Description
Press, Reviews of my work
Fields
Video Arts
Date
2011
Press
  • Press
  • ‘The Internet’ — Webbies in Love, or Trying
    By ANDY WEBSTER
    Published: August 15, 2010

     Despite Prince’s recent proclamation of its demise, the World Wide Web is alive and worthy of scrutiny in “The Internet,” a busy but compact production of the Everywhere Theater Group at St. Mark’s Church. The show, as befits its subject, incorporates digital media — video, music samples — as well as those trusty analog standbys, movement and dialogue.
    The Net, of course, encompasses a universe of applications; this show focuses on instant messages, pornography sites and the illusions, or lies, that computer communication can impose on the dating game.
    Chase Voorhees, the videographer and sound designer, waggishly gives Prince a shout-out, playing “Purple Rain” and “Let’s Go Crazy” before the lights dim. Amid a din evoking global cacophony, beeps and hissing suggest that quaint fossil the dial-up modem.
    Against a bare black set with a white floor and two large elevated video monitors, the 11 performers are all in constant motion dancing and singing, but four characters are central. In I.M.’s, Dan (Dan Whalen) is wooing Nicki (Nicki Miller), the girlfriend of Tom (Benjamin Myers) — or so he’s known online — who chases Rachel (Rachel Pearl) online behind Nicki’s back.
    On the monitors, you see the physical world, where people are glued to their laptops, and onstage there’s the emotional, where people flirt, cry, rant and plead for connection. The script, by Leah Winkler, who also directed with Lindsay Mack, effectively skewers the false personas and banal self-descriptions on dating Web sites while underscoring the longing.
    Gradually the online exchanges and video images grow more X-rated and the actors’ movements more zombielike. Tess Frazer Hofmaier strips to a gold lamé-like bikini, an android temptress. The music builds to a “Day in the Life”-like peak, before bodies drop like corpses. The stage empties. And then Tom and Rachel meet, in person, to face a more benign uncertainty.
    These appealing young actors have grown up with the Net. For us dinosaurs, it’s a relief to know that apparently it hasn’t made mating any easier. The Web wilderness is just one more territory to traverse in the expanse of human loneliness.
  • nytheatre.com review
    Will Fulton · August 13, 2010

    So the Internet—kind of a big deal. Not since Gutenberg's printing press has a new medium so rapidly and thoroughly changed the way our society functions. In the 20 years that the World Wide Web has existed, it has infiltrated virtually every aspect of our public and private lives, and shows no signs of slowing down. While the Large Hadron Collider may be the largest contiguous machine we have ever built, it pales in comparison to the Internet, which has grown at such an alarmingly high rate that it has outpaced our ability to map it, taking on unpredictable and almost organic qualities. Unless someone has kindly printed this review out for you, you are on it right now. The brave (or foolhardy) young artists of Everywhere Theatre Group have taken this enormous subject head-on in their aptly-titled ensemble-created piece, The Internet.
    They accomplish this daunting task by reducing all of its complexities and abstractions to the deeply human elements at its core. The narratives that fill their cyberscape are familiar ones: stories of love, of loss, of misunderstandings, of loneliness. Rather than trying to include everything, directors Lindsay Mack and Leah Winkler wisely focus only on the social elements of the Internet, so we spend most of our time on well-worn sites like Gmail, OKCupid and Facebook. Beneath the slick interfaces this is a seething, vibrant world full of people longing to be seen and heard. Although the means may be new, the motives are as old as time. The universally strong cast creates this world with the deeply-felt conviction of those who inhabit it every day. They show the intimate understanding of the generation that has grown up alongside and inside it.
    In form the piece mirrors its subject matter's diversity by utilizing a pastiche of dance, movement, video, scenes, and songs. While certainly frenetic at times, the piece never loses focus, and all of these disparate elements flow together seamlessly to give the impression of a single, dynamic landscape. Mack and Winkler deftly manage our attention with smooth transitions of moments emerging from and receding back into the landscape. The balance between stillness and motion, extravagance and intimacy, is spot on. Teddy Nicholas's lighting design very effectively supports this, savvily providing the shifting structure necessary to articulate this kind of virtual space. While Chase Voorhees's sound design is similarly intelligent (I was incredibly pleased that the show began with the nostalgia-inducing sound of a dial-up modem), it's his masterful video design that truly stands out. The swooping camera and its slight upward angle to the pages manages to make the seemingly mundane act of typing into a viable stage action.
    As a word of warning, the Internet is full of porn, and accordingly this piece has its fair share of explicit content, both on video and on stage, but executed with pitch-perfect tastelessness. That being said, I would heartily recommend The Internet to anyone looking for a fun and insightful night of theatre. The ensemble has created a piece with equal parts love and skepticism that demonstrates the uniquely insightful position of the last generation to remember a time before the Internet changed everything. Everywhere Theatre Group has given us an affecting reminder that immense and abstract as it may be, at the end of the day the Internet is made of people.
  • BWW Special Feature: 99 and Under the Radar
    Friday, August 20, 2010; 
    by Michael Roderick

    Welcome to 99 AND UNDER THE RADAR: A LOOK AT INDIE THEATER'S MOVERS AND SHAKERS, BroadwayWorld's new weekly series that showcases standout productions and production companies from the independent theater scene in New York City. Each week, independent producer Michael Roderick will be discussing the latest goings on in the theatrical wings, highlighting those with potentially bright futures.

    ...Equally engaging is Everywhere Theatre Group's newest creation, The Internet. Collaboratively constructed by a team of innovative actors, directors, and designers, the show addresses the concept of the internet and how it has changed so many things. The videography, care of Chase Voorhees, is often so engaging and honest that it pulls the audience away from what is happening on stage which is equally as impressive. Director/ Choreographer Lindsay Mack does an amazing job of fusing modern dance, intense monologues, and complex staging to present something that is as intricate as the web itself. The piece focuses on the lives of the performers who were interviewed about their internet experiences and explores various scenarios that we all know too well. This includes an IM conversation that gets a little hot and heavy, web surfing as a well to fill deep desires, and the all to popular concept of someone being more attractive online than in real life. The thing that is most engaging about the show is that anywhere one looks, there is something very deep and intricate happening. Whether we are seeing someone have a private moment of pain collapsed against a wall or rocking out to a Michael Jackson song, there is enough story in every moment to fill a thousand blogs. The show itself is great, but what is more impressive is the way one feels after the show. Due to the fact that these actors confront some major hot button topics of the net, the audience is left thinking about which member of this cast most resembles them, and perhaps about how long it's been since they last cleared their web history. That, in turn, allows for greater exploration and deeper conversations. The team is opening minds for a few more performances and tickets can be found here.
  • Artists’ Bodies: Talking About How Performers Look
    Chase Voorhees's Poster featured in article and discussion.