The Manhattan-based Big Art Group so melded theatre and video that artistic director Caden Manson had to coin a new term for its work: "real-time film".
In Shelf Life, presented as part of the Pan Pan international theatre symposium, six performers stand on a rostrum behind a row of shoulder-high screens. Three video cameras are trained on the action, which follows the story of the bubble-brained Frankie (Vivian Bang). She is a newcomer to the big city who becomes the sexual prey of everyone she meets: an eco-friendly, truck-driving lesbian, a bodybuilder with a flash car, an insecure shop manager. The acting style is exaggerated and melodramatic; all wear tacky wigs and ill-fitting costumes.
The fun for the audience lies in the switch between the purposely lousy B-movie on the screens and the actors' complex interplay. Though the cameras are stationary, each capturing only one point of view, the action often extends across all three screens, with "stand-in" actors taking over if a character moves out of one frame into another. The actors are always in motion behind the screens, changing costumes, moving set pieces and putting placards in front of the cameras to facilitate scene changes.
The show offers a predictable (though valid) critique of contemporary capitalist society. All of the characters are single-minded, hypocritical consumers: Frankie is a compulsive shoplifter only interested in amassing more stuff, and her three suitors all want to possess her. The final showdown, which conveys the moral of the story, is appropriately set in the city landfill.
The most interesting element of the production is the ironic contrast between the sophistication and seriousness of purpose of the actors and the vapidity of what they are representing. Overall, the vapid side wins out: after the first 15 minutes, the form and the message become over-familiar and, even at just 70 minutes, the evening has too many saggy points.
It would be wonderful to see the company's formal adventurousness paired with more challenging material.
