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Two Gentlemen of Bellona
May. 15th, 2011 03:22 am"I come to wound the autumnal city," intoned by a six-foot-tall face projected on the wall that blocked half the set. A blue-red-white container ship slid across Boston Harbor.
Bellona, Destroyer of Cities breaks the topology of the stage in much the same way Dhalgren breaks the topology of narrative — scenes happen in sealed rooms or behind the set, and the audience is granted perspective (often multiple perspectives) by the cameras that pepper the set. The twenty-foot screen interposes itself between the actors and the audience; things we only glimpse in reality, or can't see at all, are thrown up in magnified perspective like the poster of George that's projected there as we take our seats. We are shown things the audience isn't supposed to see: when Kid goes to "take a piss" in the sealed room, we see her sit on the toilet, and hear the sound of urine — until she manually turns the camera, and we see that her psychiatrist is in there with her, pouring water from one beaker to another for the sound effect. After the elevator accident, we see the "dead" actor lie down before the others bury him in debris and artificial blood.
I said "her" above, in reference to Kid, and that was not an error — Jay Schrieb, the adapter and director, made the protagonist a woman (and if you've read Dhalgren you know why that turns Bellona into a perhaps-sequel). There's a lot of gender-play, a lot of omnisexual makeouts, a lot of naked bodies. The dialogue is largely taken from the book — often verbatim. The back wall of the stage is a window, looking out onto the harbor; "windows" of cling-film seal off portions of the set from the audience, contributing to the jarring conflation of barriers and forced intimacy. I don't know how someone unfamiliar with the book would have taken it, but Schrieb managed to make something that was both recognizably Dhalgren and its own thing, standing on its own legs.
There was a Q&A with Schrieb and Samuel R. Delany after the show. Delany (who loves the adaptation, and says he's seen it five times) was genial and huggable and a little bit dorky; Schrieb was intense and passionate and a little bit pretentious. I'd watched the show from the second row, with seven empty seats in front of me; during the Q&A, those seats were slowly filled by the cast, freshly showered and wearing their rehearsal clothes, so I got to hear their responses (and express my appreciation).
I was very very wary of Bellona, and very nearly didn't go — not because I am one of those who insist on faith in adaptations, but because I found Dhalgren so personal and revelatory that I feared I would violently reject any deviation from my own idiosyncratic interpretation. Turns out it was incredible: sexy, upsetting, difficult, funny, true. I feel so privileged to live in my city.
Bellona, Destroyer of Cities breaks the topology of the stage in much the same way Dhalgren breaks the topology of narrative — scenes happen in sealed rooms or behind the set, and the audience is granted perspective (often multiple perspectives) by the cameras that pepper the set. The twenty-foot screen interposes itself between the actors and the audience; things we only glimpse in reality, or can't see at all, are thrown up in magnified perspective like the poster of George that's projected there as we take our seats. We are shown things the audience isn't supposed to see: when Kid goes to "take a piss" in the sealed room, we see her sit on the toilet, and hear the sound of urine — until she manually turns the camera, and we see that her psychiatrist is in there with her, pouring water from one beaker to another for the sound effect. After the elevator accident, we see the "dead" actor lie down before the others bury him in debris and artificial blood.
I said "her" above, in reference to Kid, and that was not an error — Jay Schrieb, the adapter and director, made the protagonist a woman (and if you've read Dhalgren you know why that turns Bellona into a perhaps-sequel). There's a lot of gender-play, a lot of omnisexual makeouts, a lot of naked bodies. The dialogue is largely taken from the book — often verbatim. The back wall of the stage is a window, looking out onto the harbor; "windows" of cling-film seal off portions of the set from the audience, contributing to the jarring conflation of barriers and forced intimacy. I don't know how someone unfamiliar with the book would have taken it, but Schrieb managed to make something that was both recognizably Dhalgren and its own thing, standing on its own legs.
There was a Q&A with Schrieb and Samuel R. Delany after the show. Delany (who loves the adaptation, and says he's seen it five times) was genial and huggable and a little bit dorky; Schrieb was intense and passionate and a little bit pretentious. I'd watched the show from the second row, with seven empty seats in front of me; during the Q&A, those seats were slowly filled by the cast, freshly showered and wearing their rehearsal clothes, so I got to hear their responses (and express my appreciation).
I was very very wary of Bellona, and very nearly didn't go — not because I am one of those who insist on faith in adaptations, but because I found Dhalgren so personal and revelatory that I feared I would violently reject any deviation from my own idiosyncratic interpretation. Turns out it was incredible: sexy, upsetting, difficult, funny, true. I feel so privileged to live in my city.
