{"id":106,"date":"2010-07-28T16:57:54","date_gmt":"2010-07-28T20:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/?p=106"},"modified":"2010-07-28T16:57:54","modified_gmt":"2010-07-28T20:57:54","slug":"clap-your-hands-stomp-your-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/?p=106","title":{"rendered":"Clap Your Hands; Stomp Your Feet"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had tickets to Stomp<\/em> last Saturday, Eileene’s birthday present. It was fun. It was also almost exactly what I had expected: energetic drumming on whatever struck the…composer’s? performers’? producer’s? fancy. There was a certain sameness between parts of the act. Tapping out rhythms on large matchboxes was a little different, and combining light with sound in a part of the act using cigarette lighters was quite different, but most of the show sounded a lot like the rest of the show. Which, I suspect, was the central point: to demonstrate that it hardly matters what<\/em> you use to make music\u00e2\u20ac\u201dgarbage cans, bedframes, broomsticks, human flesh\u00e2\u20ac\u201dso long as you make music.<\/p>\n

The biggest surprise for me was the size of the theater, no more than a few hundred seats. Despite Eileene’s ongoing efforts to expose me to theater, something in the back of my mind persists in thinking of theater as a grand occasion involving gowns and jewelry and multiple balconies. I expected it of Stomp, too; any show with TV ads must be big, right? I blame PBS. Growing up in Elgin, Illinois, my exposure to theater was almost entirely very local, very amateur, often school-sponsored productions or what I saw on Channel 11. And Channel 11 broadcast big theater, big opera, big concerts, featuring Pavoratti, Bernstein, Gielgud. The one professional play I remember seeing in person was a staging in Chicago of Camelot<\/em> with Richard Burton, which did nothing to dispel the Channel 11 vision of theater.<\/p>\n

Theater certainly can<\/em> be all that; I know grand theater has survived my childhood because I see it in ads for Disney musicals, or stepping out of taxis on 52nd Street. But far more often, theater is a more intimate art form held wherever it can find the space, flaking plaster or no, especially since Eileene tends to eschew the big productions and follow personal, less mainstream favorites.<\/p>\n

I think I like that better. I can accept intellectually that the spectacle itself is part of the attraction to theatergoers, but the idea leaves me cold. Too much conspicuous consumption and class consciousness. I don’t always like small theater, either, loaded as it is with plays full of self-pity and dysfunctional families. But when I do, it’s not a big star belting it out for the cameras; it’s some guy I never heard of saying, essentially, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, wanna see something cool? Look at this.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And sometimes he’s right: it is cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

big theater and little theater<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}