David Froomkin

"Bastards of Strindberg" seeks to lend familiarity to a perhaps distant world, while also exposing our distance from many things that should be familiar. In so doing, it explores themes of sexuality, gender politics, and class conflict, as well as more theoretical issues of intertextuality and drama.

The Flea Theater's "Mr. Landing Takes a Fall" is a sharp play. Not only deeply sharp, but sharply deep at times.

Undergraduates can see that the University Senate is unresponsive to our preferences. The current institutional scheme, established by the Guidelines on Confidentiality and Release of Information that the senate passed on Apr. 29, 2011, largely disempowers students by discouraging direct student participation. Undergraduates have only six representatives in the senate to begin with, and meetings are closed by default. Excluding student voices directly decreases our ability to accomplish any policy change. Without adequate representation, collective advocacy is our most effective means for setting the agenda. However, institutional rules preclude this option. Barriers to students' ability to work with their senators diminish the clout of Columbia's student body. The importance of procedure in achieving any serious policy goals cannot be overstated. Accordingly, we propose a set of concrete reforms that will go a long way toward fixing the problem. We believe that these reforms are feasible and could be implemented with speed.

As the audience filters into the dim Minor Latham Playhouse in Milbank Hall, an accordionist sits onstage, smiling as he manipulates his instrument. Dark lenses obscure his eyes. The chords he plays do not quite seem to form a melody.

The Blind Musician, played by Barnard lecturer Rinde Eckert, soon shuffles off to the side of the stage, where he remains for much of the performance. There, he continues to provide instrumentation complementing the play, primarily percussion, using an eclectic mix of devices. As he plays, he seems lost in his own world, fascinated by his instruments.

"Eye Piece," a student production that was performed this weekend and written and directed by Eckert, opens with music, and music is a major driver of the play. The use of sound as a significant sensory medium is fitting for a play about blindness and the absence of sight. Eckert's instrumentation supplements School of Continuing Education student Elizabeth Rhodes' haunting, subtle sound design. While perhaps not properly a musical, "Eye Piece" incorporates songs that heighten the emotional register of the work, sometimes comically.
Dark comedy finds its way regularly into the play, which confronts the rather depressing prospect of a painter losing his sight. As one character remarks, "You can't be a painter if you can't see. Maybe an artist, but not a painter."

The painter in question, Jacob Rothman (Lindsay Forcade, BC'14, and Alessio Mineo, CC '14), learns he has retinitis pigmentosa, a form of macular degeneration, which will lead to blindness within a year. As his vision deteriorates, he sinks deeper into depression. Gradual dimming of lights emphasizes this progression. Disorienting staging also serves to remove viewers' ability to make sense of what they observe.

With the onset of blindness come the twin threats of Ignorance and Fear, Rothman discovers, personified as characters who menace the anxious artist. As these forces increasingly exert their power over him, Rothman begins to contemplate the release of Death. Blindness, Eckert suggests, threatens to destroy one's ability to function.

Rothman's story is told alongside others' stories. The play centers on an ophthalmology seminar led by Dr. Stroud, played strongly and evenly by Jin Ha, CC '13. The students, for whom Rothman provides a case study, must address their inability to heal all patients. Stroud impresses on them the importance of providing emotional support to their patients. When a student voices her concern that she lacks the ability to be sympathetic, Stroud asks whether she can learn lines, suggesting that she should learn to act the part.

"Eye Piece" breaks down the barriers between actor and character, perhaps suggesting that all aspects of life require performativity, particularly when confronting the loss of sensory ability. The play employs a Brechtian aesthetic, if not an obviously Brechtian ethic. Actors assume their characters' identities explicitly onstage, and they make their identity transitions obvious, donning and removing articles of clothing as they perform. Yet Eckert's characters also strongly individuate themselves, in both the force of their words and the force of their personalities, through the work of the ensemble cast. Their forceful performances succeed in selling the stakes of the production, and their coordination allows Eckert to construct his impressive tension between the individual and the collective.

If doctors are actors in "Eye Piece," they are also artists. Eckert likens the academic approach of the ophthalmologists to that of art historians as they study ocular diagrams. And artists, too, are actors. Rothman and his model are played by two actors who exchange roles periodically. This intertwining of the identities of the artist and the object of artistry hints at the performativity at the heart of artistic production, and Mineo and Forcade manage these switches with aplomb.

Ha also plays a preacher who relates the story of Job. Job attains grace, the preacher claims, only when he renounces reason. While blindness creates a feeling of ignorance akin to false belief, Eckert suggests, true ignorance consists of the rejection of belief, as it is only through faith—whether in God or in art—that one can transcend blindness.

Their frequent shifts in identity allow Eckert's actors to demonstrate their abilities to portray different characters. Several of them give particularly nuanced performances, including Ha and Ben Russell, CC '13, who plays Tiresias. Brittany Beljak, BC '16, also gives a memorable performance as Ruth, a lab technician who delivers a climactic speech on the efficacy of science and the necessity of collaboration.

"Eye Piece" is a highly abstract play in which the focus is not on any one story—indeed, the play has little in the way of linear plot—but on the language and the ideas. Eckert's skillful direction bolsters the force of the script and provides ample opportunity for actors to distinguish themselves, both as individuals and as an ensemble.

The play's title suggests that it offers a way to help viewers see. This may be a difficult task, but "Eye Piece" ultimately does prove enlightening.

arts@columbiaspectator.com | @ColumbiaSpec

Billed somewhat humorously—though by no means inaccurately—as a "tragipoliticomedy," Ismail Khalidi's play "Tennis in Nablus" delivers a thoughtful and pointed political argument while eliciting roars of laughter from the audience. Khalidi's visceral depiction of human struggle allows him to illustrate complex themes, giving viewers a deeper insight into the complexities of today's Palestinian situation, so rooted in the country's chaotic history. Film professor James Schamus introduced Thursday's staged reading of "Tennis in Nablus" at Miller Theatre by noting Khalidi's artful combination of the personal and the political. Cosponsored by the School of the Arts, the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and the Center for Palestine Studies, the reading delivered a potent, punchy critique of imperialist policies toward the Middle East and presented a touching tale of Palestinians' attempts at resistance and reclamation. Set in 1939, just as World War II is beginning in Europe, Khalidi's play focuses on a Palestinian couple torn apart by the British occupation of their country. Distraught at the degradation of his people's honor and the loss of his family's land, protagonist Yusef attempts ingeniously and violently to resist the occupation. Meanwhile, his wife, Anbara, pseudonymously writes inflammatory articles critiquing the British. Khalidi's Palestinians are not opposed to the presence of Jews in Palestine, but rather express concern about the intrusion of "Europeans" on their land. They maintain that the Jewish settlers are not like their own Jews, and they fear a day when Jews will own their own homeland. While the play does not present a Jewish perspective on the situation in the Middle East, it is remarkably sympathetic. The play's lone Jew makes brief but memorable appearances, and he is ultimately granted a moving monologue in which he expresses his love for Palestine and its people. "There will always be reactionaries," he says, but most Jews seek peace and mutual understanding. The villains of the play are not the Jews, but the British. Sinister, even in their incompetence, the British Lieutenant Duff and General Falbour happily set aside their brutal repression of the Palestinian resistance for days at a time to make time for tennis matches and costume parties. Meanwhile, O'Donegal and Rajib, two conscripted soldiers (Irish and Indian, respectively), insubordinate at every opportunity, make no attempts to hide their disdain for their superior officers and for the British imperial project. They provide wonderful comic relief, and show that the play's central argument could extend easily to any part of the developing world. More dramatic than the scarcity of Jews, however, is the remarkable shortage of women. The gender imbalance of the cast is made particularly obvious by the staging necessary for a reading: one woman sits onstage, alongside 10 men. Yet the one woman, Anbara, receives the most intricate portrayal of any character. And it is her pamphleteering, rather than her husband's pugnacity, Khalidi suggests, which ultimately undermines the position of the British in Palestine. Westerners have themselves to thank for today's Palestinian mess, Khalidi suggests, implying that American imperialism is just as unwelcome today as British imperialism was 70 years ago. "Will we be able to get back what we've lost?" Yusef asks at the play's climax, reminding viewers of imperialism's tremendous toll. "Tennis in Nablus" inspires laughter and tears­—and the frequency of the former serves masterfully to ensure the efficacy of the latter. arts@columbiaspectator.com Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated that the opening remarks made by Brinkely Messick, not James Schamus. Spectator regrets the error.

From the start of "Birthday Triage," members of the audience are thrust into the action as guests at one of four birthday parties. On entering a living room in the basement of Columbia's Teachers College, they meet their host, one of the play's principal characters, who greets them warmly and shows them to their seats around the edges of the gloomy, claustrophobic space. From there, the party proceeds to traverse the "tunnels" of the host's memory as he confronts the traumatic events of his past and re-evaluates his identity. The play accomplishes this exploration cleverly, integrating the group's psychological foray into the mind's tunnels with a physical exploration of the corridors of Teachers College. Along the way, the audience discovers other parties, each accompanying a different host. The four groups sometimes interact, and, while for the most part their peregrinations take them apart, their destinies are ultimately intertwined. Along the way, the audience learns about the troubled circumstances of their respective host's life, of the tragic losses that cause him to question the premises of his own existence. In its exploration of the psyche, the production synthesizes music, dance, and video to depict metaphorically the landscape of the mind. "Birthday Triage," a collaboration between playwright Naïma Phillips, SoA '12, and director Simón Hanukai, SoA '12, tries constantly to include the audience in the play. Throughout the night, party members accompany their host, periodically conversing with characters in the play. Along the way audience members enjoy beer and wine, tea and baklava, and cake and champagne as they move from a living room to a tent to a nightclub. In accomplishing these remarkable transitions, the production makes an innovative use of the theater space, allowing the audience to feel like it is truly embarking on a journey. Despite its attempts to break the fourth wall, "Birthday Triage" does not succeed entirely in connecting with the audience. A sense of detachment pervades the production. Though executed with great technically proficiency, the production fails to reach its audience, which is never really sure of its role. The viewing experience, while fascinating, feels alienating rather than inclusive, as the actors fail to fully immerse the audience in the world of the play. The vivid scenes reach a lurid intensity that is quite captivating, though often in a rather voyeuristic way. Members of audience, therefore, become less participants than spectators. The play's perambulations are disorienting and create a mood of surrealism that permeates the production, with its strange blend of realism and abstraction. The two are difficult to reconcile, and they ultimately become entangled to the point where reality cannot be extricated from fantasy. Ordinary spaces take on dreamlike qualities, and busy areas feel at times hallucinogenic. The tasteful integration of dance and media never becomes gaudy, but contributes to this fantastic atmosphere. The play's surrealism is well-suited to its subject: the bizarre complexities of memory, which the host must confront in his attempt to put the past behind him. The party's physical motion parallels the host's complex emotional and psychological quest. The play asks, "How do we piece ourselves back together?" For the host, as for his party, the process is painful and difficult, but ultimately transformative. Along the way, they encounter a range of outlandish characters and situations. In each scene, the production uses magical technical effects (most notably eerie lighting) and offbeat props and sets (e.g. a room full of shattered mirrors) masterfully to develop its surreal atmosphere. So many things could go wrong, but none do. The result is a technically impressive and well-acted production that lives in the moment. Although the talented cast gives an impressive ensemble performance, the script gives the characters little opportunity to individuate themselves. The production focuses instead on the intense, captivating atmosphere of the play, and here it succeeds superbly. Further, the play's technical approach, along with its bizarre combination of real and surreal elements, makes for a stirring, compellingly curious production.

Much of Lauren Feldman's recent play "The Egg-Layers" seems like it might have been inspired by the beginning of Philip Larkin's poem "This Be the Verse." Central to both is the gloomy certainty that life is a corrupting process. This dark outlook infuses the play, which is produced by Barnard in collaboration with the downtown theater company New Georges. Feldman's inspiration comes, however, from a source quite distant from Larkin. The play is based on the Ancient Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, in which Zeus takes the form of a swan to seduce and rape Leda, and on W. B. Yeats' poem about the myth, which features repeatedly in the play. Yeats emphasizes the mixture of fear and fascination with which Leda approaches the swan, and Feldman works extensively with this dialectic. The somewhat abstract play explores the psychological trauma of rape as the characters try to recover from their violation and victimization. In their growing despair, they confess the desire to inflict violence on a merciless world. For Feldman's characters, life is a process of attempted recovery, often with little success. Feldman's central character is the Playwright, who sets out to write a play only to discover that she has little control over the events which unfold in it. As her characters tell her, "The play preceded you." The Playwright's characters appear in scene one, while the Playwright herself does not enter until scene two. She perhaps represents a synthesis of the postmodern conceit of the death of the author and existential fears about loss of individual agency, but her development is beautifully authentic and emotionally captivating as she struggles to wrest back control of her own script. As the play continues, the parallel worlds of author and characters slowly merge in a fascinating and visually compelling way. The Playwright writes in order to correct the flaws in her life, but like her characters, she cannot escape her past traumas. Each time she loses control of the plot, she tries to start the play anew, "with a clean slate," but her characters warn her that bringing about rebirth is not so simple. In their existential crises, the Playwright and her characters search desperately for God, each character reiterating the desire to discover a God in his or her own image. This reflection of the desire for agency merely perpetuates their impotence, as they seek salvation from the very source of their trauma. After all, God is the original father and his creation of man is the original birth, from which all trauma springs. Feldman's God, who rapes Leda at the dramatic start of the play, is not anthropomorphized; rather, he is a swan that is at once beautiful and threatening. Life with a swan god is a tenuous process of both pursuing and fleeing God, recognition of both seduction and rape. Alongside the problem of God stands the problem of the author. The Playwright, who, out of love for her characters, imparts her neuroses onto them, tries to play God. But she is a God with human impotence, and she is soon swept up and overwhelmed by the force of the narrative, reduced ultimately to stunned silence. Her characters' recognition that she is too damaged to offer them the salvation they seek parallels their growing disaffection with God. The play accomplishes parallelism and symbolism marvelously, as director Alice Reagan offers a slew of brilliant directorial choices. The play incorporates wonderful effects, like the rain which features prominently, and uses props cleverly to great effect (e.g., the two large fans that represent a swan's wings). The set is a beautiful collage which integrates the realistic and abstract elements of the play, and the shape of the set is such that the theater feels at once intimate and expansive. The dim, sickly yellow lighting creates an appropriate mood of hypochondria, and the single bare bulb hanging over the audience casts menacing shadows over the theater. An excellent and well-chosen undergraduate cast complements these choices, and tempers the play's gloomy mood with a healthy amount of joy. They bring to the play the necessary level of emotional intensity, yet rebound quickly from the play's darkest moments. The ensemble cast is led by Madalena Provo, BC '12, who plays the Playwright, and by Victoria Pollack, BC '12, who plays the unnamed Woman, the central character in the play-within-a-play. If much of the play seems to be based on "This Be the Verse," then ending seems to be modeled after another of Larkin's poems, "An Arundel Tomb," which the poet concludes with a shockingly optimistic line: "What shall survive of us is love." The cathartic ending of "The Egg-Layers" is similarly surprising, after the dark tone of the rest of the play. But the conclusion rings true. In each character's personal crisis, the central question is how to survive. "The important thing," as Albert Camus once wrote, "is not to be cured, but to live with one's ailments." Somehow Feldman's characters manage to do this, and the play concludes with a stunning and satisfying seizure of individual agency. This production "The Egg-Layers" is compelling and touching. Its intense, cohesive narrative combines philosophical questions with a captivating story of emotional growth, and the production accomplishes its internal parallelism masterfully. While it may be difficult to get tickets, students should certainly try. The production runs until March 3 at the Glicker-Milstein Theatre.