Month: October 2019

(Review) – Art – First Presbyterian Theater

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Raise your hand if you’ve committed the electronic act of unfollowing an acquaintance on a social media platform. What about subtweeting as a method of coping with someone else’s post? How about severing ties with a former classmate or coworker by deploying options such as unfriending…or, applying the more permanent form of digital removal: the high-octane capital-B Block? Though French playwright Yasmina Reza’s highly acclaimed script debuted over twenty-five years ago–well over a decade prior to the birth of social media–Art has modern-day applications and pushes viewers to examine the nature and existence of our interpersonal relationships. Thus, its inclusion in the calendar at First Presbyterian Theater is welcomed and clearly warranted, given our shifting attention concerning the public forums that social media has amplified. Director Thom Hofrichter identifies Christopher Hampton’s translation of Reza’s play as “hysterical” but also a “harbinger of the times,” suggesting that recent political tension has led many to reevaluate friendships and acquaintances, especially if both parties have drastically conflicting ideas and beliefs.

The play does involve art–focusing on the recent purchase of a controversial painting by one of the three adult male friends featured throughout the plot. The painting, though, is quickly established as a vehicle to lead viewers to grapple with the intangible issue of true friendship. The artwork’s significance and value is not equally shared by all three, which spawns the disagreement and deep-rooted discourse concerning their pasts and their observations of one another. 

Serge, the purchaser of the painting, is performed by Aaron Robertson, and Marc, Serge’s longtime friend, is played by Aaron Mann. Robertson captures the swelling hopefulness that acquiring this painting will elevate him within some circles, though Mann counters that pride in a convincingly dismissive manner. As the rapid-fire dialogue pushes their conversation forward, Robertson and Mann successfully waver the strength of their characters’ friendship through cutting dialogue and physically affected performances. Both exemplify a realistic mixture of maturity and pettiness with which most adults can likely relate, and they quickly rope the audience into their internal and external struggle with how one another has changed over the course of their years as friends. 

Nol Beckley plays Ivan, the final member of the friendship trio. As an anxious and vividly stressed man, Beckley demonstrates the pressure of finding meaning with his new career as well as being inundated by the demands and requests of various family members his upcoming wedding has created. Ivan is the type of friend whose non-confrontational complacency has evolved as counterproductive and predictable, and he has become a running joke among Marc and Serge as they ultimately dehumanize him as a weapon within their own verbal battle. Beckley’s Ivan wrestles over his own inability to be assertive, and the consequences of his refusal to remain as the trio’s punching bag dazzlingly shifts the action of the play. 

The culminating showdown among these three creates for audiences an opportunity to consider the basis for all relationships. Presumably, these three men met and began a kinship as individuals who identified a shared quality with one another, which becomes an effective universal connection for any viewer. However, as they have aged, they may have noticed that the chumminess of their conversations has been replaced by a much more personal and irritable one. This increase in hostility, too, becomes the foundation of the evocative power these performances offer. The brittle state of their friendship displayed through these performances–as grown men who had simply planned for a relaxing evening together–becomes obvious through the vibrant dialogue and comical asides. These asides shared with the audience and not the characters on stage, are a longstanding theatrical device to reveal thoughts not meant for the ears of other characters. Nowadays, we might as well nickname them “theatrical subtweets.”

Some may argue that social media has announced itself as a common and convenient supplement to face-to-face interaction, but others may warn against its increasing trajectory of use, believing that the ease with which unfollowing, unfriending, or blocking carries will escalate our collective divisiveness and dissociation. Because all phone usage is disallowed during performances at FPT, audience members can ponder these ideas as well as enjoy the opportunity to detoxify from social media activity for about eighty-five minutes. 

Lively…on Beyonce (?)

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Much of the conversation in class after we finished viewing Lemonade this week centered on the expansive funding required to produce a professionally scripted and directed visual album that features elaborate costuming, choreography, and set designing. There is something to be said about the size of the platform Beyonce has by leading the production of this film, but that creates a slippery slope. These discussions can, for example, suggest that various hypothetical redistributions of the presumably hefty final costs of a project of this size might have directly benefited intended viewers and very people it features. That said, the film has spawned a large academic response in just three years, so it stands to reason that scholarship on it will only grow at a higher frequency in the coming years. Thus, our attention should be redirected toward the functionality and general value of the film.   

Ashleigh Shackleford’s article discusses representation, and the tone of her essay mixes compliments with condemnation. The notion of representation is an intriguing one because, on the surface, it seems to be the most respectful way to display oneself artistically as conscientious of minorities and marginalized groups. However, meeting our collective idea of how we are differentiated (e.g. age, gender, sexuality, ableness, skin tone) would lean toward inclusion more than it would representation. Shackleford sees the film as a missed opportunity for Beyonce et al. to destroy stereotypes from within the Black community because the film does not include any “fat” Black women, especially since “fat” professional dancers exist, but none were brought into the fold of this film’s creation. If this criticism of the film were included as a paired text with Lemonade for undergraduates or high school students, the instructor has an obligation to chart the distinct differences between these two terms. 

One of the arcs presented throughout the visual narrative is that of a jaded lover who vocalizes her inquiries as to the whereabouts of someone with whom she is intimate, and we  eventually see that she has correctly guessed at/uncovered his disloyalty. A particularly curious portion of the narrative that stands out early in the film is the baseball-bat wielding version of Beyonce whose anger is represented through various acts of glass-smashing, denting, and crushing while maintaining a presumably satisfied smirk. While these criminal acts may not just be a thinly veiled revenge trope, the sinister exuberance she appears to be experiencing while creating so much havoc is simultaneously progressive and regressive. Fearlessly acting out an immediate impulse to destroy can inspire (especially impressionable) viewers to react just as violently through similar vivid, lasting “statements” when they are victimized. However, it is equally regressive not to promote a less violent response. The Louisville Slugger-swinging character clearly represents a fed-up woman whose struggle while being on the receiving end of a (now former) lover’s emotional abuse are behind her. This angry, reactionary, and physically agile persona exemplifies the liberating ramifications of shedding the anvils of a toxic relationship by violently (and/or maniacally?) destroying objects of literal or sentimental value, but the character here is less directly reminding viewers that it is only the relationship–not the individual–that has died. Perhaps a second missed opportunity lay in the absent scenes of this liberated, untethered woman celebrating a personal or professional success instead of the imagery of instant gratification, which, at its core, perpetuates the adrenaline-enhanced–but relatively brief–antidote that a smashing ceremony does for one’s soul.