all shook up
by Douglas Messerli
The Wooster Group Early Shaker Spirituals: A Record Album
Interpretation / the performance I saw was at Redcat (Roy and Edna
Disney/CalArts Theater) at Disney Hall, Los Angeles, January 22, 2015
In the Wooster Group’s new
production of Early Shaker Spirituals: A
Record Album Interpretation, it appears that the company has, if not
reached a kind of crossroads, perhaps paused to reconsider its direction.
Unlike many such experimentally-based theatrical companies, whose major
activities included deconstructing major and minor theatrical works, the
Wooster Group have generally layered their productions of “classical” works
with
But here, in a new way that is not apparent in their other works, this
important American institution seems to have moved further in a direction that
questions and challenges the ironic sensibility that seems present in some of
their previous productions. At moments, the narration almost plays with the
potential of the ironic, beginning with the male introducer (Jamie Poskin) who
contextualizes the performances we are about to encounter. Noting that the
group has already “recreated” extant records, including Hula and L.S.D, the
current recreation of recordings made by the Shakers in 1965, 1970, and 1976
potentially might be another “jumping off spot” for a series of reevaluations
of US culture. Yet, once the quaintly dressed women singers—Cynthia Hedstrom,
Elizabeth LeCompte, Frances McDormand, Bebe Miller, and Suzzy Roche—begin their
series of 20 early Shaker spirituals, we recognize that whatever humor exists
in the work existed already in the minds of the original creators. For the most
part, these are pure creations of love and commitment to God, based on a life
of “bending, reeling, winding, linking, and intertwining their human ways” with
those of the Holy Spirit.
Yes, a DJ-like figure does play, on the side and in back of the action,
the record itself, snatches of which we can hear after the singers have
performed and which, we quickly perceive, they themselves are listening to as
they sing “along” to the original works. But these technological additions (if,
in their simplicity, they can even be described that way) serve simply as
markers and musical cues (how do you sing a capella on pitch without a pitch pipe?) rather than representing another
layer between the performers and audience. Indeed, the actors appear to be
attempting to render their simple songs in the same amateur (arising from the
pleasure and love of singing rather than a professional ability) manner as the
original Shaker singers. This is particularly notable when Frances McDormand
explains the origins of one of the songs, pausing, interrupting herself, and
retelling the story in a way that is meant to perfectly imitate the original on
the recording.
Like the starkly simple set and their homespun costumes, the performers
are clearly attempting to duplicate the original, to create a mimetic image,
rather than to comment on or give greater significance to the original. If
these figures occasionally exchange private glances, share brief phrases of
conversation and rather formally exchange positions with each other, it is not
meant as commentary as much as it is to suggest that the Shaker singers
recognized themselves as apart from the community before whom they were
performing. From our contemporary viewpoint, these women are quaint outsiders,
slightly strange. But by bridging that gap, they are attempting, if nothing
else, to communicate Shaker values to us. Accordingly, the Wooster Group
performers are in the strange position of existing on our side of reality,
while attempting to project something other.
'Tis the gift to be
simple, 'tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to
come down where we ought to be,
And when we find
ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the
valley of love and delight.
When true
simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will
be our delight,
Till by
turning, turning we come 'round right.
In
this second portion, moreover, the Shaker past is reintegrated with our
present, as the male dancers, dressed in modern costume, move in an outer ring
which, although continues to segregate them from the women of the past, still
brings them together through and space, the “you” being joined with the “I,” or
the “them” with the “us”—as it necessarily must be since, presumably, the
dances are a respectful “re-creation,” a stylized imaginative “reconstruction”
of actual Shaker dances, rather than, like the songs, a faithful imitation.
In short, in presenting Early Shaker Spirituals the group is no
longer attempting to reconceive a theatrical event of the past, nor even to
revitalize it, but to respectfully reiterate it, exploring the songs and dances
for what they originally offered rather than reimagining what they might now
mean for us.
The quietude of the audience throughout
these songs and dances suggests not only a certain awe of the beautiful
simplicity of the works but represents a recognition of the distance between
ourselves and the art we are encountering. But it is just that distance, that
awe of something slightly removed from ourselves that, when we ultimately
perceive it as still having so much meaning, results in the final release of
joyful applause. If the Shakers saw it as a religious experience, today we
describe that, more often, as art.
Given the various directions the Wooster
Group has moved over its glorious existence since 1975, it would be absurd to
attempt to describe what might be expected in their future works; but it is
clear that at least some of their members have found new meaning in the
original art without needing to overlay it with contemporary innovations and
irony.
Los Angeles, January 21, 2015
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (January 2105).
