War is most often chronicled by artists well after the fact.
Television tried unsuccessfully, with “Over There,” to examine conflicting feelings about the war in Iraq. Documentary film managed, in “Uncovered: The War on Iraq,” to take a stand on a pressing political issue. While poetry presses on (see poetsagainstthewar.org), literature and theater have been slower to tackle the war.
That is about to change with “The War Anthology,” a massive collaboration by Denver’s Curious Theatre on a new work combining theater, photography, dance, song and poetry in a heady mix. The subject is America’s wars – Spanish-American through Iraq, each piece based in some way on a single photographic image showing America in conflict. In every way, it’s a handful.
Following a year-long process involving nine writers, a choreographer, many photographers, a videographer and a musician, the commissioned piece opens in its world premiere Saturday. Expectations could not be higher.
With three Pulitzer Prize-winners among the writers – Tony Kushner (“Angels in America”), Suzan-Lori Parks (“Top Dog/ Underdog”), and Paula Vogel (“How I Learned to Drive”) – the show is a heavy hitter before it opens. All material save for Kushner’s is new for this production. Major players in New York reportedly have an eye on this project and on director Bonnie Metzgar, Curious’ associate artistic director, a teacher at Yale and Brown, and former associate producer at New York’s famed Public Theatre.
The evening will mean switching gears from a traditional dramatic scene to spoken-word poetry to choreographed sequences to journalistic videos to hip-hop rants to art photography. The creators hope for “a mess of Americanism.” The tone will be variously patriotic, nationalistic, critical and proud.
It’s a huge, experimental, multifaceted, hotly anticipated stew with a small army of cooks. The intentionally risky mélange is a throwback to the multimedia experiences that first emerged in the 1960s. The outcome could be thrilling, could be a mess. Or perhaps a thrilling mess.
“How do you respect the integrity of each individual piece and yet make it feel like an evening of theater that has some kind of an arc?” Metzgar asked. What holds it together is the visuals. Brian Freeland (the artistic director of Denver’s LIDA Project) is her videographer and chief collaborator.
“Our intention is that it feels almost like a visual opera. You never stop seeing images,” she said. “Some are specifically crisp photographic representations of war, and some are more abstracted and create an atmosphere.”
Harmony or discord?
Pairing words and visuals onstage is tricky. When it goes wrong, the concept can divide attention and feel like a “performance art” misfire. Done well, the words and visuals enhance one another, creating new levels of meaning.
These days, when you hear “multimedia theater,” you may be forgiven for thinking first of advertisements for surround-sound home-entertainment centers. But “The War Anthology” could revive the concept to mean a seminal cross-pollinating work.
While the visuals are crucial, Metzgar promises there are never more than a few moments without live theater to complement the photographs and videos. In some instances, the characters onstage interact with the characters in projections.
A stack of 10 reference books in the staff room backstage at Curious reflects the intensive research that has gone into the production. This particular pile is the research for a visual presentation that accounts for just one minute of the production.
The project is “as much about the making of” the production as the result, Metzgar said. That’s not what audiences want to hear. The end product must stand on its own.
Playwright Elaine Romero (“Barrio Hollywood”) wrote a piece for “The War Anthology” titled “Rain of Ruin,” set in contemporary Hiroshima. Her play tells the story of a Mexican-
American English teacher and her Japanese lover, the son of a bomb survivor.
“They sent me a book of amazing photographs of Nagasaki,” Romero said. “I found one particular photo that haunted me.”
Taken by a Japanese newspaper photographer following the bombing, it’s a shot of a police officer putting oil on the wounds of teenagers. “I became obsessed with this one woman and what happened to her. What if she had a sister? I started riffing on the idea.”
She’s not worried about the anthology’s interplay of visuals and text.
“The words are really important; I don’t think the images are going to overtake that,” Romero said. “(The pictures) root these stories in the reality of these events. It brings another layer, enriching it. The photographs and video are an element of design, no different than any other set design.”
Nimbler than film or text
Steven Sapp and his wife, Mildred Ruiz, founding members of Universes, a New York poetry/theater ensemble, wrote a piece about Vietnam. “For us, it was a very scary piece to write,” Sapp said, “because you’ve seen it. Over and over again. Oliver Stone’s ‘Platoon,’ and so on.” In a separate monologue, they consider war photographers, using the camera as a gun in Vietnam.
“Bonnie gave me two books and said, ‘Look at the pictures.’ We found a famous picture of a camera with bullet hole in it. We just ran from there.”
Sapp suggested theater is the logical discipline to bring Iraq into cultural context.
“Film has studios to deal with,” he said. “Novels have to cover so much space and time. With theater you can move from period to period quickly. Film gets more political. A theater like Curious in Denver, it’s known and not known. You can really kind of do your work with no one messing with you.”
Curious is on the cusp of something big. In Denver for rehearsals, Sapp said he found himself thinking “War Anthology” could be “a pivotal piece. This show could have a life, a real serious life.”
With luck, the tension between what is projected onscreen in “The War Anthology” and what is enacted onstage will spark the imagination.
“It’s all a big experiment”
Imagine: As an actor playing Walt Whitman ministers to a Civil War soldier (as Whitman did in reality), the audience hears the poet naming battlefields. At the same time, the battlefields are shown onscreen. Some are protected sites, designated historical landmarks, others are now shopping malls.
Metzgar hopes the incongruous spectacle might lead the audience to think – about war, about history, about what it means to be an American.
“It’s all a big experiment,” she said. “Will people be emotionally moved by harrowing ideas and images of war, then be able to laugh at the light moments?”
Pulling the show together has been daunting. “This arty athleticism is tiring,” Metzgar said.
She compares the demands to those of the Olympic biathlete, who must ski, then shoot, gasping for air and then slowing the heart rate. You have to “change up your rhythms and stay loose.”
Metzgar has been part of big, crazy musicals that barely come together in the final terrifying moments. But this, she said, is more nerve-racking.
Prepare now for an artistic biathlon.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
