Elia Schneider, formerly of Venezuela, is known for hauntingly visual productions which transcend language with strong imagery and a dreamlike fresco of movement and design. In "Judgment on a Gray Beach," her newest work, themes of exile and totalitarianism are explored by a condemned man--he knows not for what--on a beach populated with ten sheepish antiheroes who agree to obey absurd laws and nonsensical orders. Will he escape or return for punishment? La MaMa E.T.C., her theatrical home in New York, will present the work's world premiere March 6 to 15 in its
Ellen Stewart Theater, 66 East 4th Street.
Ms. Schneider's theatrical productions mostly emerge from ideas derived from Kafka. "Judgment on a Gray Beach" springs from Ms. Schneider's idea for a dream that might have preceded Joseph K's awakening at the beginning of Kafka's novel "The Trial." In her play, a man, named only "K," finds himself on a beach, where he has been arrested for no apparent reason and is about to be informed of his punishment: life in prison or execution. He interacts with a weird collection of characters including a corset woman, a hunger artist, a ballerina who eats meat, a man in a black dress (symbolizing oncoming fascism), an accordion woman and a woman who transforms into a man. K thinks he can appeal to them, but actually he is being judged by them. Even his lawyer has to submit to their absurd, invisible law. What ensues is a nightmare of grotesque, violent and even erotic realities. In the tradition of Ms. Schneider's arresting visuals, the beach is gray, but the sky is very blue, shot with magenta colors, and actors move eerily through exquisite lighting designs. The jury ultimately gives K the option to acquiesce or to commit suicide by drowning and, unable to escape, he will be hanged and buried in the sand. The beachgoers will go on to their routine activities, waiting in darkness for the next person to be condemned.
According to Ms. Schneider, to feel condemned and not know why is the human condition. This, she says, is her baggage for being the daughter of Holocaust survivors: the sense of not knowing what you are being punished for and being at the mercy of self-contradictory forces. She emigrated from Israel to Venezuela at age four because her father feared the Jewish State would be a place of continuous wars. So the family moved to Latin America, where the turnover of wars was even faster. "The world is so tragic that you just have to understand that it is absurd," she says, and points out how the shifting of political realities of Latin America is extremely Kafka-esque. An an example, she cites the political contortions of Argentina's President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, over the recent death of Alberto Nisman, a prosecutor who had been investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires and the suspected Iranian ties to the attack.
Ms. Schneider burst into worldwide recognition in the 1980s with her Caracas-based Teatro Dramma (
www.teatrodramma.com) and was "adopted" artistically, by La MaMa's
Ellen Stewart, who gave her a New York creative home and regarded her as one of her internationally-famous theater's elite directors. Schneider's previous productions at La MaMa include Franz Xavier Kroetz' "Request Concert" (1982),
Franz Kafka's "Blumfeld" (1985), her own play "Gaz" (1989), developed for the 50th Anniversary of the Holocaust, and her own play "Rooms" (2000), which set three women in a Kafka-esque world of isolation and everyday obsessions.
All four of her La MaMa productions were critically controversial. Schneider, who never envisioned Kroetz' "Request Concert" naturalistically, divided the play's solo character into two versions of herself played by two different actresses in whiteface. The production was a stark contrast to Joanne Akalitis' photorealistic staging of the play two years before and, to some critics, a superior journey into the play's inner life. The New York Times (
Mel Gussow) asserted that, by vindicating the abstract approach to this play, Ms. Schneider had helped establish the work as a classic. "Blumfeld" earned accolades for Schneider for a "troubling, startling and beautiful meditation on loneliness" (Laurie Stone, Village Voice). Critiques raised provocative issues on how the essence of Kafka's writing could rightfully be adapted for the stage. In an article whose headline called the play "beyond Kafka," Steven Hart (Villager) observed, "Kafka was a master of finding the subtleties that lie beneath the endless banality of most human relations, and these undercurrents are what Teatro Dramma seems to be exploiting in 'Blumfeld.'" He analyzed the play as "an exploration of the atmospheric conditions the story produces in the reader," an approach that could have been taken from the director's notes of Schneider's current play. "Gaz," a lavish production with surreal images of Nazi concentration camps, was a digression from Schneider's series of works dealing explicitly with Kafka themes and flummoxed critics who had been expecting something more easy to associate with the Czech writer.
When she returned with "Rooms" (2000), a more recognizably Kafka-esque play for three women, it was triumphantly. The wordless piece delivered the sensations of imprisonment and loneliness through the distancing actions we do in everyday life. Three women spent their lives sealed in their rooms, but with jealous eyes and ears alert to every whisper and shadow next door. They moved robotically through household chores that were sometimes mundane and sometimes weird--cleaning a toilet, fixing hair, making coffee, caressing meat, walking a metallic dog. The set, all in gray, boxed by soaring walls of wire mesh, seemed as expressive as technicolor. The New York Times (D.J.R. Bruckner) declared, "An unspeakable sorrow of hopelessness spreads through the theater like the shadow of death's wings. Yet it is such a triumphant moment of theater that it brings cries of admiration and a thunder of hands from the audience....To feel such exhilaration and despair at once is a rare epiphany."
"Judgment on a Gray Beach" is Ms. Schneider's first production with a new theater company, which she formed in Los Angeles after moving permanently to the U.S. in 2011. Her rehearsal process is like a work in progress that never ends: starting with basic ideas, the group of artists relies on improvisation and physicality. The assumption is that the actor's body is clear and capable of expressing all the ideas of the play. There is no need for dialogue per se: the metaphor of the images is the main idea, with actions always reflecting the inner thoughts of the characters.
Between her last La MaMa production and now, she directed her own stage adaptations of Ionesco's "The Lesson" (2004) and Mrozek's "The Emigrants" (2010) in Venezuela, but mostly she has been directing and producing films. Ms. Schneider works with her husband, Joseph Novoa, in two production companies, Joel Films and Unity Films, interchanging responsibilities as producer and director. She directed "Huelepega" (Glue Sniffer, 2000), a film about street kids in Caracas, which was initially censored by the Venezuelan authorities during President Caldera's period and later released in that country, earning the highest box office gross of the year. It won 15 international awards and was the Venezuelan submission to the Academy Awards. Her "Punto y Raya" (Dot and Line, 2005) was a dramatic comedy about an imaginary and absurd war between Venezuela and Colombia in 2004. It was the Venezuelan submission to the Academy Awards and won 30 international prizes. Her "Desautorizados" (Unauthorized, 2010), about a theater writer who lives inside a story he is creating, was nominated for the Golden Globe Award in the International Film Festival of Shanghai. To be released in 2015 is her "Tamara," a film about a Venezuelan lawyer who underwent a sex change. She has produced and cast four films by Novoa and one by her son, Joel Novoa Schneider. She is a part time faculty member of the
Stella Adler Academy of Acting in Los Angeles.
"Judgment on a Gray Beach" will be acted by Daniel Damuzi, Daniela Mandoki, Ale Fips, Maria Bosque, Alexis Rivero, Marilia Colturato, Ximena Munoz, Moises Amsel and Vanessa Herrera.
Set Design is by Joel Daavid. Lighting Design is by José Ramón Novoa. Sound Design is by Joseph 'Sloe' Slawinski. Costume designs and construction are by Alexis Rivero, Maria Fernanda Bosque and Julio Castillo. Properties design and construction are by Zahydé Pietri.
Photo by Guillermo Polo
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