kendall Cafaro.

Experience the Epidemic of Virtual Addiction in ‘Arcade Amerikana’ (Review)

Buy a ticket to a theatre show, arrive at a nightclub, and become a part of the video installation.

Do you feel fragmented? Are you drowning in the ever-rising tide of digital content? Are you exhausted by the constant competition? Sounds like you are a perfect client for Ancient Ocean, a rehab facility for struggling with digital addiction. You are in the right place because this where Arcade Amerikana takes its audience in this multimedia production. Upon navigating Industry City, an analogue “hipster arcade,” (a complex of multiple factory buildings turned into hip offices, studios, shops, and restaurants)  the audience enters a “performance cube,” the venue/installation that has been created specifically for this production. The four projections screens that form the walls are 40 feet long and 20 feet wide, two VJs synchronize video elements and a DJ mixes an original techno-infused score.
   

The year is 2020. The first stop on the journey is The Cube, a hip club, in which audience members can get acquainted with the environment and take selfies, drink in hand. Imagine yourself in Times Square, being bombarded by a constant stream of video, only instead of commercials you are looking at three female cast members applying makeup, walking around the kitchen or just flirting with the camera. They are present in the flesh as well, glued in place, performing a single dance move on a loop with an absent gaze. Meanwhile, the  other four cast members mingle with the audience. The lighting and haze add to the club-like atmosphere.

As the bombardment of video streams and lighting effects intensifies, so does the choreography. What had started as a chill evening at the club culminates in dance madness with performers twitching and twirling under the strobe lights among the scattered patrons. This beautifully designed scene effectively combines all the elements at the production’s disposal: video art, lighting, music, live choreography, and the audience. It is at that moment when the phones go down, the eyes widen, and I can see people are taken by the moment completely. The agony of the performers reaches its peak and bang! The projection walls turn black for a few seconds. The solution to the unbearable withdrawal presents itself from the void: an Instagram-like frame featuring a serine oceanic landscape. One of the performers reaches for it and after a short hesitation presses the button, “activating” the Ancient Ocean, the retreat for the digital adicts.    

After the transition to the digital rehab in the middle of a Nevada desert, Arcade Amerikana’s  narrative takes off, carried by monologues, and the show becomes theatre-in-round with the audience standing against the walls. A series of short scenes introduces us to the inhabitants of the retreat and features commercials for it.  Occasionally people get reshuffled by the cast for unknown reasons. Every time somebody takes me by the hand and puts me in a different spot in the circle, I experience discomfort followed by disappointment. The discomfort comes from a feeling that I am standing somewhere I am not supposed to stand or am obscuring the view. The disappointment comes from the broken promise “to take me somewhere else,” which is unspoken but presumed when a performer engages you directly. Ideally, I would expect a “one-on-one” scene to follow, or even a meaningful or puzzling sentence whispered in my ear (since the show only utilizes one space). Instead, each time, I am simply moved to a different spot. It is unclear whether the performers were trying to organize some spontaneous flow of people this way. In this case, an internal motivation to move would feel less intrusive.

I found myself unwilling to move, mesmerized by the monumental landscapes of the Ancient Ocean virtual facilities unfolding around me. The hypnotic effect is achieved by a soothing robotic voice narrating. The previously-clubbing youngsters appear on the screens, diving in pools and doing tai-chi on the beach in slow motion. The less glamorous, and more anxious, live versions of themselves share their stories of what brought them to this retreat. One of them, performed by Russell Kahn (also a producing director), asks me to take a picture of him with my phone. He critically stares at the image of himself for a few long moments as if looking for the affirmation. His loss of interest in this activity is as sudden as his request. After a sharp inhale, Kahn ventures in a rapid monologue intensely convening that he always knew that he was “the shit.” Now the projected image on the walls of the cube changes to photos of him, with ink running. As the camera zooms out, we see that those photographs are printed on paper and then applied to his body with water, forming a slowly peeling second skin.

Arcade Amerikana is full of haunting video art; you can catch a glimpse of it by looking the show  up on social media. But it’s one thing to scroll through the feed at your leisure or lose yourself in a video art piece in a gallery setting, choosing to look for the amount of time you are comfortable with. Submerging oneself into the performance cube for the 40 minutes of the show is something that’s not for everybody. Growing up, I heard horrible stories of how parents would make their kids quit smoking by forcing them to smoke the entire pack of cigarettes in one sitting. Maybe the creators of Arcade Amerikana are trying to do just that? Promoted as a show created for gen Z, who would “never ordinarily attend a play,” Arcade Amerikana is both compelling and overwhelming for the same reason: visual overload.  

The fragmented narrative, devised by the Arcade collective is suitable for the subject matter of the dystopian near future, where virtual addiction became epidemic. This scenario is not difficult to imagine, as occasionally it does feel that we already live in a world of “hyper reality, constant competition, and endless choice”. Arcade Amerikana invites its audience to rethink their relationship with the digital image, but doesn’t provide an alternative. Rapid cuts, camera movement and close-ups of faces flooding entire walls made me feel physically dizzy and emotionally emptied. If you feel like this is something you are immune to, I recommend checking out the show, even if just for the sake of the form: an experiment of blending a nightclub vibe with video installation art and live performances, one that is incredibly well executed.  As for me, I am definitely in need of a technology detox after attending Arcade Amerikana.

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Arcade Amerikana plays at Industry City, 51 35th Street Brooklyn, through December 15, 2018. The running time is 40 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are $50. For more information visit arcadeamerikana.com.

Arcade Amerikana is devised and produced by the artistic collective Arcade. It is directed by Dulcinee DeGuere.

Arcade Amerikana is performed by Emory Campbell, Quenton Stuckey, Simone Grossman, Aarron Ricks, Russell Kahn, Lio Mehiel, and Owen Campbell.

[This review was published on noproscenium.com on 12.11.18]

Review: "Menagerie D’arte"

An inspiring collaboration of a choreographer and a fashion designer blends different styles in exploration of the performance of gender.

An elegant lady winks at me from beneath a beaded lampshade worn as a hat. But before I can fully appreciate the intricate details of this human sculpture, I am pulled away by a bubbly blonde in a 50’s style dress. Right from the door the performers of Menagerie D’arte engage the audience members in their shenanigans, taking place in every corner of Teatro LATEA. I find myself in the company of two ladies winding musical boxes under the oriental canopy backstage. The next minute I am on stage taking a hula-hoop lesson. The hostess of the evening, Dalia Carella, the artistic director of DCDC (Dalia Carella Dance Collective), reads tarot by the bar. And in the green room, the dancers complain about each other, mostly in Italian, while generously pouring champagne to their guests.

photo courtesy DCDC

The half-hour pre-show flies by in this carnival-like atmosphere. Once the lively interactive prelude is over, the audience members are asked to take their seats in a black box theater. From here, the show follows a rather conventional cabaret format. There are a over a dozen solos, duets and group numbers performed by nineteen dancers, brought together by Carella. This evening showcases both repertory works of the ensemble as well as new dances, many of them featuring the signature DCDC blend of traditional and contemporary choreography.

The kaleidoscope of world-dance fusion includes flamenco, salsa, and belly dance, among others. A lot of the numbers are choreographed by the performers themselves. Menagerie D’arte doesn’t shy away from pop-culture female archetypes like “exotic oriental beauty” or “dumb blond housewife” but gives them a dark and intriguing spin. The majority of the dancers are women and there is a strong emphasis on the variety of the female representations, something that Carella actively explores throughout her career. The show even ventures into the macabre territory of horror films by featuring two female werewolves and a ghost-like creature wearing a horrifying Japanese mask. This brief exploration of something completely unexpected when it comes to “performing femininity” is refreshing. Inclusion is inspiring in the context of the gender performance and, as shown by DCDC can be achieved effectively even in a family-friendly PG-13 format.

Thanks to the skilled and charismatic performers, as well as show-stopping costumes by Debbie D. Cartsos, there is a constant sense of surprise. There is equal collaboration between the choreographer, Carella, and the costume designer, Cartsos, who are both co-producers of the show. The understanding between the two is evident and reflected in each other’s artistic visions. Cartsos’ whimsical costumes mix iconic style elements and new inventions with the same daring playfulness that Carella and other members of her company combine different dance traditions. As an example, Kunoichi – The Japanese Spies includes belly dance moves, for which the kimono-inspired costumes are accommodating by exposing the dancer’s midriff. Another great example of the choreographer-designer collaboration is Le Jardin. In this dance, the manipulations with transforming dresses are the basis for the choreography of the entire piece.    

Unfortunately, the black box of Teatro LATEA isn’t the most fitting venue for the show; something like a more traditional cabaret with little tables or even a bar, would be helpful in creating the right atmosphere. As is, the theater is great for listening to the performers’ stories, but less efficient for immersing yourself in a fashion and dance fantasy. It was much easier to stretch my imagination in the make-believe cabaret of the pre-show. The virtual absence of any spatial design is compensated by audience engagement with interaction and activities. But as soon as the audience members are offered to take a seat in front of the proscenium, some of Menagerie D’arte’s magic disperses. The audience seemed less enthusiastic after sitting down and the transition from being a playmate to a mere observer made me feel abandoned.

The lovely performances and pre-show interactions could only benefit from more curating, as Menagerie D’arte lacks the coherence of a cabaret evening. In its current incarnation, it is more of a talent showcase striving to be more. Carella appears as a hostess but doesn’t fully exploit her role of the MC. The single vignette with her interacting with an audience member was a delight for people in the seats and the overly excited participant alike; it would be great to have more of these to help maintain the lively energy from the pre-show. There is a good proportion of fun and playful numbers with more somber ones. Menagerie D’arte biggest challenge is to figuring out how to balance the interactive elements with the more traditional presentations.

[This review was published on noproscenium.com on 12.6.18]