Performances

So, once again, it's time for what is becoming a weekly ritual. This week has gone quite splendidly, all things considered. Most of the time was taken up studying for my last midterm exam, but after it went by today, I feel much better, like having been given a reprieve. And this weekend will be long because of the election on Tuesday. Will be going over to Philadelphia again on Saturday, but will be back on Tuesday to do a sociology project that involves actually going into polling stations and observing interactions there. It's an unparalleled opportunity! Not only will we get access to an area of American society that hasn't really been studied sociologically before, but simply being even tangentially related to what in all likelihood will be a historic election is exciting enough in itself! To think that, a few months ago, I was using one of Barack Obama's speeches to teach an English class. Now, Obama's been on this campus, and I'll actually be involved in the election process that will decide his fate. It's mind-boggling to think how things have lined themselves up so nicely, how things have come to this.

Outside, the weather has taken a turn towards coldness. The leaves are finally starting to turn colour, and it has become quite an ordeal to walk through corridors, which funnel winds to supersonic speeds and produce a proportional windchill. The wind is generally confounding outside, really, as it flows through the streets nd avenues, now deflected this way, now diverted that way, so that as you walk through the city you can never tell the direction from which the wind will assault you next. And nighttime temperature are near freezing; it's snowed upstate already, as well as in New Jersey, and I'm told that any time now we can expect to see at least some sleet in New York City. The other day, idly looking out a window in a classroom, I thought I saw the first signs of snow, as a rain drizzle turned finer, and the water droplets started to flutter most suggestively in the wind. In the end, it turned out that it was not snow, but for a time I was seized by a certain measure of wonder, which reminded me of the first time I touched snow, in the Italian alps. all those years ago.

The last week has been dominated by two things, the elections and the preparations for Halloween. In terms of the former, TVs all over campus have been tuned to news channels more often, and every night brings excellently hilarious late-night comedy takes on the day's politics, from the Colbert Report to the Daily Show and, each week, Saturday Night Live. And today, on a random trip into the city to celebrate the end of a week of studying, I was on a bus passing through Times Square when I saw a forlorn little group of about a dozen Republicans holding "McCain-Palin" placards, surrounded by a platoon of police officers and having their pictures taken by throngs of tourists. Indeed, what's stood out about this election ever since I got here is not so much the candidates' positions on the issues, but the comedic elements that come out of their campaigns, from the gaffes of Sarah Palin to the little Republican demonstration in Times Square, which had the superficiality and futility of a gesture of resistance in the face of an implacable force.

And on the other hand, the campus dining halls have been festooned with skulls, pumpkins, ghostly shapes and cobwebs, to the extent that walking in for a meal is like entering some sort of fantastical funhouse. Even the desserts have been colour-coded to match the pumpkin heads and witch's hats. People in the hallways and the corridors speak of the costumes that they are preparing; some students even went to class over the last few days in costumes (I was in a lift with a Cheshire cat the other day). Not having experienced Halloween before, I find all this rather cute - especially in how the actual practices and traditions of Halloween so closely match what I had read in children's books. Who would have thought that people really did go door to door asking for tricks or treats?

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Last Saturday, one of my friends from CUE asked me to join him for a play in nearby Riverside Church, which is a grand and ornate structure that has been converted from simply being a religious building to being a community centre. The performance of Brecht's Baal was put up by the masters programme in theatrical directing, much in the same way that the TSD programme in VJC puts up semesterly performances. Tickets were for $5, but with the power of our Columbia IDs we got in free, and it was a steal. Certainly, I would have been happy to pay them $5 for the show that they put up.

The plot of the play is somewhat convoluted. As far as I can make out, it is the depiction of the journey of one man into deeper levels of depravity and extremism as he explores the outer boundaries of human experience, quickly checking off the seven deadly sins as he careens from drunken parties to rapes, profanity, drugs and murder. There were some great lines, especially when Baal (the titular main character) is trying to shrug off the clinging loyalty of his pregnant lover. But the strength and power of the play came mostly from the masterful stageplay: the elaborate set, the ingenious scene changes, the splendid costumes, the integration of a live band and a trio of drag queens into the stagework, the use of a night-vision video camera. It was beyond question a technically competent play. And, coming at the end of a long day of studying (as usual), and right after an afternoon of incredible gusty stormbursts, it was even more poignant to watch, even if I didn't really get the meanings in the words.

On Sunday, I decided to go to Brooklyn College to attend a radio play performance by LA Theatreworks. Some of you may remember that I posted one of their radio plays on this blog before, after I'd heard it on the BBC World Service a few months back. This was the play about a psychic/con-man trying to defraud a client of her inheritance, raising the issue of how hard it is to tell between magical clairvoyance and powerful observation and deduction skills. I had been extremely taken by that radio play, and when I saw a performance by them advertised in the Columbia Arts newsletter, I knew I had to make the trip down there to watch it.

Brooklyn College is at the end of the No. 2 subway line, and between Manhattan and the College, the train passes through a large swath of predominantly black neighbourhoods. It is really clear when you enter Brooklyn, because suddenly all the non-blacks get off the train, and I was left as the only non-black in my carriage. It also just so happened that I was reading a book for my sociology class on racial dynamics, and it was somewhat strange to be reading about anti-black discrimination and ghetto formation when all around me were the very people the book was referring to. I was half afraid that someone would glance over at my book and then be offended, but I was even more uncomfortable with the thought that the unbelievable racism being described in the book was actually a reality - the results of which are the people who were riding with me in the subway.

Anyway, when I got to the College, I was in for a stroke of luck, because the show was not sold out, and the box office was pushing tickets at a 33% discount. However, just as I was about to buy the ticket, a teacher from NYU walked into the box office and offered to sell some spare subsidised tickets she had for 50% of the price. It was an offer that was too good to be turned down, so I quickly purchased one of her tickets, and saved myself 50% of the price. It's the second time something like this has happened to me, and I'm beginning to think that rushing for last-minute tickets for non-Broadway performances is an eminently doable thing, with a high chance for a profitable outcome.

LA Theatreworks was putting up a double bill, recreating Orson Welles' infamous broadcast of War of the Worlds and performing a kitschy melodrama, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. It was an interesting mix of stageplay and radio play, with the actors wearing costumes and acting out a limited range of actions, while at the same time being always stuck to their onstage microphones and producing their own sound effects. It was a treat to watch them, as well as to simply close one's eyes and listen to the performance and enjoy the sensation of images being created by sound in one's mind. The two plays also produced an interesting contrast, as the actors reproduced some measure of the terror of Welles' original broadcast (which had been so frightening and realistic that it had sent listeners into a panic), while The Lost World was unabashedly kitschy, complete with damsels in distress, caricatured heroes and villains, and many, many instances of Deux ex machina. All in all, though, it was great fun for a Sunday afternoon. And on top of it, I got to see another part of New York too.

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And tomorrow, will pop down to Greenwich Village to watch yet another performance. The great Halloween parade takes place tomorrow at sundown, and it is reputed to be filled with ingenious costumes and irrepressible characters. It's something that is on the scale of Christmas, but is apparently perenially underrated. Will go down to have a peek, to get a feel of what holidays in New York are like. And even after tomorrow, there is still the long weekend ahead. After the last two weeks of intense working, seeing all this time ahead of me is a very welcome relief!