Helen of Troy, a treat at WCSU

Classic Greek drama visited Danbury Monday night. It questioned the efficacy of violence and the benevolence of the fickle "gods."  The play was Helen of Troy by Euripides. The performers were a professional touring troupe under the direction of Eftychia Loizides.

The play provides an alternate view of Helen. In this version she'd been whisked to Eqypt by Hermes and never taken by the warrior Paris, who instead, stole a phantom of smoke, whipped up a goddess bent on mischief. Yet as we find out - this means all the blood shed, lives lost, agonies endured for the sake of Helen during the ten-year Trojan war, had been offered up in vain....

Literature Professor Donald P. Gagnon, PhD  set the play among Euripedes other works, before the curtain went up on this performance, noting that it was banned for a time some 2400 years after it was first produced, because it was considered too powerful for the situation then.

It took me a while to get used to the stage voices, but after a while I was immersed.  It was tastefully done with a minimal set and some beautiful (haunting) singing.

The production stared Leslie Fray as the beautiful clever Helen, Brian Scannell as craftly but noble Menelaus, the delightfully villainous Chuk Obasi as Theoclymenus, and an equally strong cast of other players including Aaron Barcelo, Nora Aislinn, Katia Haeuser, Stevan Szczytko and Sandra Maren Schneider. (Leonidas Eftychia Liozides Theatre Group)

The production of Helen of Troy was sponsored jointly by Western Connecticut State University and The Deno and Marie Macricostas Family Foundation.

A reception with delicious food, coffee and Baklava afforded an opportunity to chat about the play, with the actors and the sponsors immediately afterwards.  A delightful event, entirely free to the public. Thank you. This low budget person says, Thank you very much.

See also www.loizidis.com and http://helen-oftroy.blogspot.com

Images of the unspoken: dances by Pina Bausch

Polite small talk is a social mask, but in the dances of choreographer Pina Bausch - you simply cannot escape viewing the unspoken subtext.

A severe and menacing man chooses among deeply fearful women who offer him a red cloth. He rejects all but one.  All are distressed. A flock of men poke and prod a woman as if she were a melon, or a small child.

These were among a few vingettes in the film "Pina" - a commemoration of the work of coregorapher Pina Bausch. It's not a biography, nor a documentary really, nor an epic. It sets Bausch's major works in the loose frame of her dancers memories of her - which are admiring and well, sort of oddly worshipful. The film shows them onstage and sometimes takes them dancing out into the city, and country.

I hoped the images present in the dances would be interesting and might inspire a painting or a drawing perhaps a poem also.  (I like to paint the human form in motion, and evoke motion, even in doodling.)  The dances were evocative of human relations and contained quite a bit of visual metaphor. The trailer will give you the idea.....

One scene that really struck me contained a couple embracing. Suddenly another man comes out of the side door and rearranges their embrace - then he picks up the woman and hands her to the man. The nitpicking spectator then goes back behind the door, after which, the man drops the woman. She immediately gets up and flies back to him, and they assume the original pose...  Then, of course, the man comes back out of the side door, rearranges them again, and this whole process repeats over and over and over - and  accelerating faster and faster to an impossible pace.

Finally the man no longer comes out to rearrange them. He doesn't have time and doesn't need to either because they have accepted his expectations and rearrange themselves. They subsequently revert to type, rearrange themselves, revert to type......, repeat, repeat, etc etc  What an odd, wonderful visual metaphor for social expectations and the way we internalize them.

"False Faces" - masks (1916-1948) by W.T. Benda were at WCSU

W.L. Benda's amazing masks were shown at Western Conn. State University's Alumni Hall this past week, by his grandson Thatcher Taylor who is a theater student there, with the assistance of Elizabeth Popeil an associate professor. Taylor is a personable sort and was there to act as a tour-guide. He is studying set design and theater tech at the college.

Alumni Hall is full of glass and has a chandelier. The masks were all in plexiglass cases. This arrangement made reflections difficult to avoid. So instead I gave in to them and tried to position them in the photo frame with some mixed results.

GOLDILOCKS >

THE EXECUTIONER:

What I find odd, thinking back, is that male masks could have the full range of humanity, could be old or evil However, female masks were all idealized as youthful, beautiful, unblemished.

I wish I had seen a wider variety of the women characters so I could know if this was an artistic choice or just the whim of the curator. I think I will paint some women as they are, warts and all. I really enjoyed this exhibit.

Bolt -a Disney movie with some remarkable metaphor

The two dollar movies at Edmund Town Hall are a welcome treat in these days of low budget living. Thursday evening, an acquaintance and I went there to see Bolt, a Disney movie. Although it's animated, and heart-warming Bolt's a different sort of Disney movie. Bolt is a story of a gradual fall from belief, of a journey from blanket labels of good and evil to a realization of the micro-community of friendship and family . It's not a story of finding fame and fortune - but of turning away from it. Bolt, a dog, is "superhero" star of a Sat morning TV show. He doesn't know it's a show. His delusion - that he has certain "super powers" - runs smack into reality in a very funny way.

However Bolt holds metaphor that are needed in this sad world where Religion's blind tenents drive so much death and misery, where greed has ruined a global economy for an unknown number of years to come., where the cult of celebrity flaunts personality disorder and borderline socio-pathic actions as "cool"

Instead of a boy and a dog, it's a girl and her dog. Instead of the usual single parent DAD with his daughter which is a common TV family, this is a short plump little MOM and her daughter. Instead of a bone the dog's favorite toy is a stuffed carrot. Instead of the dog being wildly perceptive and human being hoodwinked - in this case the human knows the score and dog is a true believer. Instead of the hero saving the day - it's a tiny hamster and a discarded disillusioned cat that hold the keys. Instead of "belief" and "super powers" saving the world - it's the reality of a few small beings, just doing what they can.

Mittens is an ally cat (really a de-clawed abandoned house cat), that Bolt meets when he is accidently shipped to New York in a crate of packing peanuts. He thinks the peanuts are his kryptonite and have sapped away his powers. Bolt captures Mittens thinking she is related to the cat characters on his show who were the minions of its evil anti-hero. So he ties himself to her and demands to be taken to Penny. Though Mittens hasn't a clue who penny is, she notices Bolts license-tag says Hollywood CA. So she confesses that Penny is in Hollywood and shows Bolt a discarded tourist map. Off they go on trucks and trains to cross the country. Along the way they meet the hamster "Rhino" a fan of Bolt the superhero. Rhino is viral alright - he is a living infectious mem - a true believer living a a bubble ( a plastic Habi-trail exercise globe). Bolt is reminded of his ideals when Rhino launches off on one of his sermons, determines to use what power he has to find his human (or maybe his humanity instead of his fake "superpower")

It really could be argued that Bolt, Mittens, and Rhino are aspects of the self and are internal.... and together they are a whole personality.

To sum it up, I laughed, I cried, I had stuff to think about afterwards. It doesn't get any better than that. Bolt is a film worth going to see no matter what age grasshopper you might be now ..

-- Mar Walker