Review: Little Mother by Twin Alchemy Collective
by Michael Meigs

Katie Green's gently melancholy creation is a surprise, less an entertainment or a didactic presentation on injustice and exploitation than a quiet contemplation of desperation.

There is a story, and it's simple and desperately sad, but Green and her Twin Alchemy Collective apply techniques to engage our emotions and our minds.  The distancing effect somewhat resembles Brecht's use of alienation, the deliberate interruption of narrative in order to engage the moral sentiments of the audience.

Little Mother deserved to be seen by more people.  The company was wrong-footed by Austin's unpredictable weather.  They'd arranged to perform in the yard at the Vortex across from the deck of the much-frequented Butterfly Bar, but recent rainstorms made that too risky a venue.  The very late alt-location was the Museum of Human Achievement, a drafty and sprawling warehouse off Springdale and Lyons that to date only the most hardcore theatre types have succeeded in locating.  Both times and venues shifted.

The story in 50 words: A circus strongman befriends a waif and finds her work as an apprentice trapeze artist.  The ringmaster forces her into sexual slavery and makes her pregnant.  The strongman fights him and is rendered paraplegic.  The waif supports protector and the ringmaster's bastard child by prostituting herself, pretending she's a maid.

Such exploitation has taken place across all times and places, especially where people are poor and women are defenseless.  Storytellers have spun variations on it, offering us happy hookers, spunky survivors, punished villains and successful escapes.  In my occasional pro bono work as translator for refugees and asylum seekers, I've become involved in a number of those stories, always with the intention of offering a helping hand and a way out.

Katie the playwright, director and co-animator plays 'Little Mother' in her own piece.  Thin but resilient, subjugated but not enslaved -- "no kissing!" she insists -- she mimes the elements of the 50-word story, interacting with Gabriel Diehl as the strongman, Chris Alvarenga as the ringmaster, Jacquelyn Lies as the madame and Sean Moran as the callous purchaser of sex.

'Mimes' is a key verb here.  Green and the rest of the cast say not a word.  Dialogue is projected behind them, white on black, as visual placards similar to those used in silent films.  Spectators must shift attention from the live action before them to the placards and back again, a disruption that did not exist in the strictly sequential silent movies. 

Action occurs alternately in the present and past, each belonging to a distinct playing area.  The stages stand on either side of a five-member orchestra that provides richly sonorous accompaniment.  Composer Shawn Jones delivers a score that's reflective and emotional, fully of the calibre of a motion picture soundtrack.  The depth, power and unpredictability of the music brought to mind performances by the Kronos Quartet.

Ranks of seats on the floor of the warehouse are directed toward the stage left 'past' area, and each time action reverts to the present assistant director Ben Howell motions spectators to come stand before the 'present' where Diehl lies perpetually dejected beneath a coverlet over a sofa.  Diehl is a powerful, brooding presence in this piece, even prevented from using the verbal lashings that he applied so well last October as the villain  in Kyd's The Spanish Tragedie.

 

Beyond that 'present' area on stage right stands another screen where 'Little Mother' pretends to project shadow figures to tell serene stories of imaginary talking creatures.  Her simple figures become richly colored puppet projections and assume a life of their own, as if absorbing all the life and color and remaining hope in the couple's end-of-the-world existence.  Here, also, the dialogue between those imaginary creatures is silent, projected on that screen.

Green's techniques function to disconcert us and provoke a reaction to the pathos and hopelessness of her basic story.  The mixture of aural, visual and mimed sensations, the deliberately jumbled symbology, constitute an artistic approach that resembles what Josephine Machon has termed 'synaesthetics' or 'visceral performance.'

This performance by the Twin Alchemy Collective shares much of the political and aesthetic orientation of the longer-established Trouble Puppet Theatre in Austin, even though there's no indication that the groups have had any interaction.  Perhaps this is in part an Austin aesthetic: the yearning to apply the magic of make-believe learned in childhood to interpret and understand the cruelties of this world. 

It's a tonic approach, particularly for the young, healthy and relatively unsubjugated members of Austin's potential audiences.  I look forward to seeing, reading and hearing more of the musings of Katie Green and her friends.

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Little Mother
by Katie Green
Twin Alchemy Collective

Box Office: Send an email to katiegreen444@gmail.com with the number of tickets you would like to reserve, and the dates you wish to attend.

Tickets: $15 (no extra fees) -please pay with cash or check at the door. Available at BrownPaperTickets.
Strongly recommended for audiences 16+ years