As long-time readers know, I am a huge fan of Akropolis Performance Lab, whose current members are Joseph Lavy, Jennifer Lavy, & Eric Mayer. They are remounting their Dream of a Ridiculous Man, based on Dostoevski, for the Theatre4Play Festival in Seattle.
One more show, Sunday (today) at 5:45pm, Seattle Centerhouse, 4th floor. Arrive early. Buy an All-Festival pass for $15; more info here.
This space is considerably smaller -- and lower -- than the space the piece was designed for. Akropolis, who trained for 13 months to mount the transcendent version last fall, only had 6 weeks to train for this remount.
It was fascinating to watch Thursday's show. When Akropolis is in shining shape, everything looks easy -- the singing, the leaping, the running-while-carrying, all of it. Thursday, it looked hard. For the first time, I could see the bones of the Grotowski practice -- the sheer commitment, strength of will, and intensity of focus on each other that carried them through.
The loud and sustained applause at the end was in recognition of the pure difficulty, and surmounting of that difficulty, we had witnessed.
Akropolis's gift is finding the truth in THIS moment, with THIS partner, NOW. This was just as soft and firm and desperate and relied-upon Thursday as ever. Glorious ragged soft singing. New surrenders. New desperations.
If you have seen Akropolis before, see this one to witness an emergence of a new maturity. And a rare chance to glimpse just how hard this work is. If you have not seen them before, see this because they only perform once a year and you can't see this work otherwise without going to Poland, Italy, or Denmark. Akropolis is always worth seeing. Always a complexity, a difficulty, a challenge, a spark, a poetic dream.
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