While I'm talking about theatre
Dec. 26th, 2017 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettThe other Forward Arena production I've seen (this one sadly only twice) is Children and Animals. C+A is a charming little one-hour show about anxiety, relationships, communication, stories, sex work and kink. As far as I know, it hasn't been peformed since 2016 and is unlikely to get staged by Forward Arena again, which on the one hand I can understand and on the other think is rather a pity.
It clearly started out as something very different: an early review from March (I saw it in August) describes it as featuring a married town councillor with "a strangling sense of guilt" over a child murdered in the local park, his non-spousal lover, and "a sixth-form student, prostituting herself to make ends meet". It was "punctuated by seemingly incongruous monologues about lack, and particularly the powerful idea that lack (or, rather the feeling of desire) is sometimes more noticeable than the missing object itself".
This does, I will grant, sound pretty dire on a very large number of levels.
It was also very much not the play I saw.
One of the things I find fascinating about Forward Arena is how much their productions are living and changing things, perpetual works-in-progress: the most recent run of Callisto had been rendered more accessible for single viewings, in addition to everything else I talked about, and by the time I saw Children and Animals it was something very different. I feel quite strongly that Broadway Baby didn't get it at all;sebastienne wrote a brief review at the time, which I think gives a far better sense of it; Forward Arena were pretty clear to us, when we asked, that they weren't sure how to sell it, and we rather thought that came across in an interview with their venue (who also didn't get it):
So, in the style of that first review I linked you to, I'm going to try to tell you a little bit more about the play I got to watch. (Twice, to my delight.)
C+A does indeed take place in a hotel room: there was a bad; there were bedside tables; there were indeed the characters of Tim and Sally, but their occupations seemed irrelevant and they were a loving and supportive, if rather stressed, couple. Tim clearly has hideous anxiety; Sally is clearly exasperated with him, but is still choosing to help him manage it; and May is a sex worker who seems entirely cheerful about her profession and is... also a conspiracy theorist. Very much a conspiracy theorist.
While they're waiting for May to arrive, Tim and Sally have a lot of not-quite-arguments (pretty clearly anxiety-driven) about such topics as "but what will she think of us I asked for a room with a balcony and got this awful view of a carpark instead" (approximately); and they tell each other stories. They roleplay. A lot. They shift in and out of character, and they shift power, and they trust each other, and it's glorious to watch. (And they irritate each other, and Tim handles his anxiety by snapping at Sally, who pulls a For Heaven's Sake This Again face that makes it very clear that there are standing arrangements for dealing with this nonsense...)
... and at every point where I braced for it to go wrong and bad and awful, it... didn't.
May arrives and is gentle and reassuring with them both. Conspiracy theories... happen. Sally steps outside to give Tim space. May starts to look uncomfortable when Tim asks her to engage in ageplay... and then the dynamic rapidly shifts, because he couldn't ask for the dynamic he wanted, and she starts to look more comfortable again. Sally joins them. There is no sex and no kissing and very little touching, and Sally and Tim end up curled up in the hotel bed either side of May, under the blankets, being read a children's alphabet book -- A is for... -- that rapidly turns strange and creepy; they fall asleep before the end of the alphabet, having already paid May, and she quietly sneaks off. In the last performance, the bed broke catastrophically, and the poor actors were trying to avoid corpsing as they slid inexorably into the gaps.
There is no affair. There is no murdered child. There is no coercion. There's just screaming anxiety, and learnig to ask for what you want in the face of it, and trusting your partner, and the moon landing. I left with the sense that May was baffled, but not unhappy. I left with the sense that the script had been adapted in response to feedback from sex workers & allies, and kinksters & allies, such that it just -- ended up charming, and non-judgemental, and gentle, and kind. It was a triptych of portraits, and I'm awfully glad I got to see it.
It clearly started out as something very different: an early review from March (I saw it in August) describes it as featuring a married town councillor with "a strangling sense of guilt" over a child murdered in the local park, his non-spousal lover, and "a sixth-form student, prostituting herself to make ends meet". It was "punctuated by seemingly incongruous monologues about lack, and particularly the powerful idea that lack (or, rather the feeling of desire) is sometimes more noticeable than the missing object itself".
This does, I will grant, sound pretty dire on a very large number of levels.
It was also very much not the play I saw.
One of the things I find fascinating about Forward Arena is how much their productions are living and changing things, perpetual works-in-progress: the most recent run of Callisto had been rendered more accessible for single viewings, in addition to everything else I talked about, and by the time I saw Children and Animals it was something very different. I feel quite strongly that Broadway Baby didn't get it at all;
sebastienne wrote a brief review at the time, which I think gives a far better sense of it; Forward Arena were pretty clear to us, when we asked, that they weren't sure how to sell it, and we rather thought that came across in an interview with their venue (who also didn't get it): Children and Animals is a different beast altogether. From the twisted but brilliant mind of playwright Florence Read (Cold/Warm), Children and Animals follows a young couple in a hotel room who invite a prostitute to join them. However, sex is only one small aspect of this psychological play about guilt, fantasy, and the down-right absurd. “The premise is this couple who are so bored with the mundane [that] they simulate, through games and fantasies, almost every moment of their existence,” says Bailey. “All the while they’re nervously waiting for this third player [who] is the catalyst for the most extreme situation they can think of,” he continues, “they want to see what is the darkest thing they can simulate for each other”. Knowing the more weird and grotesque aspects of the play (that I shall not spoil here), I must say this is definitely a pitch black comedy that will stay with you. In a good way.
So, in the style of that first review I linked you to, I'm going to try to tell you a little bit more about the play I got to watch. (Twice, to my delight.)
C+A does indeed take place in a hotel room: there was a bad; there were bedside tables; there were indeed the characters of Tim and Sally, but their occupations seemed irrelevant and they were a loving and supportive, if rather stressed, couple. Tim clearly has hideous anxiety; Sally is clearly exasperated with him, but is still choosing to help him manage it; and May is a sex worker who seems entirely cheerful about her profession and is... also a conspiracy theorist. Very much a conspiracy theorist.
While they're waiting for May to arrive, Tim and Sally have a lot of not-quite-arguments (pretty clearly anxiety-driven) about such topics as "but what will she think of us I asked for a room with a balcony and got this awful view of a carpark instead" (approximately); and they tell each other stories. They roleplay. A lot. They shift in and out of character, and they shift power, and they trust each other, and it's glorious to watch. (And they irritate each other, and Tim handles his anxiety by snapping at Sally, who pulls a For Heaven's Sake This Again face that makes it very clear that there are standing arrangements for dealing with this nonsense...)
... and at every point where I braced for it to go wrong and bad and awful, it... didn't.
May arrives and is gentle and reassuring with them both. Conspiracy theories... happen. Sally steps outside to give Tim space. May starts to look uncomfortable when Tim asks her to engage in ageplay... and then the dynamic rapidly shifts, because he couldn't ask for the dynamic he wanted, and she starts to look more comfortable again. Sally joins them. There is no sex and no kissing and very little touching, and Sally and Tim end up curled up in the hotel bed either side of May, under the blankets, being read a children's alphabet book -- A is for... -- that rapidly turns strange and creepy; they fall asleep before the end of the alphabet, having already paid May, and she quietly sneaks off. In the last performance, the bed broke catastrophically, and the poor actors were trying to avoid corpsing as they slid inexorably into the gaps.
There is no affair. There is no murdered child. There is no coercion. There's just screaming anxiety, and learnig to ask for what you want in the face of it, and trusting your partner, and the moon landing. I left with the sense that May was baffled, but not unhappy. I left with the sense that the script had been adapted in response to feedback from sex workers & allies, and kinksters & allies, such that it just -- ended up charming, and non-judgemental, and gentle, and kind. It was a triptych of portraits, and I'm awfully glad I got to see it.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-28 05:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2017-12-30 11:42 pm (UTC)