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Chicago
Performance Group Revels in Ambiguity by Channing Joseph
Early this week, Chicago-based
performance group Goat Island helped to usher in a new artist series with
a free, public presentation of a work in progress, titled It’s an
Earthquake in My Heart. Combining dance, mime, spoken text and drama, it
was the first performance in the Maverick Artists/Visionary Educators
Series, sponsored by the Henry Luce Initiative in the Emerging
Arts.
Linda Weintraub, the College’s new Luce Professor of Emerging
Arts, introduced the piece with commentary on the series’ efforts to
present dedicated artists/educators and cited the members of Goat Island
as just that. She emphasized the ambiguous nature of the piece, stating
that the group’s name, which joins two unrelated words, was in itself a
statement of Goat Island’s eclectic approach. Weintraub described this
approach as, “at first bewildering,” but ultimately satisfying to the
audience, who participates in the piece’s construction of meaning. From
its very opening, the piece lived up to Weintraub’s warning of ambiguity.
The audience witnessed images which were so open to interpretation that it
seemed apparent that each audience member would indeed walk away having
constructed their own meaning. First, a woman took center stage alone,
twirling her arms and hands in a fashion that seemed at times snakelike,
at times machinelike and at times meditative. At points, she suddenly
thrust an arm into the air above her head while simultaneously an alarm
horn blew somewhere off-stage. If this beginning were not cryptic enough,
she began to sway like a tree, a cloud or a piece of kelp beneath the
ocean. A male voice rang out, saying in a soft monotone, “It’s
raining/Rain in my heart/ Merry Christmas/Merry Christmas in my heart.”
The rest of the three-act performance flowed in a similarly surreal and
dream-like manner. Next, a complex choreography was performed first one
way and then repeated backward in a manner suggesting the rewinding of a
film. Leaps and body collisions were accented by a softly poetic spoken
text : “Possessed by the thought that if I didn’t break the world apart,
disaster would strike,” or, more harshly, “Number one! Be courteous!
Number two! Know how to drive!” At times the piece became a commentary
on the ills of an overly-mechanized modern society, especially as
energetic movement was accented by angrily recited lists of rules. The
performers’ costumes seemed to suggest this theme of mechanization since
their pockets were wired with tiny portable fans. At other points
the piece became an exploration of the dynamics of interpersonal
relationships, like when two performers (of differing genders) disrobed
and traded clothes. The man wore a dress and the woman wore slacks, in
what may have been a challenge to socially-defined gender roles, or
perhaps a commentary on the effects of sharing one’s life in a romantic
relationship.
The entire performance was ultimately
subjective.Thus, interpretations of the work varied greatly between
individuals. The piece defied a definitive theme or meaning due to Goat
Island’s intentional nebulousness. During the discussion following the
performance, the performers re-stated the necessity of an audience to give
the piece its meaning. The group did not offer any interpretation of what
they had done, neither confirming nor rejecting any audience’s
interpretations. In fact, they even invited audience members to offer
suggestions for improving the piece before it is locked into a final
form.
According to the show’s director, Lin Hixson, the members of
Goat Island, (Karen Christopher, Matthew Goulish, Mark Jeffery and Bryan
Saner) will debut the final form of It’s an Earthquake in My Heart
sometime in June of this year in Vienna, Austria.
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