NYC #2: Damndest thing I ever seen

You'd think meeting Wyatt would've been excitement enough for one night, right? Oh no.

I said my goodbyes to the extremely friendly Jon Stewart people and walked 9 or so blocks through the remains of the recent blizzard up to Julliard. So now, what are we doing at Julliard, again?

For readers who don't know, I am married to this guy named Jim White. He is a critically acclaimed musician whom I've been a fan of since his first album came out in 1997, though I didn't actually meet him (at a show at the Echo Lounge) until 2003. Jim is sort of a renaissance fellow; when he's not working on albums he's involved with a variety of interesting side projects. One of these side projects was scoring the senior student production at the Julliard Theater School.

Everybody knows that "Julliard" = "wow" when it comes to music. But I didn't know until Jim got involved with this crew that the 15-18 students accepted into the theater school each year (out of 2000 annual applicants) are some of the most talented actors in America. What I DID know was that for the past 8 months Jim and these Julliard people had been working their butts off to create something extraordinary.

The show was an adaptation of Sam Shepard's "Paris Texas" and the "Motel Chronicles" interspersed with stories the young students had written about their families. In between the stories, the students would sing songs arranged by Jim and Dan Nettles, his very talented colleague. Some of the songs had lyrics written by Stephanie, the dramaturg; some were re-arrangements of songs Jim wrote in the past.

For those of you not familiar with Jim's work, the above sentence probably carries no emotional weight one way or the other. People who DO know his music, though, are probably struggling as much as I did to reconcile these two wildly disparate ideas. For "musical theater" is never, ever the first thing that pops into one's head when thinking about Jim's music. Maybe an old falling-down MOVIE theater on some forsaken corner in the abandoned downtown of a Mississippi hamlet that has seen better days but is now known mainly for its startlingly high rates of birth defects due to the huge number of basement meth labs that began springing up once the local lumber mill shut down; yeah, I could see Jim's music overlaying a scene like this (and you can, too).

But a THEATER production? Jim? It'd be like hearing that Tom Waits had been chosen to play the lead in the upcoming Ethel Merman biopic. Does. Not. Compute. Nonetheless, I reserved judgment. Jim is a talented person working with other talented people. Perhaps they'd take these incongruous ingredients and whip up something tasty after all.

And wouldn't you know, we settled into the back row of the sold-out theater on the show's opening night, and it was amazing. 18 students singing "Combing My Hair in A Brand-New Style," and "Ghost Town of My Brain" while performing a choppy, angular, rhythmic dance that completely suited the off-kilter lyrics -- I'm telling you, if the show had stopped right then I would have said it was one of the damndest things I'd ever seen.

But it didn't stop right then. It kept going for 2 more hours. These people, these kids, were WORKING. They were in constant motion; when they weren't talking or singing or dancing they were running around setting up, disassembling, or toting around the sets and the multimedia that held the whole show together. This production was fairly experimental; there was no clear plot or narrative per se. It was more like a mood that was created that built on itself as the show went on, and the sparse set and dramatic lighting were instrumental in creating this mood.

The lighting, in fact, was such a critical part of the show that it was almost another cast member or character. The show used something I'd never before seen and used it to great affect: a long series of milky glass panels that lit up in different ways according to a complex series of cues. Each individual panel was about 5 feet long and 3 feet wide, and there must have been about 10 of them attached to each other. This 50-foot long rectangle of glass was attached to the ceiling by cables, and the whole thing could be raised or lowered depending on the mood the director wanted. The glass face could point down, so it was shining on the actors like overhead florescent lighting, or it could face out, so that the audience of parents and grandparents (this was the class' thesis show, after all, and the opening night) and theater people could see the sequence of colors and flashes.

It was really something to see, and really added to the production. And so, when at the beginning of act 4, the cables holding the fixture aloft suddenly snapped and the whole 2000-pound, 50-foot-long, dangerous glass contraption crashed to the stage below and exploded like a fishbowl knocked off of an end table, everyone was absolutely, completely aghast.

Act three had just ended, and the 18 (EIGHTEEN, do you understand how many people that is) actors distributed themselves around the stage and froze, waiting for the next act to start. A slide was projected onto the back wall, interstitial music was playing, and the big rectangle of lighted panels was being raised to the very top of the ceiling 20 feet above. It had almost made it when the cables snapped and the lights crashed to the floor. It made a sound that was unbelievably loud and also oddly satisfying -- like the sound a crystal chandelier would make if someone threw it out of a helicopter. It echoed in the absolutely silent theater as we all prepared ourselves to see which of the students we'd been watching for the past 2 & 1/2 hours had been killed, and which had been spared.

Remarkably, unbelievably (and I still have no explanation for this) not a single person on the stage was hit or even hurt very badly. One person had to be walked off by two other students when she was hit by flying glass. But there was not a single other injury. It was, without a doubt, the damdest thing I've ever seen. I still have not completely processed it.

And what a tragedy! Obviously, it would have been way more tragic if someone had been hurt or killed, but still. All that work, all that labor. Those poor kids. Poor Brian, the director. Damn.

We all sat there in total silence for a very, very long time, until finally Brian sort of stumbled on stage, spread his arms out forlornly, and said "We can't continue after this. Everyone go home." We all leapt up and began clapping frantically, trying to communicate all our shock and relief and gratitude and amazement. Then, we all went home.

Tune in tomorrow for NYC #3. Boy, this was a busy 2 days. No wonder I'm sick.