Experimental Theater Relates to L.I. Youths
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| Members of Guild Hall multimedia group at rehearsal. Photo: Ricky Telberg |
SOUTHAMPTON, L. I. — It was definitely not a case of love at first sight and sound. It wasn't loathing, either. The self‐conscious twitters echoing through Southampton College's Fine Arts Theater suggested instead a mild state of confusion.
Seventh and eighth‐grad ers from Hampton Bays and Southampton were meeting the teenagers of the Guild Hall Multi‐Media Experimental Youth Theater and the pupils weren't quite sure of what to make of the flashing colored lights, the electronic music, the performers' seemingly aimless posturing, and jerky movements and the shivering inkspots.
But 40 minutes later, after the last white‐clad performer had slithered beneath the white canvas dominating the stage, the last inkspot had splattered across the curtain and the last rock notes had moaned their farewell, the audience was enthusiastic.
“That's real cool,” said Billy Hart, steadily applauding as he and his Hampton Bays classmates were ushered out of the theater into waiting buses.
“Yeah,” agreed Steven Ahern. “That was neat. The lights, the colors, the music. I never saw anything like that before, But I don't know what it was all about.”
Comforting Buzz
“Come on,” Billy said. “It was all about how we're robots and how other people control us and pull the strings to make us do the things we don't want to do.”
The boys left deep in conversation, trying to relate what they had seen and heard to what they know and feel. The parting buzz told the 23 members of Long Island's only touring youth theater that after a slow start they finally had reached their peers.
Supported by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the workshop, sponsored by Guild Hall, East Hampton's cultural center, devoted its second year to bringing avant‐garde theater to any high school that could provide a stage and transportation costs.
The troupe played its season finale at Mineola Senior High School last month. During the season, it gave productions in East Hampton, Sag Har bor, Westhampton Beach, Patchogue and Southampton. Bookings are already coming in for the 1972–73 season.
‘We're About People’
By combining a way‐out light show with dance, drama and music, the company, made up of East End residents between the ages of 12 and 20 and under the direction of Lelia Katayen, a dancer, and Val Telberg, a filmmaker, has concocted a contemporary happening., They call it “Version” and because it is basically improvisational it changes from performance to performance.
“We're about people, so ‘Version’ is about people,” explained Babette Chenet, a 16‐year‐old from Sag Harbor. “About people and how they're not too good to each other.”
“And how we're all automatons who imitate one another,” added Lorilee Garbow ski, another Sag Harbor 16‐ year‐old.
“It's political, it's social,” said Miss Chenet. “It says a great deal and we say a great deal with how we move and what we project.”
“But it doesn't have to be meaningful,” Interjected Bruce Bromley, a freshman at East Hampton High School, “The audience doesn't have to understand to enjoy it.”
“They can enjoy it on a sensory level,” said Miriam Markowitz, a 16‐year‐ old from East Hampton. “We try to appeal to all senses, bombard the audience from all sides. If we could only figure out a way to bring in taste and smell we'd have total involvement.”
“That's what we want, total involvement,” said Miss Chenet. “We want to get the audience, to get them and make them do it with us. Clap and cry and scream. Take off their masks, like we do during the performance, and join us. We're giving of ourselves and want them to give, too.”
As spontaneous as it may seem, “Version,” in any version, is an outgrowth of hard work and long hours by the workshop members, who pay tuition on a sliding scale, depending on what they can afford. Whether they dance, run the machines that produce the optics, regulate the sound or flash the lights, they normally meet twice a week at Guild Hall or at the Whaler's Church in Sag Har bor to develop and, polish their work.
The performers study movement, voice (though it's basically nonverbal theater), ballet and acting improvisation. The technicians experiment with their tools, testing ideas and searching for lighting effects and slide projections to complement what the performers have choreographed.
Investment in Future
The time that members devote to workshop chores is remarkable, since few are interested in theater as a career. Some, like young Brom ley, who has been a John Drew Theater apprentice, have made their professional commitments. The workshop is an investment in his future.
Most, however, are like Miss Markowitz, who views her participation — as a light manipulator behind the canvas — as a valid means of expressing her deepest feelings. The abstractions produced by the interplay of movement, music, pictures and lights are intellectual and emotional reflections of these teen‐agers, who believe they are typical of their nonverbal, visually‐oriented generation.
“We're actually into open theater techniques,” said Miss Katayen, who is currently dance‐theater consultant for the Mineola Arts Project, a community organization supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. “Sometimes it's like a sensitivity train ing class. The kids are being taught to use their bodies and not just their heads.”
‘Components Jell’
“Sometimes a sequence starts in an acting class as an improvisational exercise to express certain feelings,” she went on. “Sometimes it's an outgrowth of movements. Suddenly the components jell into combinations. Something marvelous happens once they've freed themselves. Something even more marvelous after we've added the optics and music.”
There's work involved, too, in fostering acceptance of what is almost alien to many in their young audiences. Detailed explanations of what “Version” is and what multimedia theater tries to be are sent to schools preceding each performance.
The information, Miss Katayen hopes, is used by teachers as a guide to help prepare students for what they are going to see and to help them analyze what they have seen. Since this theater is plotless, the search for “the meaning” can frustrate viewers accustomed to more conventional theater.
“We say to them, ‘This just is,’ and invite them to accept the reality of this media,” said Miss Katayen. “We ask them to relax and let things happen to them, to accept the work as a symbolic artistic expression just as music, painting, poetry and dance are also symbolic statements of the artist's in sight, feeling, views or ideas.”
“The difference is that our theater piece is a group expression in which members of the performing and technical ensemble contribute to the over‐all result. The viewer must decide what he's seen, what the statement is; there is no one ‘right’ interpretation. There are as many interpretations as there are people en the audience.”
