The Price of New York Theater

Not only is New York the most expensive city in the United States, but it's getting more expensive to live here. The cost of living in the Big Apple rose a whopping 4.5% from October 2004 to October 2005, 1.6% higher than the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. But one statistic that the Labor Department doesn't calculate is the rising cost of producing theater in New York.

So what's causing theater to become so expensive? Is it the gentrification? Competition with big-name, big-budget Broadway musicals? Perhaps it's an abundance of theaters, which means shows draw smaller audiences and ticket prices must go up to cover production costs.

It could be any of those reasons, all of them, or none of them. But regardless of the cause, anyone who has been involved in an Off-Off Broadway production will tell you that the expenses involved in getting a show up and running are becoming nearly prohibitive.

Recently, TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence) II theater company performed Charles Busch's The Lady in Question. Busch is an all-purpose entertainer who has earned fame for his acting on the HBO series Oz, a cult following for the movie version of his play Psycho Beach Party, and a Tony nomination for his play The Tale of the Allergist's Wife.

Impressive, then, that an Off-Off Broadway theater company-even one as prominent at TOSOS II-could stage a reading of a current Broadway star's play. What's more impressive is that this reading served merely as a fund-raiser for TOSOS II's next production, Dog Opera by Connie Congdon.

Two plays for the price of one? To find out how TOSOS II had managed to pull off this seemingly impossible feat, I met with company members Christopher Borg (director), Jason Bowcutt (director), Mark Finley (artistic director), and Doric Wilson (founder and general director) to discuss how their recent production came about.

Offoffonline.com: Christopher, Jason, how did you two get involved in TOSOS II?

Jason Bowcutt (JB): We grew up in Utah, in Salt Lake City. We both grew up Mormon. He brought me out of the closet.

Christopher Borg (CB): We were best friends.

JB: We were both into theater. We were both in acting.

CB: We were in a Mormon musical together…

JB: [Laughs.]

CB: ...called Saturday's Warrior.

JB: Saturday's Warrior!

CB: All about keeping the family together from a lot of liberals around, filling your head with garbage!

JB: So we, I got this book of Charles Busch's plays. I gave the book to him. He, we, totally understood...

CB: Connected to the material.

JB: Loved the material!

CB: Thought he was the funniest playwright we'd ever read. At the time we were interested in Charles Ludlum, and that interest got us into the library and led [Jason] to Charles Busch, and we read all the plays we could get our hands on. So the very first play I ever directed was <i>Psycho Beach Party</i>, and that was the first Charles Busch play ever produced in the state of Utah.

JB: And so we've been dying to do this play for a long, long time. Recently, we've become familiar with Charles and he's been very, very sweet to us.

How did you become familiar with him?

CB: Jason is the executive director of the New York IT Awards, the Innovative Theater Awards.

JB: He was the host last season.

CB: Last summer, or spring, we went to the Duplex [Theater] to see [Charles] talk before a screening of [his film] Die Mommie Die!, and Jason said, "Oh, my gosh: Charles, you should be the host of the first IT Awards ceremony." And so we spoke to him, and I kind of weaseled my way into the job of being his assistant for the evening, and it was like a dream come true.

JB: Congdon was an awards presenter, and TOSOS II decided they wanted to do her play Dog Opera with Christopher and [TOSOS II actor] Shay [Gines] in it. So we decided a way to raise funds for that was to put on this reading of The Lady in Question, which is a hard play to actually do. It would cost a lot of money.

CB: We could not afford to produce... it's got a big set and a large cast.

JB: A large cast.

CB: And we approached Charles with the idea, and it's a play that he's kept close to himself because I think he wants to do it again. But he very sweetly said, "Of course you guys can do it for this purpose."

Did you think about money when planning for this show?

Mark Finley (MF):It wasn't, "Well, we can't do this because we don't have the money," because we never have any money.

So how did you come up with the idea to use a production to fund a production?

JB: I don't know if anyone else has done it, but it seemed like a smart idea. I mean, we love both plays.

CB: It's a fund-raiser, and you think about, "How do theater companies do fund-raisers?" Sometimes they have cabarets, sometimes they have auctions or things like that. But I've wanted to do one of Charles's plays, and I don't know when I'll ever get a chance to. And it was like a symbiotic thing. One was our devotion to Charles, his work, and our love of his plays, and a need to make money for the theater company.

All of the actors involved are members of TOSOS. And so it was, I mean, in a way it's kind of wonderful. Charles is, to me, one of the important gay playwrights in New York. And in a way, it's like a gift. He's giving the gift of his celebrity and the fame of his play to support the gay Off-Off Broadway theater company of New York City. And I really think that that's where his heart is, too.

Do you get private donations? Do you write grants? Or is it all kind of thrown together?

MF: It's pretty much box office and personal money. You know, people lending us money.

CB: But it's a noncommercial...you know what? The focus is on the work, it's not on commercialism. And so it means that you have to be creative about finding a way to pay the bills and to pay the rent of the theater, which is getting higher and higher in New York, and it's almost squeezing the small theaters out. But they will survive!

So do you see this being a problem that is going to somehow quell the Off-Off Broadway theater community?

Doric Wilson (DW): Well, it's up to [everybody] to deal with it. Our way of dealing with it is to hope that we can continue to go on doing things [at the club Downstairs at the Monster]. We don't pay rent.

So you rent this place out per performance?

DW: No. We don't pay rent. They get the bar. We get the space. That's the point. When I first did TOSOS originally, we did things at the Spike, which was a bar I helped open. No overhead, no electric bill. No rent whatsoever. Yeah, you have to deal with the ice machine dropping ice and the piano upstairs.

But bottom line, the black boxes were when in the 80's and 90's Off-Off Broadway really became showcases. And what's funny about that is, the minute they became showcases, the agents stopped coming. But in the old days of Off-Off Broadway, agents just came. I didn't have a play of mine in the early days of [legendary cafe/performance space] the Chino or later at TOSOS. Actually, when we did TOSOS, we opened up with a musical revue called Lovers, and there was a very determined young actor who got every agent in New York down to see Lovers, and everybody in the cast got an agent except for him [laughs].

You know, the bottom line is, to get a cast like you saw tonight willing to work for free means there's no work in the city. They shouldn't be available. They really should not be available. And they're going to be available because there is no work left in this city.

What other ways do you guys use to get the funds necessary?

CB: So far, it's been, you know, looking for donations and relying on the generosity of your audience.

JB: And focusing on doing the work and making sure the work is of a quality.… Honestly, sometimes it's like paycheck to paycheck. Show to show. We don't have a big budget.

CB: TOSOS is a noncommercial, not-for-profit organization. It's completely a volunteer effort on everyone's part. And so there isn't really a mechanism in place to draw money from. I don't think there's a big, fat, rich board sitting around pouring money into our mouths.

JB: Big, fat, rich, evil board.

CB: Boards are great!

JB: Boards are great, Chris!

Doric, you have had your plays produced in New York since the inception of Off-Off Broadway. Has producing changed since then?

DW: Yes, yes, yes. Because now you have the black boxes that cost five times more than you could possibly make if you sold out for the week. So that's garbage. And we can't go on doing that. We've had, knock on wood, since TOSOS first opened, we've not had a bad show. And we've not had an unsuccessful show. We've had good audiences for all of them. Lost money on all of them because of the economics.

JB: I don't think that the people in TOSOS are thinking, "In five years, I'll be on Broadway." They're thinking, "I want to continue doing theater I love. I want to continue working on plays that have affected me, that have had effect on the community, the gay community.

MF: We started TOSOS because we wanted to bring out a lot of the seminal gay plays that have fallen out of the canon-that, because they exist, you get, you know, plays that happen now. But you're not going to see a lot of Robert Patrick's work on Broadway. It's not going to happen. And it's such great stuff, and I feel lucky that we can do it.

Any final thoughts on producing Off-Off Broadway?

DW: No, except get out and [expletive] do it.

Note: Dog Opera will open at a date yet to be determined. For more information, go to the TOSOS II website.

'Draining the Cup: The Battery Dance Company's Mission of Cultural Diplomacy

 

Watching New York's Battery Dance Company perform in Amman, Jordan, was, for me, a little slice of all the things I like best about being home: it was an experience both moving, exciting, and slightly painful.

The story starts with me, huddled in a bus station in the freezing cold, hugging myself against the last serious blast of winter. To be honest, winter in the Middle East isn't that serious, compared with, say, Chicago. But it's more unpleasant for being somewhat unexpected.

I was on my way to a show the Battery Dance Company was doing as part of one of its frequent international tours. That particular trip was supposed to include Syria, Israel, and Jordan, according to the company's artistic director, but Syria was canceled after the U.S. ambassador withdrew from Damascus.

I recall that the cold that night was making me reconsider the whole endeavor. I've always been more interested in narrative theater than in dance, and I was inherently suspicious that anything called "A Mission of Cultural Diplomacy" could live up to its billing. Still, they were playing both banks of the Jordan, which I supposed was a good start.

About that time, a young woman wandered into the otherwise empty bus alley. She wasn't wearing the headscarf, so I guessed that it wouldn't be too culturally inappropriate to ask if she was waiting for the bus to Salt. Many things in Jordan these days are English-speaker-friendly, but the signs at the Abdully bus station are entirely in Arabic.

Thankfully, the woman answered me in English, and I explained that I was trying to get to the Amman University arena for a show. She seemed surprised-first that there was a dance performance going on, second, that I was actually going to it. So, for a few minutes we talked about how odd it is that in a country on the "development fast track" in so many ways-every day there are new highways, schools, offices, government-sponsored e-learning initiatives-there seems to be so little art made.

There are, perhaps, economic factors involved in the "art problem," as I call it. For years (the past 12 in particular), the people who could afford to get out of Jordan's embattled neighbors, Iraq and Palestine, have been fleeing to Amman. According to Interior Ministry statistics, about 50 percent of new construction in 2004 was done by Iraqis. An influx of foreign capital and business is raising rents, prices, and the cost of living, while leaving wages for the average Jordanian pretty stable. Skyrocketing utility rates have been making the editorial pages of many of the papers here; the subject has even made it into the English-language papers, which generally cater to a more affluent audience.

."In Jordan," my bus station friend said, "people are more worried about getting food, paying the electricity bill." But, I wondered, isn't this argument a little spurious? After all, people have problems everywhere in the world. Some make art, some don't. The satellite dishes that sprout from nearly every roof in Amman hint that the entire city isn't as chronically overworked as all that: they have time to watch cable TV from Europe.

But there still seems to be a painful dearth of "stuff going on." When I briefly covered the art beat for a local magazine, I started following all the gallery news, which for the most part consisted of exhibits of Iraqi painting and photographs of Palestine in the 19th century. I live and work near two of what I am told are the country's biggest theaters; they sit dark every night.

Yes, of course, there is some art in Amman-there are a few local bands that play around town, and occasionally someone puts on a one-person show. But these events are scarce and hard to find. The embassies and cultural centers theoretically bring in art from other countries-though, in a recent e-mail exchange with the people at the British Cultural Council, I was told they were no longer doing cultural events.

According to Edwina Issa, a theater educator and director who has been working in Jordan for nearly 20 years, a lot of the cultural programs run by outsiders have dried up over the years, or have just not been followed up on a local level. When art gets made or brought here, it seems like a mirage, vanishing when you get close. There's the idea that it's not real. Even at Jordan University, Issa said, students are selected for art programs based on a test score.

"People here don't believe you do this as a vocation," she said.

The irony of all this is that among a certain segment of the population, people are really, really hungry for art. Any kind of art. After a few months here, I know I am. It's something unusual for an American to experience, especially a New Yorker. In New York it seems there's always more art than anyone needs or wants.

But when I made it out to the university amphitheater, it seemed as if everyone I know was there. Two hundred people were packed into the first rows of a 4,000-seat arena, wearing the expressions of starving men who have just sat down at a loaded banquet table.

I sat next to a musician friend, and he immediately started to complain about how he missed all the company's other shows

 

and workshops-the show I went to was its last, after spending a full week in Amman.

"Why wasn't there any publicity for this?" my friend asked. "I only found out from an anonymous text message on my phone last night. It's typical. They'll spend millions to import some group or some star, fly them out here, but then they can't bother to spend a few thousand JD to publicize it."

I couldn't argue. I found out about the show from Issa, who saw the dancers the previous night, playing in a 400-seat theater to an audience of 38. It was even free.

People who are trying to make art in Amman can testify that funding for local projects has become harder and harder to come by in recent years. No one wants to pay for art anymore; perhaps they don't see enough return on it. And maybe that's the thing that's missing: in America, there is a deep-seated cultural idea that art is good for something. General Motors, Ford, and GE all fund some kind of art as part of their public relations endeavors. Archer Daniels Midland is one of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's biggest sponsors. No one gets rich in America without tossing a few bucks to some favorite theater, museum, or cultural organization.

As much as Jordanians try to imitate America by putting up skyscrapers, there are still details they miss. Like the fact that, although Americans seem crass and cultureless about many things, when it comes to art, many put their money where their mouth is.

The Mission of Cultural Diplomacy was funded by Bank Audi, the Municipality of Amman, and, of course, the American Embassy. The best collection of Jordanian art available to the public is in the lobbies of the Sheraton Hotel.

And the Battery Dance Company was terrific. The show began with its "solo project," which gave each of the dancers a moment alone in the spotlight. Some of the solos were good, others great. When dancer Stevan Novankovich performed a routine that mixed Russian, European, and Middle Eastern sounds and influences, the audience burst out in appreciative gasps and applause, as if they never expected to see their own culture reflected back at them except through spy movie villains. For me, watching Novankovich's modern moves and flawless technique, with his wild, Gypsy energy, felt like waking up.

Jean Sato performed a short but haunting solo to accompaniment from vocalist Christine Correa. The song she sang was about death. Perfect movement matched with lyrics about decay and dissolution. At one moment, Sato seemed like a puppet, hanging from strings tied to some invisible hand, while the next she surged like a live wire. For a moment, human skin was just a wrapping around something bright and powerful and longing to escape.

In between the solos, the company's musical group performed pieces both vocal and instrumental. One of the most interesting was the simplest: a slow, chanted lyric about the life of an artist, living in the Land of Art, who works on the Art Farm and sells Art for money to deposit in the Art Bank, or to spend at Art Restaurants and Art Nightclubs. Somewhere else, perhaps, this song was written to be ironic. In Jordan, the Land of No Art, it became a hymn, a paean to a world where the spiritual can somehow intersect the temporal through an act of making.

Of course, you can say, that's the world we all live in, the only difference is whether we have eyes to see it. And this is where the pain comes from, because if I had seen this show in downtown New York instead of in a manufactured city set on the side of a mountain in the middle of an uninhabitable desert, how much of what I saw in that theater would I have appreciated? Isn't that the irony of a world of abundance? Even from an overflowing cup we can only drink so deep before we choke.

For more information about the Battery Dance Company, visit their website at: http://www.batterydanceco.com

Nicholas Seeley, a former staff writer for offoffonline, currently lives in Amman, Jordan, where he works as a teacher and freelance journalist. Recent theatrical work includes directing fellow New Yorker-in-exile Jibril Hambel in a production of Wallace Shawn's "The Fever," at Amman's Blue Fig Cafe, and organizing an amateur theatrical salon.

Dental Debauchery

Bite, the new comedy from the Dysfunctional Theatre Company and Horse Trade Theater Group, couples laughs and lechery with dominance and dentistry. The story follows Dr. Oliver

Lights! Magic! Set Changes!

Faust in Love, now playing at the Ohio Theater, is part two of Target Margin Theater's adaptation of Goethe's masterpiece. This second installment of the production's trilogy, which will be completed next year, concerns the most well-known aspect of the Faust legend: his romance with Gretchen (Eunice Wong), a young and innocent girl. As the story goes, Faust (George Hannah), aided by the demon Mephistopheles (David Greenspan), successfully woos Gretchen with gifts, sleeps with her and ruins her reputation, and then abandons her by taking a little vacation to hell. Upon his return, he discovers that his lover has gone mad and is imprisoned for murder. Faust finds himself torn between his desire to save Gretchen and Mephistopheles's insistence that he save himself. Directed by Target Margin's artistic director, David Herskovits, Faust in Love is a slick affair, with plenty of sly winks and nudges to the culturally savvy audience. The show's self-aware theatricality serves as both its most impressive and most detrimental aspect. While Herskovits's attention to production values makes Faust a visual joy to watch, the style of the show is so attention-grabbing that it sometimes distracts the audience from the story itself. The lighting is distinctive and dramatic, the sound design is playful and engaging, and the set changes are fluid and magical. But against the ever-changing backdrop of such beautifully crafted shapes and colors, the characters' conflict and desires seem bland in comparison, despite the efforts of the energetic and talented cast.

The play really shines during its scene changes, unlike most shows, which simply try to get through them as quickly as possible. Herskovits turns these transitional moments into tightly choreographed mini-scenes, during which a flurry of movement is coupled with an exciting burst of music. As the show progresses, the set evolves, gradually revealing a striking depth that dramatically portrays a variety of locations and symbolically represents the distance that develops between Faust and Gretchen. During the transitions, the audience experiences a revelation of space, and when the curtains and flys are removed, one can almost feel a collective shiver of delight rolling through the crowd.

The play's heightened sense of theatricality sometimes works to great dramatic effect, as in Gretchen's prolonged silence when she describes holding her dead sister as a baby. During this scene, the audience's attention was rapt as she wordlessly rocked her empty arms, proving that silence really can speak volumes. At other times, the directorial choices seemed overly devised and even a bit smug.

For instance, a sparkly curtain often appears to hide certain actions from the audience. At one point, someone mimes stomping on a ukulele behind the curtain, while cartoonish sound effects add a comical effect. The curtain is removed to reveal a now-broken ukulele. Although somewhat amusing, bits of business like this often seem gratuitous and out of place. It is difficult to tell whether Herskovits is attempting to make the story interesting by highlighting certain aspects of it, or whether he is simply trying to distract our attention from the boring bits by using any possible means.

The last scene of the play, in which Faust attempts to rescue Gretchen, is a welcome relief from theatrical tricks and gags. Their confrontation is played out in a straightforward manner and thus generates one of the most meaty and thought-provoking interactions of the evening. Once the tongue-in-cheek commentary is turned off, the actors are allowed to get down to the business of really responding to each other, and it is a joy to see. Although it might be nice if there were more of these moments in the play, it is satisfying that Faust ends on this emotional high note.

Herskovits stuffs a surprising amount of humor into the production, and the action proceeds at a pleasantly quick pace. He has successfully put a fresh, new spin on an old play, and the superficial elements of the production shine with style, grace, and a lot of charm. Although the characters may not inspire much empathy or interest, this is still a thoroughly engaging piece of theater, and Target Margin proves that there is more to a good play than simply a good story. In Faust in Love the set is not just an indication of where the characters are; it is the hat from which the magician pulls a rabbit. The costumes do not merely keep the actors from being naked, and the lighting creates much, much more than simply a lack of darkness.

The Spirit of Hip-Hop

Akim Funk Buddha is a beautiful man. He radiates an inner joy, an infatuation with life, people, and movement. This energy is what he attempts to capture and present in his new show, Amazulu: Dance as a Weapon. Buddha, whose real name is Akim Ndlovu, was born in the U.S. but grew up in Zimbabwe. For the past 10 years he has been creating performances in New York City that combine multiculturalism, dance, storytelling, and music. Amazulu stays within this genre, celebrating the diverse histories of its cast while also investigating the indigenous roots of rhythm.

The show begins with a group chant that eventually blends with a freestyling rap session. This represents a theme that Buddha tries to maintain throughout the evening: that our modes of expression today are informed by our cultural histories. A video landscape behind the performers projects images ranging from African fabric patterns to objects in nature and modern graffiti, calling the audience's attention to the potential similarities in these variegated visual icons.

After Buddha informs the audience of his quest for expression (told through spoken-word poetry and a strange, robotic hip-hop dance), the other performers get their chance to shine. And what a bright glow it is, for Kazuma G. Motomura, taking the stage with his routine "Tea Time," is an absolute joy to watch. Gliding along the stage like an unearthly being, he mimes the ritual of a Japanese tea ceremony. His hands become beings that are independent of his body, like two dancers locked in a fascinating duet.

In addition to Japan, Amazulu travels to China, via Zhisheng Zhan and his sheng (Chinese mouth organ), and to childhood, via Buddha's incarnation of a toddler. In most cases, the exploration begins as a solo, then draws in the collaborators who watch from onstage, turning the piece into a medley of rap, freestyling, beat-boxing, opera, and dance. These are the moments when the show truly takes off, and the joy the cast seems to feel when uniting in song is infectious.

Also notable in Amazulu is Buddha's throat singing, which adds an otherworldly feeling to some of the songs; Pete List's subtly supportive beat-boxing; and Erika Bank's impressive operatic tones that float above the music. Buddha's many talents also include tap dancing, gymnastic hip-hop dancing, and body balancing, and his athletic body seems more suited to all of these than to the introspective movement that makes up most of the show. The grace and subtlety required for flowing movement and spoken-word recitations are better left to the other performers, as Buddha has an immensely talented cast at his disposal and doesn't need to do it all himself.

It should be noted that the performance is a work in progress, and many elements of the evening are never satisfyingly unified. The broad narrative scope, which jumps from one part of the world to another, ultimately lacks focus and feels a little random. There are also some matters of pacing that need to be cleared up. But thankfully, Buddha lets the audience in on the show's creative process and its little mishaps, rather than attempting to cover anything up.

Amazulu: Dance as a Weapon can be seen through Feb. 20 at La MaMa E.T.C. There are also Sunday shows in the early evening (starting at 5:30) to accommodate the kids in your life. Children should be wowed by some of the physical feats, and

Play Time

Have you ever sat down to watch an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the comedy-improv TV show hosted by Drew Carey? Ever thought to yourself, "Hey! That looks easy. Bet I could do it"? If so, then head on down to New York Comedy Club for a taste of The Grown-Ups Playground, a comedy show that proves just how difficult good improv can be. Playground is both misconceived and poorly executed. The skits are performed by a well-meaning, energetic cast, but the games are inherently dull and do not encourage comedy of any kind. For example, toward the end of the night a selection of improvisers played a game that resembled the old television show To Tell the Truth. Six actors stood in a line onstage, all pretending that they had once worked as a guard at an ice skating rink. Only one of them, in fact, was telling the truth, and it was up to the audience to guess which one.

The M.C., whose drawn-out explanations were duller than a slow day on C-Span, told the audience to think of questions they might like to ask the actors about the job. She then proceeded to ask the entire group the same painfully boring question, going down the line and eliciting boring answers in response. The audience was then asked to vote for the cast member they thought was telling the truth.

But wait! What happened to the funny questions the audience was asked to provide? I wondered. Alas, this was merely a red herring, something meant to keep our minds occupied during the excruciating execution of this "comedic" game.

To the cast members' credit, they seem to be utterly enjoying themselves, and they provide much-needed encouragement when their teammates are onstage. However, this support system positively crumbles in the large group skits, during which the players' lack of training is extremely evident. All of the cardinal rules of comedy improv are thrown out the window, and the result is an unstructured mess. In the final game of the night, "Styles," five actors perform a neutral scene, then are asked to freeze. They continue the scene in a different style

Safety in (Musical) Numbers

Cellphones, the new rock musical written and directed by Sesame Street veteran William Electric Black, claims that it is "the only show in town where they ask you to turn your cellphone ON!" Now strictly speaking, this is true. The performance opens with a jazzy number titled "Turn Your Cellphone On." However, this song was preceded by several emphatic announcements that the audience's cell phones should, in fact, be turned off. This contradiction exemplifies the internal struggle that forced Cellphones to waver between a merely pleasant show and a really engaging piece of theater. While the production's use of audience participation and its tongue-in-cheek approach to its topical content (the war in Iraq, the Internet, and pornography, to name but a few subjects) encouraged an unusual or even subversive theatrical experience, ultimately Cellphones was not willing to accept the risks that come with such boundary breaking.

The story is concerned with 11 strangers who show up at dawn to a new Department of Homeland Security recruiting booth opening in Central Park. They each want a job protecting our country, but for various unpatriotic reasons: a teenager is running away from home, another girl just wants to be famous, and someone else simply wants a gun. As they wait for the booth to open, the strangers "rock out" about current issues, both of the political and pop-culture variety. The songs are fun in a candy-coated way, and the music jumps adroitly between styles, from salsa to 50's to revival gospel.

The cast is wildly energetic and displays its vocal talents with great aplomb. Although some songs drag as a result of too much formulaic repetition, Black and his collaborators (Joel Diamond, music, and Matt Williams, choreography) should be commended for allowing the multifaceted cast

Jesus Has Left the Theater

"You are the salt of the world," says Jesus, gazing out at the audience with intelligence, importance, and enough pretension to make the La MaMa crowd shift uncomfortably in their seats. The recorded music of mystic chanting reverberates against the slow sound of Jesus dropping pellets into a wooden bowl. He enters and exits through a womb of white fabric, never shifting his intense and purposeful gaze away from his viewers. After his fourth entrance, accompanied yet again by the inimitable "You are the salt of the world," I'm not sure how much more of this self-important, narcissistic performance I can bear.

Then the sound of a vacuum cleaner sings through the air, and a wave of relief washes over the audience. Perhaps we are not meant to take Jesus quite so seriously after all.

Or are we?

In The Pathological Passion of the Christ (written and directed by Dario D'Ambrosi), things are not always what they seem. The Jesus play that begins the show is soon interrupted by a host of characters, all of them "real" people who comment upon the play. Some think that the man playing Jesus is a brilliant actor, while others berate him for being a fake and a liar. One man dislikes D'Ambrosi's work and claims that directors and actors contribute little to modern society. Others defend Jesus's and D'Ambrosi's right to produce theater, begging the question, "Who are we to judge?"

As the discussion continues, a vague connection emerges that links each of the characters to a corresponding apostle or biblical character. For example, "Judas" is a drug addict who delivers a kiss upon Jesus's cheek, deeming him a great actor, while "Peter" is somehow involved with the opening play but repeatedly denies his relationship to Jesus.

A discourse on the meaning and purpose of the theater is cut short when Jesus, shaking and spitting, is wracked by a seizure. Medical assistants carry him out, and one of the "real" characters transforms into Satan. The last section of the play focuses on sickness and madness, culminating in a stomach-turning video of brain surgery. Mary holds Jesus in her arms as he dies, but before his maladies overtake him he heals a boy in a wheelchair, much to the amazement of the apostles and onlookers.

The difficulty in this play is that D'Ambrosi seems to be commenting fervently on something, but that "something" is never clarified. If he wants to liken actors to Jesus (and directors to God, perhaps?), thereby making a religion of the theater and an audience composed of doubters and sinners, then the play he creates should be worthy of such worship. Yet D'Ambrosi's piece is disjointed and unclear, and desperately needs something solid for the audience to grab onto.

Abstract theater can be very effective, and a clear narrative is not necessary for a performance to make sense. But The Pathological Passion does not offer anything novel or beautiful enough to hold the audience's attention during its meandering explorations and structural inconsistencies. The staging is not terribly creative or visually dynamic, nor does the Pirandellian disruption of the play maintain the momentum it initially generates. The music, lighting, and costumes are hyper-dramatic and theatrical, often wavering between the beautiful and the overindulgent.

Finally, the one thing that might improve the flawed writing is ultimately unable to deliver: the acting never rises above the level of a freshman monologue class, and the "real" characters are even less believable than the "fake" ones.

Of course, with all the allusions and self-reflective commentary flying by, one must consider the possibility that the acting is meant to be subpar, that perhaps the audience is supposed to feel alienated and lost in a meta-theatrical morass. But if these are all means to an end, if these are in fact innovative directorial choices that generate groundbreaking theater, then the end must justify the means, and the audience should ultimately realize the powerful culmination of D'Ambrosi's direction. Unfortunately, the choices feel random, the elements remain separate, and the meaning of the piece is never synthesized into something strong and clear.

But The Pathological Passion may appeal to some theatergoers not despite but because of its strangeness and intellectual obscurity. D'Ambrosi asks a lot of his audience, and his commentary, though hidden underneath layers of pretense and theatrical devices, is waiting to be decoded by those who enjoy a little difficulty in their drama.

I Heart Freestyle

The great thing about writing reviews for improv shows is that one can never spoil the plot. Because the performance is different every time, one can expound upon the tiny details of the night's show without worrying that too much would be given away. Everything in Freestyle Love Supreme is inspired by the audience's suggestions, and the shockingly talented lyrical artists and musicians use their skills to take those suggestions to the limit, with hilarious results. Comedy improv is a form of theater made popular by groups like Chicago City Limits and the television show Whose Line is it Anyway?. Freestyle Love Supreme is in the same vein, but adds the element of music into the mix

SHAKESPEARE VS. SID: A Battle to the Death

What would happen if Shakespeare and Sid Vicious had a baby? Although this question triggers some rather disturbing images, their unholy offspring might look something like Titus X, a lovingly loud interpretation of Titus Andronicus told through the tunes of punk music. While the production dismisses nearly all of the Bard's text, it successfully revels in the bloodlust and revenge that drive the original play. The cast takes the stage to the overwhelming strains of an electric guitar, a bass guitar, and a drummer, who pummel their instruments with grace and vigor throughout the show. Although the band is top-notch, they are also REALLY LOUD. Fortunately, free ear plugs are distributed before the show, and I must recommend that any future audience member who wants to retain most of their hearing take a pair, just in case.

The show begins with a rousing, guitar-fueled chant of "Titus, Titus!" and some expositional dialogue that is difficult to hear. Luckily, the situation becomes clear upon Titus' (Peter Schuyler) entrance. He is a war hero returning from battle victorious, with Tamora (Bat Parnas), the queen of the Goths, as his slave. The emperor Saturninus (Joe Pindelski) takes Tamora as his bride and thus, enables her to wreak revenge upon Titus for the murder of her own children. Her two surviving sons kill the emperors' brother and frame it on Titus' offspring. They also rape his daughter Lavinia (Amanda Bond) and cut off her hands and tongue to silence her. Titus feigns madness for awhile but eventually kills the criminals, baking them into a pie and forcing Tamora to eat her own sons. A rash of killings ensue, leaving nearly everyone dead in a gory bloodfest.

The complicated plot translates poorly to punk music, which is by nature loud and indecipherable. But Titus X is more musical theater than punk opera, and the play increasingly resorts to spoken scenes and sung dialogue. While I felt a little disappointed at this tempering of the genre, I have to admit that if every song had been pure punk the story would have been lost. Several rock ballads add to the musical theater feel, and for the most part they slow down the anarchic energy of the show. The major exception to the ballads-are-boring rule is Lavinia's post-tongue solo, sung through a mouthful of blood. To make a tongueless, handless rape victim sing a ballad is sick, wrong, and absolutely hilarious. The other songs that work well are the punked-up screamfests that simplify the plot into a single, selfish emotion. "She Woman" is a great example of that, with lyrics such as "mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine!" effectively getting the point across. When freed from having to clearly enunciate or hit notes, the performers really get to revel in the shameless self-indulgence that makes Titus X so much fun. Even when the play drags towards the end, the cast's conviction and their flair for the ridiculous keep everyone entertained.

The small performance space of Chashama is used extremely well. While some of the songs are sung straight out to the audience, others are more physical, and the cast never lets a few hand-held mikes stop them from smacking, shoving, and stabbing each other with great fervor. The lighting is also remarkably effective, drowning the stage in intense color and evocative shadow from only a few sources. The costumes add to the fun of the evening, changing quickly as actors shift from one character to the next. Decked out in punk, retro, gothic, and hipster gear, the actors transform Chashama's 42nd street location into St. Marks Place at midnight, and the audience is happy to make the trip.

Each of the actors has their moment of brilliance, but some shine more often than others. Joe Pindelski and Ben Pryor are especially versatile and energetic, and their performance is aided by the fact that they can sing well in the various styles of punk, rock, and musical theater. Pryor also impresses due to the sheer number of characters he portrays, all with great clarity and hilarity. Bond and Parnas both exude a nice stage presence but are unable to deliver on all of their songs. To their credit, every off-key note is held with the (false) conviction that it is the right one, and the bad singing, when it occurs, actually adds to the show's feeling of anarchy and disobedience.

The major problem with Titus X is that it does not really know what it wants to be. While the show starts off as an in-your-face punk explosion, that energy soon tapers off into musical-theater land. This mixed-up musicality was evident in the singing, which sometimes wavered between two styles within the same song. But maybe I am taking Titus X too seriously. Maybe a mixed-up, pointless teenager is precisely what this show wants to be. Its angst is voiced with a lot of heart, and in the end its ridiculousness and inconsistencies actually make it endearing. The show also has a darker side. Titus X takes two things that are often treated with the utmost seriousness--Murder and Shakespeare--and pulls the rug out from beneath them. When we squeal at Lavinia

The Transformers

Improvisation as performance is much maligned. That has less to do with the form itself than with the performers. Improv is also seen as good training for serious theatrics, or as a quick laugh a la Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Those multiple and overlapping perceptions need not be so, as demonstrated by the graduates of the New Actors