{"id":405,"date":"2005-03-04T21:32:33","date_gmt":"2005-03-05T02:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/?page_id=405"},"modified":"2012-10-05T23:43:47","modified_gmt":"2012-10-06T03:43:47","slug":"prisonms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/archives\/405","title":{"rendered":"Performance Review: PRISONMS"},"content":{"rendered":"

PRISONMS: A Performance in Review<\/strong>
\nMarch 04, 2005<\/em><\/p>\n

Ostensibly, the main reason to live in downtown Toronto is for its cultural richness. This was certainly the main reason why I jumped at the chance to go see live performance art at the Du Maurier Centre with three of my good friends. Also, I got the ticket for free. <\/p>\n

I must concede that I would never be able to find a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccultural event\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 of this sort in, say, rural Manitoba (unless I laced the local ground water with huge doses of LSD). Yet I can provide comfort to thee, O thou teeming millions who make thy home in the cultural wasteland of the suburbs, or the bleak countryside, or those of you who live right here in the T-Dot but didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t manage to get comp tickets to this event, by giving \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPrisonMS\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 an unmitigated two thumbs down. Allow me to cleanse you of your cultural envy by recounting the event with the white-hot fury of my disdain.<\/p>\n

First, a quote from the Director\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Notes in the program booklet:<\/p>\n

The title PRISONMS is a combination of the words PRISON and PRISM. I created this word in an effort to evoke a feeling of isolation, however suggesting the development of other possibilities. A prism, like some crystals, although physically hard and confined, breaks up light into the colours of the rainbow sending it off in various new directions.<\/em><\/p>\n

For those of you stricken with terror at the thought of reading a review of a show that can already be seen to harbor disturbingly pretentious aspirations \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even a review as mercilessly scathing as this one is going to be \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I shall provide a boiled-down mini-review in seven words, cunningly hyphenated to look like an even more cursory five:<\/p>\n

High-school coffee-house gone horribly wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n

I give only one caveat before I pass sentence on this artistic debacle, and it is that no performers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 reputations will be harmed in the making of this review. I witnessed nothing but technical proficiency and personal excellence from the dancer, singer, and instrumentalists involved in the bold venture that was \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPrisonMS\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. Even when the beautiful ballerino Mr. Boorne seemed to be channeling the restless spirit of an unsuccessful auditionee for that 70s TV show, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcFame.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Even when the soulful singer, Ms. Baird, uttered gutteral grunts, squeals and clicks in a brave try at phonetically rendering the not-so-poetic phrases \u00e2\u20ac\u0153@%3*c17#+%@\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153%$%c&xyzz\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (quoted directly from the libretto for \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcNew People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 by Michael Colgrass). Even when the clarinetists wailed air into their reeds, recreating the sound of a small child learning to play the recorder in an abbatoir. Even then, the artists themselves were not to blame.<\/p>\n

I have every confidence that the artists were doing exactly what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re supposed to do: take direction from their respective choreographers, composers, directors, etc. So it is those people, the planners and creators, diabolical conspirators all! upon whose shoulders I place the blame. And with it, my white-hot furious disdain. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking to you, Valerie Kuinka, Artistic and Stage Director. You promised me your show would move me \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to a place of peace, beauty and hope\u00e2\u20ac\u009d through \u00e2\u20ac\u0153music combined with dance, computer-generated imagery and the spoken word\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. You totally lied.<\/p>\n

“The amazing digital environment” we were so tantalizingly promised in the program turned out to be an 8×10 projection screen that occasionally sported images that appear to have been manufactured in Microsoft Power Point. The flying toaster screen saver involved the same level of technological innovation that it took to generate this video. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even an evolving program; just a two-second heavily pixelated video clip of a New York street scene, repeated on a loop and stretched onto the sides of geometric shapes that danced around the screen in a spastic fashion. Later, there was an extremely familiar looking bunch of geometric shapes (one might even say, the same) except now they were wearing a new, purple-toned circuit-board skin. One of my kindest thoughts during the evening was that perhaps the projectionist had experienced an extreme nic-fit and popped \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTron\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 into the camcorder before going outside for a nice, long smoke. <\/p>\n

When we first entered the theater, there was what I will term an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcamuse-yeux\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 on this screen, to whet our visual appetite for the show to come. Like a movie trailer, only in no way captivating. My descriptive powers wane before this apparition, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll use the words conveniently provided for me by the video \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcartist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 herself, Karin Ocker. In what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d gauge to be 80-point Arial, she had a series of illuminating yet cryptic phrases superimposed over a shifting sand background that might have been ripped from a beta-test of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMario Dune Buggy Racing.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 <\/p>\n

Here are some of her phrases: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6a journey that is flat\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and goes nowhere\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 through the imaginery [sic]\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m afraid I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t contain myself at this point. I turned to my friend and fellow English major, Alyssa, and whispered \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The word \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcimaginery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is a combination of the word imaginary and the letter \u00e2\u20ac\u02dce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. I created this word by placing an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 where no \u00e2\u20ac\u02dce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 had previously existed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We laughed more than perhaps we should at a simple spelling error, but in retrospect that cruel laughter was the most enriching thing the show gave me, so whatever. I take entertainment where I find it.<\/p>\n

The other, taller screen on stage right doubled as a shield to conceal the piano trio and as a projection field for symbols that were supposed to resonate with the music and dance performances on the stage below. These \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcresonant symbols\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 amounted to three shitty black and white graphics that looked like they had been photocopied from a grade ten science textbook. The image they threw on up in there during the sixth piece, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Technical Deposition of the Virus Power,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was a picture of a large molecule called a buckyball, aka C60, the third major form of pure carbon. Now, I may be blind, but I know when someone hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t done their science homework. Carbon is not a virus. My message to you, Mr. or Ms. Visual Graphics Coordinator? Learn! Achieve!<\/p>\n

I find myself without the energy or the heart to relate in detail the myriad smaller, nibbling disturbances of the program. Like the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTommy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 moment where all the actors are temporarily and without explanation engrossed in a game of pinball. Or the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfreaky children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sketch where little girls play ring around the rosy behind a shadow screen while high-pitched, distorted children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s laughter is piped onto the stage. Or the mere uttering of the lyrics, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Baby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyes are chocolate \/ That melt when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m bad \/ Baby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mouth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a plum \/ That sings when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sad\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll remember baby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s laughter \/ In prison till I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m dead \/ And after\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Baby oughta be singin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 for me, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccause I may remember those words till I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m dead and after, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sad. I can only assume that at this point, baby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eyes are liquid fondue, as this was some of Mr. Colgrass\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s better poetry from the show. <\/p>\n

The evening roster was divided neatly in two on the paper, printed on facing pages. This posed the clear inference of a break in the performance, mimicking the break in pagination. As my friends and I observed the artists bulldozing onwards into what appeared to be the second act of material, an icy chill settled over our hearts \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there was to be no intermission. Later, it seemed obvious that from a directorial standpoint there was much merit in \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcimprisoning\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the audience, to lend credence to the theme of the show. In the heat of the moment, however, only one explanation for such cruelty sprang to mind. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcFuckers! They know if we see daylight, no way in hell we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re ever coming back!\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

After all this venomous railing against the injustice of two precious hours of my life being stolen from me, never to be returned, I will leave you with a parting thought: Considering how clich\u00c3\u00a9d and stereotypical all of this interpretive dance and screeching, off-tempo music and black-turtleneck-beatnik-poetry-recital seemed to us, has performance art developed its own set of rules and expectations? Has it become a legitimate and defined genre? Is there a canon to be referenced and adhered to and possibly, undermined? And if so, did my friends and I miss the point entirely of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153PrisonMS\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as a masterfully ironic mockery of itself, a perfect post-post-modern performance, a subversion of the dominant paradigm? <\/p>\n

Who knows. Regardless, I thought it sucked ass. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PRISONMS: A Performance in Review March 04, 2005 Ostensibly, the main reason to live in downtown Toronto is for its cultural richness. This was certainly the main reason why I jumped at the chance to go see live performance art at the Du Maurier Centre with three of my good friends. Also, I got the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consciousness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2851,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions\/2851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}