'Let us think of these things always' at the MCA: Probing the dangers of silent conspiracy
THEATER REVIEW: "Let us think of these things always. Let us speak of them never" ★★★ Through Sunday at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave.; Tickets: $28 at 312-397-4010 or www.mcachicago.org
Theater, you might say, is a kind of conspiracy of silence. So is moviegoing. You agree to show up, take your seat, turn off your cell phone, avoid answering back and leave when it has been decided for you that the show is over. You might well see atrocities along the way — plenty of violent horrors have appeared on stage and screen, as they have in public squares — but, however appalled you may be, you've agreed not to do anything about them. Not during the externally defined moments of show, anyway.
To a large degree, that's what the very provocative and intense new piece at the Museum of Contemporary Art, titled “Let us think of these things. Let us speak of never,” is about. It's a creation of a relatively new Chicago-based performance group created by Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish from the core of the old Goat Island company. The new group calls itself, with enigmatic aplomb, Every house has a door. I know mine does.
Compared with the invariably precise and unstinting work of Goat Island — much, but not all, of which I saw over the years — the striking thing about this newer group and piece is the welcome amplification of three things: emotional intensity, ironic self-awareness and intercultural exploration. Through the arrival of various visiting groups from Latvia and Belarus this fall, Chicago theatergoers have witnessed probing the legacy of the Soviet bloc and the state of the former Soviet Republics with unusual artistic diversity and ferocity in recent weeks at the MCA and elsewhere. So it goes here. The most interesting thought of the many oblique and complex notions expressed in this piece is the sense of dread we feel when we realize that there is no cruelty to which humanity will not stoop, if the political or revolutionary ends seem to justify the means.
“Let us think …,” which Hixson directs, spends a good part of its 80 minutes messing with the rules of theater — especially the notion of where theater starts and ends. But most of the time is spent partly on a yin-and-yang comparison of the lush cinematic legacy of Ingmar Bergman with that of the Dusan Makevejev, a jerky Serbian moviemaker and a key figure in the Yugoslavian avant-garde of the early 1970s. Bergman you probably know; Makevejev, perhaps not. The piece is mostly concerned with Makavejev's “Sweet Movie,” a genuinely shocking affair that, to cut a very long story short, emphasized various ordinary bodily functions, seemingly as a way of saying that such physical doings actually make us feel things far more strongly than ideas. The actual show is not just about comparing movie directors, but also the act of how we experience performance — we watch the actors watch the movies on their laptops, experiencing a snippet of a snippet, pondering artistic and human birth.
This isn't an easy, linear or cheering 80 minutes, and although Goulish says from the stage that knowledge of the works of these movie directors isn't necessary, it's still a piece that relies on referents, and it's always good to know references, lest you sink into your chair, intimidated.
Goulish and the feistier, younger performer Stephen Fiehn — both Americans — work here with Selma Banich and Mislav Cavajda, both Croatians. Banich, whose physical work is superb, functions as the conscience of the piece — her compelling, laconic and, at times, deeply sad face seems to sit at the center of the stage as all of these meditations and mediations and negotiations take place around her. It feels rather like the group is probing the limitations of their own practice. Maybe the simple human body — centered, graspable, born, alive — is always more important than any kind of hapless revolt or artistic expression or sour, existential movie. I think Banich is an ideal canvas for all these heady guys surrounding her and mouthing off: You have the sense throughout that she keeps the whole thing honest.
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