Читать книгу Performance / Media / Art / Culture - Jacki Apple - Страница 24

One of the questions that obsesses us as a species is — Are we alone in the Universe? And if not, who and what are the “aliens”? And are we being watched, and possibly visited by them? We are torn between longing and fear. Thus, we have cast these “others” as bearers of enlightenment (angels), or reptilian monsters (devils). But most of all we fear the incomprehensible, something whose alien “otherness” would shatter all our long-held beliefs about the nature of reality.

1000 Airplanes On The Roof, a collaborative performance written by David Henry Hwang, composed by Philip Glass and designed by Jerome Sirlin, made an attempt to take the subject beyond the Hollywood sci-fi versions of terror or salvation. As theater, it met this challenge formally, but was less successful in content. How it succeeded or failed can be measured in terms of what we expect of art.

Thus the most successful aspect of this piece was Sirlin’s quite startling stage set and scenic designs using multi-dimensional photographic projections. The viewer was confronted with an almost hallucinogenic shift of spatial perception in which material reality collapsed into illusion. The differentiation between theater and cinema was blurred, forcing the viewer to question which side of consciousness he or she was on. We soared over and landed on the rooftops of New York City, went down streets, entered buildings, vanished into forests with the lone performer/narrator, who appeared in a hologram-like projection of a gridded globe that transformed into a cage, the mind, a spaceship, the Universe. It is ironic that the manipulation of the formal structures best conveyed the deeper implications of the narrative.

The story, told in a monologue by Jodi Long or Patrick O’Connell on alternating nights, is basically the tale of someone who has been abducted by aliens, and whose body and mind have been probed. There are pieces of time missing in her life. She fears her own memory, and as she begins to recall various incidents, she questions her own sanity. She comes to remember and understand what has happened, only to have her fear of ridicule and punishment, of being thought crazy, drive her back into denial.

Though evocatively and beautifully written by Hwang, the narrative is one-dimensional. It seems to have been based on the now familiar testimony of numerous people whose contact with aliens parallels or closely resembles what is described in the book Communion. Something is shoved up the nostril. Later there are lapses of memory, nosebleeds. There is the sense of a hive-like organization, of aliens being of one mind.

The language was sometimes transcendent, but the story itself, which remained locked in a singular point of view, never got beyond that limitation. Given the subject matter, I kept waiting for it to go beyond the familiar, to stretch the imagination, risk unorthodox speculations, make daring perceptual, philosophical, or metaphysical leaps. Alas it did not. Did Hwang have a failure of nerve or of vision?

The weakest and most disappointing part of this piece was Philip Glass’s music performed live by his ensemble. It was uninspired and predictable, and one can only wonder if Glass spent any time contemplating the sonic dimensions and possibilities of the subject matter, or the structural innovations of Sirlin’s visual environment.

Hwang suggests that perception is the fifth dimension, and the performer spoke of being drawn up by the aliens into the sound, which was also experienced as light and touch. The narrator’s description defies her and our notions of time and space, and transports her into a parallel reality or dimension of consciousness, the implications of which she cannot cope with. Hwang struggled with this dilemma, but ultimately remained trapped within his character. Sirlin played with our perceptual assumptions, and introduced us to other possibilities. Glass, however, never even took the journey. He merely rehashed himself, with some humming insects thrown in for atmosphere. The result was oppressively redundant.