IT’S SHIFTING, HANK
The Goat Island performance group is obsessed with process, yet their shows–however eccentric, obscure, or oddly structured–are solid, rich, and resonant, as moving as the best of Chicago theater. Their insistence on process is not a defense mechanism used to ward off criticism but a genuine act of faith, a willingness to follow wherever their artistic whimsy might lead. And they continue this process long after the “finished” show has been performed for the public.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
That’s part of what I gleaned two summers ago when I hung around Goat Island’s rehearsals, watching them slowly assemble the show that became Its Shifting, Hank. The Goats themselves restate this faith (in more words) in their fascinating self-published booklet, “The Goat Island Hankbook: Process and Performance of It’s Shifting, Hank.” Here we learn, for example, that one of the show’s repeated gestures–a performer falls to the floor, one arm under the body, the other arching out from the shoulder, one leg bent at the knee and pointed upward–is based on a photo of a runner who’d fallen while competing with American athlete Mary Decker. A related movement, an exaggerated temper tantrum, clearly refers to Decker’s own tantrum at the 1988 Olympics. Yet another series of movements are based on the way Secret Service agents carried President Bush after his famous vomiting episode in Japan. We learn that director Lin Hixson and company based other movements on scenes from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, the drowning scene in Sometimes a Great Notion, and illustrations from such sources as a physics textbook and a Red Cross water safety handbook.
But the work itself has changed too. At least one song has been added, and the show is tighter and more graceful. Gone is the discontinuity I found so distracting 18 months ago; each sequence flowed naturally into the next. The performances were sharper and more self-assured.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Eileen Ryan.
