PICA presents
Elevator Repair Service's Total
Fictional Lie
Scottish Rite Center, 1507 SW Morrison St., 242-1419
8 pm Friday, 8 and 10:30 pm, Saturday, Feb. 18-19
$15-$18
In his novel The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead presents
two rival forces within a large city's elevator-inspection
unit. There are the "Empiricists," who are by-the-book technicians
coffled to custom, and the "Intuition-ists," who can sense
an elevator's worthiness simply by entering it and meditating
upon it. In Whitehead's world, the Intuitionists are the more
accurate, which brings many of the technicians' assumptions
of superiority into question. American theater is filled with
technicians who have whipped and chaired intuitiveness into
many a method. But to challenge such systematic approaches
there are a number of experimental companies that place pure
intuition at the center of their process; one such company
is Elevator Repair Service.
Formed in 1991, Elevator Repair Service has steadily built
up an international reputation for collaborative, found-object
theater. Part dance, part slapstick, the company known for
reshaping cultural scraps and the hoarded trivia of American
culture has been called "the last disciples of Dada" in
Germany. In past productions, Berlitz language tapes, Betty
Boop and Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke have
served as departure points. The latest piece, Total Fictional
Lie, was inspired by old documentary films of door-to-door
Bible salesmen, murderer Aileen Wuornos and teen idol Paul
Anka. The result is an imaginative and ironic collage of
voice and movement.
Elevator Repair Service is a group of performers, writers,
designers and directors who met at Yale, though only one
member was connected to the School of Drama. As with many
experimental companies, the group has avoided formal theater
training, with all of its rites and rules, to actively pursue
a more spontaneous performance art. Some members are also
involved in the Wooster Group, a company that has served
as ERS's intellectual mentor (Wooster Group members Elizabeth
Lecompte, Kate Valk and actor Willem Dafoe sit on ERS's
advisory board). The company's pieces are created collectively
over an extended period of time, with the ensemble exploring
other media for material. "We give ourselves a lot of time
for our process," co-artistic director Steve Bodow told
WW. His fellow artistic director, John Collins, elaborated
on their approach. "We share everything in common with the
Wooster Group and nothing," he said. "Though both companies
create work within the ensembles, they develop plays whereas
we allow ourselves more freedom with what we're making."
Premiered at the Berliner Festspiele in 1998, Total
Fictional Lie is an hourlong piece performed by seven
of the company's members. Slices of dialogue lifted verbatim
from the studied documentaries point and counterpoint each
other as a Bible salesman's difficulty in pushing the scripture
is balanced by Paul Anka's backstage crowing. Though the
company has always used film in its development of work,
it was usually to find movements to incorporate into a physical
score. For Total Fictional Lie the company was interested
in playing with the monologue, and it found documentaries
to be one of the last bastions of uninterrupted and self-revealing
speech.
There's no escaping the commitment and enthusiasm found
in companies like Elevator Repair Service. Groups such as
these are a far more accurate gauge of the stage's health
than the clockwork theaters and all their methods.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Willamette Week | originally
published February 16,
2000
|
