Day: February 22, 2020

Spamtown, USA Has Something to Say About Doing the Right Thing at the Children’s Theatre Company

Photo by David Rubene

It has been well over a decade since I’ve been to a performance at The Children’s Theatre Company and it was nice to be back. Spamtown, USA is a more serious minded show than what I would generally expect from CTC, which is why the production is recommended for ages 9 and up. Spamtown, USA deals with the P-9 strike at Hormel in Austin MN in 1985 to 1986. It deals with this serious historical event in a way that will not bore children but will teach them with humor, just enough information, and the use of characters we come to care about. It expertly shows us the event through the eyes of the young people of Austin MN. How they see the adults and how they see each other through the eyes of their parents situations. I don’t think there is a better way to share this event with young people than what Philip Dawkins’ has accomplished with his play.

He tackles the elephant in the room right away, which is the complex reasons for the strike and the points of view of the two sides. Having the adults substitute what a real adult would say with lines like “long word” “blah blah blah” “adult Words” he tells us this isn’t about the details of the event, they don’t matter. It’s not about who was right or wrong, it’s about the effect it had on the people and particularly the kids. It also places the adults in the audience back into childhood, that is literally what we heard when our parents were talking about their jobs with each other at dinner. If that seems wrong, you have to remember this was set back in the 1980’s before children became the center of families. The world was a different place back then, many things will seem strange when compared to today. You may notice a lack of anxiety attacks despite some pretty rough things happening, that again was normal in the 1980’s. It’s a brilliant technique though that reminds adults, while also acknowledging to kids, that the play understands their angle on things.

The play follows 5 kids and 6 adults as they go through the events of the strike. Amy and Travis are the star crossed high school lovers in the play, his Dad works in the plant and her Dad is Management. When the strike begins they feel the pressures to stop seeing each other and they see each others families through the lens of what they hear their own parents say. Amy has a younger sister Carol who will be someone who can ask clarifying questions to help younger audience members understand some of the details, like what a Scab is during a strike. Travis’ sister Jude is the one through whom we see the cost of the parents being so focused on the strike. She doesn’t have clean clothes or a parent there to root her on in the big tennis tournament. She shows us that in their fight for what they want, the parents forgot they were also parents, not just strikers. The final kid is Jude’s cousin and best friend Scott. He wants to be an astronaut so he can get out of Austin MN. His father becomes a scab so that his family will be able to eat. This causes friction within the two related families, and it’s through this family that we see some of the worst elements of the strike, the intimidation and destruction. By the end there was a genuine tear in my eye for several different threads in this story. It really is an amazing example of a serious play for young people that they can understand, identify with, and also be entertained by. The children learn by watching what has happened, watching their parents and watching their own relationships. They learn hopefully a different way for their futures.

The Director of the play Will Davis has done a wonderful job of keeping the story moving. The set Design by Christopher Heilman aids in this tremendously, with a set which is a serious of transparent houses, they are configured and reconfigured quickly switching the scene from one house to the next to the diner or even the factory. There is a curtain along the back wall of plastic flaps like they have in walk in refrigerators which reminds us that Hormel is the backbone of the town of Austin and the backdrop for the drama of the play. There were some nice lighting effects by Lighting Designer Karin Olson that played well with that plastic flap curtain, used to create the appearance of a large rally or the some tension causing silhouettes. I’ll just say also that the cast was very good.*

Spamtown, USA plays through April 5th at the Children’s Theatre Company for more information and to purchase tickets go to http://childrenstheatre.org/

*In general I do not review the performances of young actors. I feel it is important for young people to take part in the arts. I want them to participate in theatre because they love doing it, not for the feeling they get when someone praises what they have done. On the flip side I don’t think they need to hear criticism of their performances at such a young age. A negative comment can be hard on a mature performer but it goes with the territory, as an adult actor you have to develop a thick skin and accept that not everyone is always going to like what you’ve done. But young artists are not always equipped to deal with that. Be sure that if the acting was terrible it would be reflected in the quality of the production itself, which is what my review will be. As a rule, in a show dominated by young actors I will tend to simply avoid performance discussion in general, including the adults in the cast.

The Golden Ass, Perplexing on the Surface, But Profoundly Confusing Underneath

I have written elsewhere about the fact that I have had very little exposure to opera, something that I am working on changing in 2020. 113 Composers Collective’s new production The Golden Ass is an experimental opera. Experimental opera is like regular opera but without beautiful singing, a discernible narrative, or accessibility. Before you jump to conclusions let me point out that I didn’t say it was bad singing, I said “discernible narrative”, and frankly inaccessible seems to be the goal. When the lights came up after a little over an hour I had no idea what I had seen or heard. I mean, obviously I know what I saw and heard, but I had no idea what any of it meant. If I had left the theater right then and headed home I think I would have gotten no further in understanding what I saw. But I stayed after for a talk back session with some of the creators and artists involved in the production. I can’t say that it brought comprehension to what I saw, but at least I moved past the feeling that there was nothing to understand. That is ultimately the goal for The Golden Ass. The creators talked about seeing it multiple times and coming to new understandings each time. A deeper understanding comes from questioning and probing for what meaning is there, and in this case most of what you find will be what you brought with you.

I’m not going to spend time on the basic story, it’s a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche Myth, click her to familiarize yourself with it courtesy of Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupid_and_Psyche . But this is a retelling for a psychological point of view, it’s also being told out of any narrative sequential order. Of course reading that I tried to impose a narrative onto what we were presented with. But there isn’t one, it’s about the moods and feelings that Psyche has at times. Listening to the composer Tiffany M. Skidmore and director Joey Crane it’s clear that for them the experience is filled with purpose and meaning. The problem is there is no way for someone coming in cold to the performance could interpret anything they saw in the way Skidmore and her Librettist Patrick Gallagher see it. There is basically no comprehensible language sung there is no action other than that of dancers who play a sort of silent greek chorus. They move very very slowly around the room. The music is challenging, it’s unlike what you are used to hearing, it is not melodic, it is discordant. The singing is not singing as we traditionally think of it. Rather than singing words the performers seem to be doing impressions of a theremin. But that is impressive in it’s own way. This type of music must be the absolute hardest for a performer, it’s not like you can learn the lyrics and notes to a song, you would absolutely need to read the music and lyrics as you perform it, there is no chorus, no melody, just sounds.

Along with the singing and movement there is also a visual aspect. there are filmed images that are projected behind and above the performers. They said that provides what little narrative there is, but I don’t see it. Between the dancers who move throughout the theater, sometimes in front of the audience sometimes behind, Conductor Elizabeth McCann also doing movement, and the filmed images projected it’s hard to know where to look. This is another element that leads one to be unsure of the intentions of the the company. Where are we supposed to look? What is important? In traditional theater the job of the behind the scenes and the onstage talent is to draw our attention where they need it to tell their story. Experimental opera seems to be the antithesis of that. They don’t seem concerned with you understanding a story, they don’t seem to be concerned with where you are looking, if so they wouldn’t have things happening all over the room, in front of, to the side, and behind you simultaneously.

I know this sounds very negative, and honestly this is not for everyone. But I’m glad I checked it out. I’m describing things accurately above. I think this is an example of what Hamlet said “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”. I’ve described things that in an ordinary play/musical/opera would be negatives. But this is an experimental opera, and these things are perhaps not the negatives in this form as they would be in others. If you are curious, if you like avant-garde, if you enjoy unusual music, you may find this challenging but enjoyable as well. Did I mention the two Cellist who sit on stage throughout and never play? It’s that kind of thing. The Golden Ass plays through 2/23/20, For more information and purchase tickets go to http://www.113collective.com/