THEATER
A Jarring Genesis
Immersive mash-up of art forms evokes humanity’s origin
BY DAVID KENNERLEY
When you enter the
lobby of The Downstairs
Theatre at La
MaMa, it’s as if you’ve
punctured another dimension. The
space has been transformed into a
mind-bending realm of sculpture,
color and light, pulsing with sound
and even scent.
Humanoids clad in white HazMat
suits cavort about, engaging with
each other and with mystifi ed theatergoers.
These curious beings repeatedly
mutter something about
existence as being “indescribable.”
Which pretty much sums up
the experience of “Generator: Pestilence
Part 1,” the cryptic live art
creation written and directed by
veteran performance artists Jack
Waters and Peter Cramer, in association
with Allied Productions.
The thrust of this ambitious piece
L’Amour, L’Amour
Two tangled tales of love — or something somewhat like it
BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE
After many successful
regional productions,
Pearl Cleage’s extraordinary
play “Blues for an
Alabama Sky” has fi nally come to
New York in a wonderful production
from Keen Company. Though
the play was written in 1995, it
is reminiscent of Tennessee Williams
or William Inge in its scope,
structure, character development,
and emotional impact, giving it a
classic feel that wonderfully serves
the story. Diffi cult subject matter
unfolds slowly as Cleage’s fi nely
drawn characters and fl uid exposition
draw the audience into the
world of the play with elegance and
sensitivity.
Set in Harlem in 1930, the story
follow the trials and challenges of a
set of people at the end of the Harlem
Renaissance. The Depression
Bryce Payne is Technology in Jack Waters and Peter Cramer’s “Generator: Pestilence Part 1,” which
runs at La MaMa through March 1.
has hit hard in Harlem and day-today
survival is not assured. People
are struggling, yet one is likely to
meet Langston Hughes at a party
or on the street.
Angel, a nightclub singer with
a disastrous relationship history,
has been fi red from her job for
confronting her mobster boyfriend
from the stage after he’s dumped
her. She lives with Guy, a gay man
who dreams of designing costumes
for Josephine Baker in Paris. Their
neighbor across the hall, Delia, is
a churchgoing woman who works
with Margaret Sanger in trying to
establish a family planning clinic
in Harlem. Sam is the doctor who
delivers all the local babies and is
rumored to help with a different
kind of family planning. Leland,
an upright and rigidly moralistic
man from Alabama, who has lost
his wife and son in childbirth,
has escaped to New York. He spies
skills and develop language.
The story is told not only by THEO COTE
Angel leaning out the window on
a hot summer night and is smitten.
What follows is a courtship, of
sorts.
Leland sees his dead wife in Angel,
and Angel sees salvation from
her hardscrabble existence in Leland.
She is angry about her life
and tired of Guy’s dreams of designing
clothes in Paris, and her
fear and frustration lead her to
agree to marry Leland, though she
doesn’t love him. Across the hall,
Delia and Sam fall in love, and it
looks like a happy ending may be in
the cards. It is not, at least not for
all of them, and the tragedies and
losses begin to accumulate even
as some dreams come true. Cleage
weaves these stories together with
an ability to create sympathy for
even the more troubled characters
and an indelible sense of time and
place that make this a rich and engrossing
tale.
seems more about sensory perception
than about narrative.
Not that words don’t play a part.
We meet an androgynous host of
sorts named Technology (the charismatic
Bryce Payne) who leads
us from the immersive preshow to
the main theater, preparing us for
a journey into “the Void.” Spokenword
poetry replaces traditional
dialogue. This spirit guide urges
us to free our minds and consider
“endless possibility: what could
have been merges with what could
become.”
Over the course of an hour or so,
we witness the genesis of life, from
a single-cell organism to complex
life forms, which evolve into mythical
beasts, then primates, then
into humans who must learn social
➤ GENERATOR, continued on p.21
LA Williams directs with an eye
for period and a deep understanding
of who these people are and
what drives them. The result is a
clarity of focus that consistently
delivers quiet tension and anxiety
that reveal how high the stakes
are. The cast is a dream. Jasminn
Johnson as Delia, Sheldon Woodley
as Sam, and Khiry Walker as
Leland inhabit their characters
fully, making the most of each moment.
The production, though, belongs
to Alfi e Fuller as Angel and
John-Andrew Morrison as Guy in
the two central roles. Fuller plays
Angel with a hard-edged ferocity
that almost masks her fragility
and fear. Her Angel is the quintessential
survivor and her tragedy is
that she has lost the capacity for
dreams, leaving her trapped in a
bleaker life. Morrison plays Guy
➤ BLUES, continued on p.21
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