Performances ofLa Voix Humaine will be held on June 4th and 5th at 9pm and 11pm at 811 North Tioga Street.
AS PART OF THE ITHACA FESTIVAL, a version of Jean Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice) will be staged by TheaterGroup.Ithaca this weekend.
Cocteau—whose work as author, director and designer straddled theater, film, ballet, opera, poetry and novels, and included lasting collaborations with the great modernist artists of his time (Dhiagelev, Picasso, Satie, Modligliani, etc.) as well as the Surrealist crowd—was also a noted control freak, an auteur well before the Nouvelle Vague created the term. La Voix was reportedly Cocteau’s response to an unhappy actress, who complained about the restrictions his direction placed on her work. So he whipped out an hour-long monologue in which a jilted lover pleads desperately with her amour over the telephone.
TheaterGroup has a clear, upfront mantra: they don’t want their audiences to have the “typical” theater experience. They’ve been there, done that; as individuals they will probably still keep doing it in order to make a living in the profession. But by and large, what’s out there doesn’t thrill them.
So after comparing notes, these three recent Ithaca College alumni— Zia Anger, Jennifer Cambras and R.B. Schlather—pooled their skills and dreams and launched a new ensemble this past October. According to their mission, the group aims to use “new and non-traditional source materials” and “alternative techniques” to foster their own unique brand of contemporary theater.
In January they got together 25 colleagues and workshopped an Ingmar Bergman filmscript. And for the Ithaca Festival, they’re making their public debut with a more intimate venture, La Voix Humaine, which is perhaps better known in its operatic version with music by Poulenc (the Kitchen Theatre offered a production this past March).
“How,” posits artistic director Schlather, “do we say something about our 20-something lives? … This is about a break-up .… When I listen to this woman on the phone, I think ‘that’s how I sounded when I was 15.’”
Schlather pitched the play to Anger early this year. “When got around to reading it,” says Anger. “I thought ye….es, but…”
“It’s wonky,” interrupts Schlather. “That’s part of the allure. How do you get people to relate to this 1927 work?”
Part of their strategy to get people (particularly young people) to relate is to disrupt the usual go-to-the-theater experience. So to start with, La Voix will take place in a house. The phone the actress speaks into has been turned into a microphone (“I wanted to get that feeling, that chatty, low-fi feeling of being on a telephone,” says Anger, who acts as technical director for the group.)
And there’s video—Anger’s speciality (she has already received awards for her film/video work):
“Exploring audio/visual stuff is very hip, very now in the theater these days. But most of what we’ve seen wasn’t assisting the performer. It was more like putting a cherry on the top of the sundae.”
“At one point, we felt we were getting a bit too theatrical, so we re-committed to stripping down to the text,” she continues. “We want to use the tech to support the part of the text that feels relevant .…
“If Alyssa [Alyssa Duerkson plays the woman] wants to get up and scream or do something incredibly large, I want to add to that, but not necessarily blow it up. But what would I remember if that situation was happening to me? The ceiling fan, the creak of the floorboards, how hot it was … Every single moment is turning out to be unique, yet so minute, it’s like hearing a million tiny pin drops.”
R.B. has yet another take on their use of video: “It’s like … the use of masks in classical [Greek] theater, which took place in an amphitheater. The mask would enlarge a person’s emotion and face, so the person in back would not miss anything. We are interested in spaces, for instance being in a space where you can’t necessarily see the actor all the time, but you have video that can catch them in another room …”
From talk of eyes, they move on to speak of the use of ears. The two visited the rebuilt Globe Theatre in London and learned that in Shakespeare’s time, audience didn’t speak of going “to see a play” but “to hear a play.”
And in the case of La Voix, says Schlather, “we’re overhearing it.” (a million pindrops)
They plan to have La Voix return after further rehearsals at the end of the summer, and then to take it to Chicago and possibly other cities. In each place they mount their work, they’ll use the moniker TheaterGroup, but add a dot-city (dot.Ithaca,dot.Chicago, and so on).
Schlather and Anger readily admit that their definition of what the ensemble is doing is a work-in-progress. “We’re not interested in a writing a manifesto,” says Schlather, “we’re doing a lot of self-definition by doing the projects, and letting the experience of them inform what we do.”
What they do know is they are not interested in creating illusions through theater design or having an end-product. “We want this piece to have legs,” says Anger. She searches for a metaphor, “like the legs of synchronized swimmers.”
Performances ofLa Voix Humaine will be held on June 4th and 5th at 9pm and 11pm at 811 North Tioga Street. Tickets on sale for $8 in advance and $10 at the door. Seating is limited so reservations are strongly suggested. To make reservations please email: info@theatergroupithaca.org for paperless confirmation and a program to the show. For more information please visit: theatergroupithaca.org.