Review: You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, He/She Lives in Austin/Edinburgh (March) by Hidden Room Theatre

Review: You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, He/She Lives in Austin/Edinburgh (March) by Hidden Room Theatre
by Michael Meigs

Artists are intrigued by the possibilities of social media, a fascination that they share with commercial enterprises, institutions, marketing strategists and your old granny. (In 2010-2011 the share of the U.S. over-55's on Facebook quadrupled to 9.5%, because of a more than nine-foldincrease in their numbers, to just under 10 million creaky Facebook boomers.)

It's no surprise that Austin with its happily volatile mixture of knowledge industries and creatives is exploring that fuzzy junction of social tech and art.

Beth Burns and collaborators at her Hidden Room Theatre, particularly the gifted actor and technological practitioner Robert Matney, have cobbled together with London's Look Left Look Right Theatre an alluring trans-Atlantic theatre experiment. Adjusting themselves both to time zone differences and to the disynchronous switches to daylight savings time, the companies convene again this weekend on Saturday and Sunday for You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, etc. You can 't get a ticket, by the way, at least not in Austin, for all twenty-five places in the east Austin loft apartment are filled for the 3 p.m. sessions on Saturday and Sunday. Promoters had announced the venture for all four weekends in March but have for unspecified reasons curtailed to only two.

But you can join in directly, on-line, thanks to some crafty engineering via the Round House Theatre in London, venue for the UK participants. The theatre's live feed will feature both of the Skype video feeds as well as an edited and controlled Twitter feed of comments you and others generate using the tag #TexasLondon.

Austin principals in person and London principals in remote will engage SXSW media visitors tomorrow morning, Saturday, March 12, with a discussion of the experiment.

The mysterious matriarch of the Hidden Room kindly invited me to last Sunday's get-together, with a message suggesting that participants wear cowboy hats and Western gear. Ever gullible, I went tramping up the exterior metal stairs to the third floor apartment on east 11th street, wearing boots, black pants and shirt, a leather vest and my cherished straw Stetson -- the one that my wife won't let me wear in polite company because I wasn't born with a shit-kickin' right to one. Stephanie Delk checked me in, Beth Burns greeted me, and Judd Farris fully in the character as the gosh gee-whiz Ryan Peterson welcomed me to the crowd, urged me to grab a Lone Star and pointed out the balcony and the bathroom.

Austin theatre crowds are too cool for cowboy hats, so I felt a bit conspicuous. There was plenty of denim, though, and attitudes were agreeably loose and friendly. Ryan/Judd called us together to the living room where the screen was set up and ready to go. He distributed a few fake cowboy hats and vests to secure that ambiance, and gave us a rousing warm-up that included practice in a chorus of "Howdy/Yee-hah!" with which to take the Londoners by storm. He encouraged tweeted comments. With apparent excitement and nervousness, he wrangled with his room mate the tech guy, out of sight upstairs.

Judd Farris as Ryan (left), Rachel Watkinson as Elizabeth (image: Austin Chronicle)

This was theatre, indeed, structured as a participatory event, much like a costume party or grown-up trick or treating. We accepted Farris in his fictional identity and we pretended to be funny frontiersmen. After delay and suspense, part technical and part dramatic, a murky video blossomed on the screen, an earnest young lady appeared there, and Ryan/Judd burbled in joy, greeted her, and led our chorus of greeting. He happily brandished a framed picture of George W. Bush.

The Austin video feed was sparkling clear and audible, thanks to the gear, the environment microphones, and the brilliant Austin sunshine flooding through the tall windows. The London feed was murky and ill-lit. Faces swam in or out of view, and we regularly lost the upper halves of them. It appeared that the Londoners were squinting at us through a laptop on a table.

Their conversation was fragmentary, pleased and frequently interrupted in thought and focus -- much as in real life. The exchanges corroborated the story that with much anticipation Ryan/Judd had outlined for us: a year earlier he had run into this extraordinary young woman Elizabeth Watson while visiting the Tate Gallery, learned that she was on the staff of the Feminist Museum, and the two had fallen headlong for one another. She had visited Texas for five days. They corresponded via Facebook accounts (Ryan Peterson and Elizabeth Watson, where you can "friend" them and join the story). Amidst the goo-goo and happy talk they were taking this opportunity to present their friends and relations, inviting questions both by tweet and in person.

You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, etc. presents a coherent if banal story, invites our sympathy and participation, delivers conflict, sets up tension, intensifies the suspense with breakdown (engineered technically, applied dramatically) and supplies a dénouement.

I enjoyed the experience but find upon consideration that the medium -- or, in fact, media -- outshadowed the story that was being enacted. Video conferencing is really nothing new, and industry has used it for years. More than ten years ago I attended and participated in video sessions linking the Department of State, the White House and the Pentagon. The inexpensive popular application of the technology does open opportunities. For example, last summer as I studied in Sweden and then visited Switzerland, I regularly video-Skyped my wife in Austin, most evenings for me, most afternoons for her, maintaining our own long-established story and history despite the ocean between us.

The Austin-London production uses a boy-meets-girl story with not a lot of nuance. Actors working their respective audiences had the opportunity to create and maintain character, but it appeared they were spinning that cloth from a very short supply of thread. Who were Ryan and Elizabeth, other than emblematic 20-somethings? In theory there was no time limit to the experience -- at least, not in terms of long-distance toll charges -- but we had a fairly brief ride.

Despite some big decisions facing them, neither of the characters was thinking or looking beyond the next thirty seconds. One tweet went flickering by, asking about visa status if they should plan to remain together. For me, that inquiry invited a rich consideration of practicalities, tradeoffs, sacrifices and very real administrative complications. They ignored the topic.

Maybe next time around the companies can script a bit deeper. They can formulate a scenario that offers choices that are more shaded or conflicts demanding closer examination. Negotiations, for example; instead of question - third-party objection - response as in this piece, perhaps video technology could be used to simulate the complexity of across-the-table offer, commentary consultation, consensus-seeking within negotiating teams, counter-response, intrusion by media and the public.

A story doesn't have to involve high drama or hostage-taking. For example, the most nerve-wracking and mutually uncomprehending deal-making I've ever witnessed occurred within the staid and bureaucratic World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva. Taking it to another sphere entirely, imagine Ryan and Lizzie sometime in the future when they've divorced and one of them has violated a custody order, fleeing with their loved eight-year-old daughter Samantha to Bogota. High stakes, complex emotions, a ripe history and an urgent problem to solve with persuasion and ingenuity. And in that scenario, at least, the time zone difference would be only an hour . . . .

Review by Jo Caird for What'sOnStage (London), March 8

Review by Avimaan Syam for the Austin Chronicle, March 10

Review by Ryan E. Johnson for examiner.com, March 13

EXTRAS

Robert Matney interviewed by NthWord, May 11, 2011