This film…

…and this performance…

…have something in common. Check the comments for the answer!

What do all of the items in this picture have to do with Jan Fabre’s Orgy of Tolerance?

Well, we can’t tell you yet. You’ll just have to come find out on May 14 – 17 what Fabre and company are up to. Lane promises that all items are applied quite creatively.

More information and tickets available here.

Portland’s tEEth is coming to OtB in less than 2 weeks. The up-and-coming company shocked and delighted audiences at the 2007 NW New Works Festival and we’re thrilled to be bringing them back.

You can learn all about tEEth on their website. It includes reviews of Grub’s work-in-progress showings, samples of their original music , video and oh so much more. Check them out and then order your tickets via OtB’s site.

The first five minutes of Five Days in March reminded me of the first five days or so of the one-plus quarters of Japanese I took in undergrad. Which is to say, I felt completely disoriented and out of my element. I was trying to simultaneously read the supertitles and watch the story being told in the quiet physicality that was unfolding on stage, at every moment convinced that one was making me miss out on the other. Gradually I relaxed, and much like my college experience I found that when I stopped trying to “listen actively” and just listened and trusted my own senses, the pieces started to fall into place. As I surrendered to the flow of the performance, certain patterns and facts began to emerge and resonate: ‘no’ means ‘of’;  perception is a tricky thing; our war has affected the whole world; ‘gakusei desuka?’ is how you ask somebody if she’s a student; we are all ultimately trapped within our own bodies, limited by our own vocabularies, and this is an occasionally awkward fact of life. I thought about mercurial friendships I’ve had. I thought about first dates I’ve been on. I thought about whether the pronunciation of chelfitsch would rhyme with “selfish”, with “shellfish”, or neither. I thought about where I was on March 20, 2003. I thought about the enjoyment of bad movies for badness’ sake. I thought about concerts I’ve been to. I thought about Canada. O, Canada!

During intermission I listened to some college kids awkwardly trying to flirt with one another, which seemed oddly appropriate. Somehow it underscored the abortive romantic encounter of the first act, which may have been my favorite part of the entire show. I loved the straightforwardness of the whole thing, and the way that it used light in simple geometric shapes to suggest an abstract geography in the bare space.

Mostly though, what I walked away from this evening with was an idea: that, while the larger facts of history are being painted in broad strokes and bold colors every day and at any given moment, and while each of us exists internally in his or her own expansive emotional universe, the vast majorities of our daily lives are consumed by and expressed in little pencil scribbles, oftentimes tracking right over yesterday’s carefully erased scrawls. During my five days in March I remember watching live coverage on CNN as the world waited to see when the bombs would start dropping, and I remember feeling deep moral uncertainty once they did. But it’s entirely likely that I was more worried about getting my Japanese homework done at the time.

-Matthew Echert

On a bare stage, the actors speak and move with the utmost casualness. I thought I was going to see a play, or a dance-theater work, instead 7 actors forgot they were in a theater and simply told me about some events in their lives that happened to coincide with the start of the war.

Except: the story was completely deconstructed. We kept jumping slightly forward, slightly backward in the timeline of events. Just as you think you’ve figured out each character’s role in the events, they seem to shift; maybe it was him in the hotel, not that other guy. I initially couldn’t help but be completely engaged in the story. I felt a driving need to figure it all out.

And then there was the movement. At first you don’t even notice the choreography. The man on stage is simply talking, gesturing as any of us would. But there’s something off kilter, it’s not the right gesture. It’s not even quite a gesture. An almost-gesture. Repeated. Over and over and over. And then another. This is a group of people with a very strange sense of equilibrium.

In the end, the story was of little import to me. It was the movement that made each character compelling, occasionally off-putting, and always endearingly eccentric.

-Keely Isaak Meehan

I pretty much always go see OTB shows with my sweetheart, who I’ll call A.  After shows, A and I generally have a pretty vibrant conversation about our first thoughts.  I thought I’d try to capture at least part of that conversation for this post.

Me:  I really would have liked that show when I was 20.
A: Why is that?
Me:  I don’t know… It’s just what I was into then.
A:  Yes that makes sense.  You like putting every day in art whereas I like putting the art in every day.
Me:  That’s not quite what I meant.  I was really into the disassociation between a person and what they are saying and what they do, especially on stage.
A:  Hhmn…
Me:  Though I did have a really, really hard time paying attention to everything.
A:  I really liked the supertitles and hearing it all in Japanese.
Me:  I could not pay attention to the inflection in the language, the supertitles and the movement. 
A:  The movement wasn’t worth watching.  It didn’t add anything.
Me:  The movement was a big part of it for me, but it was pretty unrealistic.  People just don’t move like that. 
A:  But people are always moving and twitching.  I twitched through the whole show.  Everyone moves all the time — even I scratch my butt, but not when everyone’s looking.
Me:  Even though the movement was unrealistic, I was still really frustrated that I couldn’t pay attention to everything.  I would have almost liked it just as much if I had read it as a short story.

A few minutes pass in silence.

A:  It could have been five days anywhere. 
Me:  Yes it could have been.  I’m not saying that the story was unrealistic – it’s just that I didn’t’ identify with the characters, how they were moving or how the story was told.  The lack of through line of characters and story and the stylized movement just made it all seem so fake to me. 

Obviously, I did not love the experience of watching the show; I felt disengaged from the performers and their story, largely because of the stylized movements.   Even with that feeling, there is something grabbing me from the show.  There’s something compelling that I can’t quite name.  It will likely haunt my dreams and it won’t be until tomorrow that I actually appreciate the time I spent watching chelfitsch.

-Anonymous

chelfitsch is now in Seattle and settling into our Studio Theater. Before they got here, though, they made 2 other stops at the Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis) and the PuSh Festival (Vancouver BC). Here’s a quick selection of some of the writing that’s come from those venues:

The interpersonal military complex - Star Tribune

PuSh PreView: Toshiki Okada - The Bulletin

After OtB, chelfitsch will continue on to the Wexner (Columbus), Japan Society (NYC), MCA Chicago and Touhill (St Louis).

The Saturday night performance of chelfitsch’s Five Days in March is currently sold out, so what should you be doing if you didn’t score tickets for that night?

SEE LISTEN TASTE FEEL

Our friends at Henry Art Gallery are throwing an amazing party. Tickets are $100 and include a lot of goodies:
-site specific soundscapes by Zeke Keeble
-live music from Orkestar Zirkonium
-rare soul and Motown-favorites spun by Emerald City Soul
-cocktails
-dessert

And did I mention Jeppe Hein?

The Henry’s blog has the lowdown on all of these things. To purchase your ticket (which also includes a $75 donation to the Henry – awesome, right?) head over to brownpapertickets.com.

ArtZone and ArtZine (both part of Seattle Channel) said some kind words about chelfitsch in their most recent episode/issue.  Watch the episode (which includes a few 12 Minutes Max alumni!) or read about the performance. 

In the past 2 weeks there have been 2 videos that I haven’t been able to stop watching (to the chagrin of my office mates, I’m sure). One is by Portland’s daring and dark company tEEth and the other by the Belgian performance titan, Jan Fabre.

tEEth’s video is a promo for their last piece Normal and Happy, which actually came to OtB during the 2007 NW New Works Festival. Its eerily beautiful and contains teasers of their idiosyncratic dance, tripped out video and original music.

The other video is a preview from Jan Fabre made from behind-the-scenes footage of Orgy of Tolerance workhops. Receiving this snippet of footage has officially kicked off the countdown to Fabre’s arrival in Seattle.

More information on tEEth and Jan Fabre can be found on their performance pages.