Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Concluding where it began: SITI Company returns to the ever so relevant THE MEDIUM in its bittersweet farewell season

• By drediman
• March 18, 2022
• No Comments

Last night at BAM Fisher, I caught a performance of SITI Company’s revival of The Medium. Originally staged in 1993, the show has the distinction of being the first – and now perhaps the final – production to be performed by the revered avant-garde theater company (the current 30th anniversary season has been announced to be its final one). Over the last three decades, the company has established itself as a true force in New York’s downtown experimental theater scene. Indeed, attending the sold out performance was a bittersweet affair, and many in the audience seemed at once saddened and ecstatic to watch the company at it for maybe the last time.

The Medium is a hypnotic meditation on the ever so relevant musings on technology of 20th-century communications theorist Marshall McLuhan. Although McLuhan (who also appears in the play as a character) is saddened by certain aspects of being overly dependent on technology (e.g., the tendency to lose touch with nature), he also encourages us to embrace the its inevitable and unstoppable advancement. The devised performance art piece – less a traditional play with a conventional narrative and more of an impressionistic tone poem – especially takes to McLuhan’s famous saying that “the medium is the message”, which suggests that the technology we use is inextricable from our experience of life. Throughout the 90-minute evening, other such quotes are recycled repeatedly in different combinations and in various genres of entertainment, a theatrical device (pun intended) which amusingly illustrates the very same notion.

The production has been meticulously restaged with only minimal alterations and updates (smart phones are now mentioned) by SITI’s longtime co-artistic director Ann Bogart. The Medium features the company’s distinctive blend of movement and speech, and its rigorous repetitions gradually cast a spell over the audience. The cast of five perform the piece with impressive physicality and discipline, especially the tireless Will Bond who plays McLuhan as a quirky but irrepressible ringleader. It was especially poignant to see Ellen Lauren and Mr. Bond – two founding members of SITI Company – in action. Both still perform with the kind of precision and boundless energy that put the company on the map in the first place.

RECOMMENDED

THE MEDIUM
Off-Broadway, Performance Art
SITI Company / Brooklyn Academy of Music
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through March 20