Bloody Mess

So the whole reasoning behind this trip to Seattle was not the cross border shopping or the excuse to drink at bars where shot glasses are prohibited and the free pour reigns. It was not to mock the smokers, victims to Washington's recent anti-smoking bill that prevents people from puffing in any public space or within 25 feet of any doorway (unless they're moving – so conceivably one could walk around in circles). The point was not to catch up on sleep or spend too much money on feeding myself.

The point was to see the show. ("And why are you travelling to the United States today?" "We're going to see a play?" "A play. People still do that?")

The group is called Forced Entertainment. The play, Bloody Mess. And it was. In a good way. To give a blow by blow description of what happened would sort of give you an idea of the whole. But there was this aspect of accumulation: of moments, images, of stuff and mess on the stage, of time, of sound. And then this stripping away: of clothing, words, relationships, lights. It was chaos. And yet so well organized and orchestrated that it really poses a challenger to the viewer to answer the questions, "but what does it mean?"

(Side note: my Dad asks me that question when he comes to the see the tangential theatre that I make up. "It was good," he says, "but what does it all mean, Adrienne?" I say, "What do you think it means?" He may have answered. I don't remember. Ah, my life is slipping away from me through randomly inaccessible memory.)

What I really liked about the show was the sense of the group and the individuals within that group. I always felt like the group was working together. Each performer was responding to the others on the stage, even when all ten (?) of them were working completely separately. I appreciated the sense of danger. Electical amps and lights. Water splashing. The wrestling clowns who got so tired and bruised. I loved the Stars, two naked men holding giant cardboard cut outs of starts covered in tin foil. Their decision that now is a good time to share five minutes of silence and then the twenty minute discussion that followed, determing just what kind of silence we were going to experience together. Each silence – some were beautiful, but others decidedly awkward, morbid or tragic – mulled over and made palpable not by our experience of it, but our imagining of it. And the ideas: beginnings and endings; accuracy vs. sentiment; how performers desire the audience to see them; the intrusion of technology; the impossibility of crying on demand. And I liked the loud, loud music.

When the show was over (two hours and forty five minutes later!) I sat stunned. Camille turned to me almost immediately: "I'm so glad we saw that in the States," she said "It is a perfect comment on what is going on in World relations right now." Huhnh? I thought. Still stunned, too tangled in the accumulation of moment... moment... moment to be able to tie them together and create any sort of synthesis or summarizing statement. Encapsulation.

Later that night, over margaritas in the too loud Mexican karaoke bar (oh. my. god.) Norman talked about what it meant to him: a tribute to twenty years of working with the same company, all the personal relationships, the conflicts, the mess. And again, me: hunhhh?

I can see both perspectives. I can see where they are coming from, how Norman and Camille each got to their ideas. And I guess this is one more thing that I liked about the show: how it is completed, ultimately, by me – or you – by each audience member from their particular perspective at that particular moment in time. I know I will be thinking about it for a long long time.