Cab 47 Recap

Season 47 of the Yale Cabaret has ended its run as of April 25th, which must mean it's time for a re-cap of the season. A re-cap wherein I try to recall and celebrate my favorite contributions to the magical basement that is the Yale Cabaret. Ready? Here are a baker's dozen of categories with my five exemplars in each (in chronological order, but for my fave pick), for a total of 65 citations: New Play: This year’s top five never-before-seen, new plays were: Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, in which Alice in Wonderland—or rather Liddy in Wonderland—meets “Little Miss” beauty pageants, written with verve for a cast of crazies by Emily Zemba; The Zero Scenario, in which every Cleveland in these United States is threatened by the Ticks of Death but for a special plucky band of heroes, written by Ryan Campbell; The Untitled Project, in which a collective of black male YSD’ers create self-portraits in the context of racial profiling, conceived and directed by Ato Blankson-Wood and created by the ensemble; Sister Sandman Please, in which three sisters put it out there for a cowboy, with varying degrees of passion, irony and intention, written by Jessica Rizzo; and ... 50:13, in which an incarcerated black man about to be freed tries to tell it like it is, with candor, wit and a variety of character sketches, to a young prison-mate, written by Jiréh Breon Holder.

Adapted Play: Impressive pre-existing plays adapted for Cab 47 included four translations and an English-language opera: Don’t Be Too Surprised, written by Geun-Hyung Park, translated and directed by Kee-Yoon Nahm, lets us know in no uncertain terms that familial dysfunction can still take surprising forms on stage; MuZeum, translated and directed by Ankur Sharma, tells stories from ancient sources and contemporary headlines, to dramatize powerfully the victimization of women; Quartet by Heinrich Müller, translated by Doug Langworthy, directed by David Bruin, revisits Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons as a wickedly entertaining pas de deux and psychologically fraught cat-and-mouse; The Medium, an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti, directed by Ahn Lê, creates a world of mystery, loss, and deep feeling and gives further credence to the notion that opera is not just for opera houses; and ... Leonce and Lena by Georg Büchner, translated by Gavin Whitehead, directed by Gavin Whitehead and Elizabeth Dinkova, presents a play of aristocratic ennui that torches the well-made play, and this time with puppets!

Set Design: After all, the Cab is a basement with a kitchen, and convincing us we’re in a new space each week takes some doing. Here are some set designs that went beyond all expectation in their achieved artistry: Kurtis Boetcher’s set for Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time made a door where there’s a window and had the coloring and style of a child’s playhouse; Joey Moro’s versatile set for Hotel Nepenthe breathed a seedy charm, like we imagine Hotel Duncan does, or should; Chika Shimuzi and Izmir Ickbal’s stunning set for MuZeum lent aura aplenty and eye-catching beauty to its revue-style presentation; Christopher Thompson’s set for The Zero Scenario seemed to defy space itself in cramming so much busy-ness into the Cab, including a motelroom and a hidden headquarters, and ... Adrian Martinez Frausto’s moody set for The Medium was so fully achieved in its seedy gentility it might be a film set inviting a camera’s scrutiny.

Costumes: Dressing actors for their parts often goes beyond the norm, creating inspired additions to the visual flair of a show. Some of the tops in costumes were: Grier Coleman’s range of captivating dress for ancient characters of India and contemporary folks in MuZeum; Fabian Aguilar and Alexae Visel’s super cool get-ups for the agents protecting us from Tick Apocalypse in The Zero Scenario; Alexae Visel’s authentic mock-ups of the cartoonish costumes of the old Batman series “fit just like my glove” in Episode 21: Catfight; Haydee Zelideth had a field day with modernist Enlightenment-era costuming in Leonce and Lena; and ... Soule Golden and Montana Blanco rendered camp versions of the White Rabbit, Hatter, White Queen, and Tweedledum/dee we won’t soon forget in Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time.

Lighting: It doesn’t just help us see, it also selects and shows and evokes, sometimes making for quite magical effects. Illuminating dancers with lights that added to both movement and music in Solo Bach: Caitlin Smith Rapoport; creating a wealth of visual effects that kept us entranced in MuZeum: Joey Moro; putting on a show and putting-on the trappings of a storybook world in Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time: Joey Moro; using light to complement stories and to add drama in 50:13: Elizabeth Mak; and ... creating an Old World atmosphere both spooky and authentic in The Medium: Andrew Griffin.

Sound: It can be used in striking or surprising ways, or to create an aural texture to accompany the action. Creating a wintery world with bursts of music and broadcasts in Rose and the Rime: Jon Roberts, Joel Abbott; maintaining a sustained eerieness and B-movie aura in Hotel Nepenthe: Sinan Zafar; incorporating music and a range of emotional tones in MuZeum: Tyler Kieffer; bringing together recorded voice, spoken voice, and background music into a collage in The Untitled Project: Tyler Kieffer; and ... merging voices, sound effects, loops and his own music to create a shifting aural space in Sister Sandman Please: Chris Ross-Ewart.

Music and Movement: We don’t always get both, but it can make for entrancing theater when we do: MuZeum featured essential music by Anita Shastri, played on stage by a crew of musicians/actors and interacted with by the actors; The Untitled Project used recorded music tellingly and featured a show-stopping dance sequence by Ato Blankson-Wood; The Medium presented a stirring reduction of Menotti’s score into a solo piano tour de force by Jill Brunelle, expressive miming from José Ramón Sabín Lestayo, and impressive vocals from the cast; Sister Sandman Please benefited from Chris Ross-Ewart’s compositions amidst the aural textures, and delighted with a raucous “O Holy Night” from Ashley Chang; and ... Solo Bach showcased Zou Yu’s amazing solo violin performances, combined with the inventive, cryptic and dramatic choreography by Shayna Keller and her actor/dancers: Paul Cooper, Chalia La Tour, Julian Elijah Martinez, Leora Morris.

Special Effects: An ad hoc category that includes whatever doesn’t fit into other categories, such as: the combination of lights and star chart backdrop to create a sense of wonder in Touch: Joey Moro; the evocative projections-as-scenery in Solo Bach: Rasean Davonte Johnson; the B-movie monster ticks and blood and projections and other effects in The Zero Scenario: Rasean Davonte Johnson, Mike Paddock; the varied creepy puppets, hand-held and string-operated, in Leonce and Lena: Emily Baldasarra; and ... the use of projections and clips to tell stories and create context with images in The Untitled Project: Rasean Davonte Johnson.

Acting (ensemble): Ideally, the acting in a play is a group affair, in which everyone plays a part, of course. Still, it’s worth remarking on when a cast is more than the sum of its parts, as in these shows: Look Up, Speak Nicely and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, the big kick-off extravaganza of the season featured a gallery of colorful characters by Sarah Williams, Celeste Arias, Aubie Merrylees, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Melanie Field, Andrej Visky, Libby Peterson; The Zero Scenario, the crowd-pleasing first semester closer, pulled out all the stops with Ariana Venturi, Tom Pecinka, Sara Holdren, Ankur Sharma, Aaron Profumo, Emily Zemba, Ryan Campbell; The Untitled Project, an ensemble-derived show that focused on the subtle distinctions and broad stereotypes of race, was created and enacted by Taylor Barfield, Ato Blankson-Wood, Cornelius Davidson, Leland Fowler, Jiréh Breon Holder, Phillip Howze, Galen Kane; Leonce and Lena, in which actors and puppet-handler/actors interacted to create a zany theatrical world of kingdoms and encounters, with Sebastian Arboleda, Juliana Canfield, David Clauson, Anna Crivelli, Ricardo Dávila, Edmund Donovan, Josh Goulding, Steven C. Koernig, Lynda A.H. Paul, Nahuel Telleria; and ... Hotel Nepenthe, a comic tour de force of changing roles, repeating characters, and linked situations that ran from the creepy to the farcical, all created with manic intensity by Bradley James Tejeda, Annelise Lawson, Emily Reeder, Galen Kane.

Acting (individual): For individual performances, I’m going with some standouts, whether in accomplished ensemble work, or showcased in two-handers, or in the unrelenting spotlight of the solo show. Ladies first: Celeste Arias, hilarious as an unhinged mommie dearest in Look Up, Speak Nicely and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time; Sydney Lemmon, riveting as Mme Merteuil but even more so as Mme Merteuil/Valmont in Quartet; Maura Hooper, chameleonic as a series of characters, including a disaffected nun and a happy hooker, in Shiny Objects; Zenzi Williams, demonstrating a range of attitudes in four characters, from spiritual to demur to quietly confident in Shiny Objects, and ... Tiffany Mack, unforgettable as a heart-wrenching victim of an acid attack in MuZeum.

Acting (individual): And from the men: Jonathan Majors, finding himself in an unbearable situation and quietly going to pieces in Touch; Tom Pecinka as a highly verbal passenger monologuing his anxiety in The Zero Scenario; Edmund Donovan, riveting as Valmont but even more so as Valmont/Mme de Tourvel in Quartet; Ricardo Dávila as the slippery, caustic and fascinating Valerio in Leonce and Lena; and ... Leland Fowler as a stand-up guy feeling the longings of the jailed and acting out a quick lesson in family history and racism in 50:13.

Directing: For the vision behind the whole shebang that makes it all hang together, we celebrate directors: for the all-out campy and creepy charm of Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time: Ato Blankson-Wood; for keeping the hopscotch logic and many shifts in tone of Hotel Nepenthe on point: Rachel Carpman; for creating the interplay of stories, including humor, confrontation, and violence in MuZeum: Ankur Sharma; for showing a dramatic and thoughtful grasp of the resilience of a human spirit trapped in a cage in 50:13: Jonathan Majors; and ... for providing the comic highpoint of the season with wild charm, horror surprises and relentless verve in The Zero Scenario: Sara Holdren.

Production: From the above, it’s obvious which shows seemed tops to me, but to bring them all together for a final nod: Hotel Nepenthe, Sarah Williams, producer, Taylor Barfield, dramaturg, Avery Trunko, stage manager, the kind of shifting and surprising show that keeps me coming back to theater; MuZeum, Anita Shastri, producer, Maria Ines Marques, dramaturg, Emily DeNardo, stage manager, a strong and cathartic import to our shores; The Zero Scenario, Ahn Lê, producer, Helen Jaksch and Nahuel Telleria, dramaturgs, Anita Shastri, stage manager, a crazy sci-fi ride that screams “sequel!”; 50:13, Jason Najjoum, producer, Taylor Barfield, dramaturg, Lauren E. Banks, stage manager, an important and meaningful addition to the one-person play and the "black lives matter" movement; and ... Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, Kelly Kerwin, producer, Nahuel Telleria, dramaturg, Avery Trunko stage manager, “the gang’s all here” type of theater, presenting a lively riff on the rigors of growing up female in our media-ized Wonderland.

Thanks again to our hosts for 18 weekends—plus a Drag Show: Molly Hennighausen, Will Rucker, Tyler Kieffer, and Hugh Farrell. And ... see you next season, at the Cab!

The Yale Cabaret Season 47 September 18, 2014-April 25, 2015

Atrocity Exhibition

Review of MuZeum at Yale Cabaret This week the Yale Cabaret has been transformed into a stage for a MuZeum, a display of exhibits adapted, translated, and directed by Ankur Sharma who also acts as Singer 1, a benignly accommodating Master of Ceremonies for this pageant of dance, music, song . . . and harrowing tales of the abuse and mistreatment of women, primarily in India, from ancient tales and myths up to violent news stories of our times.

The cumulative effect of the play’s many vivid vignettes is a question of accountability that’s never answered. Who and what may be blamed? There seem to be no extenuating circumstances, no way to make sense of the variety of abuses, except the obvious point: women are not perceived as the equals of males, and, to some extent, not even of the same “species.” For men, any number of hardships can be imposed upon women simply by virtue of the fact that females aren't males.

And the Cab’s production is quite willing to beguile us with lovely costumes (Grier Coleman), a distinctive, eye-enticing set (Chika Shimizu and Izmir Ickbal) with rich projections (Davonte Johnson), and evocative choreography (Anita Shastri) to create a space of aesthetic contemplation. Sharma and company then place before us the very qualities of beauty and poise that, in the stories, become the only purpose for women whose looks make their fates, as in the story of the homely woman punished cruelly for having a crush on a god, or in the story of girls—in modern India—who reject suitors and are disfigured or killed in retaliation. Cruelty, we might think, is a defining characteristic of barbarism. But we also know, in a world that condones torture for political purposes, that cruelty is considered a weapon against “the other,” “the enemy,” and MuZeum would have us contemplate the extent to which women—by virtue of being “other” in a male-dominated culture—are liable to cruelty as a form of male “justice.” We might wonder how such a culture lives with itself.

Perhaps the most dramatically intriguing aspect of the show is how the storytelling alters with its setting. When the stories are primarily mythic folktales, the fresh perspective of having female characters tell their stories using a modern sensibility sustains the satiric dimension of the play. These canny, straight-forward tellers expose the double standards and the traditional conceptions of the sexes that underlay the ancient tales. But, at the same time, the modern perspective permits a certain naïvete about what the source tales intend. In other words, the fact that heroes are always good-looking isn’t meant to imply that all good-looking people are heroic, but it may lead to the dangerous notion that only good-looking people can be, thus making those less presentable among us feel worthless. To trust the “logic” of such stories as though they are teaching about “real life” leads either to absurdity or tragedy. Whereas in the latter day stories—such as the story of an acid attack victim played with heart-breaking intensity by Tiffany Mack—MuZeum gives an almost emblematic status to random acts of violence. The implication seems to be that all such events, regardless of their circumstances, can be explained by one universalist assumption about women.

Then again, there are also aspects of the play particular to Indian life, as for instance a tale that includes the notion of the “untouchable” caste. For there we find not only the blindness to common human value often found in mythic tales of godlike beings and royalty, but a real world occasion of rigid hierarchy and of otherness that cannot be surmounted.

To help our imaginative participation, MuZeum maintains a certain quizzical tone. As Singer 1, Sharma enacts some of the confusion about what is permissible in assessing female contributions, with the other musicians and singers chiding their leader for not being enlightened enough. As participants on stage who also act as audience, the singers help to mediate the action so that the violence in the show remains stylized and at a remove. Otherwise, the emotions aroused by the exhibit of victims might be overwhelming.

In the end, MuZeum walks a fine line, evoking atrocity as something that can be enacted as theater, attempting to represent the unrepresentable both as a didactic tactic and as a call for change through awareness and a burden of generalized culpability. When one of the victims in the roll call at the end locates herself in Milford, CT, then it’s all too clear that the events the play depicts are not restricted to far off cultures with ancient traditions of chauvinism. The culture we may feel estranged from, then, is very much our own.

MuZeum Adapted, translated, and directed by Ankur Sharma

Cast: Tiffany Mack, Lynda Paul, Haydee Antunano, Elizabeth Dinkova, Ankur Sharma, Chris Ross-Evart, Supriya Kulkarni, Noreen Reza, Shreyas Ravishankar, Kartik Srivastava

Choreographer: Anita Shastri; Dramaturg: Maria Ines Marques; Set Design: Chika Shimizu, Izmir Ickbal; Costume Design: Grier Coleman; Lighting Design: Joey Moro; Sound Design: Tyler Kieffer; Sound Mixing: Ian Williams; Projection Design: Davonte Johnson; Associate Projection Design: Elizabeth Mak; Stage Manager: Emily DeNardo; Technical Director; Tom Harper, Ross Rundell; Production Manager: Lee O’Reilly; Producer: Anita Shastri

Yale Cabaret November 13-15, 2014

Unhappy Hedda

The third Yale School of Drama thesis show opens tonight, directed by Katherine McGerr. Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen, is a masterpiece, a character study that is one of theater’s most fascinating roles. As the playbill by the show’s dramaturg, Jennifer Schmidt, suggests, the play, unlike some of Ibsen’s other famous plays, does not take aim at social problems so as to give meaning to the play’s action. In Hedda Gabler, the problem lies with Hedda herself; her manipulation of others and her ultimate fate would seem to set a moral, though audiences are left to determine what that might be. Is she tragic or does she get what she deserves, is she mean-spirited or high-spirited, is she idealistic or nihilistic?

For McGerr, Hedda Gabler is a play that is meant to shock its audience. “There’s nothing old about it, the play is alive today,” McGerr says, and hopes the audience will be “shocked, but understand it and be shocked by what it means.” One question the production faced was how to remove the play from its period setting—the 1890s—without “updating it” to the present. The show’s striking design (Adrian Martinez Frausto), with the audience literally looking through the glass walls of the home of Jørgen and Hedda Tesman, is somewhat modernist, without being of a definite era. Costumes (Soule Golden) as well are modern, with some of the elegance of art deco, while furnishings show a mixture of modern shapes together with the older mode of life that the Tesmans are trying to move up from. The house is one of the finest in the neighborhood and is the place where Jørgen (Daniel Reece) expects to begin his career as a professor with a young wife and possibly a family—particularly if his doting Aunt Julia (Elia Monte-Brown) has her way.

McGerr says that, in working with her cast, the question they have been asking is “who is [Hedda]?” They see both her cruelty and her frailty. McGerr thinks of her heroine as “ahead of her time and smarter than the others around her, but also frustrated.” It’s that frustration that fuels many of her actions, we might say, and Hedda’s complexity has always fascinated audiences. What interests McGerr and her company is the very question of what draws others to Hedda, what makes them love and trust her. We—the audience—might understand the attraction if we admit we love her too. Much may rely upon whether or not we identify with her.

As Hedda, Ashton Heyl is lively and accommodating, with finely chiseled features and blonde hair bound tightly to her head. Her costumes accentuate the graceful lines of her figure and she indeed looks very much the prize catch of the area that Tesman—and others—take her for. “Others” include Commissioner Brack (Mitchell Winter), a close friend of the Tesmans—Jørgen is literally in his debt—who wants to get closer. The sparring flirtation between Brack and Hedda is one of the show’s strengths, allowing us to see how Hedda handles herself when confronted with another’s machinations. Both seem wary of each other’s strengths while looking for an opening that will be useful. Winter’s Brack seems to be a man forever testing the water, just waiting til it gets comfy.

Reece’s Tesman is so absorbed in his hopes for his career and his elation at winning Hedda, he’s unaware of Brack’s overtures to Hedda, and rather welcomes his friend’s attentions to his wife. Tesman is the comic figure in the cast, to a large extent, and perhaps some of our sympathy for Hedda may come from our growing sense of the obtuseness of the man she married. Even so, Reece’s Tesman is likeable and aims to please. We might expect Hedda to wrap him around her finger, but not so. We’re looking at a domestic unit where the man—especially with the moral and even the financial support of his aunt—sets the tone and Hedda is expected to content herself in the home he has gone into considerable debt to buy for her.

The more dire threat to that contentment, for Tesman, is the sudden reappearance in town of the brilliant but dissolute scholar Eilert Lövborg (Mamoudou Athie). Suddenly Tesman again faces professional competition and, what’s more, we learn that Lövborg had some scenes with Hedda when she was single and living with her father. There’s a back-story there and Lövborg’s recent “reclamation” by the sweetly supportive Thea Elvsted (Tiffany Mack), an earlier flame of Tesman’s, sets up a possible game of mixed couples to offset Brack’s desired threesome. Ibsen was nothing if not canny about the possibilities of romantic affairs in small towns—your basic soap opera learned well from his tendency to hint at desires below the surface that may flare into reality at any moment. The cast is rounded out by Ariana Venturi as long-suffering servant Berte—suffering not only because she’s the only servant the Tesmans can afford, but because her long ears pick up some of the dirt on her mistress. This minor role is amplified a bit to give hints of the kind of “upstairs/downstairs” view in which a servant stands in as witness.

As Lövborg, Athie gives us a vivid sense of instability, but also of the kind of passion that threatens at any moment to overrun the pacing of Hedda’s cat-and-mouse game. Athie’s loose cannon in the midst of a world of bland formalities adds an odd force to the play that other characters seem unable to cope with. As Thea, Mack is lovely and very sensible, perhaps too sympathetic. Hedda’s maliciousness toward her can seem motiveless if we like Thea too much.

Hedda, we see, toys with the possibility of romance but doesn’t truly desire it, so that much of her motivation comes from her attitude toward Thea, who, unhappily married in a manner worse than Hedda, has been Lövborg’s salvation, as well as placing her chaste romantic hopes in him. Backing the now ascendant Lövborg, Thea may actually “win,” you see . . . .

Plot-wise, the over-riding interest is in who will get the upper-hand on whom, and with what consequence. Props—such as Hedda’s old piano, her father’s pistols, Lövborg’s new book and, even more, his brilliant unpublished manuscript, dictated to Thea, written with her in weeks of comradely intimacy—serve well as tangible reference points in a world where dialogue can be a duel, a seduction, and almost always the imposition of one will upon another. Paul Walsh’s translation, in shedding some of the Old World gentility, seems at times to lose some of the finer nuances of motivation as well.

Ibsen was a great playwright. Hedda Gabler is one of his greatest plays. McGerr and company have created a deliciously dark modern comedy in which Heyl’s Hedda—steely, desperate, winning, manipulative, and fine—pits her wits against obtuseness. To what end?

Hedda Gabler By Henrik Ibsen, translated by Paul Walsh Directed by Katherine McGerr

Scenic Designer: Adrian Martinez Frausto; Costume Designer: Soule Golden; Lighting Designer: Caitlin Smith Rapoport; Composer and Sound Designer: Steven Brush; Production Dramaturg: Jennifer Schmidt; Stage Manager: Shannon L. Gaughf

Yale School of Drama University Theater February 1-7, 2014