Usher Roundup

The Neo-Futurists' production of Fear closed on Halloween, and with it ended The Fool Machine Collective's adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher. It's strange that this was just two weeks ago. It feel more like two months. Although perhaps that feeling can be explained by the insane amount of things that have been happening lately. Too Much Light gigs, benefit performances, rehearsals, classes, blogs to read, blogs to write, financial calculations, travel plans, the new Doctor Who special. (Although I haven't watched that yet. Feels wrong to watch it alone.) Activity makes life feel longer. And that's nice.

I'm not sure how many times we performed our Usher piece - assuming an average of five tours per night, the number comes out to ninety. Sometimes we did six tours, other times four. The actual number is probably a little under ninety. I don't think I have to tell you that is a lot of performances. The task of performing a piece - even a 12-minute piece - that many times was alleiviated by opportunites for spontaneity and exploration, things I consider to be essential to any worthwhile theatrical endeavor. Interacting with the audience is always a big help as well.

I felt, based on comments from friends, that it went well. Reviews were generally positive. Some were little more than summaries of the different pieces, which was disappointing and in my opinion lazy. But then, I suppose it's difficult to 'review' a haunted house in the same way you would review Tennessee Williams. Here are some choice quotes. First, the good!

"A room based on “The Fall of the House of Usher” features space-age dead people on the floor who ascend and take us by the hand to an impromptu haunted hootenanny." - Dennis Polkow

"Ingenious visual work (including a gallery of Joseph Cornell-esque illuminated boxes) and evocative performances add up to a mournful, creepy, fervently imaginative exploration of Poe's nightmares--and our own." - Kerry Reid

"And the centerpiece, Pierson’s adaptation of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is a wonder. Scary, bizarre and sweet all at once, it enmeshes the audience in Roderick Usher’s gloomy world, somehow reimagined through the prism of MJ’s “Thriller” video." - John Beer

I've heard from friends that they felt Usher was the most fleshed-out piece. Their feelings seem to be echoed by these reviews, and that's good to hear, given that we spent so much time on it. These quotes pour a little bit a fuel into a gas tank that has been nearly emptied by the last seven months.
And now, the problematic:

"The puppet rendering of The Conqueror Worm is by far the most fully realized retelling. The actors are completely invested in all of the stories’ stylized renditions. But sadly, if we are expected to take the production more seriously then it has to seriously have more content. The chaos overshadows the audience’s connection to the stories and the intended impact is diminished." - Venus Zarris

It seems like Zarris was looking for Fear to be a cleaner adaptation of Poe, which is not unfair given the way we marketed the show. I personally don't mind when things are vague and chaotic, at least to a certain extent. I can see how some of the pieces in the show fall outside Zarris' expectation. I would argue that Usher was a fully-realized retelling, but it's not my job to argue with critics.

"The Neo-Futurists are storytellers at heart. Thematic and visual abstractions require a different sort of skill set, and even when the company brings in outside artists for these shows (as they have here), their efforts aren’t quite potent or focused enough to work." - Nina Metz

Metz's review was a bit frustrating. She seems to have set up sandboxes for all of Chicago theater and placed the Neo-Futurists into the 'storyteller' box. I'm not sure what goes in the 'thematic and visual abstractions' box. Redmoon, maybe? My point being that storytelling and abstraction are not mutually exclusive, and they don't necessarily require vastly different skill sets. No, we don't have a lot of money. No, we don't exclusively rely on spectacle on a regular basis. But if you watched Usher and didn't see a story being told, you weren't paying attention.

Finally, the yay-you-got-what-we-were-going-for:

"Through each visit with Poe’s work, visiting the stories of others’ darkness, one cannot help but reflect on their own disappointments, even questioning the true nature of our world today. It gets inside your head like a psychological thriller, as opposed to a shocking horror." - Joseph Erbentraut

"maybe the point isn't really to give you something specific to be afraid of, but a new reference point for all the already scary things. the possibility that you can't stop your mind from snapping one day. the possibility that someone familiar will turn on you. the unpredictability of violence. the chance that we will go to our graves never speaking again, with you thinking i wronged you, or didn't care, and that there is no making amends later, just regret and guilt." - a friend

These quotes get at the heart of what I hoped people would take away from this show. It's not about jump-scares or gore. The truly frightening things in life are the inevitable and unpredictable ones that will most likely happen to all of us at some time or another. I'm glad that came across. Now, on to the next project.

Usher Redux

This is the second time I've played Roderick Usher on stage. The first time was in college. We had a studio theater program that allowed students to write, produce, and direct their own work a few times a year. A friend of mine had chosen to lump a bunch of Poe stories together under the banner of "The Masquerade", and I was given the part of Roderick Usher. The production was ambitious to a fault. We had costumes, complicated lighting, and the Red Death who spoke entirely in sound cues. It was fun to do. We had a waltz. I still have my crushed green vest.

Now it's September of 2009, and again the House of Usher is falling. It started falling, at least for myself and the rest of the Fool Collective, about six months ago. Looking at my calendar now, I can see our first rehearsal was on April 2nd. You might think this is a lot of work to do be doing for a 17-minute show, and you might be right. But it's part of the Fool Collective process to play a long game with whatever project we're tackling. For myself, and for those interested, a brief outline of said process:

• Get together a group of phyiscal performers. For Fear this was a combination of people we'd worked with before, and people we had been in workshops/classes with. We ended up with five boys and two not-boys.
• Start with meetings/chats. We met throughout April just to talk about fear, death, depression, and whatever else seemed appropriate. Much of this is archived on the show blog.
• Generate ideas via text and physical exercise. Most of our early rehearsals fell into two camps: we would be given a writing/thinking assignment and told to either blog it or bring to rehearsal, or we would be given a physical assignment to present to the group. These things influenced each other. Chairs were tossed in the air and landed on their legs. A light bulb was swung by the cord, faster and faster as a body descended into a box.
• Collect the most interesting images and swirl them around in your head until you have an order. We were helped(?) on this step by the addition of the Poe story. Originally we were just doing a show about the fear of death. Having a specific text in which to base our physical abstractions gave us a clear direction to pursue.
• Create sounds and lighting which support the images you've created. The Fool Collective likes to use practical lights, personal lights, multiple speakers systems, and atmospheric soundscapes. We try to transform a theater into a different place entirely. There are no seats in the House of Usher.
• Rehearse it over and over until each moment has a purpose, and there is an overall clarity of focus. This does not mean, necessarily, that things will be clear to the audience. You find that out during previews. Or after.

Things will change during the performance run, of course. The different audiences will cause moments to be shorter or longer, and our cycling cast of narrators will lend their varied specialties to each run. Hopefully we have made something which will at least elicit reactions from the audience. At most, it will communicate something about the cyclical nature of life and death and perhaps reveal some novel elements of The Fall of House of Usher. I'll let you know what I think after performing it upwards of sixty times.