The question mark is there because I am still confused at what this play was about. Here’s an email Marlyn received about The Race:
As the 2008 Presidential election reaches a fever pitch, Georgetown University’s Theater and Performance Studies Program charts ever more daring artistic territory with the world premiere production of The Race, an interactive, wildly unpredictable and entertaining civic theater project that is unlike any theatrical production you have ever experienced.
Conceived and directed by Visiting Professor Michael Rohd, The Race breaks down the traditional walls by incorporating a cross-section of voices into an on-stage conversation about some of the most important issues raised by the upcoming election: Who will vote for whom? Who won’t? Why? And most specifically, what does leadership mean today?
The show itself is a three-part event. Part One is a performance that sets up the rules and questions for what follows. Part Two asks the questions- and uses interactive media and deceptively simple structures to involve the audience, and participants around the country, in the conversation. And Part Three mines completely different territory by marrying elements of a town hall meeting and a karaoke bar.
We were expecting a history of the 2008 election as it happened so far, but with actors and actresses and hopefully some funny dialogue. You know, the actors would mimic the candidates from the start of the primaries through the end of the election. Sure, we know what happens in the end but that doesn’t mean the play can’t be good.
Given that they started work on this project 18 months prior, this sounded like a reasonable assumption. What also fed this assumption was that as you walk in, they’re showing video clips and audio tracks from all the candidate’s primary runs. Remember those old Huckabee and Ron Paul commercials? This play could actually be good.
Wrong! And on so many levels. Maybe it was the theatre that the play was held in, but the technical aspects of the play were horrible. They only had two microphones (yes, handheld mics) that they had to pass around to the 12 cast members so they could talk. Wait, this isn’t a 4th grade play is it?
In the middle of the play they tried doing some web conferencing with other students from all over the globe (I still have no idea what the point of that was). Apparently, Apple computers DONT handle video conference that well. Because we couldnt hear any of the people they were talking to as they had audio problems. So what did they do? They translated what the people said to us. Wow, you know you could have saved 10 minutes (literally) of play time? If you had just read the questions and answers aloud in the first place.
Questions and answers–Keep that thought in your head because I think a good 1/2 the play was just the actors asking questions to each other then they respond unrehearsed. We paid $15 in tickets for this! There was no acting. This wasn’t a play. This wasn’t a performance. It was like we had to pay $15 to hear what other people think about the election and the world today. And by other people I mean college students; more specifically: college students at GEORGETOWN. Almost as much as I hate conservatives for their ignorance and moron-ism, I dislike liberals for their narrow views and right-bashing.
That’s right, I hate everybody (except for independants). I personally don’t care what college students think about what makes a good ‘leader’ but frankly, I bet they could have Googled “college student,” “blog,” and “leadership” and saved everyone hours of their time. This isn’t even including the poor actors who followed that director for 18 months.
18 months!!! WTF? I’ve seen better productions put on by my high school ‘Winter One Acts’ that took only a few months to put together. What a waste of time and resources (and the liberals blame the republicans for the recession…zing!)
Maybe it was our fault for interpreting this play wrong, but this thing was absolutely dreadful. If it was a movie we would have walked out 30 minutes in. But, we already took the metro ride into the city to watch a play we might as well finish it.
There was one bright spot to the play (other than when it ended). It happened when they had everyone in their chairs get up and fill some bleachers they brought in to make a mock ‘town hall’ type feeling. Trust me, we weren’t the only ones who didn’t want to get up (especially the guy surfing the internet ON HIS LAPTOP); but since it improved the performance I’m guessing it was a good thing.
The ‘karaoke’ mentioned in the email came from this: people were asked to get up and give campaign speeches, taken from the candidates themselves. Yes, the Giulani speech referenced 9/11 3 times in 60 seconds; no, Huckabee didn’t mention Chuck Norris in his speech. People that gave boring speeches (like McCain) were pretty lame. I would have much rather chosen to listen to a Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich speech, if not purely for entertainment value.
Outside of this 10 minute session, the rest of the performance was pretty bad. I still don’t understand what it was about and frankly I don’t think I want to. I feel bad for one person though: Marlyn. She tried hard to find an entertaining play and, if our assumption was correct, then I think that it would have been much more entertaining.
Oh well, at least it got me out of the apartment for one night. I’ll end this post with the funniest lines of last night. It happened from a guy sitting behind me about 20 minutes into the performance:
God, this is awful.
This is Jeffrey Lipsey, and I support this message.
