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It may be just my present place in this thing called life, but one passage from the program notes of The INdifference Project's "Bad Bugs Bite" jumped out and nipped me as I staked out my space on the unforgiving bleachers at La MaMa's Annex Theater in the East Village: "We do not suspect all we are capable of; we come into being and pass away without ever recognizing all we could have been and done." Hear, hear. The passage, from Serbian Nobel Prize winning author Ivo Andric's fable, "Aska and the Wolf", is one of three sources fueling INdifference's hypnotic new performance piece. The others are the "viscerally disruptive" sculptures of American artist Kiki Smith, and three short stories by "Bugs" director Andrea Paciotto. Utilizing a dazzling array of mobile and stationary video cameras, video projectors, motion tracking devices affixed to the performers, and a phalanx of interactive computer tools fused to the driving pulse of composer Jan H. Klug's musical soundscape, "Bugs" seeks to explore the impulses of violence and aggression the human body is capable of. Yet, though spawned by the Balkan conflict, it is the exploration of the essence and purpose of human memory that forms "Bugs'" compelling core, at least at this point in its evolution. Recalling a dreamlike pursuit (projected upon large, opposing scrims) of an elusive figure fleeing through dark tunnels towards beckoning expanses of light both inviting and sinister, a character wonders, "do these memories belong to me? Or am I the memory of someone else?" Later, another character is gunned down before a cold backdrop of anonymous, pounding industrialization. As she lays dying, she recalls the memory of seeing herself standing in the crowd she was shot in, watching. Then, in an extraordinary melding of live performance and video/computer technology, the woman's spirit rises up from her fallen body and sprints towards the heavens across a dazzling urban dreamscape. Director's Paciotto's greatest achievement here is his smoothly masterful integration of the sophisticated technology -- led by filmmaker Zlatko Stojilovic and media programmer Sander Trispel -- with the explosive improvisation of his athletic and tightly disciplined performers, Charlotte Brathwaite, Jelena Jovanovic, and Monika Haasova. The result is a swiftly powerful 50 minutes of exciting, mesmerizing theater. Fresh from its premiere at the Grand Theatre in Groningen, Holland, "Bugs'" American engagement is brief: it plays at La MaMa only through February 9 before returning to Holland for a run in Amsterdam. If
you're in the NYC area and looking for something different, intelligent
and intriguing, by all means let these "Bad Bugs" bite you all over
your five senses. It's the stuff memories are made of. "Bad
Bugs Bite", Copyright © 2003 The Write Word, Inc. All rights reserved. |
