Author: Natalie Steers

“Closer”, a show of sex, friendship, painful truths, and unfounded trust, will be performed by Basement Arts this weekend! A play by Patrick Marber, it originally premiered in London before making its way to the United States. It won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1998 and the 1999 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Foreign Play, as well as being nominated for a Tony award that same year.

The play was made into a movie in 2004, featuring Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Clive Owens, and Julia Roberts. Patrick Marber also wrote the screenplay for the film; I always appreciate it when the original writer has the chance to adapt his own work for a different medium. Natalie Portman and Clive Owens both received Golden Globes for their performances in the film.

Guaranteeing an evening full of intrigue and drama, you won’t want to miss “Closer”! Performances are in the Acting for the Camera studio on the second floor of the Walgreen Drama Center. There is free admission but only 40 seats! Arrive early! The good news is that even if you don’t get a seat one evening, you’ll have five total chances to see this second production of the semester by Basement Arts. Showtimes are:

Thursday, February 4th at 7:00pm & 11:00pm

Friday February 5th at 7:00pm

Saturday , February 6th at 7:00pm & 11:00pm

Check out the Facebook event for the show, which includes a cast list: Basement Arts presents: CLOSER

Friday night a friend and I ventured from the comfort of East Quad to North Campus to see Basement Arts’ first performance of the Winter Semester. “Gruesome Playground Injuries” is a play by Rajiv Joseph that explores pain and love over the span of a life-long friendship. I found the play at times touching, absurd, gross, and strangely relatable.

Even though it appeared through advertising the show started at 11pm, the doors didn’t even open until 11. At which point there was a very large crowd that had to fight for seats all at once instead of arriving at different intervals. Having successfully elbowed our way to seats together near the front, my friend and I observed the set. The small Studio One was an intimate space that worked to draw the audience close to this two person show. The stage was framed with sheets hanging on clothes lines, a bed on stage right, and a gurney on stage left.

The show started rather abruptly with the house lights still up, and we watched as the two actors hung up their various costumes for the show between the sheets. I liked starting the show in this manner, easing the audience into the performance, especially since this technique was echoed throughout the rest of the performance. The play is structured out of chronological order, so to help the audience know when each scene took place, we watched them change clothes. The transition between each scene consisted of the characters switching costumes before us; not only did the different clothes symbolize different periods in their life, the act of watching them transition represented the passing of time (either forward or backwards). While this did make for somewhat long transitions I personally enjoyed watching the physical and acting changes take place in their demeanor.

I however was not a fan of the sheets hanging around the edges of the stage. I kept waiting for the set decision to make sense but I left dissatisfied. The show continues to circle back to that first playground injury during which the two best friends met, so why wasn’t the set reminiscent of a playground then? Why were there white sheets hanging everywhere? My friend was unbothered by this fact and thought it made sense.  This set choice gave the characters an excuse to hang their clothes around the stage at the beginning. I however disagree; there are other ways that we still could have witnessed the costume changes and had the clothes laid out on the edge of the stage without having hanging sheets which served no thematic purpose except to be there.

Other than the set, I enjoyed the directorial and performances choices made throughout the performance. “Gruesome Playground Injuries” begins with the two characters, Kayleen and Doug, meeting in the school nurse’s office. Kayleen has a stomach ache and Doug has cut his face open after riding his bike off the school’s roof. Kayleen is both disgusted and morbidly fascinated. So begins an almost platonic life-long friendship full of pain, injures, self discover and injury, love and disappointment. Sometimes love hurts. The ultimate message focused on the concept that sometimes we have to learn to love ourselves without relying on another’s love to heal us or the scars we’ve made.

Overall, I had a nice evening and found some interesting perspective about how injuries can shape, or even ruin, our lives, if we left them.

Saturday night I attended Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company’s performance of “Straight White Men”. The show was a well balanced combination of humor, desperate seriousness, social theory, and reality. It all mixed together to create a production that posed sharp poignant questions.

The music as the audience sat down was loud, with a heavy bass and a female rapper. This seemed to put some audience members not at their leisure. A friend who I went to the show with thought it might be the setting. Having this music for pre-show enjoyment, instead of the more “traditional” classical music, threw some people off kilter. As we saw later, the music made a reappearance in the play itself at a key bonding moment for the family. I thought it actually gave the event a more social-party feel, except for the fact that it was a tad loud. I had to learn in close and shout in my friend’s ear to talk to her before the show, which was annoying. But the music became less noticeable as more people arrived and added their voices to the noise, helping to enhance the social party atmosphere I mentioned earlier.

Turning my attention to the stage while I sat waiting for the show to start, I had a good chance to admire the set. The entire production took place within the living room. It had just the right amount of clutter or purposeless objects that I believed people actually lived there. Using corners and suggestive lighting, it looked like this wasn’t just a set piece but part of a larger house that characters could disappear into the depths of.

I am usually not a fan of seeing crew members during the show. But in this production, it worked rather beautifully. The show consisted of three scenes and between each scene the stage lights dimmed and we’d watch the crew members. They brought on objects, brought off objects, fixed the furniture, etc. It was like we were watching how the objects moved and changed over the elapsed time between scenes; the time that wasn’t being performed for us onstage. It was a really interesting directorial choice which in this production really added to the sense of time and place.

The story itself followed a very logical progress, so that audience members were engaged but not overtaxed in following the complicated identity search that was being enacted for them. This was largely in part due to the chemistry of the actors on stage. Since it was so well written, the show allowed for the actors to really dive into their characters and create very real personas. The rapport between the brothers was immediately relatable to me (but then again I have a lot of siblings). Playing the family invented socially conscious game titled “Privilege” held the right amount of chaos between members.The Christmas traditions that were still faithfully kept, despite the brothers perhaps (or perhaps not) having outgrown them. I believed this was a family; their relationships made sense. I was given all I needed to understand why he said that or they didn’t agree.

Because of the believable nature of the characters and setting, I had a context in which to place the larger issues the show posed. Is “failure” ever acceptable? What happens when you feel the very fact that you exist is a problem? And are there any principles you have to fall back on if this is the case? What is there to guide how to live your life? Is being an ally enough? How do you not abuse the privilege you have?

Let there be no mistake: This was not a show to victimize or condemn straight white men. It merely posed both obvious and subtle questions about the flaws in our society by bringing it into a very real and intimate context.

I enjoyed my evening at the Mendelssohn Theatre and Young Jean Lee’s production. I’m left with more questions and fewer answers, because, as all good theater does, it challenged what I assumed and changed how I think. I look forward to the next time Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company makes its way to Ann Arbor!

I understand now why it is untitled. How can you put a title on a work that’s very purpose strives to undo the titles and labels we assign to each other? And perhaps even question those we give ourselves. At the end of the performance Friday my lips were incapable of placing only a few words, to what I had just experienced. There was no title to be given.

I laughed, cried, felt overwhelming anger, yearning, hurt, and freedom, along with a strange combination of both happy and sad. This performance captured emotions as only movement and music can, and took the audience along for the ride. So much so that when one of the performers was acting angry and frustrated and then ran into the audience flinging programs, getting in people’s faces, flinging more programs and people’s jackets along with it, I too understood the urge.

As people filed in, instead of pre-show music, there was the soundtrack of breathing in the background. It was kind of hypnotizing. To start the show the performers walked down the aisle, breathing deeply.

The interesting thing is that after the first number, I didn’t really even notice that they were completely nude. I mean, yes I noticed, but I got over the concept quicker than I expected. The choreography eased my transition, as well.The show acknowledged that nudity makes some theatergoers uneasy while at the same time disregarding such feelings. In the first piece, the movements weren’t as… nonchalant about  what or how they showed anything. It might still have made you uncomfortable but it was intentional. By the end of the show, the movement was the movement and if an audience member was not comfortable seeing everything happening on stage at that point, the production no longer cared.

The only other times we ever remembered to feel self-conscious of their nudity was when the lights would make a sudden shift to stark white nothingness, giving the performers not even shadows or tinted lights to hide behind. Or when the house lights came up occasionally to make the setting more intimate and suddenly remind us that we were watching 6 naked women and that now, everyone could see us too.

In addition to the group pieces, each performer got a segment in which they were featured individually or with a partner. These contained a nice mixture of humor and pain. And they weren’t always dance or movement based either. Some were pantomimed or used sounds because the production was not completely wordless, like I had thought going in. Occasionally vocals, like “la la” and laughter, were incorporated. Their rareness made them all the more powerful.

“Untitled Feminist Show” is one that I believe is a unique experience for everyone. And contrary to the misconception some hold, this is not just about exploring the spectrum of female identities; it is about the spectrum of all identities. What I mean is that, yes it focuses on women’s experiences (only women are in the show) but, as is often misunderstood with the term feminist itself, it’s not just a show for women to see. Feminism promotes freedom of expression; it promotes the idea that anyone should be who they are and want to be. So, yes, the spotlight in this show is thrown on women (literally and figuratively) but that that doesn’t mean there isn’t something for everyone to gain.

I saw a portion of myself in each of those women on that stage tonight. I experienced one of those rare phenomenons: I can not begin to paint for you a suitable picture of all the scenes or even most of the movement in “Untitled Feminist Show”. There would be no satisfaction in that for either me or you. Even what I have described gives you a poor idea of the individualized potential meaning it has. This is not a show to be described, this is a show to be experienced.

The play “Straight White Men” is coming to the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre! This is one of two productions being performed by Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company this weekend; the Power Center will be hosting her play, “Untitled Feminist Show”. I’m lucky enough to be seeing both this weekend!

“Straight White Men” challenges assumptions and values relevant to people from every generation. Yet, there still remains the obvious question: How did Young Jean Lee tackle such a challenging issue? When speaking with Larissa Fasthorse of American Theatre, Young Jean Lee explained. While developing this play she asked herself, “If I woke up tomorrow and I was a straight white man, what would I do?”. This question, and interviews with her actors, were the groundwork for creating a production which probes the very meaning of identities and privileges. You don’t want to miss it!

Performances are Friday, January 22nd, at 8:00 pm and Saturday, January 23rd, with a matinee at 2:00 & an evening show at 8:00 pm. There will be a 15 minute pre-show talk at 7:30pm, before the Friday performance, in the Michigan League 3rd floor Henderson Room. This will provide extra interesting information about the show and questions to consider while watching.

Run time is 95 minutes with no intermission.