Friday, October 24, 2008
Firsts fest: 'The Department' mixes theater, dance and gibberish
Post Gazette: "Timing is everything, particularly in dance. But political timing is another matter, as will be seen in the Jo Stromgren Kompani's 'The Department' at the International Festival of Firsts."
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I was able to see "The Department" this weekend, and was mesmerized with the ability of the actors and director/choreographer to tell a seemingly literal story through abstracted forms of expression - e.g. dance and gibberish. During the entire show, I was convinced that the words that the actors were uttering were complete structured sentences with proper points in the story arc being described on stage - but afterwards, when I attended the talk back, I was surprised to learn that the entire dialogue - excluding several key elements - was entirely improvised with different languages from all over Europe. I was also taken aback to find that the plot of the show was so vague - whereas I had pegged each moment as an allegorical reference to communism during and immediately after WWII. It was one of those shows that I wont soon forget - and will always remember how it surprised me.
I also got to see this show, but I feel like I got a very different experience than Josh did. Much of the "gibberish" was actually a mixture of Slavic languages, including a fair amount of Russian. The words they were using though, were completely non-sequitur and unrelated to the situation they were in. This understanding of their gibberish not only took me out of the show in that aspect, but also made me subconsciously spend the rest of the show trying to pick out words I knew.
That being said, it was still one of the strongest theatre experiences I have ever witnessed, and I would love to see some of Jo Stromgren's other work.
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