Fall Harvest Moon
Just back from the Walker and the Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s unusual theatre piece. As improbable as it may sound, the entire presentation consists of a single phone call in which one of the company members began to tell her life story. The theater, which gets its name from a Franz Kafka quote in Amerika, has now produced five complete theater pieces which continue this method, that is, each one is a further phone call transcribed and each one represents a continuing part of the same woman’s story.
The piece is 3 1/2 hours long. The script, or better, the book, because this is a musical, does not change the transcription at all. Every uh, um, yeah and wait is in it. And it is all sung.
It affected me on several levels, the most obvious its evocation of childhood and what it was like to remember things from the perspective of a child. The Nature Theater uses what they call extreme movement, a form of dance that is difficult to describe, but it has the effect of enhancing and expressing emotional content. The libretto or whatever you would call it is a wonder, giving musical expression to the ums and the yeahs as much as the story lines about her father, the silent strong person or the time she jumped off a fixture in the front yard with a home made parachute.
Both men and women perform, coming on and off the stage at intervals that did not make a lot of sense to me, but they seemed to work dramatically. Both men and women sing, too, so sometimes the words of a young girl have a bearded bald man giving them voice.
Worth seeing if you have the chance.