Wesley Doucette - Page 3

Our heritage might define us, but it doesn't get to define itself. Over the past decades we've witnessed as heroic archetypes turned dated, or even villainous. We've watched as the emotional collateral of a masculine old guard has been given a platform. From this vantage point such voices have shifted the focus from the passions of privileged men, to the scars of those left in their wake. Fool For Love by Sam Shepard is an aggressive portrayal of this passing. The play's location, a motel in the once wild west, is the embodiment of this contradiction: quotidian mediocrity, and mythic Americana. The Parisian Compagnie du Vingt-Trois withholds not a drop of the emotional intensity of this piece in their performance at Avignon's Pixel Theatre.

Based on Julie Otsuka's novel The Buddha in the Attic, Certaines n'Avaient Jamais Vu La Mer, in performance in the Avignon Theatre Festival's Cloitre des Carmes, is a look at the lives of Japanese immigrants in America from the turn of the 20th century to FDR's internment camps. Director Richard Brunel's multimedia and elemental staging is supremely inventive, and the performances spark with vitality. Those familiar with the history might find themselves treading familiar territory. However, Certaines n'Avaient Jamais Vu La Mer can serve for some as a theatrically dynamic introduction to one of America's great historic shames.

As my time attending performances in the Avignon Festival's 'In' comes to a close there are certain consistencies that float to the surface. Among these are nudity, bodily fluids, video integration, and a spectacular quality of sound design. Les Batard Dore's Meduse, now in performance in the Avignon Theatre Festival's Gymanse du Lycee St Joseph, has a bit, or a lot, of each. However, even in as such lofty company as the Avignon Theatre Festival, Leny Bernay's soundscape is transporting. Translating mental anguish, the sea, and dizzying poetry in a heart rumbling bass his presence is a boon to Les Batards Dores extremely promising production.

Anne-Cecile Vandalem's Arctique, now in production at the Avignon Theatre Festival's La FabricA, is a spectacular and rare diversion in a program laden with portentous prophesying. Equal parts Black Mirror and Murder on the Orient Express, Arctique is set after the fall of global warming in 2025. Though, never mind that, the downfall of world order is simply a social backdrop. Doubt not however that Vandalem has made a deep social mythology to rival the best of the speculative fiction genre. It's just that, dramatically speaking, she simply has more pressing matters to deal with.

Has anyone embodied the industrial elegance of central European theatre more fully than Ivo Van Hove? His worlds are factory made with squares of glass, metal, and stone. His characters reside within an inescapable atmosphere of manufactured order. Whenever disorder breaks the mold, whether it be by cascading water and blood in his View From The Bridge, or by reams of black snow in De Dingen Die Voorbijgaan, now in performance at the Avignon Theatre Festival's Lycee Saint Joseph, its breach comes as a violent shock. Gazing at the looming black metal and industrial lighting yawning over Jan Versweyveld's slate tiled scenography, it's hard to imagine that this world could contain full people. However, such is the case in De Dingen Die Voorbijgaan which, within this environment devoid of softness creates a drama of the deepest intimacy and the most raw humanity. In Van Hove's glittering diadem of masterpieces, it is a particularly glowing jewel.

An actor once vented to me after a performance that the cast 'had something good, but the director screwed it up by trying to make it something important.' The word 'screwed' is my addition. So too is the fatal flaw of Oskaras Korsunovas's Tartiufas, now in performance in the Avignon Theatre Festival's Opera Confluence. The world is glowing in a post-baroque kitsch. The actors are superbly game, throwing themselves into daring feats of theatrical acrobatics. Yet, politically overcompensating, Tartiufas repeatedly doesn't stick the landing.

To enter or exit The Avignon Theatre Festival's stunning Cloître des Carmes one must cross in full view of bleacher seating on the space's Marley floor, which extends uninterrupted from the upstage gothic corridor. Despite such a conspicuous route, or perhaps because of it, many attending Raimund Hoghe's 36, Avenue Georges Mandel took a speedy or defiant mid-performance exit. The performance I attended this past Tuesday ended in a sturdy division between aggressive boos and a smattering of impassioned standing ovations. I am not sure if either extreme reaction was truly merited. I am even more uncertain as to why this piece, first performed in the Festival in 2007, was picked for a rare Avignon Theatre Festival revival.

Sometimes it takes one great performance to rescue an evening of theatre. Servane Ducorps, as the enraged and heartbroken Clytemnestra, does her level best in Racine's Iphigenie, now in The Avignon Theatre Festival's Cloitre des Carmes. While it isn't quite enough to get the work over the finish line, her performance is a beacon in an otherwise self-pitying slog.

In theatre there are few spaces as uniquely prestigious or complicated as The Avignon Theatre Festival's La Cour d'Honneur. Situated in the 14th century Palais des Papes, the immense open-air stage is backed by an imposing 100-foot stone wall. The wall comes unhelpfully pre-furnished with scenic elements such as a large gothic balcony and haphazardly placed windows. The work of any director must ultimately answer to such an imposing space. Amazingly, Thomas Jolly's modern staging of the Roman classic Thyeste finds a sonorous harmony within this medieval chasm.

Reassuring variations of 'I heard it was good,' and as common threats of 'It better be,' pepper the courtyard of The Avignon Theatre Festival's mercifully comfortable La FabricA theatre. Concern is well placed as Gosselin's epic three part trilogy, Joueurs, Mao II, et Les Noms spans a daring ten hours without intermission. This marathon, which seamlessly synthesizes literature, film, and live drama, transforms La FabricA into its own artistic ecosystem. It's hard to imagine that some residue of the artistic toil will not indelibly mark the space. What results from these ten hours is part elegy to the state of violence, part theatrical deconstruction, and part Netflix binge.

The figures that appear in Sasha Waltz's Kreatur, now in performance at Opera Confluence at the Avignon Theatre Festival, defy belief. The incomparable costume design by Iris van Herpen transforms the human body with spikes, light as air cocoons, and patterns that appear and disappear from view depending on the angle. Soundwalk Collective's soundscape fascinates as it distorts electronic rhythm, industrial machinery, the sounds of nature, and, in one fabulous instance, The Nutcracker's 'Arabian Dance.' With so many elements of the performance attempting to drag the spectator to an alternate dimension, it is a shame that the world on stage remains one of concert dance convention.

'Milo Rau has created nothing short of a shocking success. I pray the day comes when such artistic experiences are not necessary. Though in our world of catastrophe, he offers something visceral and vital.'

Petipa, who of the three choreographers listed in the program has the most influence on American Ballet Theatre's Le Corsaire, knows how to create a dramatic excuse for dance. With a few notable exceptions, 'Giselle' and 'Romeo and Juliet' come instantly to my mind, declarative dance which spends twenty minutes to hammer out an 'I love you' through pirouettes can be draining and leave the audience thinking 'Just spit it out.' Petipa, clearly seeing this dramatic shortcoming, forms his ballets around vast pageants, processionals, and presentations. The Black Swan seduces by exhibition at a banquet, the last glorious act of The Sleeping Beauty is a virtually plotless celebration, and practically the entire Nutcracker is a series of vignettes formed around a presentation. Le Corsaire is no different. The first act features the presentation of several ballerinas. The second act is centered around the principal dancers performing to 'entertain the group'. Then, in act three, a pasha spends a lengthy amount of time in a dream sequence which features, what else, women and flowers. Superficially, this all works wonderfully and the dancers shamelessly take this opportunity to exploit their most acrobatic technique. The piece's issues begin upon the introduction of the words 'slave girls.'

1914 is not a year that should conjure much nostalgia for those who survived it. Among smaller aggravations, the year marked the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and resulted in a half decade war, the likes of which the world had not seen. The year also marked the premiere of Fokine's 'The Golden Cockerel' by The Ballets Russes. Fokine, their first choreographer, was no stranger to '(Description) (Bird)' pieces whether it be 'The Dying Swan,' 'The Firebird,' or 'The Gold Cockerel.' 'The Golden Cockerel' was in his established career and it, unlike the previous year's infamous 'Rite of Spring,' was a jewel box escape from the hostile international climate. The warmth of this piece served a Parisian audience in search of the early 1910's glow, which was probably a distant memory by then. Today, scrupulously mounted by ABT under the direction of Ratmansky and with designs by Richard Hudson (off of the Natalia Goncharova originals,) 'The Golden Cockerel' is a charming aesthetic study even as it has waned as a satisfying evening of dance.

Justin Peck's newest work, 'The Decalogue,' was placed at the far end of a daunting program this past Thursday as part of New York City Ballet's expansive 'Here/Now' festival. Following Lynne Taylor-Corbett's resonate 'Chiaroscuro,' Jorma Elo's sublime 'Slice to Sharp,' and Peter Martins' transportive, if overlong, 'Stabat Mater,' the sting of anticlimax would have been difficult to avoid for even the most robust work. The evening's narrative was moving to an aesthetic statement, but riding these pieces was also a burden of archaic catharsis which 'The Decalogue' is not equipped to shoulder. However, if dislodged from the context of the program, Justin Peck's newest work represents his most mature excavation of dance form and gives hope that ballet can be not simply dressed up in new fashion, but have its soil tilled for invigorating innovation.