Weekly Margin 2024, W37: A Meal, Our Class

 9/13/24: A Meal

What: HERE Arts presents LEIMAY's immersive installation meal slash performance experience.

And? Throughout the three-hour evening, I keep re-evaulating what space I think I'm in, what world I'm witnessing. The preshow is ritualistic and features mason jars of the best tasting tea I've ever had (if all tea tasted like this, I might actually like tea). Then there is the singing by the two cantors and the slow but deliberate movement of the rest of the cast as they condition the space and build the first table. Then the audience group is split and escorted to different parts of the transformed space--for A Meal inhabits not just the ground floor mainstage space, but also the lobby and smaller black box theater below. Here there are more installations in isolated spots of light, and projections, and performers so still they might be statues. Here there is both the grotesquerie of food preparation and the loving care of building a meal. Here there is a commentary on limits of resources, on accumulations of waste. Here there is also a tray of sushi and an arepa cart, and a vendor singing of his wares.

It's a lot. It's many things. The costume design is flowing and sharp. The sound baths--a combination of recorded sound and the voices of the cantors--are hypnotic and lovely. It's a bit too long. But I'm glad I went.

9/14/24: Our Class

What: Classic Stage Company hosts the Manhattan transfer of the production that ran at BAM last year.

And? a repeat visit of a show that remains mostly intact from its last iteration. Still disturbing, still worth seeing, and still with audience members so unnerved they leave midshow. When I saw it last time I went with a gentile friend who was so shocked at the content of the show, that people would do this to their own neighbors and former friends. I, who have long known the history of pogroms, had no words to lighten the weight of that knowledge for her. This time, I went with a Jewish friend, who remarked with angry passion (I paraphrase), "It's not just a history play, this is what's happening now, here, in America, with lies being told about immigrants, with attacks in the streets. This play is about 2024." It's both, of course. That's how good art works. Maybe the actual goal is to not let ourselves becomes resigned to the monstrosity of humankind, but to keep being appalled, so we do not normalize the monstrous. We cannot afford to keep dehumanizing other humans. We're all we've got.

Stephen Ochsner as Jakub Katz. Photo by Pavel
Antonov.