Wait, Wait, Stop The Blog, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Big Dance Theater

By

Timothy Braun

Big Dance Theater’s Comme Toujours Here I Stand is a delightfully fun, witty, and a little naughty story told with simple, almost minimal dance pieces and dialogue, juxtaposed with durations of melancholy meta-theatrical technique that stops the action in mid show. The acting, directing, and choreography is as razor sharp as a piece of theater you will find in this day and age, and these matters are only complimented by a multi-purpose set, video streams, and even Portishead music that…

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• • I feel that in full disclosure I should comment that I actually know some of the kids involved with Big Dance Theater from my now long ago days in the New York Theater scene. I had a lovely chat with co-directors Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson when they were locked out of a Richard Foreman show back in 2003. Oh, and I was hanging out with Mac Wellman in Northern Ireland whilst he was writing Big Dance Theater’s seminal “Girl Gone” in which I took part in a reading that the actor…oh, this is silly and you really don’t want to read about me. Let’s get back to the blog.

With a pin-point attack Comme Toujours Here I Stand is a blend of Yevgeny Vakhtangov’s ideas of Fantastic Realism, and a healthy splash of Anne Bogart’s notions on violence as disruption and duration in a scene or world that is…

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• • • Something else you should know before we move forward. Good slices of the show are in French. You don’t need to understand French to survive the performance, but a little knowledge of the language does help. See Comme Toujours Here I Stand “re-invents” (their term, not mine) Agnes Varda’s 1961 New Wave film, CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 for the stage. It, well…suit le début de soirée dans la vie d’un chanteur pop très légèrement de talent, elle attend d’entendre si elle a un cancer terminal. La Société utilise le script comme un objet trouvé pour créer un portrait intime d’une femme assombrie par la mort, tout pris dans les plaisirs Breezy de la journée: shopping, visiter, se promener…got it?

This is one of the best pieces of theater I have seen is sometime. Longtime BDT performers Tymberly Canale and Kourtney Rutherford exhibit the grace and body control of gazelles. But, Molly Hickok steals the show. Her stage presence is splendid, and has the ability to make the audience fear for one moment, and feel for her the next. As I left the Long Center, I kept asking myself about the meta-theatrics and self-commentary. We see more and more of this on stage, and I clearly enjoy it. I love the killing of the fourth wall, the acknowledgement of the audience the break of character to create a new fold to the story, to the experience. For me, this is today’s major device that theater owns over television and film. This is why Comme Toujours Here I Stand is a unique experience to its source material. My favorite moments included Rutherford breaking from the show to speak on the phone to a lover far away. But, if theatre companies continue to use such a device constantly, if they keep going back to the proverbial well, how much longer will this technique be effective? And, with the development of new technologies in film and television (like 3D), will the one advantage theatre has over those other medias slowly be compromised? If so, what will happen to the likes of Big Dance Theater? Although I dearly love the meta-theatrics, I can’t help but fear this technique is nothing more than…

• • • • • l’ombre d’une femme par la mort.