Steinhardt’s Sex As Performance Explores Just That
Yesterday, Steinhardt’s Program in Drama Therapy presented Sex as Performance, an evening of three short original theatre pieces based off of explorations of the inquiry “how does sex perform?” The directors, sound designers, and stage manager were all current students in the Masters in Drama Therapy program and the performance took place at Steinhardt’s Black Box Theatre, located at 82 Washington Square East.
As audience entered the small theatre, they were greeted with a long roll of white paper on the floor accompanied by some markers. Written on the paper was a command for people to write down “One word, thought, feeling about sex.” Audience then took over from there. Answers were interesting, from “complicated” and “power,” to the intriguing “safe?” (question mark included) and “so good when it is so bad.” It was not heavily encouraged that people write on this paper, and I did not see many people inscribing their thoughts. Perhaps the earlycomers were the eager ones.
The first show was a three-character play entitled Transference written by Montserrate Mendez and directed by Drama Therapy second-year Jon DeAngelis, named from the psychological phenomenon of unconsciously transferring one’s feelings toward someone to another person. This was no attempt to be metaphorical; the play detailed the interactions between a man, Jesse, and his meetings (professional and otherwise) with his recently-deceased lover’s therapist, who happens to be very handsome. It tackled the ethical struggle of what happens two men are attracted to each other, but unsure if this attraction has come from a genuine place or was spurred on by where they are at in their lives. Tack on a therapist/patient relationship, and let the drama unfold. It also explored the effects of grief and long-term monogamy. Transference dealt with intriguing concepts, but overall the piece came off as too safe and the writing left something to be desired.
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The show was billed as consisting of three one-acts, a term that almost always implies traditional plays. The second piece, Blurred Lines: Street Harassment As Performance, took a dramatic departure from that. Directed by Kat Lee and Cameron Wade, it began with a multimedia component in the form of various newspaper and television snippets regarding some of the talking points that have come up recently in major news outlets regarding rape culture. Of course, also present were clips from Robin Thicke’s infamous song Blurred Lines.
After these brief projections, actors dressed in plain black clothing walked around the space to music as if confined to walking along grid lines and painted on long pieces of paper hanging from the ceiling. Some of the things painted were derogatory terms for women or gay men, but the characters spent most of the time riffing on the phrase “what’s yours is mine.” Though initially striking, the routine quickly devolved into a repetitive pattern, and the mask work that came into play midway through was just puzzling.
The final piece of the evening and perhaps the strongest was Nancy Vitale’s Tips to Avoid Rape for the Average American Girl, directed by Darci Burch. The Black Box became a classroom, in which Detective Jane Dobrady has been sent to give a talk about rape prevention tips to a group of all-female students, stationed in the audience in a not-very-effective attempt to emphasize the fact that we were in a classroom and perhaps we too as the audience would learn something. Vitale’s frenzied detective character, giving a live Powerpoint presentation worthy of both chuckles and groans, quickly let on that the only type of rape she was trying to prevent was that of the violent ski mask-wearing stranger perpetrator, nearly buckling under pressure when asked to deal with more insidious and ambiguous issues of consent. This was a satirical look at dominant attitudes toward rape and rape culture from both men and women that was for the most part done smartly and effectively, but occasionally got confusing. Perhaps that was the point.
Overall, while these pieces were all adequate explorations of very real topics, one can’t help think that a theatrical inquiry into such a layered and broad topic by those pursuing drama therapy could have dug a little bit deeper.
