What I Saw: Bests of 2009

SOS - Big Art Group, directed by Caden Manson.

SOS is:

6 performers - David Commander, Michael Helland, Mikeah Ernest Jennings, Heather Litteer, Willie Farrad Mullins, & Edward Stresen-Reuter

2 Creators - Caden Manson & Jemma Nelson
8 projection surfaces
22 cameras

And they start out the show with the familiar dimming of the lights speech only they tell you it's okay to film (like with 22 cameras who cares!!?) and to by all means take pictures with your cellphone. So right. Things are going to be a bit different.

SOS has three story lines: Technology amok in the forest. Cute, furry animals come to grips with An Inconvenient Truth by way of The Blair Witch Project with a bit of South Park's Woodland Critter Christmas (one of my all-time favorite episodes) thrown in for fun (minus CC's virgin sacrifice and puma abortion). Another narrative involves a couple called The Profiles (sound familiar?) who are constantly texting and phoning and talking about products and what they're going to do and what they've done and they talk so insanely fast that it's almost faster than the fine line V/O narratives of radio commercials. Insane. I've seen some reviewers refer to these two characters played by Heather Litteer (who looks like a cross between Blondie and Toni Basil) and Mikeah Ernest Jennings, as tweens, but that's too easy.





Most people I know could be a Profile, even if most fall off in the clubbing department by the time they hit 40. The third narrative revolves around a feckless terrorist organization called The Realness Liberation Front. RLF's plan for domination includes takeover of a television network and computer support services and finally the release of a rather large and fearful beast cobbled together out of various hot air balloons.


SOS was created during a year long process. Caden Manson and the cast collected text they felt was important and then handed it off to the writer, Jemma (who admitted to throwing most of it away). They rehearsed for a bit and then had a party in a big warehouse. During the party, the idea was that they'd rehearse some of the elements they'd been working on. Things that happened during the party, such as groups of people encasing themselves in balloon structures, became part of the show.

The show has a sense of party about it, a sense of playfulness and absurdity that come from maybe having a few too many or some such thing and which maybe obscures the fact that underneath it all SOS is smart. In fact, SOS is my favorite kind of smart. It doesn't call attention to itself by apologizing for its intelligence and it doesn't patronize people by telling them it's okay if they can't figure out what's going on or patting them on the back for getting it. There's no judgment or investment either way. It just is. One element among the rest. Ironically, that attitude and approach might give people the sense of being left out, even though I didn't feel that way myself. There is just so much happening that isn't parsed for you that it's possible you could feel entirely at sea. The cameras took some getting used to, I kept thinking they were obscuring people's faces, but I don't think that really happened. I think you see the cameras and all the tape on the floor and your mind starts setting up expectations about how all this equipment is going to operate. And it does and it doesn't.

SOS is always effacing itself, critiquing the text/image in the moment of presentation. The great thing about it is that the critique runs under the surface, so the show is just self-aware enough to let its critique register but facile enough to keep moving, so you're never forced into a preconceived conclusion or response. When you think about it, that's a fairly difficult thing to pull off. There was a lot of sophisticated manipulation of image which has as much to do with the performance strategies of camp, drag and the playful blurring of gender idenities as it does with the use of technology. The best moments are created when low and high tech collide. Those moments of collision create a sense of "realness" where images can be enjoyed and consumed, but also parsed and interrogated - neither is an end in itself, if that makes any sense at all.

For example. There's a moment when Willie Farrad Mullins comes out in a blond wig and a beautiful red dress. The dress is a garland of plastic streamers that are draped on him while we watch and the fabulousness of the moment is created by using a three speed fan as a wind machine and then projecting and enhancing this image by adding music that Willie lip-syncs. It's eye-candy and you can enjoy it for what it is, but you can also enjoy it for how it is achieved and what it says about the superficiality of beauty and glamour and sex that sells even as it's working on you in the moment. That's Realness and SOS is always pursuing this alternate space. To a generation like mine and younger, this is a viable and genuine strategy for getting close to something beautiful or emotional or "real." It's rare to see a moment in a show that even approaches this level of complexity and SOS is layered with them.

Favorite Audience talk-back moment-
Audience member: Where did the animal suits come from?
Caden Manson: Chiiiinna.