Bitter as Honey

Here's the format of this post; first, critique, then, set-up, then something else that I'm not sure of yet.

Imagine every duality you can think of. Black, white. Good, evil. West, East. Winner, loser. Mother, father. God, anti-God. Keep going, but in the meantime I'll digest this performance. I know I totally suffer from being over-educated. I have had my share of Manichean headtrips. But this performance was beyond belief. Whenever I thought that no more layers of meaning could be unearthed...well...more layers of meaning WERE unearthed.

In the beginning, a man (hereafter referred to as "the director") stands above a cloth-covered table. He is lit by a desk lamp. He is playing solitaire. The air is thick with theatre smoke. A raspy piece of Scandanavian jazz is playing in the background.

He draws two sticks figures holding hands onto a paper wall. And then a young girl wearing an eye pillow, welder's goggles, and industrial strength earphones charges through the wall, brandishing a knife and howling hard vowels.

The director introduces her to an angel, who was contained underneath the solitaire table. The angel wears a gas mask; you feel the girl as she runs her fingers over this face as lifeless as a computer monitor. The angel gingerly explains to her that he is unable to walk, trapping them in this space if they are to stay together.

Using the paper from the wall, the angel cuts a paper doll chain for the girl. And death (or anti-god or the devil), wearing a black suit and a plaster face wrapped in bandage gauze, comes along and cuts off the heads, then drops them down on the couple like falling cherry blossom petals. This gesture was absolutely terrifying. It was like watching a bully pour gasoline on a cat.

So using these three forces: girl, angel, death, the director plays out his binary immaculate patterning. If the angel goes away, what happens to the girl? If the girl dies, what becomes of death? And if any these events or changes don't suit the director, how then is he to intervene? Admit his mistake and correct it? Or, let it simply play itself out.

I won't spoil any of the events which play out, because Atila wants to take the show back to Lincoln Center, which already hosted the first play in this cycle. In future productions of this play, I see equal parts of black sand and white sand spread out into a grey carpet. But as the actions move along a natural marbling occurs, a darker patch here, a lighter one there. Where each grain is a representative 1 or 0 to this organic computer program we all in our hearts know is our lives. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention not one articulate word is uttered on stage!

And the entire cast is a family! Father, mother, son, daughter. This makes a lot of the action on stage hit warp-drive in terms of psychosurrealism.

So, I scammed free tickets to see this amazing piece. I feel a little bad about that now. My friend Lojs is in Beograd rehearsing a performance; he belongs to the national theatre company here. He sent me 4 text messages as to how I can get into the theatre for free. (His first suggestion was to just walk through the stage door!) Eventually I talk to a gal named Ema. She's down and tells me to show up five minutes before the show.

When I explain to my date what the plan is, she's incredulous. She thinks I'm about to get the embarrassment of my life. We get in the elevator, and when the usher says "Vstopnica," she hits me with her best "You see, jackass" pursed lips. Me: "I talked to Ema earlier." Usher: "Oh, cool." He closes the door. I shoot her back with my best "Sissy, I'm the Roman god of free shit." pursed lips.

And then we see the show.

And then we stick around for the reception, because I truly am the Roman god of free stuff at this point. Ema has already told me to be sure to come back the next night to see a Turkish staging of "Oedipus at Colonnus."

The reception food is fantastic; couscous with dates, stuffed tomatoes. Iranian food has this utter delicacy to it that the Tex-Mex fan in me finds a bit boring. But, this was exceptional. A hint of honey here, a whisper of cinnamon. Yeah, you know.

The wine is so-so.

The actress who played the young girl comes out. I congratulate her. She says to me, "I don't like wine."
Me: "Oh yeah, why's that?"
Serateh: "It gives me a headache."
Me: "Champagne can be a real headacher."
Serateh: "I don't like champagne either."

I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. When I return, she's talking to my friend Alma. Alma's asking her where all she has been with the tour. She says "I really loved New York." I jump in "Yeah, that's one of my favorite towns." And like that we're all colleagues. Alma is planning a cross-continent trip from Turkey to Iran to Pakistan to India in a few weeks, so she's getting email addresses and learning basic Farsi words. I'm sipping viljamovka, and running through a litany of topics from Camus to Amsterdam to Michael Moore to the next production in Atila's cycle. Before the night's over we're shaking our butts at KMŠ.

On the way back to Center, Alma says "It's funny that they can't drink." And making a little English joke out it, I replied, "They CAN drink."

Right now, I'm trying to think up ways that I can work out an arranged marriage with them. Because I really want them to be my family.

NB: While I was talking to Atila, the director of the Ex Ponto said I should come to every performance, because it seems that actors like me. I felt like that goat trainers put in the stables of thoroughbred horses to calm them before a race.