masks, puppets, nba summer league
I heard about Trump getting shot while getting out of part 2 of Logan Berry’s Sarcoma Cycle of plays, Spring Break 2020, by the place I had gotten ice cream from a puppet earlier in the afternoon, and then went to go get a hamburger around the corner. I read about the attempt while eating in a restaurant with baseball bat door handles while NBA summer league played.
The Sarcoma Cycle was evidently the first repertory theater in Chicago in a decade. The cycle contained three plays.
Common themes included nurses, scrubs, and masks (surgical, covid, sheisty). I’ve been waiting a few years now to see something that expresses the hold that masks have had on our psyche since the start of covid as stylized theater masks like this. Screens, knives, red lights, kidnapping, Chicago.
Nanoblade 1998 is about a surgeon rebelling against the administrative implementation of “evidence based practices”, the cancer killing the nurse he loved (?), his attempt to perform (rogue) experimental surgery to save her and subsequent attempt to cover her death under the knife. The scene where he conducts the surgery was maybe my favorite of the day: the stage is completely dark except for the glowing red eyes of his surgery equipment, beginning unnerving visual motif of masks throughout the play.
Spring Break 2020 was, actually, set in 2021, and better for it. It is about three teenagers coping with the murder of their friend the year before and the possible return of his murderer, killing again. The ending of this was surprising enough that I won’t spoil it. (That being said, it sort of felt like it racheted up to the point where, as things became crazier, I sort of lost a little interest. Like, a little too unmoored). This one integrated screens and recorded video into a live theatrical setting as well as I’ve seen anyone do it (I haven’t seen that many plays). I think it well captured the schizophrenic experience of social media as well of the mundanity of the disruptive influence of the online attention economy. Covid masks and home intruders sheisties and bags
Mourning Light 2050 was the most speculative of the plays. It is about the heiress to a tech mogul (named Curtis Yarvin, which, whatever). The mogul made his wealth on something called the Mourning Light, which I guess allows the user to communicate with the dead. The heiress’ mother, the moguls’ wife, has an unhealthy dependance on the app. She also seems to have some sort of role as, thematically, an influencer of some sort. This entails giving speeches that are fed through some sort of “AI” avatar. A lot of the plot hinged on making sure she was healthy enough to give her speeches; the financial health of the company seemed to depend on it. I’m not sure exactly why, if she was being ran through an AI avatar she— specifically she— needed to give the speech, since the live content was pretty removed from her, as herself. I’m willing to offer a suspension of disbelief to keep the play moving along. She is sick, she is attended by nurses, the nurses kidnap and rape her and her daughter. (The lead kidnapper is played by author and my bandmate Gwen Hilton. Her intense performance was one of the standouts of the night. She came in YELLING and it split the air in half. A different sort of tension you could feel it in the audience. The air was a little different). This one felt less grounded. The world was thinner, the characters motivation, from scene to scene, action to action, felt thinner. Maybe I was just tired after seeing five hours of live theater.
The play, Mourning Light 2050, ends on a participatory note: the audience is asked to take on the role of attendees of a funeral, standing during Amazing Grace, walking up to place flowers in the coffin.
Earlier in the day I had attended the funeral for my childhood best friend’s mom over youtube live. I won’t do anyone the disservice of writing too much about it here. The details. But that was going through my head all throughout the day, all throughout the plays.
evidence based practices
I’ve been out of the political prediction game for a while but I want to get it somewhere on record. I don’t think that this, the assassination attempt, will really change that much. I mean, I saw that picture, you know the one, and felt sure this man was going to win by ten, twenty points, but the election already felt like it was heading towards Reagan/Mondale numbers anyway. Maybe this seals it. There’s not going to be a civil war or anything like that. No one is going to but that much effort into that, especially since it’s looking like the shooter was a registered Republican. (I don’t believe this was an inside job or anything like that btw). For such a momentous thing that I know a lot of people have been thinking on for eight years, its already, one day later, feeling a a little, I don’t know, uneventful. Trump got a great photo op out of it, though, and that is as important as anything in politics
Sentences
I’ve been watching Copa America and the Euro Cup. The announcers (Alexi Lalas excepted) have a way of speaking, the occasional offhandedly poetic moments. I didn’t start writing them down until too late, so I know that there are betters ones I missed, but here are a few phrases I liked:
the dying embers of extra time
optimistic ball
turns the head of the defenders
been the eyecatchers for most of the tournament
//
following through