JOYCE WU
Eccentricity
and experimentation still bring success:
DISCOVERING LA
MAMA THROUGH "MEDEA" AND "THE TROJAN WOMEN"
There are very few places in New York where you'll find dreadlocked women
reminiscent of Ani DiFranco mingling next to elderly ladies in tan pumps and
pearl earrings; where brownies are served as an amuse-bouche before experimental
theater. Now in its forty-third season, La MaMa E.T.C. is one such place that
can draw a crowd as eclectic as the multicultural casts assembled by its famed
founder and artistic director, Ellen Stewart.
Before a recent showing of "Medea" and "The Trojan Women,"
a La MaMa employee declared to the audience "Ellen Stewart will come
out to make an announcement." A few minutes later, Stewart herself emerged
ringing a bell. A reverent hush fell over the crowd and dreadlocks and pearl
earrings alike were deferentially attentive. The few who dared continue their
conversations were angrily shushed. There was no need, of course, to introduce
Ms. Stewart. Over the past four decades, she has become an attraction unto
herself-even hosting an international symposium for directors in Italy (for
the price of $2,850), during which, "One special evening is reserved
for Ellen Stewart, founder and artistic director of La MaMa E.T.C. to speak
to the group about her work in the theatre." Indeed, Stewart was clearly
amongst admirers as she announced the evening's program and ended by saying
"Just bear with us. We are a little unusual." Her comment drew the
sort of laughs that could only come from people who knew and expected the
unconventional both from the theater's productions and the legendary woman
who gave birth to them.
Like Ms. Stewart, La MaMa seems to have built a reputation on being a bit
strange. Even the bathroom, where a sign admonishes patrons that the "toilet
is most delicate," seemed to feed into the ripe eccentricity that is
associated with the theater and its founder. Stewart's revival of Andrei Serban's
productions of "Medea" and "The Trojan Women" proved to
be true to form. Certainly, "a little unusual", the two plays offered
interesting and occasionally provocative takes on the classic tragedies with
mixed results.
The audience was slowly led into "Medea" by actors holding candles
and whispering in tones eerily redolent of Gollum from the "Lord of the
Rings" movies-in Ancient Greek no less. While waiting behind a crowd
of people with nothing visible except the actors doubling as ushers, I felt
as though I were about to enter some sort of Ancient Greek haunted house.
After the audience was seated, however, the play began a very static and tepid
hour of "fragments" of Euripides' tragedy of a woman scorned. While
there were some marvelous moments like the stichomythia between "Medea"
and "Jason," which was charged with palpable bitterness, the production
evoked very little. The audience's imagination, which the Greeks were smart
enough to exploit, was underutilized throughout the play. When Medea did the
unspeakable and killed her children, there were no offstage noises to force
the audience into imagining the atrocities and when the children's bodies
reappeared onstage, they were clothed in the same perfectly white, untouched
nightgowns they wore before the horrific act. Without any tangible signs of
the murders (they looked as though they could have been sleeping), our minds
were never forced to witness the unthinkable violence.
If "Medea" was something of an Ancient Greek haunted house, "The
Trojan Women" was like an Ancient Greek "De la Guarda." A welcome
contrast to the inertness of "Medea," "The Trojan Women"
was a dynamo shifting between two lofted stages and the floor, with actors
unapologetically shoving and dancing their way around the bewildered and enthralled
audience members. But most importantly, the brilliance of "The Trojan
Women" was grounded in what was disappointingly absent in "Medea."
The rape of Helen occurs during a particularly orgiastic scene and the audience
members, entangled amongst dancing and singing, were compelled to watch. Playing
on the audience's voyeuristic desires, the production forced the viewers to
see something horrific and fascinating without allowing them to look away.
The actors tantalized the audience with an unsettling combination of highly
stylized revelry and rape, which made Helen's eventual execution even more
horrendous. Right as the executioner swings an ax to Helen's throat, the lights
go out. [Wu]
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