1
To me a clarity rang out in the piece I saw. It contained
concerted effort to go through to where “men” can find spaces in which to begin
to re.imagine maleness and the enactment of maleness.
2
No pandering or aiming at segments of the audience. In a sense
“men” is a category that stands in for any of us.
3
The extensive incorporation of dance, the male nudity, still or
moving; the unstinting mop/mother sex scene, unparalleled, and ways of engaging
with what constitutes male sexuality and male vulnerability are key, putting it
out there on the page/on the stage. Rather than seeing it as performing/putting
into view "toxic masculinity,” as posited in a blurb, I see it as posing
that as an opening.
4
We already know about our perverse culture; so, how to see
through it, to the existence of possibility, seems as compelling as further
delineating its corrosiveness –– i.e., the endgoal, as theater, was not to show
toxic-ness, but rather to create an inversion chamber, an apparatus of
seeing.
5
Being a work about two brothers, means it is not me-too, but
(reaching back to the soil/fundament of feminist consciousness-raising of the
1970s) perhaps it embraces the profound awkwardness, the gut membranes, of such
endeavors, spearing an elusive us-too for men and seeking to expand all of our
discourse.
6
This is reinforced by the men-only 2-man cast and mainly 3-man
collaboratively-engendered production, raising the question, Must the other
gender be out of the room, if men are to re-evaluate maleness?
7
Beyond such interpretations of its meaning, the form of the work
is composed of a greater arc, bringing theater, dance and text into a whole. At
once both cryptic and overt, of both intellect and physicality, its tempo is
similarly a mind-body puzzle, between shock and reverie.
8
The rigor in all the portrayals by the two opposing actors is
liberatory, and its starkness is related to that.
9
Neo-burlesque, reclaimed by contemporary women dancers and
performers, seems to me to be a precedent and influence, or having rhyming
rationales. Burlesque as I have glimpsed it in Brooklyn, takes women's agency
as a given and benevolently may assume shared pleasure is possible. Though in
life shared pleasure is often fraught or impossible, this problematic situation
may be suspended during the burlesque show. Here, it's quite another scenario,
also tackling the impossible.
10
Bro-Tox is relentless and abrasive on the surface while of a rich
braid of elements, sources and echoes theatrically. The “flaying” of male
armor, the play's palette of disrobing, gives a chance to shed sentimentality
and is rather “zazen-like” in making us “return to the breath” again and again.
Perhaps the corrosiveness of the brothers makes us extra-willing to own our
seated pose.
11
The shape of the loft-theater space and seating of audience also,
through some chance, had echoes of a zazen group, arrayed in 2 facing rows, as
with a Buddhist temple hall's theater and regalia, duel and drama of cutting
through sloth and delusion, in between. The initial actions, offstage;
preparation of space by vacuuming carpet; chair as throne; self vs altar,
heighten this echo. Though per the “plot” the characters are dissolute, even
abject, heraldically the characters are like profane and sacred guardians in
their fierce energy.
12
While holding Samuel Beckett, O’Neill, clowning, Greek tragedy or
classic 70s-to-now avant-garde theater, TV’s
Loud family or Survivor; underpinnings that might
include Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann’s
vaginal scroll or harness drawings, or Vito Acconci’s
“Seedbed,” Bro-Tox is willing to collage its
pastiche in which plot and speech are almost calligraphic, and give the
audience the satisfaction of performing quite a bit of the peristalsis of
making out the story.
13
The violence and startlingness within the play, become strokes
that bring out a fullness and amplitude –– in effect it evokes a necessary
question about the violence within our own over-simplifications of national and
global and local ethics: how can we move beyond reductive “zero tolerance” to apply our full cultural,
aesthetic, and societal capacities to our encounters with the current moment?
14
I am appreciating how the personas of the characters are
elaborated while also being pared back, in such a way that audiences can see
themselves, also stripped of their own usual trappings.
___
Stephanie Vevers came to NYC in her early 20s, and for a decade
saturated herself in the avant-garde film, dance, theater, poetry and
visual art of downtown’s Soho, East Village and Tribeca and frequented
and participated in art spaces such as Printed Matter, Collective for
Living Cinema, Poetry Project, Millennium Film Workshop, Richard
Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater, and the Byrd Hoffman School of
Byrds; Nam Jun Paik, Shigeko Kubota, and dancing Lucinda Childs in the
luminous Kitchen in SoHo, squares of foam for seating; at Franklin
Furnace, John Berger, John Cage, and a "dance class for poets" with
Yoshiko Chuma, and at La Mama, Mabou Mines, and Theodora
Skipitares. This formative immersion in art for art’s sake impelled
ongoing curiosity and questioning: Currently a favorite dilemma is our
human gut microbiota –– science or culture? How can we all as creative
thinkers be part of translating microbiome research into public health,
good food, new and revived cultural practices.
After a sold-out run in Fall 2019, MAGIC AGENCY CHAPTER 4: Bro-Tox returns for 3 performances!
La MaMa presents
Written by Jonas Kyle and Sean Lewis
Featuring Jim Fletcher and Sean Lewis
Sound by Forrest Gillespie
Set Design by Jonas Kyle
House Manager: James Gittens
Stage Manager: Holly Stefanik
January 17 - January 19, 2020
Friday at 8PM; Saturday and Sunday at 5PM
47 Great Jones Street Studios
47 Great Jones Street
(Between Bowery and Lafayette Street)
New York, NY 10012
Tickets: $20 Adults/$15 Students/Seniors
