Watching the three Players go through an elaborate and very tightly regulated game for citizenship to “The Promised Land,” the dot game would have been more than enough to create a natural tension between the players, with which to fuel their antagonism, and eventual alliances, secrets, and betrayals.
A composite of quite ordinary gestures that combine to make something novel, much in the way the entire play uses old poses in service of a show much more than an aesthetic or expressionistic dance.
I will not say “I’ve grown up” since then, because truly I see this acceptance of paid monotony as a bit of my idealism seeping out. A necessary bloodletting, at long last, giving up my mulishness in favor of a little ability to tame the storm that was my inner mind each day and each night.
When it comes to representation, the question of whose vantage point is accepted as the default. Whose story reads as universal?
I’ve found it terrifying at times, and surprised about how different it has felt for me. But it’s brought a deeper sort of pleasure, not least of which is that I am so proud of what we’re doing.
I like to provoke an internal movement in the audience, something where their inner life or fantasy is activated.
Though their insular world went weird, and quickly, I was there, because they were there. Davis and Markey have the attunement to one another that only comes from a sustained exposure to the other’s way of standing, talking, moving, being-in-the-world.
When I hear that two pieces have been “smashed together,” I make certain assumptions. If I read “conceived by” or “created by the ensemble,” I expect a piece so thoroughly picked apart and put back together, it barely recognizes the original source material. At the
Suggestions of timeless spaces, Miss-Julie-ish rage, and as I knew from the program, taking up issues of sexual violence.
“Nothing happening,” I wrote in a heavy slant down the page, “but I can’t look away.”
Wilson says to the container, “Well fuck you,” then to us, “Get ready to run if this explodes, I guess.”
It’s difficult to write about the show you love.