Off Stage: The West Village Fragments (review)

A few minutes before the production of OFF Stage: The West Village Fragmentswas set to begin, a dozen or so spectators reached the traffic circle between Sixth Avenue and Ninth Street, quietly asking one another if they had come to see a show too; no outward sign announced the upcoming performance save for the headset-wearing, multitasking stage manager. Some fifty years back, spectators willing to see a play might have been greeted in a similar manner. A few years after World War II, nontheatrical spaces began hosting play readings in New York City's West Village. Coffeehouses, churches, and storefronts gradually supplanted small art theatres. As Equity imposed harsher regulations on Off-Broadway, newcomers to the theatre discovered ways to bend their rules.

The traveling theatre performance, OFF Stage: The West Village Fragments, took its audience back through the time and places where the Off-Off Broadway phenomenon commenced with productions by such avant-garde stalwarts as the Living Theatre, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, and Richard Schechner's Performance Group. Indeed, OFF Stageincluded parts of these earlier works, inviting the audience to reflect on possible interactions and influences among the artists.

Along the way, to reflect upon these earlier works, three-to-ten-minute excerpts from two dozen 1960s plays or productions were performed on the streets for the small audience that clustered closely to the actors. Hearkening back to the medieval cycle plays, the cast (an ensemble of fifty) stayed in place while a guide led an audience from place to place. Three "tours" took place nightly upon the half hour. Spectators observed stops in front of most original sites, though one would have been hard pressed to recognize them without help from the program: Caffe Cino is now a tony Italian eatery, Circle-in-the-Square is a luxury condominium development, La MaMa has moved, and the Provincetown Playhouse marquee is decked out in NYU violet.

The producing company, Peculiar Works, strove to capture the spirit the plays presented, without falling prey to nostalgic reconstruction. Its work went beyond the recreation of all-but-abandoned drama, and documented its historical, cultural background. Avoiding didacticism, dramatic vignettes reflected period events (La MaMa founder Ellen Stewart's plea to keep her coffeehouse / theatre running, a gay playwright tricked and apprehended by a plainclothesman, a political demonstration, word-of-mouth about a new play). Despite sounding occasionally forced and artificial, the backstory proved particularly useful in evoking the prevalent gay subculture to which most playwrights belonged—a key element to the understanding of works routinely relying on insiders' codes. While at times frustrating, the fragmentation did not overly hinder the comprehension of pieces resisting the traditional three-act Aristotelian model.

The choice of street theatre to present works originally staged indoors turned out to be remarkably relevant. Traveling from one site to another (dodging the night traffic, trying to stay together as a group, remaining aware of the aural and visual disruptions of street life) conveyed the sense of precariousness experienced by performers and spectators at a time when spaces were commonly closed down by the city authorities, and many were forced into nomadic artistic lives. The absence of sets other than the urban landscape and minimal use of lighting and props conjured the barebones, makeshift quality of Off-Off-Broadway, when creative solutions came out of constraints, without precluding sophistication. The spectators also understood the need to carve out their own space, in the absence of fixed seating. The street installation replicated in its own way the experience of environmental theatre, where everyone can move freely in an open space and view the production from different angles, with no clear-cut separation between the audience and performers. In Dionysus in '69, an adaptation of Euripides' The Bacchaeby Richard Schechner, actors performed the birth ritual between candlelit church steps and a crane, conveniently shielding the performers' nudity. The whole cast united, arranging...