tba 2008 – PICA

Philippe Quesne’s Vivarium Studio: L’ Effet de Serge

pica-blogger — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:59:24 +0000

Photo by Patrick Sullivan
-by Abe Ingle
L’ Effet de Serge takes place where D’ Apris Nature leaves off, with a cosmonaut exploring a curious living room. The room the visitor illuminates is a sad, unfurnished and unfinished terrarium, where Serge eats Hot Lips Pizza and watches a DVD on a ping pong table, enclosed by bare walls and encased under fluorescent light. This net-less ping pong table also serves as Serge’s workbench, where he tinkers with “effects,” remote control cars, sparkles and rave lasers.

These lonely, week-long nights of tinkering result in a weekly Sunday performance, where Serge performs his minute long, marvelously simple, Michel Gondry-esque effects synchronized to music. The real performance, of course, happens between Serge and his guests.
Philippe Quesne’s Vivarium Studio tenderly and with pity portray the absurd social conventions of loneliness. Serge and his guests float awkwardly in the limbo of his habitat, ceaselessly pending the taking of a coat, the offering of a drink, or the hasty exit after eating. Serge’s audience grasp, when the performances are finished, not to express themselves, but for an appropriate remark to Serge’s blank expression. Blank because that’s all there is, and that is whatever you make of it, and that is everything.
-by Abe Ingle

Mike Daisey: “Monopoly”

pica-blogger — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:18:18 +0000

Mike Daisey’s “Monopoly” is a time traveling, novelistic monologue, spanning the stories of Nikolai Tesla, Microsoft, Parker Brothers, and Daisey’s experience trying to put together a show about Tesla in New York. Each story is a scene, and a very entertaining one at that. Mike Daisey comes from the Chris Farley, fists-clenched, red-faced, making-you’re-your-audience-laugh- while-simultaneously-making-them-worry-about-you-having-a-heart-attack school of comedy. But Daisey is much more than that, he’s also incredibly clever and sweet, and all of his characters, heroes and villains alike, are rendered vividly and lovingly, (even when they’re a lie). But these tales, although touching, and hilarious, and without a doubt entertaining, seemed to wander unrelated, save that they shared the universal truth of “corporations are bad, and they will fuck you, so don’t believe the hype.”
The “Here’s a bunch of seemingly unrelated stuff until I tie it together and Blow Your Fucking Mind” is one of my favorite tricks, and near the end of the show, I was excited and anticipating that neat, curtain lifting, invisible lasso magic trick. But it never happened. We are left with Tesla screwed, small towns screwed, the inventor of “The Landlord Game” screwed, MS Word users screwed, and told that it’s up to us to change the situation, and that it’s not too late, despite the desolation of small business in America, the abandoned, ivy covered mausoleum that is Tesla’s wireless power tower, and Windows Vista. And I knew I was being left behind, I could hear the somber pacing, and the serious tone and I thought, wait a minute, seriously? He’s ending this telling a bunch of performance art loving, Mac users in the Pearl not to shop at Walmart? Not to buy Vista? Well, hey, mission accomplished! “Monopoly” is a great show, and Mike Daisey is a talented and charming performer, and I have every intention of enjoying future shows, but if a call to action is what is being trumpeted, then I think we need to talk less about the hands we wouldn’t shake with a 10 foot pole*, and more about the hands that feed us. Still, 8/10.
-by Abe Ingle
* you know, like with a glove at the end

Lemon Andersen: “County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle”

pica-blogger — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:38:40 +0000

There are a lot of clichés about spoken word artists, especially those who rise up against all odds and make good with rhyme. Movies like “8 Mile,” “Slam,” and “Spoken Word” have turned Lemon Andersen’s life story into an institution, worthy of a spoof, and while Lemon clearly demonstrates his right to be on stage and respected, “Beautiful Struggle” doesn’t completely escape the trappings of its more saccharine siblings. “Beautiful Struggle” is a sparse show, a wise choice by Lemon, there’s a bench that serves as a proxy for various elements, and some tasteful lighting and then there’s Lemon, a short “white guy” talking big black street in some of the densest vocabulary I’ve ever heard, and that’s of course what saves the show. Lemon is no joke, his life was rough, and he knows how to hone a line like a shiv. I would’ve taken notes to offer an example, but you can’t stop to write about what he’s saying when he’s saying it, because every line matters with this guy.
The only things holding me back from completely gushing over Lemon, are that at some points the show, he fails to avoid some of the pitfall clichés of his (albeit niche) genre, or, come to think of it, every song by Jay-Z. That, of course may or may not be easy to avoid, as the show is autobiographical, and let’s face it, our lives can all be a little Jay-Z sometimes. The other elements that throw me are Lemon’s childlike voice, and his swagger. While the youthful tone makes sense in the beginning of the show as he recounts his childhood, as the show progresses, it seems like the voice never grows up. The voice, when combined with the hip hop swagger, seems to act as an emotional wall, the bravado standing in the way of honesty, it could be just be Lemon, but at several points he exaggerates the persona for comedic effect, and I would think (from my admittedly nerdy, Jewish perch) that no matter how hip hop you are, you don’t bare your soul by grabbing your nuts. I’m just saying there’s more here, beneath the surface, and I hope Lemon keeps digging, for as he and his contemporaries have discovered, there’s gold in them wounds, and if you’re going to display it, it ought to be clean.
– By Abe Ingle

Reggie Watts: Transition

pica-blogger — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:35:05 +0000

Before the lights went down to signal the start of “Transition,” my friend asked me what we were about to see. I smiled and said something like, “It’s Reggie Watts, you just have to see it…” Unfortunately, that wonderful, indescribable* quality of Watt’s shows that makes them such a joy to watch also makes them infuriating to sum up in a blog post. Suffice to say, “Transition” doesn’t disappoint. When Reggie Watts takes the stage, in a billowy tunic and clutching a goblet, he launches into an absurd, mock-pompous tornado of prose, and the words “An Soliloquy” appear behind him. This corrupted phrase, and the later presented equation “Deevolution + Revelation = Devilation,” serve as the guideposts to the show’s theme: the radioactive, solipsistic**, half-life of human relationships, and the absurd theater that results.
Using his trademark “10 octave” voice and looping pedal, Reggie offers to cheer a girl up by singing about how he would like to watch a movie with her on a Saturday afternoon, eat ice cream together, and fuck her “a little bit” (but just a little bit). Offstage we are “treated” to a skit where Reggie interrupts mock-cunnilingus, with the frequency of “Can you hear me now?” to ask how he’s doing. A “web-cam” interview is conducted about social networking, but when the female subject clumsily trods onstage wearing the absurd, “Brazil-esque” real-time audio video rig, her conversation with Reggie, unprotected by the mutual aggrandizement of technology, devolves into meaningless faux-psychological “relationship talk.” “Transition” side-tracks through these sequences in Watt’s typical stoner-friendly stagger, but the show works, and the destination is reached, even if you can’t be sure how you got there, and anyway, that’s what google maps is for.
– Abe Ingle
* Maybe: a funny Thom Yorke meets Afrika Bambaataa ?
** “This is today’s secret word, when you hear it, scream real loud”- Jambi