8. Hostage Song

I would assume that everyone who writes seriously about theater has at least one show they're extra passionate about. For me, that's Hostage Song, the indie rock musical from the "downtown supergroup" of Clay MacLeod Chapman, Kyle Jarrow, and Oliver Butler, which just happens to also star Hannah Cheek and Paul Thureen. I hope this limited revival for visiting APAP members will help it to return on a more permanent basis, and that they understand that audiences need to see roughness and grit on the stage, too, and not just the meaningless artifice of emotionless polish. Hostage Song may not be pretty--especially once you learn that at least one of the two hostages has already died, and that much of this play is a tragic memory--but it is beautiful, and its moments are hard-earned.

7. Once and For All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen

The first time the thirteen teenagers of Once and For All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen come on stage, it's a spontaneous burst of energy. Two boys flick each other with balloons; two girls splash, spit, and pour water on one another; a boy and a girl get a little romantic while tangled up in a garbage bag; a skateboard flies by--also, a scooter; a tower of cups is stacked and smashed; chairs go flying--kids do, too. The sheer volume of things happening--to say nothing of the actual volume, particularly when there's mood-setting music playing--perfectly represents the overwhelming task Alexander Devriendt has given to his cast: to express the inexpressible: the intense feeling, spontaneity, and freedom of youth.  The exuberant joy--and, to be fair, awkward frustrations--of the following "scenes" stems from attempting to recapture those anarchic moments when other conditions--the world's perceptions/requirements--are layered atop them, yet the cast succeeds, time and time again, at retaining the originality they feel necessary to remain relevant.


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Once And For All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen

photo: Phile Deprez

About halfway through this wildly energetic hour of astutely organized chaos I knew I'd never seen anything on stage before that so succinctly captured the fleeting impulsive abandon of adolescence. Even the impossibly long in-your-face title is authentically teenage. There are a few monologues, and perhaps one segment that could be called a traditional scene, but otherwise the show has the vibrantly messy thrill of a free-for-all, as if the 13 teenagers we see on stage have just wandered there to make it their playground. While Velvet Underground blares from the loudspeakers, the kids break off within the group to snap elastic bands at each other, or grope each other clumsily in make-out sessions, or stand on chairs as if they are airplanes. There's something deeply truthful in these exhibitions of playful discovery - it's impossible to watch and not remember the boundless energy, curiosity and hunger of being a teenager. The hour is divided into distinct segments and has clearly been shaped and choreographed, if that's the word, but the behavior on stage typically feels organic, as if the kids are just being rather than performing for our benefit. It's completely captivating and like nothing I have ever seen before. At the Duke as part of this year's Under The Radar festival, a stop on its world tour following a huge splash 2 years ago at the Edinburgh Fringe.

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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