Disruption

Editorial
It happens all the time. The lights come up at the end of whatever show you’re seeing. The applause dies down. Patrons begin to collect their belongings and slowly head for the exits. And as you reach down to grab your program, or perhaps check your phone for any missed calls or emails, your theater-going companion leans over and asks “So, did you like it?” I hate this. I really do. First of all, it’s bad etiquette to critique a show while you’re still inside the theater. In fact, I was taught long ago that you want to be at least three city blocks away from the space itself before you start to discuss your thoughts on the piece. If for no other reason than you never know whose mother you might be sitting next to. Adults really should have the patience and common courtesy to wait until they’re safely out of earshot before they start trashing a play. (Legend has it that Mary Louise Parker once heatedly exchanged words with a rude theater patron who just couldn’t wait to get out the door before she laid into Billy Crudup’s performance in Measure for Measure in Central Park.) Now, a reasonable person might say “Well of course you shouldn’t badmouth a show right then and there. But what about heaping praise on a piece? Or just discussing an immediate reaction? Surely that’s allowed.” A fair point, but the answer is still no, and it has nothing to do with sparing anybody’s feelings. To my mind, one should rarely be ready to praise a show as “good," or condemn a show as “bad,” as they’re getting out of their seat. Personally, I don’t even want to talk about a show for at least a couple of minutes after it’s ended. Why? One word. Digestion. When I was a Performing Apprentice at Children’s Theatre Company, Artistic Director Peter C. Brosius described to me CTC’s practice of post-show discussions (known as “demos”), in which, after a student matinee, two actors and a technician come out on stage just as the curtain has fallen and answer any questions the audience might have. This is a long-standing and much-beloved practice at CTC, yet Peter was not shy about admitting that he had reservations about it. In fact, he had on many occasions considered getting rid of it completely. In an ideal world, he said, the students would instead be able to go back to their classrooms, ponder the experience they’ve just had, and discuss it amongst themselves and with their teacher. Only then, he explained, would the children really have had the time to consider and assess their experience, to digest what they’d just seen and heard and felt - both individually and collectively - and therefore be able to have a meaningful conversation about the play. If he could, he would send those actors and technician to each individual classroom three days later to have a discussion. This is a lesson that extends well beyond young audiences, and even well beyond theater.

What do jazz, scotch, and theater have in common?

Good theater is like good food, good scotch, good jazz. Yes, in the moment as you enjoy it you can feel it clicking, coming together, many parts combining to create a perfect, synthesized whole. But greatness comes with the remembering. The reliving. The rethinking. The desire to go back for more, whether it be to feel a certain feeling again, to re-experience a wondrous or peculiar moment, or sometimes even just to confirm that what you saw really did just happen. Theater, by its very nature, has a finite lifetime. Both the individual performance and the greater production must and will come to a certain end. All that we theater-goers are ever left with at the end of the day and at the end of our lives is the remembering, and not just of the hour or two in which we sat through the show, but rather of the days, weeks, and months after we left the building. It is in the remembering that I feel I can say what theater experiences have truly moved me, have left me wondering and pondering and yearning to return. I remember seeing Parade on Broadway in 1998, and the queasy feeling I had at intermission after Leo Frank was convicted of murder. I remember the simplicity and heartbreaking elegance of Simon Russell Beale’s Malvolio, as he painstakingly and precisely hung his jacket on the back of a chair in Donmar Warehouse’s Twelfth Night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2003. I remember the sheer wonder and amazement of watching Dean Holt’s feats of strength and artistry in Reeling at CTC in 2006. And this year, I remember the intrigue, the hilarity, and the exhilarating and pure confusion of Lamb Lays With Lion’s The Black Arts in the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio.

Theatre of Disruption

Lamb Lays With Lion is a company like none other in the Twin Cities, in that they are committed to the tenets of “Theatre of Disruption”. As explained by Artistic Director Jeremey Catterton, “A performance that properly employs the methods of the Theatre of Disruption should delightedly pull the audience from its seat, tantalized with genuine surprise and raw uncertainty within each moment.” If this is the goal, The Black Arts--which was brought to the Dowling Studio as part of the Guthrie’s Singled Out Festival - was a rousing success. (Full Disclosure: Jeremey Catterton was a roommate of mine for 5 months back in 2007. The experience was not unlike The Black Arts: confusing, intriguing, and thrilling.) Inspired by a “new wave of hard rock magicians”, the show is, in essence, a magic show. And not a terribly good one. At the start, we meet a leather-clad, goth-infused illusionist and his two scantily-dressed assistants. He does some tricks, none of which are terribly impressive, weaving them together with some tidbits about devil-worship and the occult. The audience claps politely, even enthusiastically, perhaps not wanting to hurt the feelings of our host, or perhaps hoping that this is, in some way, part of the act. That’s the thing, though. Nobody’s really sure. Twenty minutes in, you can’t quite shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right. Is this guy for real? Is this show for real? Did I really just pay $20 at the Guthrie to see what seems like a $2 Coney Island side show? That’s when it happens. Something goes wrong. A prop is dropped. The magician is thrown. He seems unsure of himself, and quickly leaves the stage. Then, nothing happens for a while. The house lights come up, and then go right back down. One of the assistants nervously leaves in search of the magician. A stage manager crosses from left to right. Again, nothing happens for a few moments. And that’s when the show begins again. Literally. They start the show again, from the very beginning. The same light cues. The same sound cues. The same leather-clad, goth-infused illusionist and the same two scantily-dressed assistants, proceed to go through all the motions that we’ve already seen before. You think it must be joke. Some kind of gimmick or trick that surely will end in a minute or two. But it never does. The company repeats in full the first 23 minutes of the show, word for word, movement for movement, moment for moment. It’s not as polished as the first time through, since props and set pieces were moved the first time around, so nothing’s quite where it’s supposed to be at the start. The assistants are also a bit more clumsy the second time around, seemingly fazed by the hiccup. The magician, though, has no such qualms. He performs the exact same tricks. Shares the exact same tidbits. Invites the exact same applause. Some in the audience acquiesce and clap. Others laugh. Others shuffle uncomfortably in their chairs. This was "raw uncertainty" at its finest.

Choose your own adventure

Eventually, the performers made it through to where they had stopped the first time, proceeded to do another 10 minutes of tricks, the last of which didn’t really seem to work, and then the lights came up. The audience sat silently. A few moments passed. More stifled laughter and uncomfortable shifting. Finally, a stage manager’s voice was heard over a loudspeaker, thanking the audience for attending, and inviting them to leave. Nobody moved. Again, she politely but pointedly informed us that the show was over, and that it was time to go. The stage began to be cleared. There was no room for applause. Everyone just got up and left. Personally, I was confused. And intrigued. And delighted. And I didn’t quite know why. It was only in the hours, days, and weeks that followed that I came to a realization. I had been given a choice. The illusions of both the magic and the theater that I was seeing had been stripped of their magic. It was raw and laid bare for all to acknowledge and witness. We knew what tricks were coming, and we knew words were coming. We’d seen it all before. So, we could choose to continue to stay engaged, stay involved, and commit to the experience, or to back away and remove ourselves from the illusion. I’d never seen anything like it before. I don’t think there was a right choice to make, and from the discussions I heard in the elevator, I know the audience certainly didn’t come to a consensus. But the choice had been left up to me, and up to us. It was delightful. And inspired. But mostly, it was memorable.
Headshot of Sid Solomon
Sid Solomon
Sid Solomon is a Brooklyn-born, Twin Cities-based actor and teaching artist. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater B.F.A. Actor Training Program and New York's High School of Performing Arts. He can be see next in Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors, both co-produced by The Acting Company and the Guthrie Theater.