A Second Chance - Grimm Grimm

There is no reason to see a terrible production for the second time. Unless you directed it. Then you sort of have to.

I was lucky enough to see some productions that I loved multiple times. Sometimes they were at theatres that I worked at so I could see them for free. And sometimes I paid to go back again. And again. And sometimes, again. And in one case, again and again.

But, as I said, except for being involved with it, there is no reason to go back and sit through a production you hated.

I was in Prague during the off season and I saw a theatre piece called Grimm Grimm, which was a collaboration between the Japanese dancer Min Tanaka and the Archa Theatre, a resident company in the city. Tanaka is an internationally recognized choreographer who trained in modern dance and butoh, but went on to develop his own work and aesthetic. Grimm Grimm was inspired by the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm and was performed by Tanaka and mostly Prague-area dancers. I saw it on a weekend and it was one of the only live performances being offered. Perhaps it was the only one.

I sat through it, and it was not my cup of tea. 

I believe that I got that phrase from Robert Brustein. I mean, I knew the phrase, but not as applied to bad theatre. That if you saw something really terrible you should just say that it was not your cup of tea. This phrase is especially useful when talking to friends about seeing another friend’s play that you didn’t like. Feel free to use it. It puts all of the burden of a bad theatre experience on you and not on the play.

Now there are times when you want to complain about a play: What was that director thinking? How dare they! Did they even read the script? Who allowed this to happen! That can be fun. However, I will not be doing any of that here. 

Anyway, Grimm Grimm was not my cup of tea.

Min Tanaka. Courtesy of the Archa Theatre

I was in Prague for five more days and there were no other theatrical performances. There was absolutely nothing left to do the weekend before I was to leave. So, inexplicably, I bought a ticket for Grimm Grimm again. And as I look back, it is literally inexplicable. Why in God’s name would I buy a ticket to a theatre piece like that again? I had just seen it. I didn’t like it. Wasn’t there some American movie playing in Prague? Wasn’t there a Czech movie? Why walk back to that box office and pay money so see that again?

I have no idea.

Grimm Grimm. Courtesy of the Archa Theatre

The theatre critic Steven Leigh Morris wrote that your reaction to a play says more about you than it does about the play. Heraclitus famously said that you can’t step into the same river twice. Because you will be different and the river will be different.

My reaction to Grimm Grimm the second time was completely different than my first experience. Not only didn’t I hate it, I was entranced by it. Not only wasn’t it not my cup of tea, but it was now my personal cup of tea. Tea that had been brewed especially for me. In a cup that had my name embossed on it. And that I would carry around with me for the rest of my life.

For indeed, there are moments of the show that even now won’t leave me.

This is different than reading Heart of Darkness as a teen and then coming back to it 20 years later and fully appreciating it. (I just read it again last month, by the way – It’s a real corker.) Your life experiences and maturity have prepared you for a better comprehension of something sophisticated and complex. Film reviewers will sometimes change their assessment of a movie after some considerable span of time - like 10, 20, or 30 years.

But this was an interval of about five days. I couldn’t have been that different.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. 

This has only happened one other time in my life. I saw Robert Wilson’s staging of Heiner Müller’s Quartet at the ART and hated it. Perhaps because I sat in the front row and couldn’t take in the entire stage without scanning it.

Quartet. Lucinda Childs, Bill Moor
Courtesy of the American Repertory Theater/ photo by Richard Feldman

But because I was working there, I wandered in through the back during a performance to stand and watch for a few minutes (as we used to do) and discovered that I couldn’t leave. Not because the door had locked, but because the show was so mesmerizing. So I stood there and watched it, wondering what I had missed the first time. (I blame the front-row seating.) I could also blame myself, but I think I’ll stick with the front row theory…

Part of your reception to a piece of theatre, perhaps the largest part – perhaps the entire part – has to do with how open you are to it. And this openness is many-faceted, and may not entirely be of your control. You might be particularly open because you respond to the subject matter. I have an affinity for plays about justice, plays where the characters go back in time (granted, not that many), plays about redemption. I am not that interested in political or social plays (like Shaw). And I have a million other likes and dislikes. But you can also be open because you like a particular actor, or the show has a lot of hype, or lack of hype, or just because you are seeing it on a day when you feel really good. 

Or perhaps because the theatre piece itself finds a way to open you up. And stir things that you didn’t even know were inside of you. This is the rarest and most overwhelming situation.

“The Girl with the Chair” in rehearsal with Min Tanaka. Courtesy of the Archa Theatre.

So I don’t know what the case was with me and Grimm Grimm. And I’ve been thinking about it a long time. The protagonist of that piece was a girl in a red dress with a bright yellow wooden chair strapped to her back. She never took the chair off and sat on it. She just traveled with it. That alone has the power of an unanswered question. And at the end of the piece the other performers magically rose into the air on chairs of their own and were suspended there, surrounding her like the treetops of a forest. And the girl on the ground gazed up at them in wonder. All while accompanied by the adagietto movement of Mahler’s Symphony 5. You know, the gorgeous one.

I think of that girl with the yellow chair, and she has become an icon in my creative imagination. I wish that I could create something as esoteric and beautiful on stage as that ending moment.

I don’t believe that any encore of a bad theatre experience will yield positive results. For example, I don’t think that that production I saw of Ghosts with the five Oswalds could be redeemed by a second viewing.

But my experience with Grimm Grimm does say something about the role the spectator plays in the theatrical act. The actors can give all they want, but the spectator must hold out their hand for there to be a transaction. Eugenio Barba said that the performer’s job was to give the audience a small fragment of fire, just at the right moment when they are ready to receive it (italics mine). And that even though multiple performers may play for multiple spectators, theatre is essentially a one-to-one transaction. The one being you. And the other one being the dramatic event, which washes over you continuously, one moment at a time, looking for ways to seep in.

Like a river you can’t step into twice.