Chibeau
Edmond Chibeau looks at performance and theatre from the avant-garde communication perspective
About Me
- Name: Edmond Chibeau
- Location: Mansfield, Connecticut, United States
Friday, July 24, 2020
Sunday, March 08, 2020
Burton Leavitt Theatre
Pieces
Burton Leavitt Theatre
Windham Theatre Guild
779 Main St
Willimantic, CT
March 6-7, 2020
The collection of six plays is called Pieces because
each play is part of a larger script that the playwright is working on. This is
the second year of the Windham Theater Guild’s “Playwrights Showcase.”
The works range from absurdist comedy to serious
investigations of social issues.
The Guild has consistently offered quality productions of
new work, older established plays and now, we have the chance to see lesser
known playwrights who are perfecting their chops.
The Funny Affair by J. Mason
Beiter is a great way to start the evening. He is a clown. She is leaving him
for another man. She says that among his many great qualities, the other man,
“has great hands.” He is a mime. The clown, and the mime, face off in a fight
to the…death?
I was fortunate enough to see
this short play done at another venue as a cold reading, but this production
put it on its feet and brought it to life. Beiter has a strong sense of what
makes a production work: clearly differentiated characters, opportunity for physical
movement that reinforces the spoken word, and a linguistically satisfying text that
pulls the audience on with forward momentum.
With: Harry Gagne, Olivia
Kurnyk, Jake Buckley
Curse You, Matt Damon by Jill
Zarcone brings us two elderly sisters who grow pot in their basement. This
wouldn’t be so dangerous except that one of them is having an affair with a
South Boston policeman. The other one is
jealous.
Playwright Zarcone has a
wonderful sense of the absurd and a great sense of timing. Although she writes
with authority she shows us a kind of hesitance and unsureness in her
characters that is very playable by actors.
With: Michele Abbazia, Jim York,
Kody Mileski, and by special arrangement, Sharon Soderbergh.
Playing by the Rules by Peter
DeNegre. In the script the athlete wants the tutor to help him put the paper
he bought on-line into his own words. The frat house is never seen from the
inside but various characters enter and exit through the window and the door.
Mixed signals, frat rape of the
young tutor Francis, and boozy seduction of women are par for the course in
this comedy that makes us stop and think about what we accept as funny.
With: Alex Gentile, Raven
Dillon, Dan Reynolds, and Rachel Lewis.
Kindling by Rebecca Steigelfest is
the most poetic of the pieces offered in this evening of one acts. It
also seemed to be the most personal-confessional. If I have the quote right Steigelfest says “My throat is sore with words I haven’t
spoken.”
Kindling portrays the
character (and maybe the writer) as struggling to overcome a violent betrayal
that threatens her ability to go forward with life. But she says, “I won’t burn
out, I’ll burn through.”
Performed
as a monologue by the author.
The Waiting Room by Scotty Duval
brings together Mozart and several people from the 21st Century. They are
caught at the limen between this life and “The undiscovered country from whose
bourn no traveler returns.”
The group of recently deceased
souls meets in between life and the afterlife, unable to let go of life due to
regrets and unfulfilled dreams. We see shades of Sartre’s No Exit (Huis
Clos).
Whose fault is it that they died,
committed suicide, had a fatal accident. Does responsibility end with our life
on earth, or does it continue in the afterlife? Can we do anything to fix it,
after the fact? These are some of the questions that come to mind as we watch the
longest of the plays offered this evening. It has 3 scenes, the second scene is
played in the middle aisle of the theatre and is very powerful monologue that
ties the first two together.
With: Jacob Wurst, Joshua Stern,
Jay Barbeau, Natalie Pavone, Carly Oliver, Julianna Cargo, and Scotty Duval.
Jorts by Julianna Cargo is a
fashion-forward fashion-disaster. Cargo (the playwright not the pants) tells us
that fashion is a way of showing who you are without speaking. But in doing so
she gives us a blizzard of comedic dialogue.
Words are a kind of clothing. Writing
for performance, like understanding retail, is not as easy as it seems. Cargo
manages both with a sense of style.
With: Zoë Hayn, Allison
Sawtelle, Jake Lachinet, Joe Martin, and Kody Mileski.
The Windham Theatre Guild is to be commended for their
commitment to developing new talent. The “WTG Playwrights” is a group that will
bring increased audience and admiration to the whole Windham Theatre Guild organization.
Monday, February 10, 2020
Parasite
Congratulations to writer/director Bong Joon-ho for “Parasite.”
First foreign language film to win best picture. Also won
academy award for best screenplay best director and best foreign language film.
Also won Palme d”Or and many others. This guy can write!
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
TheaterWorks reopens with American Son
American Son
By Christopher Demos-Brown
Directed by Ron Ruggiero
With Ami Brabson, Michael Genet, Tony Crane, and John
Ford-Dunker
TheaterWorks
233 Pearl Street, Hartford CT
Oct.18-Nov.23. 2019
Review: Edmond Chibeau
After significant renovations TheaterWorks Hartford open with a killer script and a killer production. Director/Producer Ron Ruggiero chose American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown to introduce the new theater
Does it make a difference what ethnicity, gender, or color a person is when they confront bureaucratic authority.
Most Americans would say yes, but would have a difficult time explaining how the differences extend out into the larger society.
In plays about social issues we are often faced with a pastiche of anecdotal incidents that point in a general direction, but don’t exactly add up to a coherent whole.
Writer, Christopher Demos-Brown, sets up a dichotomy and then confounds that dichotomy by pointing out all of the blendings, heterogeneities and halfway measures that are difficult to separate onto on side or the other. The problems remain alive in our conscious, but unsolved in our society.
The last lime of the play, “I can’t breathe” leaves us wondering how police treatment is different on different sides of the line of privilege. It also leaves us wondering about the culture of Staten Island in New York where, “I can’t breathe” were the last words of Eric Garner, a black man who was being arrested for selling cigarettes in the street. On the surface the play takes place in Florida. It has nothing to do with the incident on Statin Island. But underneath the death on Staten Island is an objective correlative of the socio-poetic themes of the play.
The line would seem too pat if it weren’t a dead-on-accurate quotation of the temper of the times in which we live.
The plot twists and reversals, which I won/t reveal here, are thought provoking and about issues that all people must face but are especially salient in 21st Century America.
American Son at the newly renovated TheatreWorks has the writing directing and acting talent to make it all work. This production takes the time to let the premise run its course. Rob Ruggiero directs this production to a T
The set by Brian Prather is wonderful to look at, including the mirror-writing on the door to the office. But more importantly the set is motivated by the script and helps the actors motivate, not only their movement, but the way the voice individual lines,
The new facility is an experience! The gallery for hanging graphics, the lounge, the whole vibe of the space is aesthetically exhilarating.
You should check it out.
Labels: American Son, Ami Brabson, Brian Prather, Christopher Demos-Brown, John Ford-Dunker, Michael Genet, Rob Ruggiero, TheaterWorks, Tony Crane
Monday, July 08, 2019
CABARET: A Cautionary Tale
July 6, 2019
Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre
July 5 to July 21, 2019
Book, Joe Masteroff
Based on the play by John Van Druten & Stories by Christopher Isherwood.
Music by John Kander. Lyrics by Fred Ebb.
Director, Scott LaFeber. Creative Consultant, Peter Flynn
Music Director, Ken Clifton. Choreographer, Christopher d’Amboise.
Music Director, Ken Clifton.
Cabaret is a highly political musical. The hard part for a director is to bring political aspects of the script to the fore without interrupting the entertainment. Two problems we often see with productions of Cabaret are: One, that the elements are divided from one another so we get a series of sexy skits leavened with (didactic) political lectures;
Two, that the humor and sensuality of the script overwhelms the production while the political elements are not well represented.
Director, Scott LaFeber, manages this difficult task with showmanship and sensitivity.
Flynn’s production of Cabaret is both entertainment and a cautionary tale.
The Führer’s bunker has many mansions.
Sally Bowles asks us, “What good is sitting alone in your room?”
But Isherwood asks us, how long we can ignore the closing vise of autocratic rule. How long can we hide in the world of transgressive vice called the Weimer cabaret scene.
It is impossible to hide. Hitler’s fascist state enters every underground club, private dwelling and public space.
In producing a play that takes place at several times, in several locations, this production team keeps the flow of the program going while the different locations are being set up. This Cabaret never breaks the rhythms of the show. There are many different cadences but the forward thrust of the production is never interrupted. Scene changes are smooth and fast. They are accompanied by music and dance that keep us in the story-world of the production.
Forrest McClendon & The Kit Kat Girls
Forrest McClendon creates an Emcee that is always in touch with the audience.
Dee Hoty and Jonathan Brody act well together. They respond not only to the words but the feelings of the person they are speaking with.
Jonathan Brody delivers his character and his lines with piercing understatement.
Dee Hoty speaks, listens, sees, and is seen, without ever distracting us from the spine of the scene she is in.
Forrest McClendon & The Kit Kat Girls |
The reprise of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” at the end of act one, is a smooth transition on stage but an abrupt and horrifying one for the characters, and the audience. We are now clearly confronted with the unmistakable fact that things are not going to go well for the bohemian underground at the Kit Kat Club.
The song Cabaret is the most difficult piece in the show. Not because the composition is difficult to sing, but because it is freighted with audience expectations that come from repeated hearing of the piece as background music in bars, clubs, elevators, and radio. The song is associated with its iconic performance on film and many theatrical productions. Laura Michelle Kelley nails her rendition of it near the end of act two. A production team must be tempted to help the singer with dances, lights and other special effects. But this brave artist takes the stage alone Kelly, confronts the music and the audience, and mesmerizes us with her ability to handle the most important tune of the evening. Laura Michelle Kelley makes us live in the moment of her song; now.
When Terence Mann returns next year I wonder what it would be like to see a production of Brecht’s Three Penny Opera, or better yet, of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera.Would the Eastern Connecticut Community be interested in such work?
This writer thinks it would. The people who attend CRT, and live near UConn are educated, politically active, and ready for an intellectual challenge.
The polymorphous perverse Emcee discovers that being a collaborator does not keep you safe.
The Emcee, (Forrest McClendon) is the one who throws the brick through the window of the Jewish storekeeper, Herr Schultz, and is the first to strike out at the American writer when he is beaten up by the Nazis.
The final moment of the show is powerful and frightening. Nazi banners unfurl as they fall from the heavens. As Emcee turns to see the swastikas he is revealed to be wearing striped pajamas of the concentration camps. This image is an objective correlative of Clifford Bradshaw’s line that, “If you’re not against it you’re for it.”
This final scene creates a kind of Brechtian Alienation Effect, that interrupts the entertainment and makes us consider the stark reality of totalitarian government.
But don’t worry; it can’t happen here.
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Bina Oblique at TNC
Dream Within A Dream
Writer & Director Bina Sahrif
Cino Theatre @Theatre for the New City
Dec.13 - Dec 30 2018
With: Selar Duke, Kevin Mitchell Martin, Manuel Salazar, Bina Sharif
The script for “Dream Within a Dream” at Theatre for the New City, is intelligent, witty, and theatrically compelling. It pulls the floor out from under us and leaves us suspended, like our disbelief, between hilarity and despair. It is not a comedy, but it is always funny. It is a dream play, but it forces us to confront reality. One of the problems with absurdist theatre is that it lacks emotion. The confrontation with absurdity leaves the characters devoid of basic human feelings. But Bina Sharif’s “Dream Within A Dream” confronts human emotion head on. The script forces us to face the loneliness, contradiction, apathy, and injustice of an absurd world. The playwright places us, and the characters, in a disjointed universe where falsehood, fake news, and overblown hyperbole, make us question, not only the honesty of others, and our own senses, but the very rules of the game we find ourselves in.
Selar Duke, Bina Sharif, Kevin Mitchell Martin
Sharif offers us an answer to bleak absurdity. It is the comfort of human companionship, and the realization that no matter how bad it gets, we have each other.
Is the bohemian café where this takes place really there? Is the waiter really there? Does this play actually take place? Is there an audience? Is it raining? These existential questions are confronted, if not answered, by the characters, the playwright, and the audience.
As members of the audience, the answers we give are as valid as those of the playwright. The playwright is not answering the questions for us, but encouraging us to take a stand.
The confrontation with the absurd cruelty of life leaves these characters trembling with compassion, and dancing with doubt.
The play has a strong formal architecture as well as a powerful appeal to our inner humanity. Several different realities intersect at oblique angles, not in direct linearity, but with circular precision. It is a play within a dream, within a dream.
One of the most compelling dramatic devices of the evening, one that repeats throughout the play… is silence.
Kevin Mitchell Martin and Bina Sharif, sit at table, each totally attentive to the other, but neither one speaking. With silence they advance the plot, and sharpen our focus as members of the audience.
Wait! What? Can silence advance the plot? Yes, of course it can. Silence does not mean that nothing is happening. It may mean that the characters are at a loss for words, or that they are expressing the ineffable. They may be expressing a dramatic truth beyond what language has to offer.
In those moments of silence, the characters are communicating deeply and completely with each other. They offer a kind of radiant stillness that opens up and decontextualizes the other parts of the play.
“Dream Within A Dream” is highly structured but it is not the conventional act structure of Broadway theatrical realism.
There is a frame at the beginning and end that sets off the structure and the meaning of the script.
The story is framed by the hobbling on and off stage of the older couple. Throughout the script the two lead actors become many different aspects of their character. They are younger, older, sure of themselves, and confused. They are performing in a play and not performing. They are speaking directly to the audience and they do not exist at all.
This is a script that can be seen over again. It is rich in language and complex in ideas.
Manuel Salazar, as the Waiter, delivers his lines with clear articulation of the individual words, but also with insightful articulation of the ideas and contradictions that he portrays on stage.
Selear Duke, as Dancer, and Actor, has great stage presence. She moves beautifully as well as delivering her lines with great understanding.
Lighting design is by Alexander Bartenieff who has been resident lighting designer at Theatre For the New City since 2000. In 2006 while reviewing another play at TNC I said that, “The spare but effective lighting designed by Alex Bartenieff sets the mood, enriches the portrayal of the characters and illuminates the meaning of the text.” His design for this production defines playing areas and shapes the performers without distracting us from the dramatic action.
Theatre for the New City is an important venue. You haven’t seen theatre in New York if you haven’t seen something there.
Monday, November 12, 2018
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
READING BETWEEN THE LINES A Collection of Student Written Comedy Scenes
Delmonte Bernstien Studio Theatre
Friday 9 Noverber 2018
Directed by Peter Vasone
Produced by ECSU Drama Society
The, READING BETWEEN THE LINES collection of student written comedy scenes, directed and produced by Peter Vasone, and presented by the Eastern Drama Society was a terrific experience. The scripts were well chosen and well directed.
It is not easy decide the right amount of production value to put into a staged reading but this presentation fit the bill. The rhythmic walk at the entrance of the actors, and the fact that we heard footsteps before we saw any of the personnel, got the evening off to a good start..
The actors were introduced by the director as they marched on stage to take their seats.
Non –traditional casting added a lot to the evening and made us think about whether someone referred to as “he” must be played by a male and how we should approach new ways casting a script.
The “Special Mentions” in the program of 2 of the playwrights whose work was not able to be included was a testament to the director’s professionalism and his development of a theater community at Eastern. Artists need encouragement.
There were 10 plays and 8 playwrights. Six of the ten plays, and four of the eight playwrights come from the Scriptwriting class. This is an example of students and faculty working across different disciplines and classes to find ways to collaborate.
Two Gay Dads And A Baby Kangarooby Chris Burkle was based on reversal of what we consider to be a commonly occurring situation. It was both funny and insightful. It was especially telling that, even though the parents were upset and flabbergasted by the young man’s confession of his desires, his younger brother “always knew” that he was straight. The casting women in a script were almost character was gay male was a good touch.
The 2 Mason Beiter scripts were both started in Scriptwriting class this semester (F’18). In, My A-Hole Step-Brother, one character often picks up the last words of another ‘s previous speech and uses those words to begin his new thought. It would be a great accomplishment if this short script were brought to the next level and made into a longer piece.
The work in several disciplines (music, dance, and theatre) at the new Fine Arts Instructional Center at Eastern Connecticut State University leads us to believe that the building will become an significant showcase for important artistic accomplishment in the years ahead.
Sunday, October 28, 2018
DEPOT Play Reading Series
The last Depot script reading of the 2018 season took place, not at the old barn-like structure at the Depot, but at the United Congregational Church in Norwich, Connecticut. OIt was a joint venture with The Chelsea Players.
Jeanne Beckwith
The Rhode Island Chapter,by Jeanne Beckwith, is the story of New England vampire hysteria and certain who have been given very long, but not eternal, life by a mutation in the tuberculosis bacterium.
The 200 and 300 year old characters insist that they are not vampires and do not kill anyone. “We just outlive them.” They use Facetime to communicate with others in their “chapter” of the Antiques Consortium.
The story is based on actual New England folklore. The humor comes from the situation and the dialogue, not from bunch of jokes laid over the action.
Faye Ringel & Greer Gilman
O Brave New World by Faye Ringel and Greer Gilman is a 10 minute play in Blank Verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). The 10 minute play looks at the founding of New London, Connecticut as an “academical colony”.
Influenced by Shakespeare’s Tempest, the lines of ten syllables are sometimes begun by one character and finished by anther. Sometimes a single line of 10 syllable verse starts with one person is picked up by another, and then finished by the first character. Iambic Pentameter is not easy to read. The actors who did a cold reading were practically pitch perfect. Many people in the room were associated with the Flock Theatre that often performs Shakespeare. All of this held together as tight drama in terms of character, plot, and dialogue.
Labels: DEPOT, Faye Ringel, Flock, Greer Gilman, Jeanne Beckwith, theatre