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.dependent study

nytheatre.com review by Kaipo Schwab
August 15, 2005

In Andrew Schneider's .dependent study, two performers, Kristin Stewart and Gram Watts, explore the complexities of relationships through a confounding series of vignettes. Armed with an audio mix of assorted classical music, electronica, and computer voiceovers, a slide projector and two television monitors (placed, oddly enough, on the floor, creating irritating sightlines that cause one to crane their neck no matter where they may be sitting in the theatre), this production throws everything it can at the audience to make sure all of our senses are working overtime. I felt especially bad for a young female teen sitting in the front row—possibly dragged there by her mother for a "cultural experience"—who had to endure the pornographic images and orgasmic sound effects as well as video of buildings being destroyed and news reports sporadically flashing from the monitors throughout the play. I’m sure she had lots to say on the ride home. As do I now.This often disjointed play (perhaps intentionally so) is not for all tastes (and it certainly wasn’t for mine). I found it particularly amusing to read in the program notes that the company producing the show (big|picture|group) holds as its mission the intent to "use theatre as a lens through which the obscure dynamics of contemporary life might be brought into focus." That’s a high-reaching and laudable goal indeed, but to make us see what you see, you have to engage us with some common language (visual or aural) in order to connect with us so we might better comprehend your ideas and message. I can appreciate a work with lots of layers, until the layers bury the underlying meaning and whatever it was we were supposed to feel gives way to frustration.In contrast to Schneider’s writing and directing, the actors impressed me. They swim through the quagmire with technical agility and would seem right at home in any Richard Foreman or Mac Wellman piece—playwrights who are just as out there conceptually, yet whose greater command of language allows them to communicate raw emotion when words fail or just the right words when emotion fails. Stewart, especially, has great stage presence and shows glimpses of real comic flair (even when she unfortunately has the embarrassing task of masturbating with a meat cleaver before us).One line struck me in the play as possibly making sense of .dependent study: “be as cryptic as possible to keep the mystique of your persona.” If you’ve got the time and inclination to search for the cryptic meaning behind this experimental work that sits on the very outskirts of "fringe," then by all means spend your evening studying this puzzle of a play.