I came, I saw, I felt uncomfortable

I adjudicated a show for the Innovative Theatre Awards on Sunday night in the West Village. It was my first time at an Off-Off Broadway theatre. Now, I know what you're saying to yourself "Isn't Off-Off Broadway just a platform for mediocre actors to perform in something that has Broadway in the title?"

Yes. Yes it is.

Now, I wrote the book on the importance of theatre that doesn't have to rely on ticket sales so that it can express itself freely without consequence. Well, actually it was a paper. I understand its importance and I totally support it. But by supporting it I can say that sometimes its really awful. But I always love going to it.

This performance, called Archipelago, was a nice cross section of the awful and awesome. It was a collection of short plays, many of them new and most of them absurd in some way. They even paid tribute to Mr. Absurdist Drama himself, Samuel Beckett, by putting up a particularly dreadful version of Act Without Words I. It was truly the lowlight of the evening.

Because each piece was only a few minutes long, the concept of each mini-play was all you ever really had time to develop an opinion of. One play that I really enjoyed was about an artist who had closed herself into four large walls made of canvas strapped with eleven sticks of dynamite. She was waiting for something to detonate the explosives and splatter her all over the canvases, and thereby create four very unique works of art. She spend the entire play on her cell phone talking to people about fairly normal things like problems with her boyfriend and soup and how she hoped that when she did in fact splatter, that some of the color would come out orange.

Another was about a guy who had just jumped off a building. The whole play was what was ran through his head after he jumped and before he hit the ground. The actor was strapped with some bungee and was slightly hanging out over the audience. In concept it was good, but it didn't really go anywhere after that unfortunately.

The last that really got me was a housewife obsessed with cleaning glass. She talked about all the birds she had accidentally killed by keeping her windows and sliding glass doors so clean. Then one day, after a particularly rigorous buffing, her son ran full speed into the sliding door he thought was open and died. Fantastic actress and just disturbing enough.

The last piece I couldn't tell you much about. All I know is that one of the actors came out and started talking and then started taking off his clothes. When he got down to his skivies, he stuck his hand down and pulled out little plastic flowers which he then threw at the audience. Between begging him in my head to keep his clothes on and then dodging the crotch flowers, it was altogether too distracting.

So I'm looking forward to continuing to judge these shows as they are sure to provide me with ample entertainment.