Case Aiken on the HOWL! Festival
September 18, 2010
Today I welcome guest blogger Case Aiken, one of nytheatre.com’s reviewers. Case sampled three of the productions in this month’s HOWL! Festival, and here offers some brief impressions of the event:
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In the heavily saturated New York theater scene, it can be hard for shows and festivals to distinguish themselves. I find myself constantly discovering new companies and festivals that apparently have long histories and great products. The HOWL! Festival is one such. The hook here is that the HOWL! Festival and HOWL! Arts Project have a charitable bent, presenting a month of music performances, film screenings, theatrical works, and more in the name of “HELP” (Howl! Emergency Life Project), an emergency assistance fund for East Village artists. It’s a cool way to show support in a two-fold manner, promoting the art as well as potentially the artists in need, although I was disappointed to only find out about this aspect further into the festival as it wasn’t well emphasized in the publicity material. I was fortunate enough to see several shows at Theatre 80 down on St. Marks, which is the epicenter of HOWL activity. All of the shows have only a limited number of performances (some are one night only), but I was able to catch The Cradle Will Rock, an all-male version of Oedipus Rex, and The Sunken Living Room.
Scene from All-Male Oedipus Rex
In all, it’s a mixed bag. I really enjoyed The Sunken Living Room, which is written by David Caudle. I found it to be a moving period drama about emotional abandonment. The solid performances by all the actors really made a witty and deep piece work on many levels. I also really took to The Faux-Real Theatre Company’s Oedipus Rex, possibly because they opened the show by handing out grape juice, then fake-augured a sheep and distributed plates of lamb to the audience. Bribery via food can work wonders, after all. However, I was unimpressed by the staged reading of The Cradle Will Rock, which struck me as a piece that was too caught up in the history and reputation of the original to attempt a solid show. I think it’s fair to say that every piece of the festival is thoroughly different, as with many festivals, so it’s hard to predict what type of night one is in for as they walk through the doors.
Laura Ramadei in a scene from "The Sunken Living Room"
Theatre 80 is an interesting space. It feels like a classic theater and the house management takes great strides to inform the audience of its history. It helps add a layer of credibility and authority to the festival. Ultimately, there’s a lot going on at the HOWL! Festival, with something for almost everyone and a great cause driving it. A few weak links hardly offset the many strong ones and it’s certainly hard to disregard the positive impact it can have on the community. While I’d urge anyone attending to carefully select what shows they see, I think they’re doing a great thing down in the East Village and I think any supporter of the arts should come check this out.
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