Review: GEOFF SOBELLE'S FOOD Texas Performing Arts at The McCullough Theatre

From Geoff Sobelle’s website, we learn that “FOOD is an intimate dinner party performance that uses smell, taste, touch and audience instruction to feed a meditation on the ways and whys of eating. Why do you eat what you eat? Where does it come from? What does it really cost?” I quote it here, because it is entirely accurate. But that only cracks the surface of this deep performance piece that nudges us toward contemplation of the evolution of food and mankind.

Simple in concept, but hardly simple in execution, Sobelle is magician, performer, waiter and—for lack of a better word—facilitator of FOOD. In FOOD we are Sobelle’s “customers.” Where are my introverts? Don’t take a seat at the table, unless you’re good with being an integral part of the show. Instead, you can sit in the audience around the huge table that serves as the set for this masterpiece of performance art. Sobelle puts us in the center of his performance, just as he did in his previous works, THE OBJECT LESSON, and HOME. He says it is a way to “create a place for the audience to meditate on their personal relationships to a given subject.” Some can sit in “the audience” and watch other audience members “inhabit well known spaces” such as this dining table. A table that, throughout the performance, transforms into a plot of land from which agriculture, oil, towns, and eventually skyscrapers, spring up.

Geoff Sobelle has mastered a number of roles in FOOD. He’s a (mostly) nonplussed waiter, a crafty magician, and, as a reviewer for the New Yorker put it, a clown as the sacred innocent. Sobelle, his co-creator magician Steve Cuiffo, and a brilliant creative team more than pull their weight. Lighting Designer Devin Cameron, Sound Designer Tei Blow, all the props creators, the one man crew working behind the scenes (in this case, under the table) and even Steven Dufala, who created the chandelier over our heads, have taken serious care to provide us with a multi sensory experience unlike the average theatre you might be expecting.

Sobelle guides us to order from menus. We order rice, salad, steak. He snowshoes across the table to catch Atlantic char for a diner. It’s funny, but clear. What resources does it take to provide us with our experience of eating whatever we choose, whenever we choose? He magically consumes the massive amounts of food we ordered but didn’t eat. In various feats of prestidigitation, he swallows whole celery stalks, grows potatoes from dirt, eats lit cigarettes. Then he removes the enormous table cloth from the enormous table and reveals a plot of land beneath it. Bison roam the land. Bison die. Grain grows on the land and is cultivated. Oil is discovered. Together, we assist him in growing the towns and cities that sit on this plot of land as he reveals to us our own nature.

Consumption: the using up of a resource, the act of using resources to satisfy current needs and wants, or the act or process of consuming. Beyond our relationship with food, FOOD is a clear reminder that we are consumers in the starkest sense of the word. Consumers of nicotine, sugar, meat, fruit, wine, lumber, fossil fuels. We occupy the land that once belonged to magnificent creatures, and we just keep consuming. 

As I reflect on the performance, I recall the young man sitting across from me at the table. He was at times surprised, curious, skeptical, apprehensive. I thought he might have seen the whole thing as quite odd. And if that’s the case, he’s right. It is quite odd; this zero sum, take as much as you can, gluttonous culture we swim in, only to face the fate of dying and returning to the earth from which we took all that we wanted. I wonder if he thinks much on what the generations before him have left for him to consume?

The real magic of FOOD is not in the tricks Sobelle performs. It’s in the hypnotic spell he swears he won’t put on us into which we fall anyway. We’re enchanted by his true gift: an uncanny ability to show us our shadows, while we think we’re being entertained.

Get your tickets soon, only three performances left.

Geoff Sobelle's FOOD
TPA’s McCullough Theatre | Feb 1 – 4 
Presented with Fusebox
The University of Texas at Austin
2375 Robert Dedman Dr, Austin, TX 78712

FOOD is commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Arizona State University – Gammage, FringeArts Philadelphia, Allen & Meghan Thorpe, and Garth Patil. Additional support provided by the Wyncote Foundation. Developmental support provided by Mercury Store. 

About Geoff Sobelle (Creator/Performer/Co-Director)

Geoff Sobelle is a US-based actor and creator devoted to making original actor-driven

performance works. His shows include: HOME, The Object Lesson, The Elephant Room, all wear bowlers and machines machines machines machines machines machines machines (among others). He has received commissions from BAM, Lincoln Center, Arizona State University, Center Theatre Group, Edinburgh International Festival and The New Zealand Festival. His shows have been recognized by a Bessie Award, an Obie Award in design, two Edinburgh Fringe First Awards, the Best of Edinburgh Award, a Total Theatre Award and an Innovative Theatre Award. He is a Pew Fellow and a Creative Capital Grantee. Geoff was a company member of Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company from 2001-2012. He trained in physical theater at the Lecoq school in Paris and is a graduate of Stanford University. www.geoffsobelle.com

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