It can't have been two weeks.
It simply can't.
Have I really been obsessing about, dealing with, hacking away at, resisting, avoiding, etc., [i.e. NOT blogging] for TWO WHOLE WEEKS? What has happened in two weeks?
What indeed.
I saw Ellen Snortland's remarkable one-woman theater piece,
Now That She's Gone: Unraveling the Mystery of My Mother, where Ellen plays herself AND her quirky, unresponsive Norwegian parent, coming to understanding and revelation at the end. The piece encompasses every sort of woman, from Eleanor Roosevelt (whom her mother revered), to Lucy Ricardo/Lucille Ball (whom Ellen emulated as a very young child), to Gloria Steinem (whom Ellen continues to revere). It opens up history and reveals secrets [and reminds us to ask for OUR families' stories and secrets]. In some ways,
Now That She's Gone reminded me of Lily Tomlin's
Signs of Intelligent Life, in revisiting the heady years of second-wave feminism. However, in Snortland's piece, the exhaustion of feminism is nowhere to be found, and I found myself not only moved by Ellen's story, but proud of the movement and cause.
Ellen Snortland is a writer for
Ms. Magazine and a columnist for the
Pasadena Weekly. I had no idea that she was also an actress, a singer, and a playwright. I can't wait to get her book
Beauty Bites Beast. Go Ellen Snortland!
Ahh, but I have been even more spoiled.
A few days before, I went to downtown's Evidence Room to see one of the final performances of David Greenspan's outrageous
She Stoops to Comedy, a self-conscious, quasi-postmodern comedy of manners (reviewed
here in Daily Variety, and
here in the LA Weekly [scroll down!]). Played as if from an early draft filled with errors and contradictions, characters shape-shifted (anthropologist? lighting designer? wildly comedic narcissistic lesbian thespienne?), plot details zigzagged ("It is the 1950s.... uh.... it is the 1990s"), and actors acted AND acted out, alternately exasperated with the text and each other, brittle, confused, and resigned to the whatever-the-hell script. Sometimes with passion and agitation, sometimes with an underhanded wink and nod, characters read off directors' notes.
In this ridiculous mess,
John Fleck played a voluble aging lesbian diva cross-dresser drama queen, jealous that her young lover has been called to the countryside to play Rosalind in
As You Like It. When Fleck auditions for (and wins the part of) Orlando, the shape-shifting, gender-twisting funhouse begins. Dorie Barton plays our ingenue Rosalind (et al) exquisitely, as did the lighting designer/actress/anthropologist Shannon Holt (who turns it on and off in an instant, as she toggles between shrewish narcissist and warmly authentic buddy. It is especially wild when Holt and Holt come back together, for a conversation that rehashes their love affair past. Most affecting was
Tony Abatemarco as the beaten-down, also-ran HIV positive gay actor, whose deeply moving moment in the sun is as negligible to the plot as the character feels in the play (and in life).
Even with all the devices, self consciousness, and deliberately layered levels of affectation, the characters' transformation, both internal and external, is real. What a triumph for the cast. What an outrageous piece. Usually "art about art" and "theater about theater" becomes cliched, tired, and shrilly self-congratulatory. Not here. Not here.
Bravo, David Greenspan. Yay and yay again. Thank you for theater that is contemporary and postmodern
and rooted in its characters' and our humanity. Thank you for art that reminds us why art is important.
So I have been on a THEATER HIGH......
And that's not all. More in the next blog.
Good night.
