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.Monday, January 8
.
Its Monday, and its time for puppets.
(What else is a postcard that says Wish you were here?
supposed to mean?)
Adinolfis scrappy, ingeniously engineered puppets, built mostly of cardboard, are the great delight here.
UFO is to use the fests own language its work-in-progress series of staged readings and scaled-down productions.
Something to do with how these shows are rare, fringy sightings?
Its not entirely clear.)
Today Im seeingBag of Worms, a work in progress by the multimedia artist Matt Romein.
This is another of those … Theres an experimental theater here?
TheONX Studio, a security guard tells me, is in the basement.
Is he giving big brother or Big Brother?
Romein often works with Peter and Julia (see last weeks diary entry!
Here, Julia is working with him as director and Peter as sound designer.
InBag of Wormss earliest iterations, they were also onstage as Romeins fellow performers.
Hes interested, he tells us, in empathy for the digital body.
Well, it all started with a very deep Reddit thread about theMariocharacter Toad.
The subject of ferocious, multi-post debate: Is the mushroom caphis hat … or his head?
And then its also something other than funny.
As with Romeins smile, its unnerving, too even strangely melancholy.
This is Baba Yana, the Soviet Jewish Grandma Clown.
(Same goes for the witch in Hansel and Gretel.)
I didnt, and thats genuinely interesting.
The show overall, though, is too repetitive and cutesy for me.
The prince is constipated spiritually and otherwise.
He wont be able to cleanly and completely defecate until his father is avenged.
Ophelia has an enormous wig (hat?)
made of toilet-paper rolls and her drowning is accompanied by flushing effects.
The final fencing match is fought with plungers.
You get the idea.
I wish I found the whole thing funnier, because itissupposed to be funny.
Theres a part of me, though, that wonders what cultural fluency I lack here.
So perhaps Im not vibrating on all the same frequencies as Kaimaku Pennant Race, but thats okay.
And thats never a bad thing.
Their fingernails are silver talons.
In one hand, they swing an object like a censer.
(Khoza themself identifies asa non-binary womanly man,so theres a sharp pointedness to this ancestral anguish.)
But then, at the same time, somehow it isnt.
They flick their hands violently as if shaking off dirty water.
They dry their face, take a deep breath, and continue.
Whattheyare experiencing physically, spiritually is clearly immense, overwhelming.
But Im not so sure the same can be said for most of the audience.
One burns, while the other stays cool.
But we could also do these things while reading a good essay or listening to a smart podcast.
At the beginning of the show, Khoza sprinkles a circle around themself using salt and dirt.
Then they offer a pinch of either to every audience member.
I held a little handful of salt throughout the whole show and never did anything with it.
.Friday, January 12
Ive got a three-show day today, starting in Brooklyn.
As we receive instructions from our audience guides, it feels like were being prepped for an escape room.
We each get a big jangly set of keys (very satisfying).
I feel like a giant which is to say, a child peering into a dolls house.
Inside every locker is a carefully constructed diorama, all with either a video or audio component.
Were not in a musty basement with possibly sub-code wiring and Coors Lights in a cooler.
There are a whole lot of older white people in this room.
This will matter for the show.
Still with me?
Click here to read.
So theres a theory possibly apocryphal that Shakespeare was feeling cynical when he titled his 1599 comedy.
After that, the laughter in his plays would only become more shadowed and bitter.
Here you go, kids, have itas you like it.
Andthisis where Cliff Cardinal comes in.
Ive been saying all along these things are crap!).
Cardinals face quicksilvers between friendly, I mean,what can ya do?
absolution and icy, bitter judgment, and the former is always a trap.
Are we still doing this?
he said after fully shaming her once with, apparently, no result.
Put your fucking phone away.
Im angry, Cardinal tells us late in the show.
We know it, but he hasnt said it yet.
At what point are we finished acknowledgingthe abduction and murder of over 7,000 schoolchildren?
It piles dirt on the unmarked grave; it puts a pretty bow on the festering wound.
Now you know what it feels like to be Native.
Its the big punch line of the evening, though Im not sure it isnt mid-to-low-hanging fruit.
Anger and shame are sharp weapons, but they dont create much breathing space.
The days not over yet.
But dont worry this entry almost is!
The thing is Im feeling a littletooseen.
WhenFellowshipcame out, it blew my teenage brain out the back of my head.
Im not actually going to tell you how many times I paid to see it.
You couldnt edit on this thing.
Everything had to be shot in order.
We only ever made it to the Mines of Moria.
Our epic remains unfinished, though it was committed to DVD by my father.
Basically, we inspiredBe Kind Rewind.
Everything except that last sentence is true.
I lose my voice laughing at it.
Its lovely to end the night with such brazen, joyful silliness.
.Sunday, January 14
I took Saturday off (gasp!
But you ate her, said helpful Aunty M. Thats why you are the way you are.
Thats as Jarboe deadpans a lot to digest.
Her melodic, bespangled, generous show is a way of doing just that.
Anyone whos worried about grisly content can relax their shoulders: Jarboe isnt all that interested in body horror.
Its a perfect invocation: Who didnt do a version of this dance as a kid?
When did dress-up become bad?
Scott wears a cravat and circumnavigates the space coolly.
Voices hum from an old tape deck; the candles flicker.
Is Scott some kind of psychiatrist or detective?
Are we piecing together Norenas broken memories?
Norena and Scott are dancing together even before the show evolves into a more explicitly choreographed physical duet.
(The show incorporates text from several writers, includingGuy Debord.)
If it sounds like a heady, heavy cocktail,Those Moveable Piecesmanages to leave a surprisingly delicate impression.
I found myself thinking strangely enough ofAs You Like Its Jaques.
Invest me in my motley, he says, pleading for a jesters uniform.
It takes patience, and its strong medicine.
