D-P-M/(DIS-PLACE-MEANT)
nytheatre.com review by Liz Kimberlin
August 15, 2002
There is no ticket price to see this eccentric piece of performance art,
but bring your Metrocard, your most comfortable walking shoes and a
sense of adventure. You'll need all three. Waiting for me at the box
office was an envelope with a cryptic note directing me to go to a local
subway stop where I would be met. Oh, yeah, and I should make sure I
wasn't being followed. Once there, I met Bill, the artist, an
intense-looking but good-natured guy who is over from the U.K. The rest
of the audience showed up; we now totaled two. Instead of taking the
subway, the three of us caught a bus—chosen at random—and got off at its
last stop near the East River. While we traveled, Bill produced a
platinum blonde, Carol Channing-bobbed wig and began to explain the
nature of his performance: he was going to reenact his dreams (the sleep
variety) of three women in his life. I can't remember the name of the
first one, but the others were Ivanova 1 and Ivanova 2. As we got off the bus, he briefly told stories about each. Suddenly we were at a Lower East Side supermarket and suddenly the performance began in earnest. It consisted of Bill chalk-writing another cryptic message on the store's brick facade, going into the store and wandering frantically through the aisles while we followed, pausing at the cash register to tell another story, back out again with Bill now donning the wig and the performance growing increasingly eerie and surreal. As suddenly as it began it was over. Then we went for margaritas.
I honestly have no idea how the performance related to the women, if it was Freudian or Jungian, comedy or drama, whether indeed it was art or bullshit or both, but I had a blast. The double-takes alone of the clueless passersby were worth the hour. Bill limits his audience to five, so reservations are strongly recommended.
