by
Douglas Messerli
Ethan
Braun, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer (composer and librettist), Adam Linder (dance and
direction) (loosely based on Bernard Marie-Koltès play In the Solitude of
the Cotton Fields) The Want / the performance I saw, with Tm
Gratkowski, was at Redcat (Roy and Edna Disney/Cal Arts Theater) on September 19,
2019)
The
new work I saw last night at Redcat (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) is associatively
based on Bernard Marie-Koltès' play In the
Solitude of the Cotton Fields about a gay-night encounter between two men during a latenight-cruising, which I saw and reviewed in 2010 at Redcat
[see My Year 2011]. As I wrote then:
Of course, one might
immediately (as do I) wonder why
a normal sexual encounter of two gays on the street should
result in these strange metaphors of Marxist politics,
underlined by Sadeian issues of pain and pleasure. Koltès
clearly saw sex as a battle between forces and lived with a
far greater sense of being an outsider than I, who joyfully
encountered dozens of young men in my youth in just
the manner these two do.
a normal sexual encounter of two gays on the street should
result in these strange metaphors of Marxist politics,
underlined by Sadeian issues of pain and pleasure. Koltès
clearly saw sex as a battle between forces and lived with a
far greater sense of being an outsider than I, who joyfully
encountered dozens of young men in my youth in just
the manner these two do.
But even then, I realized that Marie-Koltès,
a man who died of AIDS in 1989, was not simply talking about the sexual
encounter, but was questioning the issues that surround those encounters concerning
what sexuality is truly about, in particular the issues of the cultural and
sometimes mercantile-like interchange between one individual with the other.
After all, he gave his life to just such interchanges, and many others (not I)
did treat it like a financial-like “deal” between two people.
For me, as a young man in New York and the
Midwest, it was simply an open pleasure, but if you see it from the slightly
Marxist lens from which the original playwright saw it, if often did involve,
as this new production presents it, as a kind of transactional relationship, in
which there was a mutual “offeree” and “offeror.” I guess I was always both and
presumed my partners were equally seeking just such a mutual, if terribly temporary,
relationship.
Fortunately, under Adam Linder’s
wonderful balletic direction, Ethan Braun’s musical creation, and Sarah
Lehrer-Graiwer’s libretto, Marie-Koltès
gay investigation into such sexual transactions, has been deliciously expanded
to include both heterosexual and gay interconnections, combined with wonderful
dance, singing, and engaging quotes from unlikely sources such Jacques Derrida
and Missy Elliott, who, in this production’s mash-up of their words never
sounded better.
The real center of this work are the four
major performers, Jessica Gadani, Justin F. Kennedy, Jasmine Orpilla, and
Roger Sala Reyner, who move utterly fluidly between dance, brilliant operatic
singing, and singspiel that makes you very much care about their numerous sexual
transformations, beginning with the “Boots Are Made For Walking” introduction
in which Gandani and Kennedy come together along with Orpilla and Reyner.
Yet, just as in contemporary culture, the
idea of “You will get a trade-off, the tipping of scale, a shot in dark, that I
am willing to risk,” quickly does become “thicker, obscuring”; as in “Face-Off,”
things alter, eventually their interrelationships gradually shift, the two
woman casually coming together just as the two males subtly make their sexual connections.

Offeree: You want compensation
for empty space between us?
Offeror: Every promise to see infers the promise to by, and there’s
Offeror: Every promise to see infers the promise to by, and there’s
a forfeit to
pay: a pound of flesh, a sum of money.
Offeree. Now you’re accomplishing
your designs for me.
Offeror: If you run, I will
chase; if you take the wrath of
my fist, I’ll be by your side, in your unconscious
and beyond.
my fist, I’ll be by your side, in your unconscious
and beyond.
Offeree: I only fear
unfamiliar rules.
Offeror: Even the one language we might share, that of money,
Offeror: Even the one language we might share, that of money,
whilst representing and guaranteeing that
which
exists, is only a signifier for what does not exist--
for fantasy.
exists, is only a signifier for what does not exist--
for fantasy.
Offeree: Well then what weapon?
Even
Stephen Sondheim in his Follies song “Could I Leave You” could not have
said it better.
Much of the early musical score of Braun’s
work, is based on a sampling of Monterverdi’s Lamento della Ninfa played
with a combination of violins, synths, pianos, saxophones, guitars—blasting
through the sound systems of the small Redcat theater—along with a rather
stunning use of light by Shahryat Nashat—which made many of these scenes quite
breathtaking. This highly international cast, with roots in Los Angeles,
Berlin, Spain, and elsewhere contributed to the feeling that the sexual
transactions which we were experiencing on stage were truly global, something
that our cultures have increasingly ignored in an era of increased nationalism
and narrow-minded exclusiveness.
This opera/dance represented all of us,
heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and just confused. How to create a relationship in
the complex needs of “wanting” is really what this work is all about. The
Want of its title is what every human being seeks, and its exploration of
how to find “it,” in any possible form, is what we all have to deal with in our
too human lives. It represents transactions that we never truly comprehend or can
explain.
Los
Angeles, September 20, 2019
Reprinted
from USTheater, Opera, and Peformance (September 2019).
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