Archives for September 2008

Caught a trio of shows at the San Francisco Fringe Festival the other night. All of them very different, all of them with their hearts in the right place, and all of them, despite being only an hour or less in length, leaving me feeling like they could have been 15 minutes shorter.

The first was a moving and often compelling musical by Carrie Baum entitled Exit Sign: A Rock Opera. The production deals with Baum’s relationship with her father and how she copes with his untimely death. From a musicianship perspective, Exit Sign is wonderful: Great, punchy rock numbers played by a tight four-piece band led by Baum on lead guitar who all seem very much engaged with the action on stage without being gratuitously involved; soulful singing from the two main cast members — Jamie Ben-Azay as the Baum character and Steffanos X as her father; and simple yet eloquent philosophical messages about the confusing nature of life, love and death. Despite Baum’s interesting mix of fast-paced punk songs and lyrical ballads, the pacing of the production feels a little monotonous and ponderous owing to the slow delivery of lines and general elegiac atmosphere of the work. Also, Baum fails to fully integrate the queer undercurrent into the main story line. Plus, the overall conceit about a father and daughter being prompted by a voice from the television set during a re-run of the movie It’s A Wonderful Life to go on journey together to find the meaning of life seems a bit daft and inconsequential. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout most of the show.

Next up was iScan, a play by local dramatist Peggy Powell and directed by Dan Wilson. Wilson’s musical Sweetie Tanya really impressed me when I saw it at San Francisco’s Dark Room theatre earlier this year. iScan is a very different kind of project. The play looks at what the world would be like if we could all predict our futures. When an impressionable graduating high school student, Edward, has his blood “scanned” by a sinister “gene analysis” company called iScan, he finds out more about his future than he’d like. Anger and fear about his parents’ alcoholism and violence lead Edward down a regrettable path as a result of iScan’s diagnosis. The play poses some fascinating, Minority Report-like questions and a couple of the performances (from Brianne Kostielney as Sarah, a young iScan employee who falls for Edward, and Christine Rodgers’ as Edward’s soused mother) are well-balanced. But the writing isn’t incredibly sophisticated and some of the acting is a little heavy-handed. Wilson’s direction could use more rhythmic variety and flow too.

The final show of the evening, On Second Thought, was a solo show by a Canadian performer by the name of Paul Hutcheson (pictured left — he’s much more handsome than this in real life.) Hutcheson is a lovely performer with an expressive face and lithe physicality. He’s a terrific storyteller too. But the David Sedarisesque vignettes about dealing with his brother and teaching school kids seem a bit stale, like the performer’s been doing them for too long (he’s performed this show to acclaim at a bunch of different fringe festivals from Orlando to Winnipeg) and the gay themes star to feel repetitive after a while too (especially if, like me, you’re subjected to dozens of solo shows about gayness every year.)

All in all, though, it wasn’t a bad night at the fringe. I really enjoyed the conversations and snacks I had in the Exit Theatre Cafe in between the shows too. Lots of people, delicious cheese, fruit and wine. I wish more theatres had cafes as good as the Exit’s.

When I see my name on a press release, it’s usually at the tail-end of a quote that a theatre company has pulled from one of my reviews about its work. I’ll come across lines like “‘Very Good!’ — Chloe Veltman, SF Weekly” and sigh, knowing full well that the phrase pulled from my review is missing the word “not” at the front of it.

Yesterday, however, my name appeared on the publicity materials advertising a company’s new show in an entirely different context: For the first time in my life — at least to my knowledge — a piece of my writing has inspired the creation of a theatrical production.

Here’s what the press release for Sleepwalkers Theatre‘s upcoming production about the elections, March to November, says:

“Inspired by SF Weekly theatre critic Chloe Veltman’s January 9th article “Election Stage Left,” which challenged Bay Area playwrights and theatre companies to create more “political” works, Sleepwalkers answers the call to arms with a classic hero story that assess the relevance of overtly political theatre. With the upcoming election as a backdrop, March to November, by Sleepwalkers co-founder Tore Ingersoll-Thorp, is an examination of one artist’s search to find political responsibility in her work.”

I’m not sure whether to feel flattered or alarmed by this news. I’m happy that people are doing something with my work other than using it to line the cat box. Then again, the article (and its author) may end up being the butt of some elaborate theatrical joke. Which I guess wouldn’t be so bad.

Whatever the intention and the outcome, I’m looking forward to seeing and maybe reviewing the show. As as I said in the concluding line of my essay, if a local theatre company manages to put on a smart and beautiful play about election season that makes me question my generally lazy liberal beliefs, then “I’ll be happier than a Republican congressman handing out buttons at a high-school abstinence drive.”

Playwright Itamar Moses’ new drama, Yellowjackets is unusual: It’s a piece of issues-based educational theatre with a cast of young actors that breaks out of the high school drama or ethics class mould and finds a home on the professional stage.

The issues that the play deals with — racial and class tensions within an American high school, specifically the playwright’s alma mater, Berkeley High — would seem like perfect fodder for a high school drama or ethics class. One can imagine students working with their teachers in the classroom to create in-school productions of the play and use it as a launching pad for the discussion of key issues facing the high school community today.

But within the context of a world premiere commission by Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the play effectively pulls the issues out of the insular, school environment and attempts to make them resonate with the general public.

The quality of Moses’ writing, with its cleverly interweaving themes, plots and characters, the punch and pace of director Tony Taccone’s blocking and the liveliness of the performances manage to a degree turn what might otherwise be an educational exercise into something capable of reaching beyond the confines of the high school drama workshop.

Intellectually, I can see why the play could be powerful within the Berkeley community: It’s a local story; it deals with important issues facing Berkeley residents; it grapples with the problems at stake from all angles and asks more questions than offers tidy answers; it addresses young people directly — because the narrative is about their lives — and indirectly asks them to take ownership of the issues. After all, moving forwards with trying to find practical solutions to racial and social tensions both within American schools and the country at large, is the work of the next generation. Planting the seeds of thought now is key.

And yet, for all that, I personally didn’t connect with the production when I saw it last night. From a purely theatrical perspective, the “de-ghettoization” of what is essentially a piece of educational theatre through taking it out of the classroom and putting it onto a major public stage doesn’t really work for me. Rather than dealing in metaphors and letting us make subtle connections between what’s happening before our eyes and the realities of the world at large, the drama bludgeons us over the head with its political content. Also, if you’re not from Berkeley, have never attended an American high school and feel a bit baffled by this country’s relentless obsession with race, the theme and story-line seem entirely remote. Most of the time during the show, I felt like I was watching a group of aliens describe life on their distant planet. Whereas I wanted to feel as connected to the characters and their concerns as I do when I see, for example, great productions of plays by the likes of August Wilson or Athol Fugard.

Still, commissioning and staging Moses’ drama is a bold move on Berkeley Rep’s part. If nothing else, it’s an intriguing experiment and a laudable piece of community service.

When most people think of China’s Ming Dynasty, priceless vases come to mind. There are certainly plenty of gorgeous ceramics on display at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum right now. But it wasn’t the display cases full of beautifully preserved, very old china that caught my eye when I visited the museum’s Power & Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty exhibition last week. I was most knocked out by a couple of hanging scrolls.

What I loved most about these two works of art is the relationship between the image and the story behind each one. The first image, “Boating on a Snowy Night,” was created by court artist Zhong Qinli (active 1465 -1505) using ink on silk and comes to San Francisco from the Palace Museum in Beijing. Upon first glance to an eye untutored in Chinese art and fable like my own, the image depicted on the silk, though delicately crafted and full of lovely textures, doesn’t give much away. We simply see a boat making its way up a river. But the picture suddenly communicates a rich and wonderful inner life when viewed again after reading the back story in the exhibition catalogue.

Zhong took a 4th century story as his source for the scroll. The scroll depicts the thinker Wang Huizhi (died 386) traveling up river to visit his mentor, the renowned scholar-artist Dai Kui (died 395).

As the story goes, Wang, suddenly struck by a desire to venture into the inclement winter weather to see Dai, boated along the river to his mentor’s house. But just before reaching his destination, Wang decided to return home. Why? Because the impulse that had sparked the visit had passed.

What a strange and wonderful story not to mention subject for a painting. When viewed with the narrative in mind, Wang’s journey takes on a new meaning. The air looks chilly, the traveler frigid, and the boat tiny in comparison to the rocks and trees and water around it. Nature seems to engulf Wang’s winningly random act. “Wang’s subsequent saying,’going impromptu and returning at heart’s content’ is regarded as a romantic metaphor of high virtue,” the catalogue tells us. “His boating on a snowy night has remained a popular subject in art for over a thousand years.”

The second scroll that resonated particularly strongly with me depicts “A Monk Enjoying a Moon Painting.” The ink on silk scroll was created by the Ming period artist Wu Wei (1459 -1508) and also comes to the exhibition from the Palace Museum in Beijing.

What I love best about this painting is the monk’s carefree, almost lunatic expression. He seems so happy in his world. And there’s something so surreal about him bumbling about in the hills looking at a picture of the moon on paper rather than up at the real thing in the sky. Rene Magritte would have loved this picture I think.

The catalogue includes a vivid description of the artist which I’d like to include by way of conclusion as the image in the scroll kind of conveys something of the spirit of the man who created it:

“The image certainly reflects [Wu’s] itinerant lifestyle. Traveling from one town to another in pursuit of freedom, wine, and entertainment, Wu chose to base himself in Nanjing most of the time. He was honored by two emperors with prestigious titles, including “Number One Painter,” and was twice appointed to paint for the imperial court. Nevertheless, the position could not keep him in Beijing nor subdue his dissolute temperament, which he indulged by drinking with geishas. When drunk, his vigorous brushstrokes and bold splashes were far removed from the highly controlled techniques of many of his associates. Just as Wu himself dep arted from the main current, so did his art, which according to his contemporaries, expressed “insolence” or a “fighting spirit like the soldiers.” ”

Over the past couple of days in Los Angeles, I was reminded once again of just how completely different the business of telling stories on stage is to attempting the same on screen.

LA Opera gave two first-time opera directors — Woody Allen and David Cronenberg — the chance to apply their seasoned filmmaking skills to a pair of opera productions, both of which opened over the weekend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles. Allen mostly got away unscathed with his staging of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, but Cronenberg’s adaptation of his 1986 horror flick, The Fly, made me wonder if the director had ever been to see a stage production in his life before.

Allen’s staging of the most well-known of the three one-act operas that make up Puccini’s Il Tritticoin some ways resembles a typical Allen movie. The noisy Italian family at the heart of Puccini’s farce could be one of Allen’s Jewish clans. The characters might have stepped out of Radio Days or Manhattan. In familiar territory, Allen seems to understand the people in Puccini’s story and creates boisterous, visually and physically dense scenes in which there is so much action that one feels like one is watching a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life. Despite the humor of the production, there are a couple of aspects of Allen’s opera debut that bother me. The first is to do with the fact that the director plays safe — he basically plunks a scenario from one of his vintage films on stage. The second is to do with his weird approach to curtain calls. This sounds insignificant, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth as I left the opera house. Seemingly — and somewhat pointlessly — attempting to subvert traditions, Allen had each member of his sizable cast bow individually not once, not twice, but three times. By the time the performers were taking their third set of bows, the audience had gotten fed up with clapping and was starting to wonder what was going on. Meanwhile, the great man himself never bothered showing up on stage. I felt sorry for the singers having to go through this bizarre routine. Instead of leaving the stage on a wave of applause (as was the case for the first two acts of Il Trittico directed by William Friedkin) they left under a cloud of disgruntlement and confusion. Not a great way to end an otherwise pretty great night out at the opera. What was Allen trying to prove?

Cronenberg showed a similar lack of understanding of theatrical mores with his production of The Fly. I have to admit that I feel a bit sorry for the movie director, whose work on screen I have long admired. Cronenberg is rather out of his element on stage. He fails to find elegant solutions to problems like how to get people and furniture on and off in between scenes. The piece lacks strong visual and dramatic metaphors. The storytelling system is so literal, from scientist Seth Brundle’s latex fright suits to journalist Veronica Quaife’s refusal to smoke because she’s pregnant to the copious amounts of bad simulated sex, that it’s hard to take the piece seriously at any level. Audience members kept giggling during the opening matinee at parts that weren’t — as far as I could tell — meant to be funny. The literal approach works fine on screen, but it doesn’t fly on stage. Cronenberg at least has the benefit of working with terrific actors — Canadian baritone Daniel Okulitch is particularly striking and conflicted as world-changing scientist/mad genius Brundle. The Fly‘s problems are not all Cronenberg’s fault: Howard Shore’s music is terribly weak — I don’t think I’ve heard a more monotonous and forgettable operatic score in years. And David Henry Hwang’s repetitive libretto, with its constant doomsday refrain of “all hail the new flesh!” is more embarrassing than revealing of some important message about the nature of scientific discovery.

Ultimately, the prize for best director over the weekend shouldn’t go to either novice. It must go to Friedkin, a veteran filmmaker (The Exorcist, The French Connection) whose opera career extends back a decade to a Florentine production of Wozzeck. I was particularly won over by Friedkin’s take on the second part of Il Trittico, Suor Angelica. Having never experienced the opera live on stage, I had no idea that Puccini’s convent-based tear-jerker about a bunch of nuns could be so overwhelmingly moving. Thanks to soprano Sondra Radvanovsky’s stomach-convulsing turn in the title role and Friedkin’s sensitive use of light, bold approach to iconography and meditative, almost sculptural blocking framework, this kitschy one-act stole my heart on a balmy Los Angeles Saturday night.

Yesterday evening at the San Francisco Fringe, I saw two theatre productions on a boy-meets-girl theme. But despite the similarity of the shows’ subject matter, I’ve rarely had two more extreme experiences in a single evening’s theatre-going to date.

The first show, Moon Fable, was a sweet and ardently sincere homage to young love produced by a company called SideCar Theatre. The second, Peg-Ass-Us, created by the New York company Pack of Others, was a graphic, no-holes-barred panegyric to heterosexual anal sex.

Moon Fable tells the story of a harried young office worker whose girlfriend disappears to Paris, leaving him in a dead-end job. In the youth’s dreams, however, the moon and her consort of nutty sidekicks help him understand the importance of love. The production evolves in a surreal, dream-like fashion and includes some lovely visual moments such as when the young man’s briefcase stuffed with papers opens in a dream to reveal a model of a tiny paper figure standing on top of a ladder trying to reach the moon. At the same time, the man himself is standing on top of a real-life ladder doing the same. If the show had been more expertly acted, its overall effect may well have been more tantalizing. But even though the production plodded along, it had its heart in the right place.

Peg-Ass-Us, on the other hand, told a completely different kind of romantic tale. The show, fittingly performed at San Francisco’s Center for Sex and Culture, was part burlesque, part personal memoir and part how-to guide. The how-to was related to a sexual practice known as “pegging” which basically involves a man, a woman, a strap-on dildo and oodles of lubricant. I’ll leave the rest to your imaginations. John Leo and Sophie Nimmannit make a winning couple. He’s all reserved and highly strung; she’s brash and aggressively sexual. There are some game little songs in the piece, including a clever ode to the mythical beast after which the show takes its name. But the central conceit about two people discovering the joys of anal sex gets a little boring after a while. By the time Nimmannit and Leo whip off their clothes, get out their sex toys and set about providing us with a live demonstration of pegging (from which we are thankfully actually spared at the 11th hour) we’ve pretty much had enough. Talk about flogging a dead unicorn.

In any event, it was amazing to see quite how different two interpretations of basically the same experience — falling in love — can be. And if it weren’t for the Fringe, coming across this kind of theatre-going mix would be unlikely. 

I stopped taking Woody Allen seriously as a film director around 1995. After Mighty Aphrodite, Allen’s films seemed to taper off, becoming mawkish parodies of themselves.

So it was against my better judgment that I found myself sitting in my local movie theater the other evening watching the director’s latest film, Vicky Christina Barcelona. I decided to see VCB on the basis of several personal recommendations and a handful of positive reviews. I’m really glad I went.

Romantic relationships have been a central theme in Allen’s work throughout the decades, but while previous films like Annie Hall and Hannah and her Sisters painted love affairs in broad strokes, Allen flecks his canvas in VCB with subtle, shifting notes.

Not only does he mine the nature of human passions in an unflinching yet human way, but he also achieves this with humor and grace. I found myself as intoxicated by the Spanish landscapes as I was by all the performances.

Riding high on the success of VCB, the question now is, how will Allen’s operatic career kick-off? This weekend I’m heading to Los Angeles to experience, among other things, Allen’s first ever stab as a director of opera. He’s staging Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi” from Il Trittico for LA Opera. The opening night is this Saturday. Watch this space for the verdict next week. Let’s hope that the director manages to tell a love story as well on stage as he’s managed to this time around on screen.

The San Francisco Fringe festival starts today. Every year, when it comes to Fringe time here in this city, I spend hours trying to figure out what shows to see. I never had this problem in Edinburgh: The Scotsman would simply give me a list of shows to review which pretty much kept me busy from 9am till 2am every day for a month. If I managed to find an hour to go and see a production which wasn’t on my roster, I was lucky.

The San Francisco Fringe isn’t nearly as big as its Edinburgh equivalent, but here, I’m my own boss: I can see whatever I want. This is both a blessing and a curse. How to choose from the myriad offerings? What selection criteria to adopt?

One approach, which I would probably favor if I had all the time in the world to potter around from show to show for the entire two-week span of the festival, would be to leave things to chance. I could draw show titles out of a hat or shut my eyes, turn to a random page in the festival brochure and pick productions according to where my index finger lands on the page. Another method, though a boring one, would be to wait until the last few days of the festival and only go and see those shows that have been earning raves from audiences and critics.

But what if you’re faced with having to go at the start of the festival and only have the chance to see a few productions on one or two days? It’s impossible to come up with a set of fool-proof criteria for figuring out which productions to choose from the slew of offerings. But, for what it’s worth, here are a few notions that pass through my head when I’m trying to work out what to see:

1. The Fringe is packed with solo shows. It’s harder to bring a show with a cast to a fringe festival, so I’m interested in seeing ensemble productions.
2. There are many interesting site-specific productions in this year’s festival. I like seeing productions that take place in non-traditional venues, as this seems very much in keeping with the ad hoc spirit of the Fringe.
3. I admire companies that trek over here from faraway places to participate in the festival. It’s fun to check out theatre from other cities in the US and abroad.
4. If a local company whose work I admire or hear is great but haven’t gotten around to experiencing yet has a show on, I’ll try to get there.
5. In terms of content, I’m generally less attracted to self-revelatory auto-biographical solo shows about a writer-performer’s struggle to recognize his homosexuality with his religious faith than I am to, say, a kamikaze take on a classic or a physical-theatre piece about dog racing that blends original storytelling with clog dancing. It is the fringe after all, and I’m on a hunt for the deranged and different.

The high ratings of television shows in the UK and US like Last Choir Standing (BBC) and Clash of the Choirs (NBC) together with a slew of articles in recent times about everything from how the French are embracing choral singing to how “choirs are becoming cool” has inspired me think about what it is that turns me on about singing in a chorus. Here’s my initial, off-the-cuff list of reasons, not in any particular order:

The feeling of being part of a team
Creating beautiful music
The physical benefits e.g. improves breathing and posture
Clears my head; helps me connect my head with my body
Keeps me focused on the “now” rather than cogitating over the past or future
Social aspect e.g. meeting new people; going for a drink after rehearsal
Sharing great music with an audience
Pre-concert adrenalin rush
The challenge of learning tricky music
The sensation of hearing really unusual melodies and harmonies
The pleasure of performing in unusual spaces or spaces with lovely acoustics
The theatricality of dressing up for concerts
The idea of lots of different voices and personalities all coming together and creating harmony
Developing musical expertise
The sense of feeling both connected to myself and people around me.

I’m sure there are are more reasons I could come up with if I put my mind to it. If you have anything to add to the list, feel free to get in touch.

Finally, here are a few reasons that music critic Norman Lebrecht states in the piece he wrote in 2005 (see “embracing” link above) about why people love choral singing: “Choral singing is one of the last frontiers of human freedom,” writes Lebrecht. “It is pretty much the only art you can perform without someone taxing, regulating or funding it, and it is certainly the only music that delivers an instant uplift to all participants.”

It’s fascinating to see how an artist’s involvement in a project can mutate over its development process.

While working on an article for the Los Angeles Times about San Francisco Opera’s upcoming world premiere of The Bonesetter’s Daughter, I’ve been curious to discover how Amy Tan’s role vis-a-vis the creation of the new opera has evolved over time.

When composer Stewart Wallace (Harvey Milk) approached Tan, whom he’d been friends with since meeting the novelist at the Yaddo artists’ colony in 1994, about adapting her 2001 novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter into an opera, the novelist at first declined. Then she changed her mind when she realized she wouldn’t have to recreate the novel on stage but could fashion something different based on the source material. (At least, that’s the story that Tan and her cohorts involved in the project give out. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the main reasons the novelist decided to allow her book to be turned into an opera was because a Hollywood film deal fell through.)

Then, when Wallace’s regular librettist became unavailable to work on the project with the composer owing to schedule conflicts (though again, who knows what really went on there) Tan took over the libretto-writing — her first — with Wallace.

Ultimately, however, Tan’s involvement with the opera has gone way beyond writing the libretto. The novelist is playing an active role in the rehearsal process. She’s coaching some of the singers to help them connect with the autobiographical elements of her narrative about three generations of Chinese women. She’s even going as far as to tell one performer — Zheng Cao, who plays Ruth, the main, quasi-Tan character in the story — how to dress and wear her hair. “When Amy’s around, I always have to dress up,” Zheng told me last week when I visited the opera house to conduct interviews and watch rehearsals. She’d just been to the salon and had her hair straightened, also upon Tan’s advice. “When she’s not around, I can wear jeans.”

The Bonesetter’s Daughter has its premiere on September 13. My piece about the opera appears in the LA Times next weekend on September 7.