In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CALA C T S S F ROBERT ATKINS THE WAY OF HOW (Rinde Eckart, Leonard Pitt, John Duykers) 106 The Bay Area is home base for a number of performance companies that walk a provocative and precarious line between art and theater. They present their work in either context, mounting productions for swimming pools or abandoned gas stations, artists' lofts, or proscenium stages. Their audience is disparate and they play to sometimes wild acclaim in San Francisco and Europe (recent residencies in Frankfurt, Paris, and Vienna attest to their European popularity) while remaining virtually unseen in New York and Los Angeles. Among the best known are Soon 3 (Alan Fineran), Snake Theater (now Chris Hardman's Antenna and Laura Farabough 's Night Fire), and Jock Reynolds/Suzanne Hellmuth. With The Way of How, George Coates joins these ranks. Director Coates is a product of conventional theatrical training. In a recent interview with Misha Berson, he noted that "My kind of theater is really a tool of perception." Familiar words coming from a visual artist, but unusual language for a director. Virtually everything about Coates' approach, however, is unusual. Coates' latest work, The Way of How, is certainly no exception. It's a four man show comprised of John Duykers and Rinde Eckert, two tenors involved with new music, performance, and primarily with opera; mime Leonard Pitt and new music composer-performer Paul Dresher. The eighty minute show grew out of an intense, several-months-long collaboration between Coates and the performers. The results are hypnotically spectacular-a visual opera, for want of a better term, whose form pushes audiences to rethink (perhaps futilely) their relationship to what is happening on stage. A visual arts/performance perspective proves insufficient as do theatrical, musical, and dance/motion points of view. Only when intellectual resistance is overcome, does the seduction of the audience seem somehow more complete. The Way of How unfolds rather than develops. It begins with an expository catalogue of objects, performers, and their special abilities. The acrobatic and musical skills of the performers are revealed through arte povera-style "props." Hula hoops, poles, and sheets of plastic are transformed into malleable, expressive objects . A wheelchair functions both usefully as a movable prop and perversely as a Duchampian readymade. Meanwhile, Dresher, often positioned behind a Wizard of Oz-like scrim, produces live music using keyboard, guitar, and a tape processing system. His sonorous score incorporates Italian arias and found tunes in addition to his own compositions. Deborah Heimerdinger's projected slides frequently envelop the performers in patterned jungles that manage to marry the rigorous geometric abstraction of Sol LeWitt with the organic voluptuousness of Gustav Klimt. John Chapot's shimmering, inventive lighting literally illuminates the action, punching home connections between the performers and forcefully directing the audience's attention. An audially-enhanced moving picture might better describe the combined-and often cumulative-effect of The Way of How's various components. It is a tightlywoven visual and aural fabric whose seamless relationship of parts creates a symphonic ebb and flow. Its emotional range is wide: for me it inscribed an arc from wit to pathos. What, you may be thinking, is The Way of How "about?" Essentially it is a processoriented quest for form conceived of in the widest possible terms. The glacial formalism of what one fears early on might simply be another mood piece melts as dissociating devices emerge. Eckert attempts to divide the audience into sections for responsive vocalizing. Duykers enlists the audience's aid for an aria. These are moments of pure shtick which engage not just our attention but our complicity. Coates is an expert manipulator of not only the audience, but the performers. He has long been interested in collaborating with performerswho do not identify themselves as actors. He has previously worked with Pitt and Duykers, not to mention a belly dancer and a California state assemblyman. In The Way of How, by far his largest production to date, this results in a curious sense of skilled performers creating likable personae who are themselves, but themselves appropriately distanced and distilled, refined and aestheticized. This sort of unconventional sensibility characterizes Coates and enables him to build...

pdf

Share