Audience at Large by Steve Busa, and: Disparate Actions/Desperate Actions by Chris Kraus (review)

Steve Busa, Audience at Large. Directed by Leslie and Steve Busa. Re-Cher-Chez Studio (June). Chris Kraus, Disparate Actions/Desperate Actions. Directed by Nancy Reilly and Gale Pike. Re-Cher-Chez Studio (June). Re-Cher-Chez Studio has been the recent scene of interesting and vital new work in performance. Since May, when the variety of projects being undertaken there were featured in a month-long festival, some of the productions were developed further. The two considered here, Audience at Large and Disparate Actions /DesperateActions, are a testament to the value of a workshop situation in aiding the development of talented writers, directors, and actors. Audience at Large offered a comparison /contest between the slow, southern, naturalist style of Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerieand the hyper neurotic New York sensibility. The use of the Menagerie text, which was interspersed throughout with the monologues of a punk-ish filmmaker (Keith Champagne ) and a disco-slick chick (Joan Batson ), was ironic without being snide. As the play progressed, parallels between the filmmaker character and Tom (both liked adventure-Tom dreamed of it and went to the movies for it, while the other lived and filmed it) and between Laura and the sexy woman (who described in a quintessentially Leslie Gore voice having seen her heartthrob kissing another girl) emerge, so that their texts become not only the thoughts of an attentionwandering audience to Williams' play, but alter egos for the '30s characters as well. What is especially interesting is the clash of sensibility-the naive illusions Audience at Large (Busa) and attachments of the '30s: the mother's beaux, Laura's glass animals, Tom's dreams of movie adventures, war glory and the merchant marine-and the much more disturbing signs of '80s selfabsorption : the punk filmmaker's most erotic attachment and effective turn on is to a sleek but no-longer-functioning oldmodel car; the disco woman speaks of herself-as-object, specifically using the metaphor of remodeling buildings for revamping the psyche ("You don't want to find that you've become a vacant lot.") The '80s persona are completely selfabsorbed , unable to have satisfactory relations with others, or to get in touch with their own feelings, yet, by the end of the play, their presence amidst the scenes from The Glass Menagerie seems somehow appropriate. The combination of clever writing, dymanic directing, and a few virtuoso performances made this one of the most pleasurable performance events this season. Chris Kraus's DisparateAction/Desperate Action, performed by herself and Tom Yemm and directed by Nancy Reilly with assistance from Gale Pike, was her reflection on "political imagery and personal experience." The subjects addressed were complex and diverse, and the theatrical choices varied with the material. The didactic political commentary which introduced the show was presented as a meeting-hall lecture, whereas other parts of the presentation were "acted out" by Joe and Susie, characters whose whining platitudes made the political points in a lively and fun, if omewhat disturbing, fashion. (Susie: "We could take a walk." Joe: "Where." Susie: "To the bank.") The repetitiveness and banality of Susie and Joe's concerns with money and their boredom underscored Ms. Kraus's comments on the commodity of sex in our society: the couple's interaction was filled with images of sexual control. Susie, woman as object, subject of representation rather than active agent determing her own life, was contrasted with Ulriche Meinhoff, the German, middle-class journalist who became a terrorist, taking action against a complacent society. One of 43 the best images of complacency and control , of the programmed man in the play is of Tom Yemm, his face blank, his eyes rolling from side to side to the beat of funky music. Although the piece doesn't resolve the questions it raises, both the questions themselves and the manner in which they were staged were provocative. Lenora Champagne Badomi De Cesare, Kiss Me, Kill Me. Economy Tires Workshop, A.T.L. (April. May). David Antin. Victims & Victimization: A Question of Fit, Franklin Furnace (April). KissMe, Kill Me is the story of Lucky Legs (aka Victoria Lake, who changed her name "so as not to be confused, if there was...