There is an air of festival about events at HERE, a tone that is established from a distance on Hudson Square, as one approaches the brightly colored translucent panels that make up the façade of this diminutive “Scandinavian Biennale” pavilion-style theatre complex.
The public areas are handsomely appointed, and include an exhibition gallery and café. The two performance spaces – a chamber-scale theatre seating 150 and an even more intimate space with a capacity of 71 – are well enough equipped to house suggestive and attractive productions.
Established in the early 1990’s, HERE continues its successful dedication to premiering multidisciplinary experimental work that represents the independent artistic voice. It has established an impressive array of awards and a telling list of successes. Eve Ensler, Basil Twist, Christopher O’Reilly, Joey Arias, and Taylor Mac are but a few of the artists of interest that have had enduring work presented for the first time under the discerning curatorial eye of Kristin Marting, the Founding Artistic Director of HERE.
I recently attended THE GOLD ROOM, a new one-act play by Jacob Perkins, marking his professional debut.
The 71-seat Dorothy B. Williams performance space was dominated by simple monochromatic onstage imagery, designed by Emona Stoykova and lit by greer x. Quite sterile in feeling, all was suffused with smoke as the audience was being seated. The unit set was a single room, at the center of which was a
small straight-lined sofa, a sort common in mid-20th century domestic use and still seen today in certain institutional and lower-echelon business waiting areas. A fluffy white carpet, a tiny end table, and a large potted artificial plant completed the picture, all superimposed on a backdrop of see-through
plastic walls; metaphors all.
THE GOLD ROOM is a meticulously academic, precisely designed drill in playwriting, and poses numerous challenges to the performers. Metaphorical virtuoso leaps and pirouettes by Scott Parkinson and Robert Stanton, the cultivated and expertly practiced actors whose fine work brought Perkins’ mountain of words off the page, met each challenge head on, and both stage and audience came out the winners.
Parkinson is an exceptionally nimble actor; his characterization dynamic, engaging, and imaginative, his control of language and vocal production as welcome as they are first rate.
Stanton’s meticulous work provided beat-for-beat counterpoint to Parkinson, and his skillful delivery of the character’s lengthy monologues imposed a rhythm that enlivened the text by providing accent where it was flat and smooth pacing where it was awkward.
These two elite artists intertwined their work seamlessly, and their appealing synergy made the hour of the play’s duration pass quickly.
The promotional graphics by Sam Max are inventive, provocative, and alluring, and the production photography by Maria Baranova is sumptuous and suggestive. The paper trail for this production form a beautiful archive, and will no doubt find its way into grant proposals. Sadly, in no way does either accurately represent what actually happened on that stage.
The play itself is an exercise in form, and a pocket dictionary of theatrical devices from the mid-20th century avant-garde. It touts itself as innovative and incisive. I searched in vain for both. The echoes of other people’s work were very loud at times, and would have been acceptable in a tribute play “written in the styles of” but this was not that.
Among the things that have eluded the playwright is the relationship between content and form. In this piece, for all its craft, that relationship remains indecisive and confused. The linkup in THE GOLD ROOM between template and message is intermittent and tenuous at best, and any number of subjects could be slotted into this prototype without disturbing it.
THE GOLD ROOM is emotionally evasive and noncommittal, and ultimately, immature and heartless, without being in the least bit too cool to care. When pressed to the point of analysis, the writer bunts, and takes refuge in universalization: a sad copout, if glamorously - and deceptively - worded.
THE GOLD ROOM portrays stereotypes we have seen many, many times before, without either examining or celebrating them, much less adding anything new to the inventory. There is the sense that Perkins is outside the subject, hypnotized by unfulfilled longing while gazing upon, especially, the sexual quandary of the shut down middle-aged man. The extremely unattractive characters in this play are the sort of people we cross the street to avoid, yet somehow the playwright attempts to glamorize them and present their fumbling as characteristic, even more than typical, of a subculture. Jean Genet succeeded mightily in provoking thought by his portrayal of despicable people and emotional squalor, but, again, this is not that.
NEWS FLASH: Emotionally stunted, arrested development boy/men who are incapable of either intimacy in relationship or passion in sex, preoccupied with genitalia like 12 year olds while skirting with prissy lasciviousness the sexual issues shut-down men face, are only typical among the extreme minority, lurking blind and mindless in the sub-basement, the dark root cellar, of the nameless subcategory below Basic Gay.
Did I care what happened to these men? Not. At. All.
The predictability of the play was not tempered by the prosaic, ultra-conservative, staging by company director Gus Haegerty. Using exclusively traditional means which neither reflected nor defined the disparate aspects of the script, the staging was the opposite of innovative: a confusion of American styles which included soap opera “realism” and - unintentionally comical - teen horror movie sensationalism. I watched dismayed as one opportunity after another for visual eloquence went by. Extremely puzzling was the absence of a coherent aesthetic viewpoint steered by a strong directorial hand, especially in view of Haegerty’s company mission statement.
The smug program bio of “i am a slow tide” was marred not only by the empty jargon of pompous academic “art speak” but, like the engaging graphic design and production photography, pointed up a
disturbing gap between theory and practice, representation and reality. Actions do indeed speak louder than words, and it does not do to ever praise oneself, especially in advance.
Jacob Perkins is well-schooled, and perhaps even a playwright to watch. I wish him the courage and honesty needed to locate and identify his convictions as well as the boldness to carry them out. I hope it is possible for him to eschew the wasteful vacuity of further elaborate self-description. It remains to be seen whether he takes the training wheels off his bike, takes some spills, burns his diploma, and finds his own voice and style. Until then, he is a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Productions at HERE are worthy of your attention, and this mini-Arts Center is eminently deserving of your support. Performance schedule, Box Office, and tax-deductible contributions are all handled on the company’s easily navigated website: www.here.org
HERE 145 6th Avenue NYC, NY 10013 212-647-0202