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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Abe Abraham's "Wind and Tree" screened tonight and Wednesday

Someone please come right now and rescue me from JT Bullitt's Web site! I am lost in falling glass, the sound of a wild snail eating, and oceanic ambience.

None of this would have happened had I not attended a screening of Wind and Tree--a powerful, disturbing dance video installation by Abe Abraham, which features Bullitt's seismographic recordings of Earth vibrations. These good vibrations, much amplified, create a sonic background for Abraham's choreography overlaid with uneven, ragged, violent breath of Earth--grinding and clanging, wheezing and gasping--often synchronized with the thrashing images of dancers.

Inspired by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon (see below), Wind and Tree's images appear, at first, fleeting and ghostly as they come and go across a trio of video screens. (Abraham's first iteration of this work, premiered in 2011, involved only one screen.) The photography, directed by Peter Masterson, and editing by Abraham and François Bernadi are superb. 

We make out tangled limbs interspersed with the domes of heads. Eyes glint from out of the haphazard, angular frames of arms. Light streams across flesh that takes on the texture of marble or mahogany or pumpernickel bread or rugged landscape or...strangely enough...bare human skin.

Dancers seem desperate to wrest free of arms clamped over their heads--arms that are their own. Self-protection? Or self-imprisonment?

Punishing sounds and images suggest bodies recoiling from the blows of invisible opponents but, really, the dancers appear to box with themselves. This becomes particularly frenetic--as well as beautiful, as well as frightening--in a segment featuring Abraham and Megumi Eda, a 2004 Bessie Award winner. 

By the time Wind and Tree delivers us to the gorgeous "Wa Habibi" ("O Beloved") sung by Lebanon's great Fairuz, our hearts have already been pummeled open.

See Wind and Tree tonight and tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8pm at Theatre 80 St. Marks. 212-388-0388. Admission: $15 cash only.

A Q&A with Abe Abraham follows each screening.

Theatre 80 St. Marks

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

(map/directions)

For more information on Abe Abraham's work, visit the Abanar Web site here.

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WIND AND TREE

In the way that most of the wind
Happens where there are trees,
Most of the world is centred
About ourselves.
Often where the wind has gathered
The trees together and together,
One tree will take
Another in her arms and hold.
Their branches that are grinding
Madly together and together,
It is no real fire.
They are breaking each other.
Often I think I should be like
The single tree, going nowhere,
Since my own arm cannot and will not
Break the other. Yet by my broken bones
I tell new weather.

Paul Muldoon (from New Weather, 1973)