Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Circa’s HUMANS & SITI’s THE BACCHAE: Joseph V. Melillo’s final Next Wave Festival gets off to a rousing start at BAM

• By drediman
• October 8, 2018
• No Comments

It was with bittersweet sentiment that I embarked on immersing myself in this fall’s Next Wave Festival, which commenced performances last week at BAM’s various venues in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood. You see, the 2018 edition of this indispensable multi-disciplinary performing arts festival, which impressively lasts from October through December, is the last to be curated by longtime but outgoing BAM Executive Director and festival founder Joseph V. Melillo (non-profit theater and Broadway producer David Binder has been appointed to replace him beginning in the 2019-2020 season). Over the years, Next Wave has had a profound influence in my development as an astute consumer of the performing arts. It’s taught me to think beyond established categories and relish the unexpected, the new, the daring – thanks in large part to Mr. Melillo’s inspired, wide-reaching programming for his festival, which has come to define the BAM brand.

The company of Circa’s “Humans” at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House.

First up was Australian troupe Circa’s gravity-defying Humans (RECOMMENDED), created by Yaron Lifschitz, which played the Howard Gilman Opera House. Like Opus, their 2015 New Wave outing, Circa’s latest effort pushes the limitations of the human body in terms of strength, flexibility, and stamina (although I did miss the previous show’s live music playing by the Debussy String Quartet). Circa’s ten performers were able to conjure awe-inspiring spectacle and real suspense out of practically nothing, using only their bodies and an empty space. The freedom, precision, and fearlessness with which they flung their bodies through the air in various configurations – without nets, mind you – took the audience’s breath away. Although I had seen many of the individual crowd-pleasing “tricks” before, I took positive note of the speed and organic fluidity with which the show unfolded. But more significantly for me, and true to the piece’s title, Humans, through pure movement sans words, was able to capture and communicate our shared humanity in its multiple shadings – the playfulness, the love, the inevitable vulnerability, and alas the sadness and pain. BAM has labeled the piece as “physical theater”; it lives up to both classifications.

Ellen Lauren (center) and company in SITI Company’s version of Euripides’ “The Bacchae” at the BAM Harvey Theater.

Next up last weekend was SITI Company’s take on Euripides’ The Bacchae (RECOMMENDED), via a translation by Aaron Poochigian, at the BAM Harvey Theater. Helmed by renowned experimental theater director and SITI’s co-artistic director Anne Bogart, this version of the Euripides classic combines fathomless tragedy with a heightened sense of absurdity, jarringly and potently. Indeed, there’s an amplified madness in SITI’s account that finds its nexus in its depiction of the vengeful Dionysus, the god of wine, fertility, and religious ecstasy. As viscerally played by the riveting Ellen Lauren (the other SITI co-artistic directors) in a maniacally possessed, scenery-chewing performance, the gender-neutral Dionysus is an untethered force that cannot help but wreak havoc on those around them. When the Theban king Pentheus (the impassioned, wild-eyed Eric Berryman) gets on the wrong side of the demonically mischievous god by disapproving of and banning his women’s bacchanalian revelry, he’d better watch out. Indeed, his fate goes beyond tragic; his end is grotesque, gratuitous, and I would even say kitschy and over-the-top. But, hey, so is the topsy-turvy world we live in. With these two initial rousing and attention-grabbing entries, my appetite has been whetted. Let the 2018 Next Waving begin!

HUMANS
Dance / Physical Theater
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
1 hour, 10 minutes (without an intermission)
Closed

THE BACCHAE
Off-Broadway, Play
BAM Harvey Theater
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Closed