The Birthday Party

Well, there's still a bunch of things I wanna talk about: soundtrack design and the use of contemporary music references thanks to Victory Gardens' long closed Relatively Close, some thoughts on Oracle's recently closed Termen Vox Machina, the groundwork for a massive theatrical undertaking I am in the process of beginning, some elaboration on ideas mined from Dave Hickey's Air Guitar brought to my attention by one Ms. Kerry Reid, other inanities and general claptrap.

Instead, I'm going to talk about Signal's production of The Birthday Party. I'm owning up to that bias: it jumps to the front of the line because these guys and gals have their lovely claws in me and I have many, many reasons for wanting many, many people to go see this show. My typically closing weekend (or post-closing weekend) write up just won't cut it. So this is the part of the blog where I try to mix business and pleasure. Let's see if I can safely navigate that little minefield we affectionately call "conflict of interest".

To be perfectly honest, of the Big Five (as defined by Martin Esslin) of the Theatre of the Absurd, Pinter is possibly my least favorite, depending on which Genet we're talking about. Granted, that's praising with feint damnation -- I'll still take him over Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller any day, but I digress. During a conversation with Aaron Snook, director of The Birthday Party, on opening night (this is the problem with blogging, I usually just end up rewriting things I've said to other people during the week), I mentioned that of the Absurdists, Pinter is the one that I tend to forget is absurd. He reads so naturalistic that the only thing that seems to instantly stand out on the page is the infamous Pinter pauses -- which, far too often ridiculously overblown, seem to actually serve to encompass the natural world in the midst of everything else going on in Pinter's work when they are effectively staged.

Snook, unlike me, gets Pinter to the core. I know this not because Signal's production is grade A (it is), but because when I am watching this production, and then again postshow, I get Pinter, too. That this is successful has nothing to do with Snook's answers and decisions being right -- that's beside the point. It has everything to do with the fact that he has answers and decisions that are right to him. In staging them as he sees them rather than as he wants others to see them, he not only opens the door to allow the audience into his own vision, he opens it to allow them into any vision they may encounter for themselves. I've heard a lot of different theories about what exactly The Birthday Party is about since this show opened -- a lot, a lot of disparate interpretations. Me? I personally don't see a lot of purpose for background in this piece. I don't need to know who McCann and Goldberg are or work for exactly or what Stanley may have done in his past. I do know who they are now and what is happening to/because of them now, and that to me is what this play (and much of Pinter) is about: the now. Leaving questions unanswered as a playwright can force an audience to do one of two things: answer the questions themselves or stop asking and allow what is happening to happen partially undefined. Each has its place, and to me, Pinter falls in the second category.

Not that it matters, because I'm no more correct than those answering every question themselves. We're all making the show work best within our own frame of reference. It's about the best thing a director can hope for and, in an ideal world, the exactly what an audience would ask from him.

But there's a second part to that: allowing for the audience to interpret only works when the director has a firm grasp on his own interpretation. And I've never been extremely clear on how that success is verifiable outside of a "this show works/this show doesn't" type of snap judgment. But after my third time with this production (it'll probably be four before I actually finish writing this), I started to notice little details, lines in particular, that seemed to transcend a little. Moments in which the full extent of Pinter's ability, which I was heretofore not fully linked in with, became evident. Simple lines, such as "You find a resemblance?", which despite being unassuming, could not be replaced by a better, more fitting grouping of words. And it's a hopelessly pretentious, hoity-toity idea on my part, but I can help but think that this is the byproduct of a level of understanding and complicity among the cast that emanates from the, for lack of a better word, direction in which the, ahem, director has chosen to point.

Another quality, perhaps the strongest, is simply truth in advertising. This, with the possible exception of The Weir, has the most lateral sense of an ensemble (by which I mean technical as well as performance ensemble) that I've seen from Signal, who are no lightweights when it comes to ensemble work -- the word's not in their name for nothin'. This realization actually came to me when I found out the show hadn't been Jeff recommended. It almost makes sense that it wasn't: you don't leave The Birthday Party with thoughts of how great the performances or the set or the costumes or any other aspect were, not because they weren't great, but because none of them took focus. There was no element outshining any other, because nothing was in the spotlight. Which is simply another way of saying everything was in the spotlight. When you leave a well-pieced ensemble work, you remember the effect of the whole, not the individual aspects. And therein is what I know I can always expect from Signal.

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So, it's been a while, and I never gave proper notice of last week's schedule. For the sake of inclusiveness, it was a Factory double feature of Ren Faire! A Fistful of Ducats and Shameless Shamuses on Friday night. That was it.

As to next week, it's looking like Comic Relief's The Return of Tony Clifton and his Katrina Kiss My Ass Orchestra on Friday (I'm going based solely on Chris Jones'... what would you call this? ...review? disclaimer? apology? walk of shame?), and both Walking With Dinosaurs (fuck yeah!) and WNEP's Metaluna and the Amazing Science of the Mind Revue (for real this time) on Saturday. I'm also working box for The Birthday Party a couple of nights, so come on out and get a little Paul Rekk with your show! Remember, every night's an industry night...

P.Rekk
2008

Funk It Up About Nothin'

Quick! Go see this show -- it closes next Sunday before heading off to Edinburgh. I know, I know, it sounds hackneyed ("Hey, Shakespeare was a sort of poet! Rappers are sorts of poets! Let's rap Shakespeare!"), but it's not. It's actually kind of amazing. Not only is it insanely fun, it's very very smart. This isn't just a rap version of Shakespeare; it's (and I think this is what most of the detractors are missing) a mash-up of Shakespeare and hip hop. Neither of the two is more important and each is used to serve the other. There are as many in-jokes and plays on hip hop past and present as there are on Shakespeare. If you enjoy either Shakes or rap, you'll have a blast at this show. If you enjoy both, you can't afford to miss it.

The Q Brothers have won another convert for life. I'm pissed that I never got a chance to see The Bomb-itty of Errors, but they've still got almost an entire oeuvre to go. And you can bet I'll be first in line for A Mad-summer's Night Dream.

P.Rekk
2008

He's back!

And he has a caveat...

Posting will be light for the next couple of weeks. I don't get teh internet in my new place until the 1st and I just started a new temp gig today; a temp gig I quite enjoy that pays me well and has an excellent chance of becoming a permanent gig. Needless to say, I'm going to lay low for a bit and get a feel for the place before I rampantly abuse internet availability. Which sucks, because I have a lot of stuff I wanna talk about, much of which I already wanted to talk about before I left for Iowa. But hey, a brother gots to get paid...

There's not a whole lot of Rekk free time between rehearsals (more news to come...) and helping with box office and other such things for Signal, but I'm packing in as much theatah as I still can. This week is Circle's Hay Fever on Thursday, Chicago Shakes' Funk It Up About Nothin' on Friday and WNEP's Metaluna and the Amazing Science of the Mind Revue on Sunday.

And, of course, Signal's The Birthday Party opens on Monday. I wish you the best of luck on trying to get opening night tix, but there are previews on Saturday and Sunday, and as for the rest of the run, you can always take advantage of one of the best industry night policies in the city: every night is industry night. Bring a headshot or resume or business card to any performance for $10 tickets. Though you may want to call ahead. These things have been known to sell out -- with good reason.

P.Rekk
2008

Blecch...

It really is all about money, isn't it?

The idea that Art with a capital 'A' (or Theatre with a capital 'T') can or cannot fail at all implies that Art or Theatre has a common goal.

I don't know about you all, but my art hasn't failed. And I have a hard time seeing how it can -- the point of the whole thing for me seems not to be to place my ideas into the audience through my work but to have the audience find their own ideas in my work.

That's what I focus on. Isn't that silly?

P.Rekk
2008

Life Goals

I have a new one, post-Kooza: Wheel of Death. I'm convinced I could do this and do it well. Now to find some place to give me some good ol' fashioned Wheel of Death schooling.

Ah, the 4th. I enjoyed a healthy dose of Freedom via BBQ this weekend but also lost my best friend and roommate for the past year to NYC. (NY'ers, there's a new theatre artist in town, but this one comes highly Rekk-ommended(!), so keep an eye open for Lloyd Mulvey. He's cool beans and infinitely talented and driven.) So that was sad.

It also makes me feel as if, as I close in on my third anniversary, I am finally a full-blooded Chicagoan. Lloyd was the only person I knew in the city when I moved to Chicago. I had zero connections, zero names to drop, zero knowledge of anybody, place, or thing in the Chicago theatre scene. I've spent the last three years making lots of friends and one or two enemies, doing some really good and some really shitty work, and generally making myself a home. I've gradually built a really good foundation and surrounded myself with a truly amazing base of friends and Chicago family, be it through Signal, clowning, or blogging. And now, in a period of one week, I've lost the ritual comfort of my apartment, my job, and Lloyd, my original tie to the city and the guy who has served as my daily sounding board, confidant, and partner in crime since then.

So what's a guy to do? A guy is to go to his original home for a week and a half and reset, then return to his new home and reset. And a guy is to take those ideas that have been sounded and confided and criminally partnered and make them reality. And a guy is to never forget, but a guy is also to walk with his face forward rather than over his shoulder. There are big, big plans in store, some formulated, some still abstract, some long-term, some spontaneous. And now is go.

I'll be embarking on some more detail-sharing post-reset, but I've been laying groundwork for a massive (massive as in 2 1/2 year) project that will serve to lay down the blueprints of theatre as it exists for Paul Rekk in one fell swoop. It's coming; keep your eyes open.

I'm excited that Lloyd is in New York -- it's where he wants and needs to be as an artist. And I'm excited that I'm in Chicago. It's home.

And hey, speaking of which, I leave for Iowa on Thursday morning... isn't that cool? Contrary to popular belief, the webbernet does extend to the IA, so I will be checking in from time to time. I'm probably not posting anything until after I get back on July 20th, but feel free to bask in my omniprescence. T'ain't no time for slacking though: I'm also heading to Victory Gardens for Relatively Close on Wednesday night.

Seriously, though -- Rekk-ommended? It just came to me. I'm so cool.

P.Rekk
2008

"In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind and dreaming ahead." -Tony Kushner

R.I.P., 1503

A request

This one's for all you Francophiles out there.

I'm looking for translated copies of some of Jean Tardieu's theatrical work. Anybody? The long term plan is to gain a working knowledge of French within the next two years. But that does me no good right now. Anybody?

Awesome. Thanks.

EDIT: While I'm throwing out requests, here's a long shot: anybody got anything by Julien Torma (in any language)? I've got this book, but I'd love to get my hands of some of his plays as well.

P.Rekk
2008

The Strangerer

Here's the problem with seeing shows so late in the run: I don't have proper time to recommend them to other people. Any weekend bloggers may have noticed that The Strangerer landed on my Best of the Best for a whopping two days before it closed and was gone forever (or at least to New York -- where I still name it Best of the Best.)

The Strangerer was one of those experiences where I had a physical reaction to theatre. It doesn't happen often, and when it does it usually manifests itself in the weeping, convulsing vein. (See Lookingglass Alice, the latest Best of the Best addition) After The Strangerer, I was shaky and unsettled. I couldn't breathe quite so deeply as I would have liked and I kinda wanted to huddle in a corner and gather my bearings. But, despite how it may sound, I didn't find it to be a reaction of fear or dismay. I'm not entirely sure how exactly it would qualify other than being extremely and deeply real.

I remember the first time I read The Stranger. It was my entry point into the Existentialist line of thought and a bit of a life-changing event. (It wasn't long after that I discovered Nietzsche, also earth-shattering.) Mickle Maher (who, with apologies to Marisa, Emily, and Tracy, now without a doubt gets my vote for best Chicago playwright) has taken the bleakness and the freedom and the intertwining of the two from Meursault and settled them onto Bush. The brilliance of the piece, however, is the completely earnest nature in which he does so. This is not parody, this is not satire. This is hardly a comedy; it is, of course, but only in the deepest, darkest sense, the sense that everything is a comedy inasmuch that everything is held to far more importance than it holds. By applying the vision of Meursault to Bush, Maher makes sense of Bush (or at least a possibility of sense) and in front of an urban theatre crowd no less -- a group that one can all but guarantee isn't nearly as interested in making sense of Bush as they are in making fun of him.

As the play moves on, it becomes more and more unsettling as we realize that we are not simply seeing Bush as Meursault, we are watching Bush make the very same existential realizations in front of us. And then, as Bush relays a harrowing story of his witnessing an actual child killed on stage in a production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, we know that the only rational conclusion to a show so hyper-aware of its theatricality is the irrational one -- the on stage murder of the actor playing Jim Lehrer. Of course, it's not going to happen. Of course. But couldn't it? Why not? Would it really matter? And then Jim Lehrer leaves. And Bush follows him out. And Kerry keeps talking to us, more or less explaining to us the murder that is happening in the lobby. And I wanted to leave; I wanted to see the murder, not hear about it. I was seconds from actually getting up to see, Vivian Girls-style, what was happening in the lobby. I think the only thing that kept me was the possibility that what I would have walked into was an actual murder. The ideas presented were that palpable.

I have to cut this short even now, because I know that I'm doing a horrible job of relaying my thoughts. Which I credit to Maher: it's the same difficulty I have relaying the connection I feel to Existentialism and the work of Camus and Nietzsche and the like. I've known a couple of people in my life who simply connect to the ideas in the same manner, and it's almost unspoken; we're just aware that there is a deeper vein between us. I'd like to have a sit down with Maher sometime, because I don't see how a piece this natural could come from someone not in on it.

Go see it if you're in New York. That's about all I can say.

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I moved on Monday. So that's done. Now I need a job. Anyone? I'm capable.

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This week's schedule is a relaxed holiday weekend: tonight is Cirque du Soleil's Kooza, tomorrow is Griffin's Be More Chill, and Saturday is BackStage's Bloody Bess.

P.Rekk
2008