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Sense and Non-Sense
by Michael Bettencourt
Live/Feed reviewed May 12, 2010
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| Mark Lindberg, Karen Grenke, Robin Kurtz, James Yu, Stacia French |
| Photo Credit:Raymond Haddad |
| The distinction between "nonsense" and "non-sense" is important to "getting" Nerve Tank's LIVE/FEED, a self-called "movement theater mash-up" that riffs off the phrase/curse "may you live in interesting times." Instead of presenting "nonsense" -- gibberish or random absurdism or simple chaos -- Nerve Tank instead focuses on "non-sense," the fears and fever-dreams that shadow our world of "sense," of rationality and system and explanation, and that at times ("interesting times") burst through to cause mayhem and art. Though it doesn't quite turn the Brooklyn Lyceum's cavernous space into Plato's cave, Nerve Tank does a competent job making us feel the otherworld around us that can both threaten and nurture us at the same time.
As the audience enters the Lyceum's arena, they see four bodies hanging by winched cables from the ceiling (Stacia French, Robin Kurtz, Mark Lindberg, James Face Yu), with a fifth (Karen Grenke) seated upstage staring out, all undergirded by rumbling bass vibrations. These cinched angels begin their descent, and as they do they spout sentences that, on the surface, sound sensical -- everything in its proper syntactic place -- but which are empty of recognizable sense and meanings. Thus begins the unlinking that is at the heart of Nerve Tank's efforts, the unlinking of the audience from the world left behind in the lobby so that it can glimpse the parallel ghostly world of "non-sense" in its collective peripheral vision.
Thus the show goes on, each "scene" happening in a place that appears familiar but, as in dreams, has some distortion to it that makes it strange and threatening. One such "scene" takes place in a rachitic coffee shop where patrons sit at tables piled with the fag-ends of newspapers and babble drivel into cell phones or just into the air while a waiter carries a fan around that blows the papers off the table, sending the patrons into a wasted frenzy to re-gather and re-place them -- a sort of ghoulish Starbucks.
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| Mark Lindberg, Karen Grenke, Robin Kurtz, Stacia French, James Yu |
| Photo Credit:Raymond Haddad |
| Another occurs at a party, where the actors tell the story of an inappropriate guest while gesturing in manic spasms, a parody of the "body language" at human gatherings. In yet another, using only cell phones to light each other's faces, they re-tell a "message" left on one of the phones of a person calling to say he has died on the #2 line.
The five performers pull all this off with great competence, aided by Ryan Metzler's lighting design and Stephen Moore's sound design, both of which create an appropriate otherworld for the goings-on. Director Melanie Armer keeps things brisk, and Chance Muehleck's text finds the balance between repetition and straight-ahead narrative that engages but does not overwhelm the audience. The Lyceum itself is, in a sense, an actor in this drama as well, since its spaciousness, unconstrained by traditional theatrical constructions (wings, proscenium, etc.), leaves the audience sitting in something like "the middle of nowhere," the physical equivalent of Nerve Tank's dramatic "non-sense."
Communications sent through the ether, "rational" speech devoid of any heart, familiar locations bristling with potential violence, random visitations, "interesting times" that threaten to devour bodies and souls -- this is Nerve Tank's theatrical "non-sense," crafted to nudge people past their settled usual into both fear and freedom, as if becoming unhinged can also be liberating.
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Brooklyn Lyceum
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Category: Experimental
Written by: Chance D. Muehleck
Directed by: Melanie S. Armer
Produced by: The Nerve Tank in association with The Brooklyn Lyceum
Opened: May 7, 2010
Closed: May 29, 2010
Running Time: 1 hour
Theater: Brooklyn Lyceum
Address: 227 4th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Yahoo! Maps Directions
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Tickets: $18.00
$15 students & seniors
Tickets are available at www.brownpapertickets.com
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Creative Team
Text by: Chance D. Muehleck
Direction/Set Design/Choreography by: Melanie S. Armer
Lighting Design by: Ryan Metzler
Sound Design/Original Music by: Stephan Moore
Costume Design by: Candida K. Nichols
Cast
Stacia French
Karen Grenke
Robin Kurtz
Mark Lindberg
James "Face" Yu
Crew
Asst. Costume Design: Rachel Soll
Asst. Direction & Choreography: Chanda Calentine
Stage Management: Jenn Boehm
Assistant Stage Management: Jennifer Caster
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