Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – In-person theatrical experiences slowly return to New York: CORRESPONDENCES, STATIC APNEA, and VOYEUR: THE WINDOWS OF TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

• By drediman
• October 13, 2020
• No Comments

If you look hard enough, you’ll start to find some encouraging signs of life slowly emerging from the graveyard that has become New York’s once vibrant performing arts scene. Over the past several weeks, evidence of this reemergence can be tied to the brave unveiling of a trio of in-person, pandemic-friendly theatrical experiences. The inspiring fact that they’ve been mounted at all when live theatrical performances in the city remain overwhelmingly dormant is cause, in and of itself, for celebration. Here are my thoughts on these glimmers of hope.

CORRESPONDENCES
HERE Arts Center / LEIMAY Ensemble

Earlier this month, I attended my first in-person performance in over six months. The “show” that earned that distinction was Correspondences (RECOMMENDED), an outdoor performance art installation co-produced by HERE Arts Center and LEIMAY Ensemble. The surreal, multidisciplinary work, the brainchild of artists Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, features LEIMAY Ensemble dancers who are individually encased in discrete sand-filled chambers. Drawing from Japanese butoh tradition, the performers (who wear gas masks but are otherwise pretty much devoid of garb) slowly and methodically rise to an erect stance before a machine-induced sandstorm topples them over. Upon collapse, the process begins again, albeit with slight variations. The cyclical struggle repeats itself until the installation’s 30-minute activation window concludes. Abstract in nature, Correspondences poetically suggests various conundrums facing humanity at this current juncture – isolation, environmental catastrophe, technological intervention in natural processes, and the inescapably repetitive nature of history are some of the topics the hypnotic work seems to be contemplating and grappling with. As of this writing, Correspondences has finished its run, having played the plaza on Astor Place from October 1-4.

STATIC APNEA
The Invisible Dog Art Center / the american vicarious

In a 40-foot makeshift trailer a few doors down from Brooklyn’s Invisible Dog Art Center, you’ll be able to catch Static Apnea (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), another one of the less than a handful of in-person theatrical experiences currently available to New Yorkers. Directed and co-written by Christopher McElroen (Founding Artistic Director of of the american vicarious), the work registers in the same performance art mode as Correspondences. Similarly, it artfully tackles – through a brief but intense immersive solo experience – certain troubling issues underlying our current time, prominently race-based violence and the coronavirus pandemic. However, unlike the aforementioned work, Static Apnea features, at the heart of the experience, a short but powerful allegorical text, which is performed on a microphone by actress Jenny Tibbels on one end of the trailer, on the other side of a plexiglass barrier. Over the course of less than ten minutes, she plainly but harrowingly documents – first calmly, then eventually giving way to paralytic panic – the mounting anxiety that accompanies the act of holding one’s breath for survival. The encompassing design (particularly the lighting and sound work by Zach Weeks and Andy Evan Cohen, respectively) comes off brilliantly, giving the viewer a visceral, stylized sense of the suffocating and disorienting physical sensation of drowning in real-time. Static Apnea plays for one more week at the Invisible Dog.

VOYEUR: THE WINDOWS OF TOULOUSE-LAUTREC
Bated Breath Theatre Company

Definitely the most elaborate and most attuned to traditional theatrical narrative of the three experiences covered in this round-up is Bated Breath Theatre Company’s mostly-outdoor promenade production of Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). By and large, the folks at Bated Breath have outdone themselves here. Earlier this year before the pandemic, I caught the company’s Unmaking Toulouse-Lautrec – an immersive production chronicling the life and times of the titular French artist – which was staged indoors in the tight upstairs quarters of Madame X, an atmospheric nightclub on West Houston Street. Despite the valiant efforts of a young, hardworking cast, I felt that the piece was at best uneven and a tad unvarnished. In this ambitious, pandemic-friendly reboot of that production, creator Mara Lieberman (Bated Breath’s Executive Artistic Director) and her excellent and resourceful cast and creative team have effectively transformed the storied streets of Greenwich Village into the Parisian backdrop of Lautrec’s life’s story. In a parade of striking tableaus that incorporate a dizzying combination of dance, music, puppetry, film, mime, theater, and art installation, Voyeur somehow manages to remain focused yet theatrically inspired. Its constant play on perspective and added element of physical velocity (ahem, walking at various paces) moves the action forward in intoxicating and exciting ways. Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec continues through November 7.