NoExit's Michael Bachman featured in NUVO
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IN THE NEWS
"2009 Year in Review: The Arts"
A NUVO article by David Hoppe
A NUVO article by David Hoppe
"But IndyFringe isn’t the only game in town. Rod Isaac’s Theater Within at the Church Within (Fountain Square, again) has become a kind of actors’ lab. And John Green’s influence during his years with Butler University’s theater department is paying dividends through the collaborative work of NoExit, a group made up largely of Green alumni. Their site-specific production of Antigone on the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art last fall was one of the most assured and adventurous performance pieces this city has seen."
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"Creating Culture"
A NUVO article by David Hoppe
"That sounds a lot like improvisational performance. But Bachman begs to differ. “I think for it to be a performance, I would have to be someone else and, for me, this has grown into a passion and a love. I really do love these kids and the people I work with. I want to make sure these kids are taken care of, that this area is taken care of. 'Then he laughs, something he does easily: “Maybe it’s more like being a stage manager!'”
"But the theater turns out to have been a good place to develop the kinds of skills that have served him at the Center. 'I had never managed a staff before. But having worked as a stage manager, in that kind of environment where you were, at times, put over people, over your peers, and people who knew more than you, and having to instruct or direct them – I had a feeling of comfort. It never really pushed me outside of my box because I knew this was something that was in me. I just had to learn.'"
A NUVO article by David Hoppe
"That sounds a lot like improvisational performance. But Bachman begs to differ. “I think for it to be a performance, I would have to be someone else and, for me, this has grown into a passion and a love. I really do love these kids and the people I work with. I want to make sure these kids are taken care of, that this area is taken care of. 'Then he laughs, something he does easily: “Maybe it’s more like being a stage manager!'”
"But the theater turns out to have been a good place to develop the kinds of skills that have served him at the Center. 'I had never managed a staff before. But having worked as a stage manager, in that kind of environment where you were, at times, put over people, over your peers, and people who knew more than you, and having to instruct or direct them – I had a feeling of comfort. It never really pushed me outside of my box because I knew this was something that was in me. I just had to learn.'"
"Hoppe on the Arts: Brave New World"
A NUVO article by David Hoppe
Aldous Huxley meant the title of his novel, Brave New World, to be ironic. The society he envisioned actually represented a kind of retreat -- from intensity, heartbreak, and the kind of transformation occasionally available through audacious works of art.
Alyson Mull's adaptation of Huxley's work -- performed last weekend under the aegis of NoExit Performance at the Murphy Art Center in Fountain Square -- turns that idea on its head. Mull's version -- a melding of movement, language and handmade stagecraft -- was all about intensity.
As Josefa Beyer observed in last week's NUVO, NoExit Performance is turning into a go-to source for a certain kind of cutting-edge work in these parts. Under the leadership of Nicole Gatzimos, and enlisting the talents of a cadre of performers fresh from John Green's theatre program at Butler, NoExit seems to have found its stride through the adaptation of classic works (Ibsen and Shakespeare have also served), presented in site-specific or similarly adventurous settings.
Brave New World was set in a high-ceilinged, multi-level space that, for all practical purposes, might have been bombed-out. It was the perfect site for a piece about a time and place where emotions and moral consequence have been carved away from peoples' insides like so much wasted fruit.
This may have been NoExit's most fully realized production yet. The commitment on the part of the players was impressive and Mull's shrewd use of text, combined with her battering choreographic style filled the room with energy and, even better, ideas. I'm not so sure about her heavy reliance on pre-recorded pop -- it pushes her aesthetic closer to Baz Luhrman than to Beckett for my taste -- but the ingenuity of her stagecraft is undeniable.
Arts administrators all over town complain about the difficulty of attracting younger adults to their halls. And so they offer a variety of come-ons designed to lure the recalcitrant based on the idea that once these yahoos see the great stuff on offer they'll become regular ticket buyers. This approach is not only inherently condescending, it also misses the point. What NoExit understands as well anybody in town is that theater isn't just a social ritual, but a full-body experience. With Brave New World they have begun to lay claim to the future.
NoExit's Georgeanna Smith featured in Nuvo
Photo by ROBERT WARRren
In innovative adaptations of classics like Medea and A Doll's House, 24-year-old actress Georgeanna Smith impressed us with her stately delivery and dancer's carriage. We thought we might enjoy watching her read the phone book. Now we know better. We'd like to see her to direct those yellow pages.In 2007, Smith launched Novox, a theater company devoted to spurring social change. She directedNobodies, a startlingly mature blend of words and dance created from interviews with Uganda's child soldiers. Last fall, she directed Antigone for No Exit, performed throughout the Indianapolis Museum of Art gardens.
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http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/georgeanna-smiths-theater-as-adventure/Content?oid=1460485