Performance 3-D Meltdown

by Tish Dace

The Birth of the Poet by Kathy Acker and Peter Gordon Next Wave Festival Brooklyn Academy of Music

Return to Sender by Perry Hoberman and Bill Obrecht La Mama, ETC

olks rejected The Birth of the Poet at the Saturday night performance of the Next Wave Festival quite courteously. Those who walked out went quietly. Only one person booed loudly at the curtain call. Others chose merely to leave rather than applaud. Yet the remarks they muttered under their breath, perhaps concluding The Birth of the Poet means the death of the audience, were "a piece of shit," "garbage," "what a waste of time," and "that was a joke, right?" My own companion was subdued for a full hour, then exploded about the piece's negativity. Would she have rejected King Lear for the same reason? The next morning, however, she was fulminating about plays of naive optimism which suggest life is wonderful-apparently a delayed reaction to the conclusion of the Saturday matinee of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Maybe that means The Birth of the Poet wears well. In morning's cold light, we might appreciate that it's the mess the world is in which really infuriates us. On a Saturday night, we're angry at Kathy Acker and company because they're not Love Boat. Reminded of the danger of nuclear plants and sado-masochistic relationships, we take out our fury on the messenger. But mature reflection suggests there's truth to the message.

Make no mistake about it, The Birth of the Poet is wildly unpleasant. Set against David Salle's new wave drops, rotating side walls, and objects such as a giant string of pearls, giant musical instruments, scaffolds, and a wall made of bras, Acker's and Peter Gordon's opera is as assaultive as her novels and his music would suggest. Richard Foreman stages with none of the cuddliness of his potatoes, penguins, and trains of thought.

Chairman Of the Bored

by Stan Leventhal

The Birth of the Poet Brooklyn Academy of Music December 4

T

The so-called avant-garde creations that constitute the offerings of BAM's Next Wave Festival have, on occasion, demonstrated artistic merit, but the overriding factor that governs these extravaganzas is bucks. Therefore an unknown artist who might have something genuine to offer is usually bypassed in favor of a brandname artist who has already attained a measure of renown. The quality of the work seems to be incidental, as long as its creators have cult followings. The formula works like this: Choose a maverick director from column A, a downtown composer from

This is four-letter-words Acker, percussive Gordon, and blind-the-spectators-withlights-in-their-eyes Foreman.

Lord knows what those with only a program for guidance made of Kathy (Blood and Guts in High School) Acker's intentions by way of book. Those of us with press releases are luckier. We know this has something to do with a New York atomic power plant exploding, the Roman Empire's decline, and contemporary Iran. That may not be a good thing to be told, since it sets us to thinking, trying to identify signs of such specificity in a performance piece to which we ought to react viscerally, not cerebrally.

If you just respond with your guts, you know some mechanistic group of people are upset and finally die, and you share some of their panic at the "end of the world." If you start analyzing it all, however, you wonder

why everyone walks with a striped walking stick, what the set has to do with the action, who the woman in the car is, and whether they're cleaning up a nuclear accident with those dust mops. That way-thinking, I

mean-lies madness.

All those events precede the opera's first words. When they come, many are unintelligible. Possibly the miking has failed. Possibly Gordon's music is supposed to drown out the libretto, although you'd think novelist Acker would have some interest in communicating through words. But then, one of the few lines that can be heard during this section is, "Language at the edge of its own destruction," so perhaps communication is synonymous with meltdown. Could it be that's why the American Indian moons us?

The first part-sporting Foremanesque touches like cords dividing the stage and words on huge signs watching over the action-is followed by what the show suggests is its logical aftermath: 1985 destroyed becomes the Roman Empire. I'll leave the nuclear power experts to debate that deduction and note instead that the script's internal logic seems to flow from showing that nuclear power leads to violence and destruc-

"A macho pig encased in ice cubes" in The Birth of the Poet.

column B, and an East Village designer from column C. The resulting team may or may not work well together, but the brand names ensure an audience and some critical attention.

The latest corporate merger that BAM has seen fit to promote is The Birth of the Poet and it is obvious that the board members sent in their work without bothering to meet and shake hands. This so-called opera appears to be the result of a proxy mailing, and the chairman of the board, it would seem, was out to lunch when the votes were tallied.

The chairman of the board, in this case, is Richard Foreman, the theatrical director who has done some wonderful work for the Public Theater. The board, comprised of librettist Kathy Acker, composer Peter Gordon, and designer David Salle, have all demonstrated their gifts in various media, but if there is a reason why these artists merged their talents into a mega-corporation, the evidence was lost in the realization of this project.

Beatriz Schiller

Although there was some visual appeal, thanks to Salle's sets and props, Acker's libretto and Gordon's score failed to communicate anything. By now, Acker's attempts to microwave William S. Burroughs's literary style are growing stale. When Burroughs utilizes four-letter words, violence, and sex, it evokes moral bankruptcy. Acker's use of this kind of material is simply childish. Gordon's effort to fuse rock rhythms with atonal jazz sounds like a pinhead's response to the challenge of Ornette Coleman. And the schmaltz that alternates with the pseudo-jazz is like rancid alphabet soup. The failure of this work to communicate anything substantial to the audience cannot be laid entirely at Foreman's feet.

Spontaneaous audience participation saved the evening from total disaster. "I'm dying, dying," said one character onstage, and a woman from the audience shouted, "So, die already!" Another character shrieked, "The cunt is shit," and the audience hissed and booed as though Dudley Nightshade had ap-

|

tion. The latter view seem connected to a critique of stereotypical gender roles: Real men don't write poetry about emotion, they go out and change the world; real women are sluts, or they're so desperate for love they slice themselves up with razor blades when rejected.

All this is so mixed in with golden showers and women's pretense "that heterosexuality is still conceivable" that any emergent point of view may simply be what the spectator brings to the theater. The "macho pig" who dominates this section seems encased in ice cubes, and the entire rest of the cast at this point wears white dresses. The sensibility here seems closer to Charles Ludlam than

Foreman.

Even stranger is the Arab portion, the stage filled with giant ears of corn and Gordon's atonal music giving way to melodic harp music. Non sequitur lines are followed by pairs of lines, the second repeating the first, all free of association leading to the wildest connection of all, identification of would-be Reagan assassin Hinkley with one Ali, who has shot his mother during a crazed basketball sequence (one ball per player). There's more, about a witch, and a coda"the stage is left with the cries of peacocks-as the lights dim. Positively a Robert Wilson finale.

Of course, it's unsettling and infuriating, but it's wonderfully theatrical and lots less mindless than most of what folks do on a Saturday night.

Much less complicated is another performance art collaboration, Return to Sender. Composer Bill Obrecht has worked with Peter Gordon on other ventures, and Perry Hoberman is a sculptor, performance artist, and musician who is artistic director of Laurie Anderson's soon-to-be-released film Home of the Brave. Their sci-fi send-up of a mystery, complete with 3-D glasses to view Hoberman's visuals, intergalactic and otherwise, boasts a plot, complete with resolution, involving the importance of fantasies to reality.

What will happen when the four characters are delayed in space by the conglomerate SenderCorp becomes, indeed, very obvious very fast. But nobody wears 3-D glasses to watch a plot. It's Hoberman's special effects we're there for. They're mostly wonderful (not just large visual images, but a little game of ping-pong with a projected "ball"). If Hoberman and Obrecht could just hook up with a director who could employ performers to some effect, they might create a show that would live up to their promise in this debut.

peared. "I want a wife with a cock," said a character and the guy sitting next to me muttered, "Doesn't everyone?" These moments helped sustain me through two hours of drivel.

I can't begin to explain what was going on. There was something about men and women and something about Arabs and Jews, but the meaning is an enigma to me. There was lots of loud music, obscene non sequiturs and props that had no apparent significance. The cast struggled valiantly to make their words and movements resonate, but it was all in vain. The only communication emanated from the audience, clearly angry at such a blatant rip-off. Devoid of wit, compassion, mystery, sensuality, or intelligence, the opera lumped along as the number of spectators diminished. When it was over, about a third of the house had departed, and the remaining stockholders were divided into two camps: those that booed and those that applauded. I'm certain the applause was inspired by a) the conclusion of this travesty and b) the knowledge that the cast could not be held responsible for the shenanigans they were forced to enact.

The label of a can of soup, however truthful, may inform you of the contents. But the quality therein cannot be guaranteed. Even nationally advertised brands can dispense botulism.

NEW YORK NATIVE/DECEMBER 23-29, 1985 41