The primary disturbing story that we’re instructed on this hour-long collage of dancing and diatribes, horror and love, issues a person named Tantalus, who killed his son and chopped him up with the goal of feeding him to the gods. However the gods caught on, and despatched Tantalus to Hades to punish him. They pressured him to face in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree, with each the meals and the water simply past his attain: “Tortured by thirst,” we’re instructed. “Tantalized endlessly.”
The story of Tantalus because the origin of the phrase “tantalized” is a becoming begin to “Aristotle Thinks Once more,” since we’re tantalized by what’s simply past our attain on this present – not meals and water, however, as in lots of such experimental theater items, a simple plot and a crystal clear that means.
It might be too harsh, nonetheless, to name it torture.
“Aristotle Thinks Once more,” at La MaMa by February 4, makes use of the tales instructed by the eminent artists of Historic Greece to touch upon violence and household and love in fashionable occasions – that are expressed by some eminent artists of the American Avant-Garde. The octogenarian playwright Chuck Mee (“Large Love“) wrote the textual content, and the quartet from the Nice Jones Repertory Firm who carry out, co-created, and co-choreographed the manufacturing consists of Valois Marie Mickens, a lady with a stunning identify and an excellent half-century-plus historical past with cutting-edge theater; an unique member of Nice Jones, based in 1972.
It’s she who, in entrance of a classical-style portray of what’s in all probability a gathering of Greek philosophers, tells us the story of Tantalus as if it’s the synopsis of a play (“Act 1, scene 1 Tantalus, a mortal good friend of the gods…Scene 2 The gods understand the reality and are horrified…”) after which recounts in the identical approach the generations that adopted Tantalus within the cursed Home of Atreus – most familiarly, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Orestes and Electra.
When she’s completed with these horrendous tales of incest and homicide, she concludes: “So it’s that we see revealed the dreadful nature of what it’s to be human — that nature that we strive all the time to rise above.”
We see the remainder of the ensemble (of a youthful technology) sinking into violence, or rising into love. They dance carrying pristine white togas or chemises, or fashionable costume with animal masks.
They alter into fashionable enterprise fits and don the kind of creepy rubber face masks that folks in protest marches put on to mock presidents of the USA; if I couldn’t nail their explicit identities, they’re actually meant to be outdated white males with energy.
Thus costumed, they bounce across the ground, get into violent fights, re-enact one-sided courtships, and riff on the character of affection. (“You’re born, you die in between, if you happen to’re fortunate you’ve one nice love; not two, not three, only one.”) Valois Marie Mickens comes again out to present a synopsis as if it’s a play of the traditional Greek love story Daphnis and Chloe, which is convoluted and filled with hazards however has a contented ending.
Freed from their masks, the performers discuss concerning the apocalypse, and reply the questions: What three issues would wish to take with you to the opposite aspect? What one factor would you wish to go away behind? – Then ask some members of the viewers the identical questions.
One girl within the viewers mentioned she’d take “Plato.” I believe she bought so much out of this play.
Aristotle Thinks Once more
La MaMa by February 4
Operating time: 60 minutes
Tickets: $10-$30
Carried out, co-created, and co-choreographed by maura nguyen donohue, John Maria Gutierrez, Valois Mickens, Kim Savarino and Marcus McGregor.
Directed by Dan Safer (Witness Relocation) with unique textual content from playwright Chuck Mee, music composed by Julia Kent, set designed by Sara Brown, lighting by Jay Ryan, costumes by Alicia Austin, and sound design by Attilio Rigotti
Images by Maria Baranova
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