Day Two

3.29.06 11:43am
Boy does my back fucking ache.

Hours in the car and then hours in theatre seats leaves me pretty sore. Ugh. Alas, the price we pay to enjoy good theatre.

We had breakfast at Shoney's this morning. Blech! The food at the hotel was way more expensive, but I'll bet it bore a much closer resemblence to real food. So now my stomach's pretty sore as well. Anyway ...

Back at Day's coffee house. It's funny, I used to think this place was the shit. It's still cool, but it pales in comparison to the places in Iowa and NYC. Coffee-wise anyway. It certainly has more room than Joetheartofcoffee in NYC, but the coffee isn't even Stauf's level. Oh well.

I'm pumpin the new Ghostface Killah, just tryin to relax, hopin for another good show. Honestly, I'm ready to call this a great Festival year. I'm pretty sure I'll be into what SITI is doing. I'm pretty sure I'll dig the Rha Goddess show, especially having read the Courier-Journal rave review. It's a hiphop show right? Should be right up my alley. Then there's The Scene which also got a rave review, and Natural Selection, which on it's own couldn't possibly bring the level too far down, though it got a pretty good review. If nothing else, it sounds like something I'll like. So, hooray! Great Festival. Best since ... well, we'll do that later.

Wow, two shows and I'm already happy. Good times. Swagger like Jagger.

3.29.06 4:42pm
Well, good news for all those making the trip with me to Louisville this weekend. I found a cool eatery with a variety of food, plenty of room, and wireless internet. I'm bloggin @ the Karma Cafe, at the corner of Bardstown Road and Ellwood. It's a few blocks from Ramses, closer to downtown.

Low's Journey was really, really good. I really dug it. Rha Goddess is a great performer, charming and articulate.

I do have a couple of small beefs with the show, though.

1. It needs some rewriting still. I guess that's not really a beef, but ... the second half is too much of the same thing for a long time.

2. Somewhere I got the impression it was a "hip hop theatre" show. Maybe bbecause the word "rapper" is in the title. Anyway, I'm not sure it was. Again, that's not much of a beef, the real point though, is that the poetry parts were the strongest moments in the show, I wish there were more.

3. My man Dave's gonna hate some of the sound design. For one thing, she rapped along to a recording of herself, and it was annoying. Also, I think the show was over-sound-designed in general. The lights, however, were generally great, except when ...

4. The director over-literalized a few moments, like when Low was riding a dragon, and there was a very un-subtle light change to emphasize the idea. Ugh. A little more finesse would be good.

5. The last "rap" in the show (as opposed to the last poem) was the director's worst moment, it seemed like he/she (Chay?) just gave up at that point. The final poem was similarly non-specific. Of course, I'm under the impression that the show has been changing A LOT the past few weeks, so maybe they just ran out of time. So, I hope they're working on it tonight.

But all that makes it seem like I hated it. I didn't, I was really impressed and I applaud ATL for putting a show like this in the Festival.

I wonder though, about how much white guilt was involved in the standing 'O' at the end. Some people seemed genuinely involved, but the end of the show being what it was, it seems an audience member has little choice but to get on board with the message or else seem like a jerk.

Acaica just read this and made a couple good points.

1. Almost every show we see at the Humana Festival, if it has any merit, gets a standing 'O'.

2. Acacia says that she almost always stands for a solo performer. I'll bet that applies to other people as well.

Maybe I did jump the gun on that a bit.

"BLACK RAGE!!!! I'll kill every white motherfucker I get my hands on!!!"

3.29.06 8:42pm
We just got out of the SITI Co. show. I'm going to do this, but, give some thought to seeing the show without reading this small ineffectual preview.

Well, suffice to say, I loved it, because I love what they do. That said, here are some thoughts.

The part we saw in NYC I enjoyed more in NYC. Its been extensively rearranged and it had a better narrative arc, and more emotional impact before. Maybe it was never intended to stay as it was in NYC, I don't know. But, I was disappointed by that.

The play also lacks a narrative thrust in general. Anne says something in the Director's Note about experiencing "life in a different time signature," which makes me think that either the lack of thrust was intentional, or she was aware of the problem, at least subconsciously, when she wrote the note. At any rate, it's a bit of a problem.

Also, the play has three climaxes, and they're all right in a row. They're also all magnificant moments for Darron (who had a breath-taking moment right at the beginning of the play), really some great work. But, I wish they were spread throughout the play, I think it would help.

It really was a big collage, and the problem was that there were few links between the images and the moments. It was almost too much, too many beautiful moments, too many ideas, and too little to follow. Obviously, we're supposed to be emotionally engaged by the relationship with the brother, but that doesn't carry us through the whole play. Neither does the mother, nor do either of the other minor female characters. I wasn't confused, but I wasn't drawn into the stories or ideas.

There were, though, two great phrases that I'll be stealing for my own show - "a palace of memory" and "a geometry of thought." There was, obviously, lots of beautiful language, and lots of tiny, heart-rending scenes, but again, it was not connected. There were many lists in the script, and at times, the whole play seemed more like a list than a structured work of art.