Photography by John Ranard
A most interesting feeling is having a ticket in your hand and not being sure you’ll be let into the play--you want to see the play a helluvalot more. Only someone from the play has to come out and bring you into the play, but he may choose his friends or those who seem to be—forget about the queue for this one—just try to seem like you’re a good person.
The lines on the screen as you enter say, “exploration of dangerous material.” And you hear, “Mortals are rushing to the future in a mad pace and at every corner are making decisions.”
This is Artaudian stuff, new, different, disturbing, real, and not to be confused with realism. NEW SCIENCE declares today’s ideology of realism to be passé. What’s the problem with realism? It’s uninteresting.
The creative team and ensemble that conceived New Science, has worked together in many configurations since the early 1980’s. This company’s work comes out of The Living Theater and is grounded in the ideas of Antonin Artaud. Jessica Slote (Author) says, “creating a “great realistic play” in the mold of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams fails today, because realism doesn’t render reality in a way that is useful to us now, that even captures our attention, because it doesn’t lead us to question our assumptions about reality, and that the tenets that we accept as reality are only old conventions of reality, not reality itself.”
Artaud said, “the masterpieces of the past belong in the past,” and to quote him even further, he says, “Stories about money, worry over money, social careerism, the pangs of love unspoiled by altruism, sexuality sugarcoated with an eroticism that has lost its mystery have nothing to do with the theater.” Makes you laugh, because we know all-too-well that’s our theater.
The lines on the screen as you enter say, “exploration of dangerous material.” And you hear, “Mortals are rushing to the future in a mad pace and at every corner are making decisions.”
This is Artaudian stuff, new, different, disturbing, real, and not to be confused with realism. NEW SCIENCE declares today’s ideology of realism to be passé. What’s the problem with realism? It’s uninteresting.
The creative team and ensemble that conceived New Science, has worked together in many configurations since the early 1980’s. This company’s work comes out of The Living Theater and is grounded in the ideas of Antonin Artaud. Jessica Slote (Author) says, “creating a “great realistic play” in the mold of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams fails today, because realism doesn’t render reality in a way that is useful to us now, that even captures our attention, because it doesn’t lead us to question our assumptions about reality, and that the tenets that we accept as reality are only old conventions of reality, not reality itself.”
Artaud said, “the masterpieces of the past belong in the past,” and to quote him even further, he says, “Stories about money, worry over money, social careerism, the pangs of love unspoiled by altruism, sexuality sugarcoated with an eroticism that has lost its mystery have nothing to do with the theater.” Makes you laugh, because we know all-too-well that’s our theater.
The play New Science is inspired by Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico’s (1668-1744) Nuova Scienza, which proposes a poetic wisdom, that to discover the origin one need only remember the “poetic” or “metaphysical truth,” which corresponds to the immediacy of one’s sense-experience, pure feeling, curiosity, wonder, fear, superstition upon one’s first encounter with that experience.
This play definitely does that. It uses the imagination, to address our hunger for meaning in the combined past/present/future of the human condition. The performance is definitely refreshing and different. I knew it would be, and I ran 20 blocks in the rain to catch it, happy for the visceral experience that included animal hisses, crawling, writing on walls, musicians playing their instruments wherever they like, actors dragging the lights that shine on them wherever they go, and when the wires got tangled in my feet, the performer gave me this look, making sure I knew it was my job to untangle them, not theirs.
Director Martin Reckhaus and artistic director Gary Brackett, do an excellent job transforming the world looking at the world. Brackett sits with a sound system and laptop on his table, visibly running the show, while being part of it. The actors transcend from mortals to spirits or other beings. The wonderful cast includes Claire Lebowitz—Scientist and Baby, Pamela Mayo—Scientist and WoManWo, Sheila Dabney—Scientist and Representative of Mortals, Tom Walker—Scientist and ManWoMan, and Johnson Anthony plays the Divinity. The new music, composed by Patrick Grant, adds to the otherworldliness.
At one point, someone asked, “What does it mean to be human?” The response was, “Walla Walla.” Go figure. Exactly.
This play definitely does that. It uses the imagination, to address our hunger for meaning in the combined past/present/future of the human condition. The performance is definitely refreshing and different. I knew it would be, and I ran 20 blocks in the rain to catch it, happy for the visceral experience that included animal hisses, crawling, writing on walls, musicians playing their instruments wherever they like, actors dragging the lights that shine on them wherever they go, and when the wires got tangled in my feet, the performer gave me this look, making sure I knew it was my job to untangle them, not theirs.
Director Martin Reckhaus and artistic director Gary Brackett, do an excellent job transforming the world looking at the world. Brackett sits with a sound system and laptop on his table, visibly running the show, while being part of it. The actors transcend from mortals to spirits or other beings. The wonderful cast includes Claire Lebowitz—Scientist and Baby, Pamela Mayo—Scientist and WoManWo, Sheila Dabney—Scientist and Representative of Mortals, Tom Walker—Scientist and ManWoMan, and Johnson Anthony plays the Divinity. The new music, composed by Patrick Grant, adds to the otherworldliness.
At one point, someone asked, “What does it mean to be human?” The response was, “Walla Walla.” Go figure. Exactly.
