the weekend…part one

BAM harvey theater

How to explain the BAM Harvey Theater.  Well, let’s start with this sentence direct from the event’s playbill distributed upon entry.  “The dun palette, cracked columns, precarious lighting positions, battered brick, serpentine stairs, soaring proscenium (I had to look that word up – the area of a theater surrounding the stage opening and good for you if you knew that…) and peeling paint produce a state of carefully cultivated decrepitude.”   We’ll just shorten that to WABI-SABI.

What was also so cool about this place was how nothing lined up.  Built in 1904 as the Majestic Theater in Brooklyn, the workers built this place from paper blueprints so precise symmetry just doesn’t exist here.  This place is full of architectural misalignment and I just fell in love with it!  Now to return in the future to capture the beauty with more than just my “point and shoot,” as that camera just didn’t do this place justice.

And the reason for the “point and shoot” was because photography was prohibited for the show, Donka: A letter to Chekhov.  How does one explain this show?  The best I can come up with is a touch of circus, a little bit cirque du soleil combined with evocative music and surreal imagery.  Two of my most favorite parts?  The squirting fight in which the actors duel with water-filled enema bulbs and another scene in which the performers simply break heavy balls, plates and ornaments of ice.  One of the reviews summed it up…”Strange and surreal, funny and fun, simply dazzling!”  That certainly says it all!  (Thank you Darial for an outstanding evening!)

Stay tuned for the weekend…part two!