The descriptions of Ear Films in the promotional materials for it were kind of ambiguous: it sounded like story-telling more through the use of soundscapes than traditional narrative. It turns out that it’s really just an overproduced and audio drama with a mediocre, under-developed story where the audience is asked to wear a blindfold, which was really the only novel thing about the presentation.
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I love traditional clowning. I’ve mentioned in the past how much I lament that American culture has offhandedly rejected the art-form, with people who have never seen a real pantomime comedy performance declaring their disdain for it. Given that Atlanta happens to be in the United States, we don’t get terribly much clowning outside of circuses passing through, so I get pretty excited when I have the chance to see a clown in the classical tradition of clowning and pantomime perform. I regretted not being able to see Ofir Nahari’s No(se)onenowhere when it last ran at 7 Stages and, so, when I found out that they’d be bringing it back as part of the Exposed Festival, I took some time off to make sure that I’d be able to make it. Like many of you, I was feeling awful for most of the day and, I must say, going to this was the best medicine I could possibly have taken.
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Directed by Michael Haverty and Bryan Mercer and using the Blitzstein translation of the script, the best thing about “The Threepenny Opera” at 7 Stages last night was the Brecht. There were some good performances, but the production suffered a bit from miscasting and Haverty’s penchant for gimmickry and novelty.
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Last night I saw Derek Dixon’s “When Things Are Lost” staged by Essential Theatre as part of their 2016 Play Festival. It had a lot of potential but, unfortunately, due to some sloppy characterization and trying a bit too hard to be surreal, this potential wasn’t realized. However, I think that the playwright found a good way to tell a very important and touching story and hope that there will be a rewrite in the future.
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There is no way to read William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” as being anything short of antisemitic. A significant part of the play is people expressing their disdain for Shylock not for any character flaw — of which he has many — but solely for being a Jew. As an Ashkenazic man who was raised Jewish, I found myself curious as to what is so great about this play that it is worth disparaging an entire people just to stage it so I went to the Shakespeare Tavern to see Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s performance directed by Laura Cole.
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Braving the heat, a friend of mine and I went out to see “Infinite Expectation of the Dawn,” a Giant Nerd Productions show written, directed, and performed by L. Nicol Cabe and presented as part of the Atlanta Fringe Festival. The first of two things that made me choose to see this was that it was billed as a science fiction story set in a dystopian near future, which is something that I thought that my companion and I would find interesting. The second was that it is a solo performance piece written, directed, and produced by a woman in a world of theater where women playwrites and directors are still often given the shaft for no other reason than their lack of a Y chromosome and this person is bringing this show from Seattle, WA all the way to Atlanta, GA. To be frank, I feel that putting oneself out there for a solo show like this is a pretty tough thing to do even without being of a class that suffers discrimination in this field and in an unfamiliar city and the least that I can do to support that kind of bravery is to sit in a chair and let someone try to entertain me with a story that already sounds like it’ll be pretty interesting.
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I just took a wild ride into “The Mysterium” with Keith Bourdreau and Erica Valen of Mysterium Productions as part of the Atlanta Fringe Festival. I’m not a huge magic aficionado but do I love a good show and, of course, a good magic show has less to do with the illusions and more to do with putting on a good show. Bourdreau and Valen’s charming, delightful, and fun production definitely made for a good show.
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