In Ronald Harwood’s 20th-century play about the theater, The Dresser, the title character says of his friend who was in crisis due to depression, “What saved him was an offer of work.” Isn’t that the truth and what we artists all need right now? Well, then, God bless Synetic Theater for offering work to so many of its company members into The Decameron, a series of short online performance pieces!
The series functions in three important ways. The works serve much the way a dance class does for dancers, a disciplined activity for Synetic artists to stretch out and tune their bodies as their performance style demands — to help them stay on top in strength, agility, balance and psycho-physical risk-taking. Secondly, the work keeps the company connected in this time of strict isolation when its members are scattered, separated, in some cases, by continents. Synetic is one of the few true ensemble companies left in our capital, and these members have made many sacrifices over the years to earn honestly the accolade of “ensemble.”
A third and most exciting aspect is the opportunity this has given its company members to build individual capacities for creative expression. With nearly one hundred companies in our region, the attention paid to giving opportunities for individual singers, actors and dancers to be something more than interpretive “hires” doesn’t get nearly the attention and commitment from companies it should.
Synetic artists for The Decameron project have not only been invited to respond creatively to one of the stories in Giovanni Boccaccio’s magnificent classic of how to pass the time and survive a plague, they have been given a platform to “show their stuff.” All the artists have been given a mentor to work with, and, in many cases, the artists have stepped up and not only written a scenario, but filmed their own sequences with a variety of devices, found their own music, and, served as editors or co-editors.
The works become key to the artists’ ongoing professional development. They seed the rich variety of works to come in our community.
Day Two in the program of ten days of The Decameron.
Mandi Lee leads off the trio of works, and this marks her artistic debut with Synetic. I know Lee as an administrator and external liaison of the company, and her inclusion makes me even more admiring of Synetic’s commitment to whole company. Her piece showed more of a beginning level of development, honestly so. Recorded in a dance studio with mirrors, it lets us in to the hard work behind the scenes and specifically the necessary workout in front of a mirror. The piece probes the relationship of self to projected, mirrored self as the artist grapples with basic exercises, the push-pull attraction-rejection of her own limitations.
The piece was broken down into five movements, with single piano accompaniment, conjuring even further the parallels to a dance class. The relationship of woman to the woman in the mirror gets explored in true Synetic style through a combination of mime, dance, and fight. Victoria and Dallas Tolentino co-mentored Lee, and together the three employed some simple technological “magic” to create a real relationship struggle between the “two” woman-to-mirrored-woman characters.
Czech artist Francesca Jandasek chose as her inspiration and starting point Day 3, Story 10 from Boccaccio, where “Alibech – on her journey to find God – experiences a sexual awakening.” Janasek is a most beautiful and artful performer. Her piece may have suffered somewhat from too much artiness. The choice of watching the arching and panting of a woman “awakening” seemed a little gratuitous. Her partner (Dan Istate) in seduction, robed in black, seemed to step right out of a Bergman film. Then, in case you didn’t get it, the piece cut to a flower, whose petals has been somewhat crushed and whose sepals had exploded. Anyone who has pulled out of the proverbial attic a first assignment from film class will be as embarrassed as I was – in embarrassed solidarity.
Marissa Molnar created the third piece on Day 2’s program. A star of the firmament of Synetic, Alex Mills, mentored her in this work. I’ve admired Molnar’s mime abilities in The Screwtape Letters. She is just as compelling in this, her own work. From Day 3, Story 2, she has crafted a story about our present circumstances, where “Time is warped in quarantine: minutes stretch to hours or tick by in an instant.”
Molnar has chosen to manipulate the speed of filmed action and to bring together little elements that in one moment make us feel her angst and the next make us laugh. She twitches, gulps water, downs coffee cup after coffee up. Then we see the cup and read the banality of our optimistic culture, where we’re hyped to “Make Today ridiculously amazing.” She sets a paper boat on the water and we’re rooting for a hopeful, happy ending, but it doesn’t go quite in that direction.
Two of my favorite moments in the piece are rooted in the carefully observed reality. In the kitchen we see Molnar doing the mime walk thing. Is she seriously practicing? Or does she even know she’s doing it? Molnar makes these interpretations possible and yet makes the action character based. The woman is trying to get time to pass. In another scene, when her actions become more agitated, she boards a subway car. By this point in the story she has become socially clueless. A woman watching on the near-empty car, gets up, grabs her bag and moves away.
I admit I howled with laughter. So support this company and see the works of the talented band of artists.
Tickets to watch The Decameron series start at just $10 and are available now.