THEATER REVIEW Sketchbook Festival
by Scott C. Morgan
Young theatrical hipsters rejoice! Collaboraction’s 9th annual Sketchbook Festival is back with 14 new plays.
At the same time, I must offer a mea culpa because I was only able to catch seven of those works. ( I had a scheduling conflict on opening night.) Unlike other years when Sketchbook programs were divided into set “A” and “B” schedules, this year’s mix of plays are scrambled from show to show. So I couldn’t really remedy my absence because the set of seven plays you see one night may include ones you’ve already seen in another.
In a switch from previous seasons, Collaboraction has sought “devised works” by individuals or a team or artists instead of just by playwrights. This has given a much more conceptual and abstract bent to some pieces—many of which provoked a smattering of ponderous “I didn’t get that one” audience statements.
One of those is Joseph Ravens’ Kattywampus, which consists of a man wearing an oversized papier-mâché head contorting around a circular carpet patch while pulling out egg-shaped colored fabric balls from the crotch of his flesh-colored tights. Perhaps he’s a symbolic baby in the womb, or a circus performer spreading some kind of venereal disease. (It’s up to you to decide.)
Less of a head-scratcher is Mark Comiskey’s live and playback video piece The Gist, in which three people (perhaps in a love triangle) symbolically struggle and look back on their fight over a fruit bowl.
Much more fun is Carolyn Hoerdemann and Atalee Judy’s video-heavy Fix Your Teeth B*tch. It shows Hoerdemann as a nervous goth girl patient, possibly high on nitrous oxide, both embracing the fear and pain of dental work.
Sandra Delgado’s devised piece Para Carmen feels like too much has been stuffed into one piece (which depicts an elderly Latina woman facing death and flashing back to key moments in her life).
On the play side of things, Chelsea Marcantel’s Beatrice and Beau is a hilarious examination of a romantic couple arguing over whether to take their relationship to the next stage (masterfully played by Sarah Gitenstein and Michael Salinas).
Far from just filling out the audience, Sean Graney’s large ensemble for What I Am Supposed to Be? does bring into question (albeit briefly) the self-nagging we all do—be it inconsequential or of a national significance.
And for pure goofy fun, Scott Cupper has a ball as The Dreaded Zeppelin, a dangling aerial World War I German spy contemplating his existence in the clouds (the puppetry also helps to make this playlet work).
All in all, Collaboraction keeps up its Sketchbook credentials as a hip theatrical happening. As always, how much fun and depth you get out of the show is entirely up to you.
