Metaluna and the Amazing
By Carol Burbank
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The conceptual framework of this collaborative piece is simple even though the effect is quite complicated. The two-hour show is a supposed performance by an actual Dada troupe “reenacting” its tour to the backwater of Metaluna, Indiana. There they became part of an experiment run by Sigmund Freud and his brain surgeon friend, Dr. Carlton Twist, and shocked the rubes of the town with their nonsensical dadaist antiaesthetic. This framework provides a forum for Janes’s ideas about dadaism as well as for the characters and issues WNEP members want to explore.
The performance begins before the official curtain time with the creation of a collage using glue, paper, and newspaper. A masked figure guides audience members in a blunt and childish ritual (true to Dada, I might add) in which they rip a word or phrase out of a newspaper, drop it from a height onto brown wrapping paper, and glue it where it falls, slapping hard for emphasis. People who arrive “late” must learn the process by doing it themselves; if this essentially random ritual is not followed, the hapless “artist” repeats the process until she does it right. A cast member then dives for the resulting work of art, which is pronounced finished (in pantomime), then cleared away without being displayed. The audience is encouraged to applaud at each stage of creation, and though it takes a while, the game is quite satisfying.
But audiences need to be attentive for these moments to succeed. And they need to be patient: the supporting cast sometimes offer jarringly stereotyped and oversimplified performances. Kate Hendrickson plays a suffragist contender for mayor of Metaluna in the blandest style of naturalism I’ve ever seen, acting only with her face and arms, speaking long, earnest speeches without irony or passion. In an obvious joke, David Schmidt’s energetic but cardboard Freud walks across the stage wearing a slip. Many of those playing Meta-luna locals go for the most immediate stereotype, indicating a lofty moral purpose with a high voice and arms akimbo, or uncontrollable rage by shouting through gritted teeth. Because these and other stereotyped characters are filler in most of the scenes, the joke of “dadaists meet rubes” wears thin very quickly.
