Their arguments, even when hate-filled, are lucidly formed and difficult to penetrate. There’s a weird thrill of uncomfortable relief when we find ourselves half-agreeing with them.
It’s the concept of being brave and having a safe space that is safe enough that you can feel brave — because it takes bravery to have those conversations that you know will be difficult, with people that might have a viewpoint that is different than yours, but in order to find common ground and to communicate with each other, those conversations must be had.
You feel, given the virtuosity and care demonstrated onstage, that you owe this much. You can carry all this. If you let it fall, it’ll break the spell. Don’t spill the water.
“I’ll just put my bias on the table.” What is the impact of the work? “Let’s turn over the rock and see what’s under there.” Terry says.
Donovan builds a tranquil place effortlessly, and then creates darkness within the negative (theatrical) space around it, using it as atmospheric pressure to hold the memory in place.
You can get close to truth but you can’t ever – in my opinion – I don’t think any story is ever true.
If life is a race, all the characters here are lagging behind the leader, just hoping to keep up and find space to breath amidst the density of inevitable heartbreak that comes along with living.
I’m not sure I would call Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie a play, as such, if only because a play suggests an exterior blueprint which is then built or enacted by a group of performers and designers. The Mad Ones appear to build out – they start with what is generally interior, a collection of tiny behavioral tells that shape human intention, and construct around it.
through sharing, repeating, layering, and rephrasing, the company finds a way to both underline and subvert the brutality without explicitly pointing at it.
It’s not so much a communing with the dead as an un-containing of the self, casting meaning into the void, hoping perhaps to receive some echo of that meaning back, in the shape of a hug, or song, or strip of tin foil torn from the wall.
Tina Satter’s direction and Half Straddle’s pitch-perfect company establish and then maintain an unblinking focus that cuts through the dissipating fog and rewards the audience’s taut attention.
The Making of King Kong sets out to unpack the monstrosity of our current cultural moment via the monkey, simultaneously evoking a 1930s acting style (transatlantic accents abound) while complicating itself with very-much-now identity politic-infused dialogue.