Creatures of Theater

Review of benjisun presents bodyssey, Yale Cabaret

What were you doing last night at 11 p.m.? Whatever it was, could it have used a bit more inspiring beauty, a bit more intriguing mystery? Then you should’ve seen benjisun presents bodyssey, the current show at Yale Cabaret (which has two more showings tonight at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.). That’s what I did.

Devised, directed and performed by Benjamin Benne, a playwright, and Jisun Kim, a dramaturg, both at the Yale School of Drama and known, symbiotically, as benjisun, the show features no spoken language. It’s a staged performance piece in which movement and gesture interact with lighting by Nicole E. Lang and live sound—featuring a looper, a clarinet, and a two-string violin—by Emily Duncan Wilson. The tone, neither heavy nor light, provokes contemplation, as Benne and Kim enact living tableaux that take us on a journey—a body odyssey or bodyssey—from the beginning of life on earth to something quite cosmic.

The show begins with a kind of prelude in which shadow play sets up a visually striking dynamic: we see hands in light, and on the wall shadows that can morph from small to huge as one hand seems poised to engulf the other. Then Kim and Benne, garbed simply but elegantly by Phuong Nguyen, interact with cleaning implements while their shadows create a more lyrical vision. Which do you believe: the prosaic three-dimensional beings or their 2D renderings in light and shadow?

Now that they’ve got us in the mood to access what viewing—an active process as opposed to mere watching—does for us, Benne and Kim proceed to enact, first with hands, then with their entire bodies, the process by which protoplasm became sentient beings having two legs and expressive faces. An interlude under a kind of diaphanous pod, pulsing with light and the kind of movements most easily associated with birth—from an egg or amniotic sac or simply from one form of being to another—leads to two sequences I found utterly enthralling.

benjisun presents bodyssey at Yale Cabaret, October 3-5, 2019 (photos by Blaq Pearl Photography)

The first, in which the duo swim on the floor on their backs is accompanied by Wilson on clarinet and sound loops (and blowing bubbles) to create an aquatic sound that feels like the womb must have felt. So very relaxing, so serenely at ease. As James Joyce once wrote: “before born babe bliss had.” Like that. Featuring slow motion movement both very precise and very fluid, the segment is also quite beautiful to watch.

Next comes that moment when, as we all must, we depart from peaceful sleep, get born, or, y’know, crawl out of the primordial ooze. The sound here is like the sun on a day when you don’t want to wake that early or to so much light, or like being on a beach with no breeze. Wilson scratches those two strings and Kim and Benne try to get from supine to all fours.

Benjamin Benne and Jisun Kim in benjisun presents bodyssey, Yale Cabaret, Oct 3-5, 2019 (Blaq Pearl Photography)

Eventually they’re on two feet, and there comes a delightful segment of finger touching finger, testing the water, so to speak, of what another being feels like. There are also some gracefully portrayed fight or flight moments and, masked and armed with fans, a dance segment where they become a clownish couple. Maturity! The large masks are both comical and oddly expressive, making us see the pair as fully human, their movements fully self-conscious, bound by a certain obtuse presence they can’t escape.

Except . . . they sort of do. Back beneath the veil and out they come, faces alight like stars. Heavenly beings? Space travelers? Glowing sparks of remembered spirits? In any case, they appear as poetic expressions of that part of us we’d like to think isn’t wholly contained by this physical world or planet.

The artistry of the piece is a matter of the way all three—Benne, Kim, Wilson—work together, reacting and responding to each other, and provoking in the viewer responses that can be very individual and yet part of the overall experience.

The kind of theater Yale Cabaret provides can’t really be found anywhere else. An experimental space for student work, yes, but also a place where theater feels more communal, more centered in creative effort than commercial undertaking. And sometimes, like this weekend, it’s quite simply magical, a blend of sound, light, design, movement and physical presence that makes the theatrical seem elemental.

benjisun presents bodyssey
Created, Directed and Performed by Benjamin Benne and Jisun Kim
Live sound by Emily Duncan Wilson

Producers: Sarah Cain, Caitlin Volz; Scenic Designer: Jimmy Stubbs; Sound Designer and Composer: Emily Duncan Wilson; Costume Designer: Phuong Nguyen; Lighting Designer: Nicole E. Lang; Dramaturg: Zachry J. Bailey; Technical Director: Yaro Yarashevich; Stage Manager: Fabiola Feliciano-Batista

Yale Cabaret
October 3-5, 2019

Home of the Brave

Review of Alma, Yale Cabaret

The final show of Yale Cabaret 51, Alma, by first-year playwright Benjamin Benne, directed by Cat Rodriguez, intervenes subtly into the national discourse about immigration. On the surface, it’s about a mother and daughter experiencing crossed purposes and escalating anxieties about the daughter, Angel (Ciara Monique McMillian), scoring high enough on her SATs to get into USC, but that’s not the whole story. It’s also about Alma (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino) worrying about whether or not she will be deported when her daughter turns 21. The context of these concerns—as we are alerted by what seems a haunted TV demonically tuned to FOX and a certain blustering, bigoted presidential candidate—is the U.S. government’s efforts to deport the undocumented.

Benne’s play—a bit like Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls earlier this season—takes what might simply be a charming genre piece about teen life and layers it with the meanings that political reality imposes on normal lives. Every teen, we might say, has enough to worry about when trying to get into college, but here a “catch-22” situation ratchets up the tension: when she turns 21, Angel will be old enough to sponsor Alma, but when Angel turns 21 she will no longer need a parent or guardian, by the rationale of the courts.

The way these issues come to light is handled subtly, and often comically, as the fractiousness of the two women is placed front and center. In a small, homey apartment that graces the Cab stage, Alma treats her daughter both solicitously and domineeringly. She arrives while Angel is out and there’s a dodging of certain issues—where has Angel been, and has she been studying or drinking?—and even an outburst in which Alma wields a flipflop the way some parents wield belts. Paulino, who can be very imposing with a voice that commands attention, delivers as well Paulino’s fragile side, and, notably, her willingness to manipulate her daughter through every emotion possible. She’s a livewire, at times incandescent.

Angel, for her part, gives as good as she gets. She has not been eating well or wisely and at one point barely makes it to the bathroom before she begins puking. She’s then willing to work the pathetic sickie for all its worth, sucking on a frozen pop. Later, after incurring sufficient wrath for the dreaded la chancla, she brings out a plush elephant to curry favor. McMillian has been the angel of the Cab this year with three remarkable performances, beginning with The Purple Flower at the start of the season and concluding with back-to-back shows in weeks seventeen and eighteen.

The play’s dramatic peak arrives with a sudden spike in alarm. While Trump blusters in increasing volume, Alma wails with a power some might reserve for watching an execution. The lights go out and a knock comes upon the door that feels like it has the full force of the most malevolent of ICE agents behind it. To live in fear of that knock is never to experience the “land of the free.” But watching Alma and Angel we are certainly in the home of the brave.

Benne knows how to serve up the sweet, the savory and the bitter, blending the flavors of real family life well to give us a full meal, depicting the bond of love under duress.

Director Rodríguez, who has been a vocal supporter of the anti-deportation defense of Nelson Pinos—living in sanctuary at New Haven’s First and Summerfield Methodist Church since November 2017—hopes the play can be restaged after Nelson’s day in court in Minneapolis in May. For information about Pinos, go here, and for helping with his legal defense costs, go here.

With this production, its eighteenth, Yale Cabaret 51 ends, concluding a season of engaged theater—“cultivating surprise, embracing divergence, and practicing compassion.” Congratulations to Co-Artistic Directors Molly FitzMaurice and Latiana “LT” Gourzong and Managing Director Armando Huipe for an inspiring season well done. The team for Yale Cabaret 52 was announced at the shows last week and will consist of Co-Artistic Directors Zachry J. Bailey, Brandon Burton, and Alex Vermillion, with Managing Director Jaime Totti.

Alma
By Benjamin Benne
Directed by Catherine María Rodríguez

Producer: Eliza Orleans; Scenic Designer: Elsa GibsonBraden; Costume Designer: Phuong Nguyen; Lighting & Projection Designer: Samuel Kwan Chi Chan; Sound Designer: Marisa Areliano; Technical Director: Jenna Hoo; Stage Manager: Zachry J. Bailey

Cast: Ciara Monique McMillian, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino

Yale Cabaret
April 25-27, 2019