The Institute of Memory (TIMe) (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

The Institute of Memory (TIMe) continues to haunt my own memory of the performance, which marks a pretty good indication of its success artistically. I went with a friend and we barely discussed details afterwards. We jointly agreed this needed digesting.

Imagine if you will a life. Not as we imagine a life--or as we all too often imagine one. The beginnings, middles and ends (yes I know I used plurals) are there, some of them known. But answers in many ways elude. Questions remains, forming frankly more of this specific life than we like to dwell upon. What after all can we know about anyone, save what is remembered? By individuals or by recordings one way or another. Medical files. Personal letters. These days the every increasing archive in digital format we all create with each keystroke or mouse click.

This review of example.

photo courtesy of the artist

Or this blurb:  A multi-dimensional visual design sets the stage for award-winning director and media artist Lars Jan’s theatrical exploration of the blurring of short and long term memories, and how “remembering” is changing now and into the future. With two performers, high-tech 3D renderings, original music and a collage of found and composed text, TIMe traces the transformation of archives from physical to digital structures, and the corresponding evolution of national and personal remembering and privacy through the story of director Lars Jan’s father — an enigmatic Cold War operative and privacy-obsessed misanthrope.

Appropriately enough, this sounds intriguing without really saying much. Appropriate because this show really does capture and enact its central metaphor--our memories remain fluid, unclear, full of insight yet also little finality. In a way we the audience intrude. In another way our entire society intrudes (although frankly this last seems more a minor contemplation along the them rather than anything like a bullet point or nice clear clue).

photo courtesy of the artist

Ryan Masson and Annie Saunders remain on stage for the length of this production from Early Morning Opera. Along the way they become or pretend to be or give voice to a variety of different characters, many of which remain unidentified. Others seem little more than archetypes or the voice of some official documents, such as the medical staff where Henryk Ryniewicz finally ended his days. Presumably. The gentleman in question's paranoia infected me after a time. Here was a man who named his only son "Lars" because he thought it sounded simultaneously German, Russian, Scandinavian, maybe American. A gift for his (presumably) only child--a name that might help him survive World War III and the purges to come.

Paranoid? Yes. Oh, yes. But not manic. Nor, as it happens, completely unjustified. The man had seen Poland under Nazi rule. He fell under surveillance of Polish Intelligence during the Soviet Era.

He seemed like a difficult man. A sad one. With a real appreciation of little pleasures, like watching his son climb a tree. Or so was the image Masson and Saunders created with the help of multiple designers and technicians bringing to life the real Lars Henrik (note the changed spelling) Jan's writing.

photo courtesy of the artist

In the end I cannot say for certain I understand this piece. Not because it baffled me but due to how deep and complex the subject matter--a single human life, understood and explained as such can only be, via other single human lives with their own agendas. The son. The performer. The audience member. Yet a whole in its own way, one that has made itself part of my life. I am changed. Entranced and frustrated, yes. In almost equal measure. Mind and heart, language and image, Apollo and Dionysus.

The Institute of Memory (TIMe) finishes its run at the REDCAT today at 3pm.  Another run of performances are scheduled for Portland in September, then in Boston in Winter, 2016. Hopefully more dates shall follow. I cannot but hope more people will share this experience.

Half Life (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

I can honestly say going to the REDCAT theatre downtown always proves a treat. Most recently my good fortune included getting to view Half Life, an enthralling performance blending a multitude of effects with performance that left a very real impact.

Amid live electronic music we watch a stage that fundamentally consists of two performers and two screens which use projection to create a series of varying yet somehow connected dreamscapes.  One initially seems urban and technological, focusing almost entirely upon the ma-made made, upon surfaces and (sometimes) attempts at communication with others.  The second gives us a whirlwind of color and nature, from forests to storm-riddled skies, to the soil where roots seem to envelope all to a beach with a rising tide--then deep under the waves.  A friend asked me to describe it in as few words as possible and my answer ended up being "Something like Cirque du Soleil and The Matrix." Which doesn't really capture the show, but gives a hint of what you might legitimately expect.

Dazzling. Compelling. Beautiful. Moving. All these adjectives and more the show earned. The story (in so much as there might be one)  seemed to me about a conflict within a woman--a modern, social, conscious and more-or-less Apollonian side living a distinct life from a side of sensations, bright colors and swirling living creatures from clouds of butterflies to fleets of various fish. They each did a kind of dance (or at least movement) punctuated by singing. All this takes place between two shifting sets of scrim onto which a wonderful moving tapestry of images are projected--with all the sometimes-disturbing beauty inherent in some dreams. It sucks you in.

Having said all that let me address something of a problem. Here is from the official description of the performance:

A highly visual and emotional experience of fierce urgency, the latest multimedia production from Cloud Eye Control is an imagistic, visceral work inspired by the nervous fear felt in the wake of natural or man-made disasters. The starting point for the creation of Half Life was blog entries by women who experienced the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis, inspiring the artists to explore the psychological fallout of global disaster, and how it affects our emotions and imaginations. The Los Angeles-based collaborators— Miwa Matreyek, Anna Oxygen, and Chi-wang Yang —bring their signature mix of projected animation, live performance and music to summon the unseeable forces that govern our collective sense of personal safety and control.

 Honestly, I cannot say this is what I saw. Which hardly qualifies as a damnation, but it does indicate that at least one viewer--one far from straight-laced, fairly intelligent, appreciative of the intuitive and a regular theatre-goer of very many types--simply did not "get' what they say was their intent. Which could be down to me, let us be fair. In terms of that, I felt the ending didn't quite work--when the two women finally meet and warily interact, they decide to go their separate ways. But why? If presented as a mystery intended for the audience to resolve to their own satisfaction--okay. Bravo even! Yet it didn't feel that way. It felt as if the piece wound down without bringing the inherent crisis to a head.

But the show was well done in so very many ways, I'm perfectly willing to admit the fault is in yours truly. Maybe.  Besides, I'm certainly left a bit in awe of the producing entity Cloud Eye Control, hoping very much to see other works of theirs in the future.