Friday, January 8, 2010

Space Review

Okay, let’s try this blogging thing again.

So, I don’t know if anybody’s reading this, but I got literary internship at EST and I’m very happy with it. Sure, I’m mostly doing the same shitty stuff that needs to get done around a theatre but is too tedious for anybody with a title, the stuff I didn't want to do for free now that I'm out of college and did that stuff for three years already, but that’s okay. I really like the people, good theater, good atmosphere, it’s good to have some place to go, and to be around people who make this whole crazy profession seem less impossible.

Anyway, the real reason I’m writing this is because my new internship provides me with lovely comp tickets and tonight I partook in this one and only perk of my unpaid job. I saw Space Panorama at the Public, as part of their Under the Radar festival. I know I’m going out on a limb here, I know this statement could be challenged far and wide and inspire rioting in the streets but here it goes: best half-hour mimed solo show about the Apollo 11 mission... ever. I am not kidding.

Seriously though, I really liked it. And it really is a half-hour solo show about the Apollo 11 mission, and it really is mimed, with prerecorded narration and music, but still... mime. And it really is amazing. Really. It’s just a man in a black mock turtleneck standing behind a black cloth-draped table, moving his hands around and making faces. But it’s smart and funny, and actually tells the story of the moon landing, a story which has been told and visually represented in countless incredibly boring ways, but who would have thought, mime wasn’t one of them.

I want to describe it, but it's hard, I know that feebly imitating his gestures at my computer will not get my point across but I'm having some trouble fighting that urge. However, when I type phrases like "he was all the astronauts, and he was Kennedy one time" or "sometimes his head was the moon but sometimes it was his left hand" or "and his fingers, they where people sometimes, except once they where a whale" or "he made weather on the table", not only do I sound like a four year old trying to explain how TV works, but I also don't really capture it. It was good, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before, I'm really glad that I braved the cold, got lost, called 411, risked being black-balled for future comps at the Public theater and made it to the just in time for this weird, charming performance.

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