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Theater 31.2 (2001) 119-122



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Productions

The Game's All Here

Alexis G. Soloski

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Inside an old bank building on Union Square, at De La Guarda, audience members find themselves lifted far above the ground, doused with water, or spontaneously nuzzled. Down in Tribeca, at a production of Samuel Beckett's Company, the crowd lies on the ground blindfolded and covered in blankets as actors whisper in their ears and manipulate their limbs. Uptown theatergoers are encouraged to trill "Do Re Mi" at the the sing-along Sound of Music and time-warp at the revival of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And over in the West Village Don Nichols--bald, brawny, be-earringed: essentially an African American version of Mr. Clean--strolls onto the stage. He grins, blinking a bit in the theater lights, and settles into a comfortable chair. His hand brushes the wire of his body mike. Mr. Nichols is an affable restaurant manager and would-be event planner from the West Village. Tonight--on Lifegame--he is a star.

In Lifegame--a new production from Britain's Improbable Theatre company and its writer Keith Johnstone--each show features an accidental celebrity culled from the ranks of New York's natives. A hip theatrical version of This Is Your Life!, Lifegame invites a guest onstage, each night to recount his or her bio and watch it enacted by a quartet of spunky improvisers.

New York theatergoers also take part in another current production: Game Show. A [End Page 119] not-so-hip theatrical version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Game Show invites spectators onstage to play for prizes and to watch trite behind-the-scenes-of-a-television-studio scenarios enacted by a sextet of humdrum performers.

I remember Elinor Fuchs writing in these pages some years ago about theater as shopping, and this new trend of participatory plays indicates a consumption ethic grown even stronger. As audiences search out bigger (and more immediately gratifying) slices of the theatrical pie, a gustatory instinct increasingly replaces the mimetic one. Both Lifegame and Game Show seek to sate this hunger. They want to ensure that their guests and spectators get something from the experience; this is emphasized in the press materials for each. (And, as both have such clear television antecedents, they are already more culturally accessible--read consumable--to the average audience member than most other theater.)

Both productions valorize the average American Joe as unexpected celebrity, the nobody desirous of becoming something more. After all--just as who, indeed, doesn't want to be a millionaire--who doesn't want to be a star? Yet, while both plays elevate the spectator to subject, central concern, and star, the effects differ. Lifegame, with its gentle--rather sentimental--sensibilities, celebrates the individuality and universality of the American experience. It shows us at our romantic, enterprising, aspiring best: as the heroes of our lives. Game Show, on the other hand, appeals to the worst of our natures. Our greediness, our graspingness, our unscrupulousness, our pride in ignorance are appealed to and even encouraged.

The packed seats and clapping hands at recent performances indicate these narrative arcs have symbolic power and box-office clout. We no longer seem content with watching someone else's story. We insist that our own story--or at least the story of a representative of our class and caste--gets the star treatment. Perhaps audiences have grown tired of being lectured to, talked down to, or challenged at the theater. If Lifegame and Game Show are any indication, the simple and the familiar are currently all the rage. To what do we attribute this? The proliferation of talk shows and call-in shows? The rise of the Internet, where everyone, theoretically, can have a say? The post-ironic trend of modern prose? Whatever the [End Page 120] cause, it seems to be making for lucrative theatrical ventures--proving the consumption ethic is alive and well in producers as well as audience members.

The audience of Lifegame needn't fret about being invited up onstage. (Though--West Village...

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