Backstage In The Underworld
A joyride down the river Styx has arrived at the BAM Harvey Theater. Persephone, a gorgeously surreal staging of the titular Greek goddess abduction by Hades, opens Oct. 26 as a crown jewel of the Brooklyn Academy of Musics annual Next Wave Festival.
This voyage is the fourth BAM concoction from the Ridge Theater company, synonymous with vanguard media mélange since its 1990 inception. Like most Ridge ventures, Persephone is a fusion of founder Bob McGraths direction, films by collagist Bill Morrison, projections from Morrisons collaborator and wife Laurie Olinder and set design from Jim Findlay. Starlet and longtime Ridge actress Julia Stiles smolders in the lead role, making an action as simple as holding a pomegranate look like alchemy.
Persephone emerged five years ago, after a night of cabaret music by composers Ben Neill and Mimi Goese (who also plays grieving mom Demeter) prompted BAM Executive Producer Joseph Melillo to unite the duo with McGraths team. The pathos onstage carries a second realm of theatrics: a playhouse within a playhouse, the myth produced before us by a technologically savvy 19th-century theater troupe. Until now, Ridge has never really turned the lens onto itself, notes Morrison. We see whats backstage: a melodrama of this turn-of-the-century companys inner machinations and politics.
Art Nouveau, William Morris intricate textiles, German Expressionists and proto-Modernism all proved inspiring landmarks for Persephone. Its not far from the beginning of film, says Morrison, a period Ive been interested in for a long time. Morrison, one of todays most acclaimed experimental filmmakers, meshes reels of decaying film footage into indelible montages. His found materials are copyright free, each with weird permutations, each film pockmarked in some way, often coming from vault managers shabbiest reels. For example, we shot Julia Stiles reciting a poem, says Morrison, then spliced it with a silent film actress whose face is corroded and composited together with Julias.
Persephones media-infused set design further embraces saturated color, uniting decadence with decrepit theater spaces. Findlay and McGrath saw the players onstage as primeval multimedia iconoclasts that no one knows about, but who everyone will steal from for decades to come. How would they solve their problems? asks Findlay. I liked that theyd be bringing things into the theater that werent supposed to be there, like some [avant-garde theater director] Robert Wilson of 1895.
Findlays mash-up of epochs doesnt go unnoticed by the boss. We were at a plateau back in 2001 before he started working with us, says McGrath. His sets are gorgeous and challenging, and he was brought in to kick our asses. Challenging, but highly functional: We wanted to create a backstage and a view of the show at the same time, explains Olinder, one that could change as quickly as a dissolving slide. From this criteria Findlay forged a slanted onstage proscenium not unlike a scaled down version of the Harveys. We couldnt do better than to be in the Harvey, says Olinder. I like thinking of the room itself being a part of the set and the audience being a part of the show as well.
Olinder, too, relished tools and mechanisms of the day, particularly Magic Lanterns: pre-movie projectors improved by the late 1800s invention of electric lamps. I looked at how they changed from one image to the next, and the primitive ways they had an image move, explains Olinder. I kept my transitions very simple.
Amidst these shifts, a raucous orchestra of romantic 19th-century-born instruments swells and deflates. We hear large symphonic sounds, adds McGrath. Its heavy on bass and drums, with definite trip-hop and rock elements as well. Yet even this prodigious music proved malleable. In other opera or song-based projects, says Findlay, theres an existing score and script near the beginning of the process. Here we had a conceptual framework: this fantasia thats on stage now.
Its this ambition to evoke colossal resonance that drives the Ridge Theater headfirst into Persephone. Were not winking. We really do find the story sad, and want it to be sad, warns McGrath. The paradox of this show is finding honest expression, which seems to work musically, adds Findlay. In pop songs, people sing about huge emotions. We accept big expression when its musical.
Ben Neill has dubbed Persephone an antidote to irony, and perhaps some modern attention deficits can be squashed by the rawness of myth. We all seem to be getting back to basics, says Findlay, finding what feels true, living with our economy in a period of extreme frugalness. Yet its still not cool to really believe in something. McGrath is more succinct: Were tired of everybody putting air quotes around their existence, he says. If not an antidote, great theater remains strong medicine: a mob together in the dark, pursuing catharsis. Works like Persephone have pungency in this way, traveling southbound until we reach the lower depths.
Persephone, Oct. 26-30, BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St. (at Rockwell Pl.), Brooklyn, 718-636-4100; 7:30, $25 and up.