A sold-out trip to REDCAT via the Bowery

Back in the '90s, if you wanted to see Richard Foreman’s Ontological Hysterical Theater Company, it was something of a pilgrimage. You had to make it down to the Bowery and St. Marks and then find this tiny little staircase. The lobby wasn’t much bigger and usually bustling before a show. The seats raked down and revealed a stage with a Greek column, in memory it seemed to have crept just off center stage — that always played a part. The worlds themselves began to call you in before the first word was spoken. Strings shot across the space at various heights, sometimes solid colors, sometimes banded stripes. Like much of Foreman’s work, things could feel cluttered at first. So many different images — black, white, red. A loop of sounds would form a bed under the action. Once the play began, the words started flowing and doubling back on themselves. Characters would scurry to and fro in these fantastically iconic costumes with tailored lines and headgear of one sort or another — a fez here, a bishop’s mitre here, and a beret there. There always seemed to be a series of minions (think more servant than animated) who would explode into a wacky gestural dance that would punctuate the action and somehow begin to reveal a deeper logic to the piece. I’m not sure you could say you followed it like the narrative of a traditional play, but it was enchanting. It spoke to something more visceral, bypassing narrative sense. Then came the sex. Not sex exactly but, again in memory, puppet genitals and a seductive female. It was raw and I always left thinking — God, how boring and predictable is the rest of theater? Just telling a story in a world we already recognize? Look how much more we can do on stage. Jump cut 30 years later to what has become an almost yearly ritual in Los Angeles — going to REDCAT to see the latest from the Wooster Group. It’s funny... I knew Symphony of Rats was originally a production between Richard Forman and the Wooster Group that Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk have reimagined — I even chatted in the lobby about how fun it was to see a Forman script — and then I forgot. I walked into the Wooster Group aesthetic that we’ve been lucky enough to experience in LA through REDCAT’s long-term commitment to presenting their work. The large screens on masts, the body mics, the projections (even the video screen facing the stage for the actor's score). I fell into a world where the president was receiving messages from outer space. Echoes of Radiohead bled into wacky Star Wars references as the video screens filled with bizarre worlds with sliced heads and a pulsing dot figure somehow perched atop a speaker. Then almost in reverse, it started washing over me. I think it was the red fire bell that lit up like a carnival attraction. Or maybe the scurrying minion…or was it when something zipped across the stage on a string? By the time the plushy genitals made it onto the president, I remembered: this is a Richard Foreman play and this is what it would look like to enter that world in this time. Here’s what’s tricky about the ephemeral and always-marching-forward nature of the theater. On one hand, it vanishes from everywhere but memory the instant the show is over. You can’t go back and take a second peek like you can with a painting or thumb back to your favorite chapter of a book. Even looking at that production photo from thirty years ago captures only a frozen lie of time about what that instant of a production might have looked like. Couple that with our lack of a repertoire vision that remounts productions as our friends in opera do. No, in the theater, either you saw it or you're stuck with others saying, "Oh, I wish you’d seen…" This works reasonably well when the play onstage calls upon a world that looks like our own, where time moves in one direction and people move through a space that looks familiar, where cause and effect seemingly echo the world outside the theater. But what if the world onstage isn’t like ours? What if the stage is an invitation to a world we don’t recognize? What if an artist is inviting us into a world, or an aesthetic, that layers upon itself? Where language and meaning come not through facile recognition but instead through learning a different way of experiencing? For that world, seeing one production — one time — likely isn’t enough. You only gain access to those worlds over many plays and many years. Here’s something else about Symphony of Rats at REDCAT. It sold out. They even added a Wednesday matinee, a Wednesday matinee in LA?!? And it sold out before the run even began. Maybe that’s because it was a Foreman script. Or because it’s about the Presidency and we are in one of those years. Or maybe it’s because it got good reviews in New York. I think it’s a classic 10-year overnight success. REDCAT has presented the Wooster Group consistently over many years. Los Angeles’ theater audience has gone on the ride. We know not the play but the players. We’ve found the work and the work has found its audience. As I look across our presenting house seasons throughout LA post-pandemic, I see less and less theater. Gone are the extravagant foreign productions on the Freud Stage of UCLA Live, the visiting productions at the Broad, even the Wallace and REDCAT have cut back. There’s some, but it’s tucked in here and there among the music and the dance. It’s no surprise. Theater is expensive, especially visiting productions. That dance show or musical ensemble doesn’t need the sets or the tech and rehearsal time — and the ticket price is the same. That’s a loss for LA theater. Not only do we miss the work, we miss the moment to find each other. This work generates a specific audience of theatergoers and theater-makers who are often scattered like our city, spilling about with no focused center. Maybe I’ll have to say, "I wish you’d seen…" a little less. Or maybe sell-out runs will help bring these productions back. I know April seems like a distant world, but Elevator Repair Service, another NY company we’ve been lucky enough to see in LA, is bringing their take on James Joyce’s Ulysses to UCLA’s new Nimoy Theatre in Westwood. These are the folks that did Gatz (which is another play I wish you’d seen!). Trust me, this is one to book tickets for now. It’ll sell out and you won’t regret it. This is Anthony Byrnes Opening the Curtain on LA Theater for KCRW.