Review
SONGS FROM THE BURNING MAN
Sage Theatre
Starring Peter Strand Rumpel, Wil Knoll, Sarisa Figueroa and Kyrsten Blair
Music by Kris Demeanor and Cameron Falkenhagen
Directed by Rob Moffatt
Runs until April 24
New Dance/Theatre
Described on its website as "an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance," the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert sounds to the outsider like a cross between Woodstock and Survivor. Or a fusion of the ’60s art "happening" with the ’90s rave, informed by modern environmental responsibility and topped off with ancient pagan ritual – the symbolic torching of a gigantic wooden effigy at the end of the eight-day event. Does it belong to the global movement for capitalist alternatives? Does it have something to teach us? Or is it just another New Age trend for vacationing yuppies who can afford the $250 US admission?
Raising such questions, Sage Theatre’s Songs From the Burning Man bravely sets out to both critique the event and capture its flavour, but does only a middling job in either respect.
In the communal spirit of the Burning Man itself, the show is a collective creation by actors, dancers and musicians. But as shaped by director Rob Moffatt, it is awkwardly structured – most of the promised songs (by Kris Demeanor) don’t show up until near the end – and the collaborative process has failed to produce a solid script and well-defined characters.
Peter Strand Rumpel plays the central role, a worldly older guy who has come to the Black Rock Desert with a young photographer-filmmaker pal (Will Knoll) to take in the experience and shoot some kind of documentary. With his receding hairline and dark aviator glasses, Rumpel bears a resemblance to Hunter S. Thompson and it might have been fun to go with that idea – a Thompson-like gonzo journalist and survivor of ’60s-’70s excess, checking out this new counterculture phenom while getting totally baked by the drugs and the sun. Indeed, the show already has a Fear and Loathing-type hallucinatory sequence involving desert devils. But Rumpel’s character never develops and makes an impression solely on the strength of the actor’s stage presence.
The other Burning Man denizens are even sketchier. They include Knoll’s lensman, an eco-activist (Sarisa Figueroa), a painter (Michal Tkachenko), a musician-announcer (Cameron Falkenhagen) and a flake of no determined discipline (Kyrsten Blair). Their interactive scenes are weak and the show doesn’t really get going until the cast finally switches to musical-theatre mode, delivering Demeanor’s songs – lively pastiches that offer a wry take on the festival – followed by a hokey but diverting dance sequence with strobe lighting and fluorescent wands.
Next to Rumpel, the standout in the company is Figueroa, on leave from Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, who not only dances but also sings, acts and blows a mean kazoo. Tkachenko, another multi-talent, also plays a little cello and has designed the amusing eastern-accented costumes (Figueroa looks like an escapee from a harem and Knoll is kitted out like the Karate Kid). Brad G. Graham’s serviceable set is likewise more bazaar than bizarre, not suggesting the kind of crazy artistic creativity the Burning Man apparently inspires.
And that’s the whole problem – the show gives no sense of why this 17-year-old event has become a Mecca that now draws more than 30,000 people a year. None of the characters undergo any kind of discernible transformation during their week in the desert. Instead, you are left with the impression that the Burning Man is really just some kind of folk festival from hell, with no acts, windstorms, a water shortage, a serious risk of sunburn and endless queues to the toilets. |
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