6. The Word Begins

I'm tired of plays like this, in which two actors regurgitate a stand-up routine into a one-act. In which a show boasts of the importance of independent thought and speech, but doesn't want us to actually think for ourselves. Where self-congratulatory nuggets pose as wisdom: "The only way to end war is to end war," and we can end racism if we "fuck ourselves beige." In The Word Begins, Steven Connell and Sekou (tha misfit) Andrews stress the importance of being specific, only to produce one of the most general bits of spoken-word I've ever seen. The result is straw-man theater, which offers up a sacrifice of unassailable facts in the hopes that we will accept it as wit and wisdom, ignoring the lack of reasons, emotions, or truth. What good is a spoken-word play that is all talk? Why are we content to just write a beginning?

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5. Space Panorama

Photo/Nitin Vadukul

Given how easily Andrew Dawson's Space Panorama conjures up the famous 1969 moon landing, using nothing other than his dexterous fingers and a flat black table, I can at last understand why some people still insist that the whole thing was a hoax. Then again, while Dawson's pulling off a sort of theatrical prestidigitation--epic mime, if you will--his act is no simple trick. Instead, it's a sublime ode to human accomplishment, aided by Gavin Robertson's jovially recorded narration and Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony. It puts the "special" in "special effect"; no matter how much money James Cameron throws at a project, it will never be as genuine. That's because Dawson's Space Panorama forces the audience to be just as imaginative as he is.

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4. L'Effet De Serge

Gaëtan Vourc’h's performance may be minimal, but the effect of Philippe Quesne's show is maximal. L'Effet De Serge is a reminder of the possibility of theater, and by putting the utmost of confidence and sincerity into the smallest of moments, it rekindles the forgranted beauty of the everyday. Even his basic apartment brims with possibility, stretched wide with a variety of toys and electronics clustered on one end, and nothing but empty space (and carpeting) on the other. The play itself consists of Serge (Vourc'h) inviting friends over, generally one by one, and then performing a small visual effect for them, so intimately absurd (like playing with a smoke machine and the headlights of a car to the music of Wagner) that his guests are left unable to express their reaction ("I didn't know you could do that with a car"). "Time passes, time passes," explains a Beckett-like recording, allowing Serge to smoothly segue from performance to performance, and the climax comes so quickly, so quietly, that it leaves its audience smiling, nodding, and dizzily returning to the real world.


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3. Versus

Photo/Teatr Nowy

Take a Brecht play--In the Jungle of Cities--and then reduce it to four characters. Maintain the alienation effect, doubly so by performing it in Polish, with English supertitles. Emphasize the vulnerability of the characters by having them do increasingly physical acts, and by only half clothing them. Make sure they embody the art of wrestling, with its "performative exaggerations." Remember that the audience wants not to see actual suffering, but an honest simulacrum of it. Sum all of that up with a big old "meh": we beat ourselves up enough already, that's the point, so why subject us to a show that does the same? The best moments, acutely physical, use the illusion of performance to show things that are not illusions. But in the end, because this battle means nothing, it can only be a let-down.

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2. GuruGuru

Interactive theater can be somewhat limiting, especially if you're so involved in hitting your own cues that you forget to look up and catch what the other "audience-actors" are sending your way. Rotozaza's latest, GuruGuru, neatly avoids that trap by making that the very point. Without giving too much away, upon your arrival, you will receive a nametag that identifies your "character," and upon entering the "set," you'll follow directions via television and headphones. Your character's problem involves the inability to think independently, which makes your own portrayal--reliant as you are on cues to figure out what's going on--all the more fitting, if not prescient. It's a trippy experience, a valid meditation on
our current cultural abyss and our worship of drone-life. The show ends in either a truly liberating or truly frightening way: with you back in the real world, more aware than ever of your own thoughts, and their importance.

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The Devil You Know

photo: Richard Termine

A collaboration between Ping Chong and Phantom Limb that uses (mostly marionette) puppets to retell the Faustian The Devil and Daniel Webster story, The Devil You Know is a strangely compelling piece of theatre. The visually striking designs, from the blank-faced puppets to the dark rustic rooms, are more haunting than comforting and the thematic implication of marionettes, every move controlled from on high, is in fascinating opposition to a text that warns against the human choice of selfishness. The show, at LaMama and part of this year's Under The Radar festival, satisfies at the most basic level of simple storytelling if taken at face value, but its strange special power comes from what's beneath the surface.