Friday night I saw my first 13P show. For those who don’t know (I didn’t before Friday), 13P is a company of 13 playwrights dedicated to producing their own plays to avoid the hamster wheel of “play development.” It’s a great idea and a great list of playwrights. American Treasure by Julia Jarcho is the 9th play of the 13 and a quirky exploration of historical mythmaking and the American West. I found the stylized acting distracting at first, but got used to it and by the end I found it actually tied the whole play together. With two actors playing 3 or 4 characters each, the play required the audience to pay attention and use their imaginations to draw the lines between the scenes. It was a funny, smart and bizarre play, but for anyone who studied history or consumes historical fiction (me), it’s definitely worth seeing.
Last night, I trudged through the sleety East Village with three bags of new/used clothes (my booty after a very successful Park Slope clothing swap) to PS 122 for Terrible Things the new collaboration between Katie Pearl and Lisa D’Amour. I haven’t seen much confessional American performance art (it that even what this was? I don’t know) It starts out with a thousand or so marshmellows in lines across the space with dancers in silver and red leotards moving through the space. Then Katie starts telling stories about her childhood, her inability to stay in a relationship and more. It’s a funny, entertaining piece that I really enjoyed.
What I enjoyed about this weekend of downtown theatre was seeing two shows that are very different from what I would write (and would want to write) but that I can still draw inspiration from. Tonight I’m seeing Alvin Ailey, which should be excellent.
