YOUR GUIDE TO THE TWIN CITIES

Global Search
Friday February 10, 2012

Welcome to Artcetera. Arts-and-entertainment writers and critics post movie news, concert updates, people items, video, photos and more. Share your views. Check it daily. Remain in the know. Contributors: Mary Abbe, Jon Bream, Tim Campbell, Colin Covert, Laurie Hertzel, Tom Horgen, Neal Justin, Claude Peck, Rohan Preston, Chris Riemenschneider, Graydon Royce, Randy Salas and Kristin Tillotson.

Reviews of two more plays in Guthrie's 'Singled Out' festival

Posted by: Claude Peck under Theater, Culture, People Updated: January 21, 2010 - 12:17 PM

  • share

    email


Kevin Chick (Magician) in Lamb Lays with Lion's production of "The Black Arts," directed by Jeremey Catterton. / Photo by Emma Freeman Photography

By John Townsend

 

The Guthrie Theater has welcomed smaller, high profile, local theater groups to perform on stages at their new facility over the past few years. However, the current Singled Out: A Festival of Emerging Artists, curated by the theater's associate director of studio programming, Benjamin McGovern, has expanded that welcome to include some even smaller groups with little infrastructure. Two of the works are notably transgressive.


The Lamb Lays With Lions troupe's company-created magic show, "The Black Arts," at times appears to be a spoof, and at other times to be frighteningly real. The Magician (a beguiling Kevin Chick) opens with a demonstration of producing a body out of an empty coffin, assisted by a suggestively clad female. They show the audience different sides of the coffin, and ultimately pull out another suggestively clad woman. The three of them go on to play a mind-reading game with audience members, invoke spirits and conduct other illusions. But something goes wrong with what appears to be a flirtation with self-mutilation. Then the magician, being a perfectionist, manically returns to re-enact the coffin trick, confusing himself and his otherwise beatifully poised assistants (Hilary Falk, Ashley Smith).

Director Jeremey Catterton has maintained a sharp heightened style in both the acting and the visual presentation. The effect in demonically ritualistic. He has also co-created a thunderously menacing electronic sound design with Dominique Davis. Falk and Jake Lindgren's lurid costume concept is confrontational and sensual. Ben Seidman is credited as 'Magic Consultant' with intimidating props designed by Smith and Carl Atiya Swanson. Imagine the goth subculture saluting Grand Guignol at an S & M club.

Trista Baldwin's shattering one act, "American Sexy," which played the 2008 Minnesota Fringe Festival is another work that unsettles and disturbs. The New Theatre Group has developed the play somewhat since then in workshops and readings in Minneapolis and New York. We're taken on a road trip to the Grand Canyon en route to Las Vegas with two young men and two young women. Patrick Kozicky reprises his wrenching performance as Andy, a contemporary Calvinist type who cannot and will not separate sex from love. Though the playwright is far from being an ideological conservative, she has written Andy with empathy and seems to validate, to some degree at least, his repulsion towards sexual acts too easily entered into.

Joanna Harmon (Lexi) in the New Theatre Group's production of "American Sexy" by Trista Baldwin, directed by Brian Balcom. / Photo by Aaron Fenster

Though she is also far from being erotophobic, Baldwin is skeptical of such sexual ease, especially in our age of the internet and cameras, hidden and unhidden. Director Brian Balcom's three other actors -Darius Dotch, Ally Carey, Joanna Harmon- are newer to the script and their performances are just as unflinching as those at Fringe. They reveal characters who have become so objectifying and casual in their sexual expression that they've lost their connection to their own humanity, hence, the humanity of those they would bed. Both riveting productions I've seen of American Sexy hit deep-seated anxieties and fears about sexuality. However, I am now more curious about just who these four characters are and just how did they happen to come together? Therefore, if Baldwin were to write a prequel or an act preceding this one, odds are she could render a fascinating full-length play.

John Townsend is a Minneapolis writer.

 

Singled Out: A Festival of Emerging Artists

The Black Arts & American Sexy

 When: Various Times. Ends Sun.

Where: Dowling Studio, Guthrie Theater, 818 So. 2nd St., Mpls.

Tickets: $14-$20. 612-377-2224. www.guthrietheater.org


 

 

older post

Help Haiti over happy hour

newer post

Animal Collective, Jay-Z top poll of 600 critics

  • 0

  • Comments

Be the first to comment

  • share

    email

from the homepage

ADVERTISEMENT

recent posts

Post By Category

Arts (1) Books (146)
Architecture (30) Movies (187)
Music (1470) Classical (109)
Theater (367) Culture (153)
Disasters (1) Minnesota History (21)
Tickets (200) People (417)
Style (9) Holidays (11)
Openings + closings (30) Awards (146)
Behind the scenes (420) Book news (84)
Casting news (49) Celebrities (227)
Clubs (65) Concert news (499)
Dance (66) Design + Architechture (33)
Funding and grants (18) Galleries (40)
Late-night TV (18) Local TV and radio (96)
Minnesota artists (151) Minnesota authors (67)
Minnesota musicians (478) Museums (61)
Orchestras (54) Red hot (29)
Seen elsewhere: Neat stuff (101) Theaters (66)
Culture wars (16) Entertainment (2)
Movies (90) Television (265)
Art (128) Photography (32)
Nightlife (132) Comedy (1)
SXSW music festival (29)

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Connect with twitter Connect with facebook Connect with Rssfeed

Links

inside the StarTribune

help

Star Tribune offers digital subscriptions

entertainment

In Oscar nods, oldies are goodies

vita.mn

Vita.mn's 2012 Hotness search

investigators

A showcase of Minnesota’s best investigative reporting

Home

Lottery: Get the latest results

Home

Download our prep boys and girls hockey apps