Marital burnout is no laughing matter...and yet: Sara Juli

Sara Juli in her show, Burnt-Out Wife, at Dixon Place
(photo: Nick Pierce)

Burnt-Out Wife
Sara Juli
Dixon Place
February 21-28

What a set! Designer Pamela Moulton's vision for Burnt-Out Wife, a solo performance by multi-talented Sara Juli, is lying in wait for the Dixon Place audience. And I say that advisedly, for this set is a monster, an eyesore. A cotton-candy-pink bathroom complete with polka dot toilet seat cover, a filmy pin-up girl robe with hot pink feather boa trim; and a wall splotched with wound-like flowers crafted, with childlike imperfection, out of who knows what. You gaze and wonder what Juli has in store for her unsuspecting visitors.

Burnt-Out Wife is everything that set suggests--and more. "I wanna get married...that's why I was born," sings Nellie McKay in the wry, melancholic song that ushers in this brilliant performance. Juli appears, giving the left-up toilet seat a certain look that immediately invokes the mate at fault and aiming another look at two baby dolls strewn about the floor. But if you think that tells you everything you'll need to know about Juli's project, think again.

Written by Juli, the performance draws clarity and vitality from her background in dance and stand-up comedy, and she shows ease and confidence in both genres. Marital burnout might not be first on your list of the funniest things in life, but Juli is really funny without straining and really fresh. She looks like a woman waking up to realize she's an Amazon and one with a future in performance art. She's physically strong--as you'll discover if she shakes your hand in a firm grip or strikes poses to represent the misalignment between her desires and her husband's--stronger than you might suspect from the weary look she gives the world most of the time. And she's smart as a whip, more than holding her own with the unseen spouse and her wackadoodle surroundings as she slyly, steadily lays waste to heteronormative conventions. In fact--through the magic touch of Moulton, costume designer Carol Farrell, sound designer Ryan McDonald and lighting designer David Ferri--she turns her hideous bathroom into a throne room worthy of pissed-as-hell royalty.

The surprises, joys and rewards of this show are many, and I will not spoil them for you as I hope you'll make your way to Dixon Place tonight for the final performance. But hurry! Last night's show was packed with happy people laughing their heads off.

Burnt-Out Wife concludes this evening with a show at 7pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street, Manhattan
(map/directions)


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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Reviving shange's "photograph" at Theatre 80 St. Marks

Above: Imana Breaux plays dancer Michael in a photograph/lovers in motion.
Below: Michael bursts into the mysterious life of photographer Sean,
portrayed by Adrain Washington.
(photos: Jonathan Slaff)

a photograph/lovers in motion
The Negro Ensemble Company
Theatre 80 St. Marks
February 5-19

The late ntozake shange's a photograph/lovers in motion--staged by The Public Theater in 1977--now reappears at nearby Theater 80 St. Marks, adapted and directed by shange's writer sister ifa bayeza in a Negro Ensemble Company production. A luminous revival of shange's better-known for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (1976) recently concluded its critically-acclaimed return to The Public, renewing interest in the life and oeuvre of the influential Black feminist playwright. Fans of for colored girls--and we are legion--should be wowed by a photograph's lead actress, Imana Breaux. Her vivacious turn as the dancer Michael, a free-spirited little powerhouse, rips open the show, and Breaux owns most of her scenes like a cross between Beyoncé, whom she resembles, and shange herself.

Although there's a wealth of dancerly-ness (from Breaux) and some actual dancing by other players, I wouldn't call a photograph a choreopoem in the captivating way that for colored girls is. But shange was not only a fierce writer but an exuberant dancer, and she's all over Breaux's performance with her multicolored fringes, her red suede boots, her fiery Mohawk, her hobo bag and her jazzy speech rhythms. Would that this gifted actress could have prevailed and not been subsumed by the strangely-shaped story and direction.

Michael--something brisk and cool about this male-identified, archangelic name given to shange's sexy sprite--takes up with photographer/Vietnam vet Sean (Adrain Washington) whose aspirational bravado, it turns out, fails to track with his actual professional accomplishments. Although Michael quickly falls for this strapping guy, and he for her, things seem more than a little off when Sean's photographic preoccupations and history of womanizing come to light. Three other characters complicate matters further over an unnecessarily drawn-out evening: a two-hour first act, an intermission and a second act that, although it is only about a half-hour, also seems endless and graceless. for colored girls... did not prepare me for this. I would not have expected shange to write a straight-out soap opera, let alone one filled with artificial characters who fail to inspire our concern and care. Along with Breaux, there is one performer I'd be eager to see again. Marc Deliz (as Sean's long-suffering gay friend Earl) gives an fully embodied, grounded, nuanced, quietly shining performance before events overtake his efforts as well.

I'm mindful that, for all the well-deserved love shange received when she gave us for colored girls..., she also caught hell from some folks who took her uncompromising Black feminism as a slam against Black men. Nonsense, of course. But a photograph, with its depiction of Sean (among other stereotyped characters) could be ready evidence for the haters.

Historic Theatre 80 St. Marks is tiny, and its humble intimacy can be a strength for the right show--bringing an audience close to performers in a "we're all in this together" atmosphere. That's a great opportunity that a photograph/lovers in motion is simply not able to seize.

Cast: Imana Breaux; Adrain Washington; Marc Deliz; Nya Bowman (Nevada); Mystie Galloway (Claire)

Music: David Murray
Set: Chris Cumberbatch
Lighting: Melody A. Beal
Costumes: Katherine Roberson
Choreography: Leslie Dockery

a photograph/lovers in motion continues through February 29. For information and tickets, click here.

Theatre 80 St. Marks
80 St. Marks Place (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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How strange: Melinda Ring's engagement at Danspace Project

Cast of Strange Engagements
(photo: Melinda Ring)

Strange Engagements
by Melinda Ring
Danspace Project
January 30-February 1

Dance fans flock to see some contemporary work like a dance version of that old quip: "I would pay to hear her read the telephone book!" (Yes, kids. Once upon a time, there was something called a telephone book, and some of us professed to be willing to listen to extraordinary actors reading it, page after page...oh, never mind.) There are dancers whose technical acuity and smart, sensitive presence make almost any work an occasion. Melinda Ring has the blessings of one such team for Strange Engagements, which ends its Danspace Project run this evening.

Laurel Atwell, Paul Hamilton, Rainey White, Sam Kim and Talya Epstein--lit in various degrees of revealing starkness or sedating cool by Kathy Kaufmann--start out in a sort of hunched-over huddle before activating silent space with quirky, stretchy, wrenching and swirling movement and sounds made by the slap of a palm or a foot on the floor or the occasional eruption of a few words. What Ring and her folks accomplish most securely, I believe, is our growing awareness of rhythm even when there's no audible music to guide us. Rhythm can be seen and felt even in the absence of the sonic impact of feet on the floor or the sharp clapping of hands.

This is an abstract journey with fine, strangely-engaging dancers--strange attractors, maybe, displaying clear patterns within what a lazy gaze might deem to be chaos--and that might be enough. However, I was sometimes vexed by Hamilton's deployment in all of this. He's Ring's only Black dancer and only male dancer--a tall, dark-skinned Black man whose showiest behavior in the piece looks aggressive and, at times, could be interpreted specifically as sexually aggressive. (You can't tell me Kim slapping him on the butt while he writhes over her is abstract.) Is this deliberate? Is it unintended and accidental? All I know is you can't put your one man, your one Black man, in a mix like this and surface movement like this and not expect it to raise a few eyebrows. I found it distracting because it made me pull away and start analyzing Hamilton's presence--a strange engagement, indeed.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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