Archives for November 2009

During one of the brief entr’acte pauses in yesterday afternoon’s performance of Otello at San Francisco Opera, an elderly lady sitting close to me said to her friend: “The sets look cheap. But at least they’re not skimping on the singing.”

Coming from a rather prim-looking person with carefully manicured hair and a tidy suit, the directness of this comment made me want to laugh out loud.

But the lady actually made an astute point: SF Opera, like pretty much all the other arts institutions around here, has been going through some incredibly tough fiscal times of late. The company has been forced to reign in its spending and the main target areas of the cost-cutting strategy can easily be discerned from Otello.

The company does indeed look like it’s been saving on visual spectacle, which to my mind isn’t a bad thing. John Gunter’s production design basically uses a single set — a bare stage surrounded by several layers of simple wooden balconies with perforated walls through which Duane Schuler’s atmosphere-underscoring lighting design casts shadows. In the final act, white sheeting covers up the wood and a bed is placed center-stage with drapery around it. That’s about it. There are no expensive revolving sets or very complicated set changes.

The sets look slightly tacky, it’s true. But I would much rather have a bare stage and excellent acting and musicianship than terrible performances and pretty special effects. In this respect, SF Opera does audiences proud.

Otello has become a signature role for the South African tenor Johan Botha, who has performed the role at the Met, Vienna State Opera and Frankfurt Opera. Botha is massive in bulk, but he nevertheless manages to convey the Moor’s delicate mental state. He rampages through the schizophrenic highs and lows of his character with fiery bravura and wounded pride. Marco Vratogna’s serpentine Iago is a force of nature. Verdi grants this character some of the most melodious arias in the opera and the Italian baritone cruises slickly through every note, thus making his character as likable as he is evil. As Desdemona, Zvetelina Vassileva is like a beam of light. The Bulgarian soprano’s unadorned approach to her character’s arias pluck at the heartstrings. Though her lower register is lacking in color and power (a shame as quite a bit of Desdemona’s part sits low in the voice) the radiance of the upper echelons cuts through darkness that enshrouds her scenes with Otello.

It’s great that SF Opera isn’t skimping on talent. On the other hand, it would be more interesting to see the company experiment a little more. An emphasis on rolling out the big guns — singers who’ve been tried and tested in roles before — over creating interesting new matches between singers and roles, or maybe even putting someone entirely fresh under the spotlight, speaks of too much safety at the expense of creativity. And the 2009-2010 season’s heavy emphasis on warhorses of the Italian repertoire similarly underlines the company’s anti-risk strategy.

I can understand what’s motivating these decisions of programming and casting. They make a lot of sense in this economic climate. And as I mentioned above, at least the company is maintaining a high quality in terms of performances. But it would be great to see a little more risk taking, even in these risky times.

…Here’s a list of five cultural activities to make the holiday weekend more holiday-like:

The Great Dickens Christmas Fair

Now 30 years old, a Bay Area favorite yuletide tradition returns to Cow Palace.

Through December 20, Cow Palace, San Francisco

http://www.dickensfair.com/

Joe Sample and Lalah Hathaway

The jazz pianist/composer and vocalist reunite for three not-to-be-missed performances.

November 27 – November 29, Yoshi’s, Oakland

http://www.yoshis.com/oakland/jazzclub/artist/show/1044

The Bald Soprano

Thank the Gods of absurdist performance that the Cutting Ball Theater Company’s slick production of Eugene Ionesco’s mad classic has been extended.

Through December 12, Exit on Taylor, San Francisco

http://www.cuttingball.com

Sing-a-Long Sound of Music

Don your lederhosen, wave your eidelweis and climb every mountain as The Castro Theater screens this family favorite.

November 27 – November 29, Castro Cinema, San Francisco

http://www.castrotheatre.com/p-list.html#nov25

Ari Marcopoulos – Within Arm’s Reach

This mid-career retrospective of the Dutch-born, New York-based photographer captures New York’s downtown art world, the emerging hip-hop scene, and hurtling snowboarders among other subjects.

Through February 7, The Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/marcopoulos_2009

Herewith, my three favorite artistic renderings of turkeys culled from the Web:

Happy Thanksgiving.

Cellos generally used to be found in orchestras and chamber music groups. But these days, the instrument seems to be appearing increasingly in other musical settings. And what’s really interesting about the advent of the cello on the bluegrass, electronica, folk and rock scenes is that the instrument is being played like it’s part of the percussion / rhythm section rather than the string section.

At Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage Coffee House folk club a few nights ago, I caught a gig by the brilliant alt-bluegrass band Crooked Still. The cellist for this ensemble, Tristan Clarridge, flicks his wrist near the bridge of his instrument and digs in with his bow to make a hard-edged sound that’s rhythm-guitar-like and drives the pulse for the group. Clarridge plays his cello conventionally (ie with the instrument sitting between his legs). But the group’s former cellist, Rushad Eggleston, played standing up, with his cello strapped around his shoulders like an enormous guitar.

Folk cellist Natalie Haas (who is best known for playing in a Celtic duo with fiddler Alasdair Fraser) plays her cello in a similar way to Clarridge. The music is of a different style, but the cello once again provides the kinetic-percussive drive of the sound.

In the world of electronica, Sam bass, cellist with Loop!Station, uses loop pedals, alongside vocalist Robin Coomer, to create a densely-structured soundscape. Cellist Alex Kelly, (pictured) who performs in a wide range of formats from alt rock concerts to hip-hop theatre pieces to circus performances, also uses technology like loop pedals to extend the creative capacity of his instrument.

Audiences are clearly amped about the ways in which these cellists are playing their instruments. Clarridge is perhaps the biggest draw in Crooked Still — I was told by several people before and during the concert that he was the one to watch on stage. And one person I met was upset not to be sitting close enough to the Clarridge in order to be able to eyeball his technique properly. At a recent Mark Growden Sextet gig, in which Kelly plays, the cellist got a huge ovation.

It’s exciting to see so many musicians exploring the possibilities for this instrument. Perhaps we’ll start seeing more oboes and French horns being played in unusual contexts and ways soon too.

I’m getting really tired of going to the theatre and witnessing plays that take pot shots at the most obvious people. Tony Kushner’s series of rambling, politically-slanted short plays currently playing at The Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Tiny Kushner, suffers tremendously from this problem.

Don’t you think it’s time we got over making fun of Richard Nixon and Barbara Bush, Tony?

Berkeley audiences lap this stuff up of course. But left-leaning, west coast theatre audiences need shaking up. They don’t need to have their egos and feelings massaged. I’d like to see more theatre that challenges the audience’s liberal ideals in an intelligent way. Tiny Kushner merely reasserts lazy thinking.

Pictured: Kate Eifrig as the ex First Lady in Berkeley Rep’s production.

The San Francisco-based theatre artist Dan Hoyle’s solo show about Nigerian oil politics, Tings Dey Happen, explores, among other provocative issues, the impact of visiting westerners on the lives of Nigerian locals. In response to what I wrote about the production in my weekly New York Times culture column on November 15, Hoyle evaluates his work and experiences as a white American conducting research for a theatre project in the Niger Delta.

Tings Dey Happen deals explicitly with the impact that white people–even well-meaning white people–can have as foreigners in Nigeria. The decision to, As Ms. Veltman puts it, “take myself out of the play” was, I think, important to keeping the focus on the people I talked to, to ensuring that this was not just another play about a white guy in Africa. But totally removing my “shadowy presence” – again, Ms. Veltman’s words — would have been disingenuous. I was there, I was asking the questions. I don’t portray myself as a character, but I use my search for answers as a narrative device–at its core, the play is, to use a cliché, a journey of discovery. It’s about getting past the usual pity and guilt and trying, really trying, to understand Nigeria’s people, its culture, and its politics. When the characters address my “shadowy presence,” they are also addressing the audience–challenging them, as I was challenged.

But these criticisms are all valid enough, and I wouldn’t be writing this response but for the suggestion that I’ve led my friend Williams (represented in the play as Okosi, a Delta militant) to give up his comfortable life as a killer, and that as a result he now lives a life of poverty. For it’s not the whole story. Williams’ life as a militant was not prosperous or even financially stable. He would have irregular paydays after participating in violent missions that would sustain him for several weeks, but he was still living in a wooden shack with no electricity or readily available fresh water, like everyone in his village. Williams’ current life is hard, with less money, and he, like most Nigerians, struggles to get by every day. But when I talked to him on this most recent trip, Williams told me that he is happier now than when he was in the gang. He is happier for several reasons, but principally because he doesn’t have to deal with the traumatic horror, guilt, and shame of participating in violence and killing. When I stayed in his shack in Nembe Creek, he would have violent nightmares that made him thrash around on the bed we shared at night. He still suffers from nightmares, he told me, but leaving militancy, and sharing his stories, “helps free my mind. And the only real freedom is in your mind.”

Furthermore, I have worked to help Williams. When I left Nigeria in 2006, I introduced him to the new Fulbright Scholar in the Niger Delta, who introduced him to a prominent University of Port Harcourt professor who was able to get him a job offer. This didn’t work out, but as people who have done this type of work before know, transitioning from a traumatic, unstructured life to the daily routine of regular work is not easy.

In Abuja last month, I helped arrange for Williams to meet with a Nigerian Senator. The Senator, Williams now tells me, has offered to pay for his University education. This is a great development, and I wait with fingers crossed, hoping that it works out. Just today Williams called me to say the Senator has given him the seed money to start this process. Additionally, while in Abuja last month, I suggested to U.S. Embassy folks that they arrange a speaking tour through the Delta in which Williams could tell his story and advocate for non-violence. They have connected him with various NGOs that could organize this kind of program. Other NGOs are eager to speak with Williams, having been impressed with the interview we did together for Africa Independent Television.

Going back to Nigeria to perform my play for Nigerians, and holding discussions with Nigerians, and giving interviews to Nigeria’s media, and leading theater workshops for Nigerians–all this expanded and deepened my engagement with Nigerian society. Having come back to the US, to perform again for Americans, I have sought to share my fresh insights in the post-show discussions. But the message of the play remains the same: to understand Nigeria we must try, harder, to get past pithy analysis and see things as Nigerians see them. Only then will we be able to confront the true consequences of our presence in (or absence from) Nigeria.

Hoyle’s show plays through November 29 at the Marines Memorial Theatre in San Francisco. Click here for tickets.

Also, you can read my original review of Hoyle’s production for SF Weekly (published in January 2007) here.

There are a few elements in Irish dramatist Enda Welsh’s play The Walworth Farce — currently on tour in the US in a Druid Theatre production directed by Mikel Murfi — that might confuse or perplex American audiences. The reference to fish fingers (commonly known as fish sticks here) is one that leaps out.

After last night’s performance at Zellerbach Playhouse in Berkeley was over, however, I ran into a British stage director friend who’s been working on this side of the pond for the last three decades and we engaged in a short but lively discussion about the play and, more broadly, the subject of farce in America.

The director thinks that comedies like The Walworth Farce don’t work out here because people don’t understand farce like Europeans do. He says there’s a tradition of slapstick in the U.S., but not farce, which is why, he claims, productions of plays by the likes of Martin McDonagh aren’t as great in the US as they are in the Europe.

To illustrate his point, he mentioned’s recent production of McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which he said was inferior to the London production which he experienced. The reason the London production was better, he said, was because the actors bought into the crazy circumstances of the play lock, stock and barrel and took the audiences along with them. They were completely immersed in the absurdity of the scenario. Whereas, in the States, he said, audiences and production teams can’t quite go there. As a result, the actors on stage in Berkeley Rep’s Inishmore were too “knowing” — they were constantly indicating that they knew how how absurd the world of the play was through facial and body gestures as well as through the way they said some of their lines, therefore they created a bit of a comfortable distance between themselves and the play.

The difference between farce and slapstick is a subtle one. In one online dictionary, farce is defined as, “a light dramatic work in which highly improbable plot situations, exaggerated characters, and often slapstick elements are used for humorous effect.” Slapstick is defined as, “a boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes.”

I don’t have European productions of McDonagh plays with which to compare the ones I’ve seen in the US. By and large, I’ve found myself to be completely immersed in the farcical worlds of these American-produced experiences though. So I’m not sure I wholeheartedly agree with my director friend, though he raises a fascinating point.

I actually think this nation is great at farce. The Matt Damon movie, The Informant! is steeped in farce, as are stage works by some of our local playwrights like Peter Sinn Nachtrieb and Aaron Loeb. Anyone who’s seen productions of Nachtrieb’s Hunter Gatherers or Boom, or Loeb’s Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party will know what I mean. And wasn’t the Bush Administration pure farce?

If a comet were to crash into the Earth, it would make quite a dent.

But in director Ryan Rillette’s production of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s play Boom, this colossal event elicits more of a whimper than a bang on stage. This Bay Area premiere staging of the comedy which centers on a young biologist’s madcap plan to save the human race by Marin Theatre Company misses a great opportunity to rock the audience’s socks.

There are all kinds of ways directors, designers and actors can create a huge explosion on stage. The scenery could collapse, people could smack into each other or physically hurtle into the wings. Soot, cement dust or water could rain down. There could be blood. The lights could go crazy, as could the sound.

What we get in this production of Boom instead are some malfunctioning lights, a couple of bits of scenery coming unhinged and two actors collapsing (which they do throughout the show anyway.)

I hear from friends who saw versions of the play in New York and Seattle, that those productions made much more of the comet’s impact.

How would you stage this scene?

Artists are becoming very savvy about marketing themselves these days. Everyone’s out there on FaceBook and MySpace and Twitter sending out news about their work and related upcoming events to generate interest and hopefully sell tickets.

So it’s a little disconcerting to hear about artists who are not only unwilling to promote themselves but seemingly against the idea.

An exasperated arts presenter shared with me a story about a group of musicians who had done nothing to help her promote a concert she was hosting for the group at her venue. The group has no mailing list and no web presence. They didn’t put the word out at all. Consequently, there were 40 seats filled in a venue that seats 450 for their concert the other day. What’s worse is that many of the people who came to see the concert were invited guests of the artists on stage who all expected complimentary tickets.

Luckily, the group isn’t typical of the artists that the presenter brings in. But it seems as if she needs to adopt a different strategy vis-a-vis this particular set of artists and others who may be equally or somewhat reticent about pitching in on the marketing front. If I were in her position, I’d probably do the following:

1. Allow each artist only two comps.

2. Tell them that they cannot perform at the venue again until they get a mailing list together and some kind of web presence, even if it’s just a free blog on Blogger.

3. Tell them the audience needs to consist of at least 100 paying customers in order for them to see any return from the box office split.

…is it possible to walk down the street swinging a yoga mat and be accosted by a homeless person pushing a Safeway cart in grimy clothes who says: “Pilates?” by way of introduction.

“No, yoga,” I said to the man, smiling. I gave him a dollar. Then we went our separate ways.

San Francisco is probably the most sexually tolerant city in the world. There are few places where people can walk around in nothing but socks and sneakers with bells dangling from their privates without getting arrested and San Francisco is one of them. Ironically, the fact that the city is so gay-friendly makes the latest work by the luminescent British physical theatre company DV8 so disturbing: It’s eye-opening in this lovely, uber-liberal, open-minded bubble we live in to be reminded of just how much anti-gay sentiment still persists in the world.

Based on verbatim interviews and vox pops with people in the UK about their feelings towards homosexuality, To Be Straight With You delves into the personal experiences of gays and lesbians in many different communities and the hatred that society continues to have for what it considers to be a deviant “lifestyle” choice.

The production, directed by Lloyd Newson, begins straightforwardly enough, with little physical movement and a catalogue of verbal abuse culled from interviews directed against gays and lesbians. As the 80-minute-long production moves along, the physical side of the performance builds and builds through short episodic scenes that push a wide variety of movement vocabularies to their limits. In one of the most memorable scenes, a gay teenager skips rope with the grace of a hummingbird while describing the difficulty of coming out to his parents. The contrast between the performer’s sustained bout of “extreme skipping” while talking with the ease of someone at rest is virtuostic and dazzling. The mad caricature of the idea of childhood created by the skipping is made sober by the down-to-earth talking.

Meanwhile, in another scene, an Indian muslim attempts to reconcile his religion and marriage with the fact that he has quiet relationships with men on the side. The performer’s monologue is set to an amazing duet between two male performers featuring movement that pushes classical Indian dance technique to the extreme. In this scene, the monologist utters a line which to my mind captures the core tension at the heart of the work: “It is part of my nature but it is unnatural.” This duality is underscored by the friction between the flowing, organic choreography and text of To Be Straight With You and its more freakish,violent and cartoonish side.

The visual and aural elements of the show, which include some very snazzy effects such as a transparent projected globe which one performer manipulates in a lecture-style to demonstrate the vast swathes of the globe where being gay will get you a prison sentence or worse, further arrest the senses. But DV8’s presence in San Francisco for the first time in 12 years is electrifying not just from an aesthetic perspective. We might be living in 21st century San Francisco, but attitudes towards sexual orientation are still Medieval in many parts of the world. And I’m pretty certain that just below the surface even of this gay-friendly town, lurks intolerance and hatred.