Online theater, though flawed, is creative, inspired
You’ve had it with Zoom; I’ve had it with Zoom. Still we’ve persisted, all through the months of this infernal shutdown. Theater companies, which in the grief and panic of the coronavirus pandemic’s early days cobbled together one dry Zoom play reading after another, have now — mercifully — had time to develop more imaginative formats for digital consumption.
Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Studio Theatre and Arena Stage are among the Washington theaters with new offerings on their websites. Still, how these works fare on practical levels — such as wireless internet reliability and technical mastery of a visual medium — reveals the internet as bumpy terrain for a field that breathes more naturally in shared public air.
Viewers must show forbearance for artists exercising new virtual muscles. And in each of these productions, one finds much to admire in the aspiration to push the boundaries of theatrical storytelling. But there are some glitches in web performance that can dull the intended effect.
Take, for instance, the problems that handicapped the recent livestream of Woolly’s searingly intelligent “Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran.” Created by Javaad Alipoor and Kirsty Housley — and performed by Alipoor and Peyvand Sadeghian — the hourlong play is a kaleidoscopic anthropological survey. It starts with a single tragic event, the fatal 2015 crash of a sports car in Tehran, and uses it for a breathtaking treatise on global excess, human overreach and the possibly terminal damage inflicted by (mostly white European) hegemonic cultures.
It’s hard to believe the production originated on the stage in the United Kingdom, because it seems so craftily assembled for digital: Its creators ask you to follow along, on the livestream and through a private hashtag on Instagram. The narrators toggle between the platforms, relating in reverse chronology the personal details of the young, affluent Iranian couple who died in the crash — just as one might scroll through anyone’s Instagram account ever more deeply through photos posted in the past.
The conceit is thrilling, and the argument for historical linkage that Alipoor and Housley construct is inspired. The difficulty was that the dialogue was out of sync for much of the production — at least, it was on my connection — and as a result, the captioning didn’t match the narration. At times, in my efforts to try to figure out what went awry, I lost the thread of this elegant rhetorical tapestry. Some of the rich flavor of the intellectual stew became diluted.
In Arena Stage’s “The Freewheelin’ Insurgents,” another budding film director in the District of Columbia, Psalmayene 24, gets a welcome chance to experiment with technique. His 23-minute film is a wistful expression, in hip-hop and spoken vignettes, of the opportunities a pandemic robs from theater artists. Recorded in black and white, the production gathers five Washington actors — Louis E. Davis, Shannon Dorsey, Gary L. Perkins III, Justin Weaks and the director himself — who portray a troupe waiting in a snow-covered park for inspiration to strike and theaters to reopen.
The project is one of a trio of short original musicals Arena has commissioned under the umbrella title “Arena Riffs”; it has already unveiled “My Joy Is Heavy!” by the folk-rock duo the Bengsons. You get tastes in the embryonic “The Freewheelin’ Insurgents” of stories that cry out for development, most interestingly, in the relationship between Dorsey’s Zora and Perkins’ Noble; their romance is revealed in a brief “stylized movement duet,” danced to a jazz underscoring played by nick tha 1da.
“What are they doin’?” asks Davis’ character, Church.
“I don’t know,” replies Weaks’ Dante.
“The Freewheelin’ Insurgents” has that kind of raw, improvisational home-movie feel. Like the shutdown itself, the movie comes across as unfinished business. As Psalmayene 24 adds more context, his film will be worth another look.
“Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran,” created by Javaad Alipoor and Kirsty Housley. Video design, Thom Buttery and Tom Newell; sound, Simon McCorry; lighting, Jess Bernberg. 70 minutes. $15.99.Through April 18. woollymammoth.net.
“The Freewheelin’ Insurgents,” written and directed by Psalmayene 24. 25 minutes. Admission is free. Ongoing. arenastage.org.