April 1 4-16 at the Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. 8 & 11 p.m. Directed by Michael McQuilken and “created by artists from the Yale Schools of Music, Art and Drama.” Performed, designed and executed by Samuel Adams (bass), Sunder Gangliani (actor, viola), Yun-Chu Chiu (percussion), John Corkill (percussion), Marcus Henderson (actor), Adrian Knight (keyboards/composer/video), Michael McQuilken (percussion), Jennifer Harrison Newman (dancer/choreographer/co-producer), Lupita Nyong’o (actor), Palmer Hefferan (actor/sound design), Ian Rosenbaum (percussion), Adam Rosenblatt (percussion) and Jon Wu (actor), Lico Whitfield (co-producer), Alan Edwards (lighting design) and Martha Burson (stage manager).
So this is how the 2010-11 Yale Cabaret season ends with a bang, a percussion-based multi-media concert conceived by Michael McQuilken, who brought you the Yale School of Drama rock drama Jib.
But I’ve gotta say, I’ll remember this Cabaret season for its whimpering sounds as well.
All Cabaret seasons are packed with surprises, but this one was notable for its meditative slant, its quiet spiritual moments. Its stated desire was to rethink the common definition of what constituted a Cabaret show, and by extension what “theater” was in general. I saw the majority of the fall offerings and only a few in the spring semester, so I certainly missed some key examples. But from what I saw, the most compelling experiments in this highly entertaining and enlightening season were probably the audience-interactive fairy-tale pastiche Crumbs (conceived and directed by Sonia Finley and Anne Seiwerath, back in early October) and the largely visual puppets-and-projections adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, with lots of pictures but retitled simply Dorian Gray (conceived and directed by Adam Rigg just over a week ago, April 7-9). The only slightly more conventionally theatrical production of Chekhov’s The Wedding Reception—a bawdy and riotous sensurround experience in which the audience sat at the wedding table which the drunken partiers in the play danced upon—will live with me forever, almost as memorable as my own wedding.
The Perks—A Rite of Spring, which closes the 18-show 2010-11 Yale Cabaret season with its final two performances tonight (Saturday the 16th), strives to be loose but not random. It has a theme—springtime reawakenings. It forges connections between varied artists from the Yale School of Music and Yale School of Art as well as the expected Yale School of Drama students, but creates a fluid format for them.
The tones, textures and beat come from places as likely as a full rock drum kit, vibraphones and rachets, and from such unaccustomed percussive climes as melting ice dripping through a grate into a metal washbucket, three giant Donnie Darko-esque rabbits doing a lengthy and complicated hang-banging routine, and a lively vibes/coconuts/rhythm-sticks trio which is simultaneously reminiscent of a Terry Riley composition and Ernie Kovacs’ Nairobi Trio. Wooden shoes are worn. Vegan spring vegetable soup is lovingly prepared. The final scene, a dizzying panorama of the sort of frantic visual images which might got through your head when confronted with a Yale Percussion Ensemble concert, nails this elaborate cohesion of visual art, music, theater and vibrant life. Rites of Spring attempts to illustrate a time of warmth, youth and hopefulness, and does it best by refusing to restrain it.
There’s much in the way of improvisation and variation and found sounds, but the specific musical works being played merit mention here for their inspirational qualities. I’ll be seeking out recordings of many of them, if they exist in that form:
“Mary’s Waltz” by Adrian Knight (performed here by its composer)
“Table Music” by Thierry de Mey
“Rebonds a” and “Rebonds b” by Iannis Xen
“Gavotte II” from J.S. Bach’s Fifth Cello Suite
“Hop 2” from Paul Lansky’s Three Moves for Marimba
and an except from “Dressur” b Mauricio Kagel
If you’re able to attend the final perfs tonight, make sure to spend time with the artworks on the walls and in the lobby, by Kit Yi (who’s stitched a rack full of fashion garments out of surgical masks), Costance Armellino, Abigail DeVille, Peter Moran, Nontsikeleleo Mutiti and Natalie Westbrook.
A spring sensory feast, The Perks reminds me of an old ‘80s/’90s Yale Cabaret tradition of filling in parts of the season with music concerts which were only lightly dramatized or otherwise specially conditioned for the space. But The Perks takes it to a whole new plateau. This is unmistakably a concert, but really avails itself of the considerable resources at the Cabaret disposal—not to mention other graduate schools at Yale—to expand consciousness, increase focus on the rhythms and rituals which fuel the music, and generally provide a knock-out night at the Cabaret.
The Yale Cabaret season’s over, but it will be echoing and reverberating for a long time to come.