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Doing Time
Chloe Veltman | Critic |
September 16, 2008
As I strolled through downtown San
Francisco yesterday afternoon, I couldn't help but wonder if
all the tower blocks, traffic,
stores, roads and other signs of "civilized" life would
exist if we didn't have clocks -- if we didn't have a system
for regulating this slippery notion known as time. If human beings
had only nature's cycles upon which to count to figure out what
to do when, would the economy as we know it not exist? Maybe
so, because without clocks, the concepts of past and future would
cease to be meaningful in the same way. Maybe people would live
more in the present, and the present is less concerned with shoring
up future wealth, getting people to meetings on time, and otherwise
endlessly driving towards some fictitious notion of progress.
The elusive nature of "now", the slipperiness of memory,
and human beings' unsettling hopes and fears about what lies
ahead form the backbone of Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project's
mesmerizing new production, After All, Part 1. I caught the show
yesterday afternoon during its way-too-short run at Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts in San Francisco and spent the rest of the
day wandering around the city feeling like I was walking through
a completely unfamiliar world.
Shuch's 80-minute piece marries whimsical
songs and earth-bound choreography with short plays by Octavio
Solis, Michelle Carter
and Philip Kan Gotanda. Shuch performs theatrical alchemy by
seamlessly fusing the seemingly very different texts -- about
such things as the world as viewed through the eyes of a goldfish
(their memories are not as short as people popularly think),
a man's experience on a beach, and a charismatic preacher's
delivery of something he calls "the last psalm" -- into a dreamlike,
engrossing, bleakly humorous whole.
The brilliance of Shuch's work is
that it manages to convey several complex ideas about the world
we live in without once being didactic.
The aesthetics of her productions are simple yet always visually
stunning. In this one, hoards of dancing "extras" memorably
plod across the stage dragging each other by the ankles in assorted
white outfits, and appear in several scenes bopping maniacally
like they're at a 1950s high school hop. Thus Shuch creates a
humorous version of heaven that is equally,and less funnily,
reminiscent of a lunatic asylum.
Shuch also has a brilliant way of
working with artists whose talents lie in more than one area.
In this production, the versatile
choreographer Joe Goode demonstrates his skills as an actor
in the role of the deadpan 'Man at the Sea' character. Matthias
Bossi's preacher plays a mean percussion. Beth Wilmurt's goldfish
is as adept at delivering Carter's goldfish text as she captures,
through a perfect symbiosis of observation and fantasy, the
watery
creature's way of moving and singing. Dwayne Calizo's sinister
Santa Claus brings tears to our eyes with his soulful renditions
of originally-composed songs and standards by the likes of
Simon & Garfunkel.
Similarly, the corps of four dancers turn out to be adept with
language: at one point, the dancers perform an aggressive, almost
tribal-feeling dance while percussively chanting the mantra "fuck,
no!" over and over again in different rhythms and groupings.
Shuch deserves wider exposure. Having
experienced many of her shows over the past few years, I've come
to see her as one of
the most thoughtful, playful and complete performance-oriented
artists working in this country today. After All, Part 1 makes
me want to develop a different relationship with time. But
I'll still be counting the weeks until Shuch unveils the sequel
to
this production, After All, Part 2.
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