Come see the Candidatos!

Written, Directed & Performed by The Candidatos, Kevin Wall and Justin Rose

A mildly macabre adventure of incompetent betrayal, I’m Sorry & I’m Sorry follows the failed attempts of two clownish characters – a seasick sailor & an overzealous actor – to espcape both the police & each other. Part Marx Brothers, part Cohen Brothers, part Cirque du Soleil, the performance employs physical comedy, evasive banter, acrobatic drunkenness, willful deception, some mechanical gadgetry, & no small amount of absurdity. The show has played to sold-out houses and critical acclaim in festivals across the country and continues to tour nationally and internationally.

5 stars … the very best … a clever, graceful, funny, heartbreaking gem of a show. – The Minneapolis Fringe

A demonstration of the talents of its performers and the theatrical acumen of the Candidatos … [who]create colorful characters and perform expertly.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer

"One of the funniest 'morning-after' stories ever." - NYTheatre.com

"A fantastic voyage in the hands of two supremely talented Candidatos." - Philadelphia Metro

"Nonsense in the best sense...imagine a fancy dress party attended by Terry Thomas as Laurence Olivier and Charlie Chaplin as Inspector Clousea." - Irish Theater Magazine

Changing the Terms of the Deal

December 17, 2006
The Best Seats for This Play Are Moving Fast

By ANNE GLUSKER
LONDON

WHAT if you went to the theater and there were no seats? What if you could meander with no guide or direction — from one room to another, and one plot to another? And after sampling a few scenes, you could then repair to the bar, order a drink and listen to a twanging honky-tonk band?

That’s what it’s like to watch “Faust” in an old warehouse down by the docks in the formerly derelict London neighborhood Wapping, when it’s put on by a theater company called Punchdrunk. There’s a Faust and a Mephistopheles, but very little narrative of the usual sort. Call it a performance piece, call it an installation, call it promenade theater as the British do, but whatever the label, it’s likely to leave a profound impression. It’s theater for the interactive age. But instead of moving a cursor, you simply move yourself, choosing whatever character you want to follow, whatever sound intrigues you, whichever enticing corridor you are drawn to explore.

Punchdrunk’s artistic director, Felix Barrett, has filled a 1,500-foot disused warehouse surrounded by wire fencing with a series of rooms and cordoned-off areas: a large undivided space, punctuated by real trees is called the Forest; a nifty re-creation of a Hopperesque American coffee shop is the Diner. Sometimes you enter a space and there’s action already going on — a fight, a dance, two characters menacingly circling each another. At other points in the evening, you find yourself in an area devoid of performers or other audience members. The lighting is low, eerie. The effect is spooky, an adult version of a child’s haunted house.

Although London is in the middle of a vogue for site-specific work, with performances taking place in nontheatrical locations from a former abattoir to vaults under London Bridge, Punchdrunk stands out. Mr. Barrett began his theatrical career at Exeter University, a campus known for its drama department, where he staged an early performance by a roadside as traffic went by. It was Punchdrunk’s production of “The Firebird Ball” — Stravinsky crossed with “Romeo and Juliet” — that brought the company its first major dose of critical attention.

The London critics have been even more enthusiastic about “Faust,” with Susannah Clapp of The Observer proclaiming it to be “one of the most astonishing events, not just in the theater, but in the whole of London.”

Mr. Barrett, 29, said, “The space always has to be charged,” so that even when spectators walk into a part of the warehouse where no action is taking place, they can fill in the blanks with their imaginations. Mr. Barrett works closely with Maxine Doyle, Punchdrunk’s associate director and choreographer, and Stephen Dobbie, the company’s sound and graphic designer, to get every detail — from an old manual typewriter to a motel-room bed — just right.

“There’s a sense of fear, of apprehension,” Mr. Barrett continued. “And when the audience is on edge, adrenaline pumping, they’ll take in any sort of sensory stimuli more easily.”

Without the usual division of space between audience and performer, spectators are often unsure of how to behave. In a dance sequence, the fourth wall collapses entirely: some of the performers take a partner from among the audience. While some audience members seem quite at ease with this — even eager for it — the discomfort of others is palpable. All spectators are asked to put on identical plastic masks as they move out of the bar, which functions as a passageway between the outside world and the Faustian world, pulling them into the performance.

Because no viewer sees the same “Faust,” the performance is like a textbook on the subjectivity of experience. “Some people treat it as a conundrum, a puzzle to be solved,” said Colin Marsh, Punchdrunk’s producer. “They try to follow a single character for the duration of the performance, but that doesn’t really work. Even if you manage to stick with them as they run about, even then you don’t get a complete story.”

Not only do different spectators witness different events at different times; some lucky (or unlucky) few are pulled into back rooms and antechambers for what the company calls “one on ones,” in which a door may be locked, a story told, a mask removed.

“People generally come with one or two other people, and there’s what you saw and what they saw,” Mr. Marsh said. “It’s interesting the way people want so much to fit the pieces together, to control the narrative. Afterward, they’ll ask: ‘Did I see everything? What did I miss?’ And of course, part of the point is that there is no one answer.”

When Nicholas Hytner, the artistic director of the National Theater, saw “The Firebird Ball,” he liked it so much that he decided to assist in the production of “Faust.” This has meant all kinds of things to Punchdrunk: more rehearsal time, fewer financial pressures, but perhaps most important a new audience, one more used to mainstream theatrical experiences. Not everyone has taken to the Punchdrunk approach, but many do.

“We’re used to thinking of theater in a reductive, consumerist way: paying money for a controlled sequence of events,” said Tom Morris, the associate director of the National Theater. “We don’t want to be shortchanged. Punchdrunk is changing the terms of the deal.”

Thinking About What's Important...

This is an excerpt from the cover story in today's NYT magazine. Click on the post title to read the whole article.

December 17, 2006
What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?

By PETER SINGER

In any case, even if we were to grant that people deserve every dollar they earn, that doesn’t answer the question of what they should do with it. We might say that they have a right to spend it on lavish parties, private jets and luxury yachts, or, for that matter, to flush it down the toilet. But we could still think that for them to do these things while others die from easily preventable diseases is wrong. In an article I wrote more than three decades ago, at the time of a humanitarian emergency in what is now Bangladesh, I used the example of walking by a shallow pond and seeing a small child who has fallen in and appears to be in danger of drowning. Even though we did nothing to cause the child to fall into the pond, almost everyone agrees that if we can save the child at minimal inconvenience or trouble to ourselves, we ought to do so. Anything else would be callous, indecent and, in a word, wrong. The fact that in rescuing the child we may, for example, ruin a new pair of shoes is not a good reason for allowing the child to drown. Similarly if for the cost of a pair of shoes we can contribute to a health program in a developing country that stands a good chance of saving the life of a child, we ought to do so.

Perhaps, though, our obligation to help the poor is even stronger than this example implies, for we are less innocent than the passer-by who did nothing to cause the child to fall into the pond. Thomas Pogge, a philosopher at Columbia University, has argued that at least some of our affluence comes at the expense of the poor. He bases this claim not simply on the usual critique of the barriers that Europe and the United States maintain against agricultural imports from developing countries but also on less familiar aspects of our trade with developing countries. For example, he points out that international corporations are willing to make deals to buy natural resources from any government, no matter how it has come to power. This provides a huge financial incentive for groups to try to overthrow the existing government. Successful rebels are rewarded by being able to sell off the nation’s oil, minerals or timber.

What it means to be a professional...and an understudy...

December 16, 2006
Stepping in for a Star, but Not Feeling Like One

By DANIEL J. WAKIN
He’s the guy in black jeans.

That is, he is Antonello Palombi, the Italian tenor who found himself on the stage of Teatro Alla Scala in Milan in his civvies during a lavish production of Verdi’s “Aida.” Mr. Palombi was thrust into the role of Radames after the original tenor, Roberto Alagna, stalked off in a huff because of boos.

The startling moment last Sunday has stirred the opera world into a froth. And video of the incident has shot around the real world, on television news and YouTube, sending the little-known tenor into a not necessarily welcome limelight.

In a telephone interview from Milan, where he continues to cover the role and is preparing for two performances of his own, Mr. Palombi said he was grateful for the exposure but wished his Scala debut had been a little more, well, normal. At the same time, he said, he felt bad for Mr. Alagna, the French tenor who has said both that the boos upset him enough to prevent his singing and that he was bowing to the will of an audience that had spurned him.

“Yes, they’re talking about me in every corner of the world,” Mr. Palombi said. “But they’re not saying, ‘He sang like a god.’ They’re saying, ‘He saved a performance.’ ”

Mr. Palombi added that he did not feel like a hero. “I did my duty,” he said. “I’m happy it came out well. I’m happy the audience did not have to experience an affront by having the curtain fall.”

Most of all, Mr. Palombi said, he was proud that he had managed to keep his nerves under control. Imagine, he said, if he had failed to deliver, and the curtain fell. “I would have destroyed more than 10 years of my career,” he said.

Review of "Sonnets"

Enjoy 'Sonnets'with an open mind
By Judith Newmark
POST-DISPATCH THEATER CRITIC
Sunday, Dec. 10 2006

The speeches in "Sonnets for an Old Century" aren't really sonnets; the playwright, Jose Rivera, isn't that formal or traditional. But he didn't choose his title at random, either. Seeing the piece, which the Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble is staging in an old paint factory, is a lot like reading a book of poetry.

There might be poems that seize you, poems you skim, poems you don't think make any sense at all. No matter what, you don't try to read it like a novel, expecting one page to lead logically to the next. That's the way to watch this play: Just relax and stay open to the possibilities. Some of them are lovely.

Directed by Robert A. Mitchell and Margeau Baue Steinau, "Sonnets" is a series of monologues by people who are going to tell the stories that define them. Are they dead? Dying? Honestly, who knows?

What the characters say, however, may be less important than the way they say it — together, as a real ensemble.

The characters are all over the place. Among the most vivid are a Hispanic actor (Rusty Gunther) who can't get a good role, the mythological character Icarus (Jonathan Ellison) or somebody a lot like him and an office worker (Pamela Reckamp) who falls in love during a fabulous, smog-tinted sunset.

Each individual speaks alone. But the other members of the large company join in their stories. No matter what they're doing — playing other characters, or animals, or filling in the background — the performers use distinctive, repetitive motions to set the mood.

Rivera's work is fundamentally word-driven (that's why they call it playWRITING), but Mitchell and Steinau are determined to make his language visible. Sometimes — when a girl "flies" from a moving car, or when a bird flutters in terror from a prison ledge — they even make poetry visible.

"Sonnets" includes too many themes to drive any one home, and the material is inconsistent. Still, Slightly Askew is moving in an intriguing direction, one that points toward such celebrated troupes as SITI in New York or Lookingglass in Chicago.

Those ensembles have created exciting work that makes audiences consider theater from fresh perspectives, like dreams. It doesn't have to make sense, and you don't have to remember — or like — everything you see to be touched by it. Obviously, the young Slightly Askew troupe, which is a part of the Off Center Theatre Company, isn't at that level yet, and "Sonnets" is certainly not for everyone (including children). Still, it will be fascinating to see what happens next.

The theater building, now an art studio, is hard to find. It's just west of a landmark church, St. Francis de Sales, and there's a picture of a panda (the old paint logo) on the outside wall. If you go, pretend you're ice-skating and dress accordingly. Gloves, hats and mufflers are all in order. It's truly la vie bohème.

The two worst evils in the world? "Nuclear Bombs and Starving Children" - And Carl Laughed.

Click on the "Feeding Africa" and "Feeding Africa- Multimedia" in the articles section to read the rest of Eric Hand's articles and see his and Dawn Major's trip to Africa this summer.



Hunger leaves children susceptible to disease
By Eric Hand
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Monday, Dec. 11 2006

BLANTYRE, MALAWI —

The mothers know that bed No. 1 is very bad for their sons and daughters.

In the malnutrition ward of Malawi's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the bed next to the nurses' station gets the most attention and the sickest children. In a hospital where one out of every three children die, it is a bed with a high
turnover rate.

A visiting English doctor considers moving Gladys Mponda to bed No. 1. She sits limply in her mother's lap and stares, her bulging eyes set deep in a puffy face. The doctor runs through her problems: AIDS, a urinary tract infection, an X-ray showing a shadowy patch on her right lung that could be tuberculosis.

These maladies could kill her. But the root cause of her decline, the reason Gladys came here, is a far more simple and pressing problem: She hadn't eaten enough.

As diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria get global attention and money, some doctors say that donors are overlooking the biggest children's health issue of all: malnutrition, a creeping, insidious disease that rarely captures headlines. Worldwide, 6 million children — more than twice the population of metro St. Louis — die every year because of immune systems weakened by malnutrition, according to the United Nations.

"It dwarfs AIDS," says Washington University pediatrician Mark Manary, who has worked in Africa throughout his career. "Fundamentally, the amount of food (in Africa) is not enough."

Manary is working with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in Creve Coeur, which is trying to genetically engineer an important African crop, cassava, so that it resists a pandemic virus that has cut yields in half. Scientists also want to fortify the potato-like plant with vitamins and minerals. The Danforth Center, a nonprofit biotech center that gives its technology away, has been unable to test its cassava in African soil.

Click on the post title to read the rest of the article.