A couple of things.
First of all, what's with the lab coats? You walk in and Maiko, Jaime and Chris Nelson are standing there wearing lab coats and holding clip boards. It just seems so unnecessary, so obvious and so patronizing to the audience. Oh, you're scientists! I get it. Zzzzzzz. No, you're not scientists, you're theatre gaylords.
I love the project, I just don't think it needs all the extra fixings. I feel it reveals a lack of faith in the fact that they as theatre practitioners are legitimate social researchers, they don't have to force us to think of them as scientists.
But, why not? Why pretend to be scientists when you can actually BE scientists by approaching the work with some of the chops a social scientist might. Which they do. A little. But if they were really scientists I think the exploration could be more specific and the quantitative connections between the boxes more refined. But I was only able to catch 3. I feel like there's another conceptual level that's missing. And trying to wrap it all up in cheesy lab coats just won't cut it.
And then all the acting. Good acting. But acting nonetheless. In their promo stuff they talk about "intimacy" but being intimate with the audience is more than seating them close enough to smell what you ate for lunch. It requires exposing some vulnerability both in the performance and in the creation. And these, like pretty much all shows, was an airtight affair with no room for any real intimacy. I feel strongly that if your gonna perform in my lap then you should be open to my participation. But here were slick, beautiful, little pieces, often slightly expressionistic or something, cleanly memorized and recited by the actor. The text was taken from real interviews but had been tinkered with too much to get a satisfying sense of the real person behind the performance. Again, I think another lack of faith is revealed. A lack of faith in the potential for their subject's unadulterated stories to be interesting. Less would have been much more.
But formally, the things were great. It was very much like watching a huge budget show. Fantastic effects and lots of mesmerizing Magic of Theatre. What show wouldn't benefit from a budget that would allow for babies to drop from the grid, sand to pour from the ceiling and walls to be crumbled in front of us? All that was gorgeous. But, like I said about the Electric Company offering at Hive, I want to be dazzled AND moved.
I offer these criticisms with the understanding that I think Theatre Replacement's work is among the 2% of theatre actually worth talking about and is, therefore, excellent. But within the narrow band of excellence I think there's still lots of work to be done.
PS: after hassling Maiko about the lab coats, she hassled me about the shirt I was going to wear for A Free Show for the People of Pakistan at the PCC and I realized that she was right and I changed it. Now, let's get back to talking about those lab coats....
