{"id":1617,"date":"2018-06-08T17:40:08","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T16:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2018-06-08T17:40:08","modified_gmt":"2018-06-08T16:40:08","slug":"propwatch-the-flowers-in-creation-pictures-for-dorian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2018\/06\/propwatch-the-flowers-in-creation-pictures-for-dorian.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the flowers in Creation (Pictures for Dorian)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Beauty. Beautiful. Beautifully. It\u2019s just<\/em> possible I overuse these words. A quick search through my dropbox suggests that in the past year I\u2019ve applied them to: Alina Cojocaru\u2019s acting in Giselle;<\/em> the final image (watches!<\/a>) in Robert Icke\u2019s Hamlet;<\/em> Rebecca Frecknall\u2019s production of Summer and Smoke<\/em>; the difficult pleasures of Swan Lake<\/em><\/a>; the pacing of The Inheritance<\/em>; the handbells in A Christmas Carol<\/em>; Sam Mendes\u2019 precision in The Ferryman<\/em>; the way puppets can suggest unselfconsciousness. I dread to think how often I\u2019ve used \u2018beautiful\u2019 in email (a quick, shaming search suggests that it\u2019s applied to most of the copy and images for Dance Gazette<\/em><\/a>, though in that case it\u2019s 100% accurate) or social media, let alone in burbling conversation.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing, though \u2013 to me, beauty isn\u2019t all that. When the British Museum held an exhibition about the body in ancient Greek art called Defining Beauty<\/em>, I didn\u2019t have a sliver of interest. I\u2019m not beautiful, so how would it speak to me, other than making me drift past chiselled statuary, perving over aloof marble? Stage a show called This Way Ugly<\/em>, and you\u2019ll have my attention.<\/p>\n

Still, my adjectives betray me. I may not have applied them to how people appear \u2013 the instances I\u2019ve found seem to describe choices, not faces \u2013 but I\u2019m clearly not immune to the idea. Nor are Gob Squad, the Berlin-British performance collective who brought Creation (Pictures For Dorian)<\/em><\/a> to London as part of LIFT. It\u2019s not so much an adaptation of Oscar Wilde\u2019s The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em>, more a deceptively relaxed conversation about art, and how we invest in it as participant or spectator.<\/p>\n

Time comes for beauty<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we enter the Purcell Room, Sean Patten is perched on the front of the stage, sketching audience members he finds interesting, while Sarah Thom is arranging flowers at the back. This isn\u2019t mere decoration, she tells us, but the Japanese art of ikebana (\u2018I did a three-hour workshop\u2019). It\u2019s an art of balance and composition, a process in which beauty builds over time. And time comes for beauty \u2013 especially when, as here, Thom trains a camera and a heatlamp on her floral composition, to see what blooms, what fades during the 90-minute show.<\/p>\n

In Wilde\u2019s novel, Dorian\u2019s beauty makes him a work of art \u2013 on canvas, but also in life, as he preserves that deathless attraction by a supernatural pact, in which the hidden portrait ages while he remains immaculate. The middle-aged performance warriors of Gob Squad (Thom and Patten are joined by Bastian Trost) also try and arrange life into art, using two trios of volunteers \u2013 three student actors aged around 20, three senior performers upwards of 70. They\u2019re all dressed, posed, filmed; asked to speak and then modify their speech. When the Gobbers are (briefly) satisfied they trundle a gilt frame in front of them, give the tableau a title which scrolls in cursive over the screen at the back (photo by David Baltzer, top). But, after a moment, they remake the scenario or propose a new one \u2013 beauty isn\u2019t stuck here, but fleet, on the move, wriggling out of reach.<\/p>\n

A midlife show, if not a midlife crisis, Creation<\/em> takes the frets of adulthood \u2013 a body that feels older than the mind, a shuttle between feeling wide-eyed and weary, a destabilising mismatch between the person the world sees and the one you feel yourself to be. The company\u2019s warmth ushers you into reflection; it\u2019s a hugely engaging deep dive of a piece. In my own misfit adulthood, I felt protective of the younger trio, enchanted by the older one, involved in the Gobbers themselves (I can\u2019t tell you how much I want Thom to be my friend).<\/p>\n

Gob Squad\u2019s show is also a kind of welcoming morality play. For Wilde\u2019s antihero, experience is inimical to beauty. Every act a line, every emotion a wrinkle. Every sin a livid deformation. But the experience of the older volunteers is what makes them shine: their resolve, their reverses, their continuing curiosity. It\u2019s lovely to follow Claudia Boulton\u2019s rackety chronicle of the passing decades, or Stuart Feather\u2019s unquenchable poise. Smiles break out when birdlike Lieve Carchon recreates an off-kilter number from her performing past to close the show. They\u2019re beautiful not despite the lives they\u2019ve lived, but because of them.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the show, we return to the flowers, who have been enduring time\u2019s hot passing. Some buds have wilted on the stem; a brazen bloom refuses to wither; the stick is still a stick. It\u2019s not quite the arrangement it was. It feels more, far more, beautiful.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beauty. Beautiful. Beautifully. It\u2019s just possible I overuse these words. A quick search through my dropbox suggests that in the past year I\u2019ve applied them to: Alina Cojocaru\u2019s acting in Giselle; the final image (watches!) in Robert Icke\u2019s Hamlet; Rebecca Frecknall\u2019s production of Summer and Smoke; the difficult pleasures of Swan Lake; the pacing of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[347,322,321,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-lift","9":"tag-props","10":"tag-propwatch","11":"tag-theatre","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1619,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions\/1619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}