Spiritual Visions in Brooklyn
Review of INSIDE OF ME and JOAN OF ARC IN A SUPERMARKET IN CALIFORNIA
The fall season is well underway in New York, and a lot of exciting work has been produced here in Brooklyn. Two recent productions caught my eye for their spiritual subject matter and unique performance spaces. Is this the beginning of a metaphysical theatre scene in Brooklyn? I hope so, but some harness these psychic forces better than others.
Three chairs are in the center of an art gallery at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center. A mother and a daughter fill two chairs. The pair never look at each other, but mirrors surround them. A coldness lingers between them, a disconnect, and their deadly family secrets rise to the surface in Tade Davis’ new play Inside of Me.
Evelyn (Chandra Lynn Albritton) has just been released from the hospital after a suicide attempt and is cared for by her daughter Victoria (Kara Gordon). Victoria is distant and glides along the stage. “I did it for you! I really did! I don’t know how to make you understand,” Evelyn screams at Victoria. Evelyn murdered her daughter’s abusive father. These secrets send Victoria to the mirror. It's fun to watch the play from the mirrors. What is revealed when we look in the mirror? We must always go back to the mirror.
James (Justin Kamp) fills our third chair, and the play takes an even bigger swing toward melodrama. An incestuous relationship occurs between Victoria and James. Experiencing Inside of Me was like V.C. Andrew’s Flowers in the Attic merged with Aeschelus’ Agamemnon. Melodrama is fun, but it felt unclear what direction this play was heading. Is it camp, or should we take the family drama seriously?
Across all the actors' performances, there was a rigidity present. Albritton has a crazed Southern housewife persona she brings to the stage. It's almost as if she were a character in a Tennessee Williams play. Gordon has an intense gaze on stage that pierces the soul, and she ethereally glides across the stage. When the revelation of her incestuous relationship occurs, and Gordon lets out a roaring scream, the moment doesn't have the impact you would like it to. Is it the actor or the space? The production has marketed its Antonin Artaud Theatre of Cruelty inspiration. Theatre of cruelty usually leads us to a new understanding of the characters, yet we are still yearning for more.
Inside of Me is intimate, and while the Williamsburg Arts and Historical Center is a great venue, there may have been better venues for this particular play. The actors are swallowed up in the giant space. There was virtually no lighting or sound. Evelyn’s gruesome suicide is thrilling to watch. Fake blood can be a disaster in the theatre if not tended to with care, and this production follows through. I do admire Davis’ risk-taking and her artistic influences. There is much intrigue within her writing- mother as creator and destroyer, the inability to escape the past, and the quest to know where one comes from. But I’m curious what Inside of Me looks like in a different space with an incorporation of more technical elements.
I was lucky to catch Chloe Xtina's Joan of Arc in a Supermarket in California for its closing night performance. Tickets to Xtina's play were a hot commodity. I was waiting in line as a woman was asking each person in line if they happened to have an extra ticket. She said she had waited multiple nights outside the grocery store theatre, hoping to get a ticket. Unfortunately, no one had an extra ticket. At check-in, each audience member was given a snack to enjoy while watching the play. Noticeably, no one in the audience was eating during the duration of the show. Is it because they were enraptured by
Sitting in the bodega grocery aisle is eerie, and we are constantly aware of these forces. Forces much bigger than ourselves. We follow Frances (Healy Knight) through a burning California. She is bound for "something really sinister," she references a man whose presence she can feel intuitively.
We also meet four women working at a supermarket- Gretchen (Khali Sykes), Emmalee (Izabel Mar), Zoe (Madeline Wasson), and Suzy (Maaike Laanstra-Corn). They are watched over by their store manager, Bob, on the store cameras. Bob is a consuming entity in their lives. We never see him, but his presence is felt just by the expressions of fear in the performance of these actors. It reminded me of the character "Bob" from Twin Peaks, the evil force that ends Laura Palmer's life. Xtina just might be the David Lynch of playwrights.
Ballerinas (Amelia Evans, Gwendolyn Torrence, Victoria Vulner) physicalize these invisible forces within the play. I was seated at the end of the aisle, and a terror would arise in me when I saw them out of the periphery of my eye. Very surreal. Each ballerina brought grace and poetry of the body to the space that was needed to balance the harsh terrain of the California landscape.
Space is another character in Joan of Arc. What is in the air? What is behind me? Who is looking at me? Audience members are close, watching each other experience the play. Bob is watching these girls. We are all possessed by space.
The return of the Joan of Arc archetype tends to signify nationalistic pride or a strong feminist heroine.1 Joan of Arc in a Supermarket in California captures a refreshing Americana and women taking on brutal male power in its writing and performance. America is a land of the mystical, wild, deranged, and passionate. We've seen it in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, and Xtina's play gives me hope the American theatre can seize these elements once again.
Dr. Felicia Londré. Don Juan and Faust in the XXth Century (Prague: Charles University, 1993), 22-46.