The published title of this performance piece by internationally recognized Ping Chong, "Truth & Beauty" logically continues "...& The American Way". Begun at the Ko Festival in 1998 partially in response to Columbine, the show was played by two physical actors, Michael Rohd and Jeffrey Rose, the following year at Virginia Tech as "American Gothic." It came to wider attention after being published in American Theatre magazine in 2001. The current production, directed by the BCA's Michelle A. Baxter uses that text, described by Chong as his most play-like, along with original video graphics prepared for Company One by Joshua Dreyfus. C1 has been experimenting with multimedia recently, and the production marks their most technically ambitious show.
Late last fall, C1 took on Anna Deveare-Smith's "Twilight: Los Angeles" using six actors in a larger BCA space. Various Deavere-Smith pieces have been done locally as school productions using quite large casts. Their version received decent notices, but coming at the beginning of the holiday season, didn't garner much attention, seeming somewhat irrelevant even to its core audience. This Ping Chong revival should do better, though the author's "Reason", done as a Harvard project at the late lamented Market Theatre in Cambridge last winter, didn't generate much enthusiasm. "Truth & Beauty"'s subject matter, guns, violence, and commercial greed may have current resonance. It could also be entitled "Death & Violence..." or "Intimidation & Advertising..."
The two main actors in the piece are both founding members of Company One. "S", Shawn LaCount, is the group's Artistic Director, while "M", Mark VanDerzee, is a board member and currently the Tech Director at Brookline High. Under Michelle A. Baxter's they achieve respectable physical presence. Their general acting is also acceptable as they carom from sketch to sketch. They are assisted by two Stage Hands in white lab coats, Mason Sand--another founder--who also serves as C1's P.R. person and Joshua McCarey, a recent Emerson grad new to C1. These two silent characters assist with props and set changes, and spend much of the time frozen in not always explicable poses just out of the light on either side of the set. Sand also has the difficult task of manning a live television camera, seen on three monitors, stage right, left and center.
This is a multimedia piece, so technical considerations are all important. Karim Badwan's simple raked platform contains several small traps for props, and areas lit from below, one of which pulls up to form a conference table for a not particularly interesting session of admen brainstorming. In fact, although Chong insists on commercials as the motivating force behind today's society, the clips run, and the channel flipping pace of the show don't quite make that point. The video work and graphics are well done, though slogans occasionally projected on the stage floor really aren't visible to most of the audience. And one central image, "M"'s paranoid drive across the country to blow up the very building where the show is being presented seems forced to say the least, and doesn't show up on videa--perhaps a matter of expense. "S"'s metamorphosis at the end from a gun-nut in paramilitary dress to a Brooks Brothers adman is similarly forced. Once again, Chong offers grab-bag of compelling images but depends on the audience to make the connections and to verify his conclusions.
But the journey may be worth it. LaCount and VanDerzee are compelling as they play dangerous games with guns. There's always something to watch, and a sense of menace is certainly behind all their hyperactivity. A scene where LaCount explains the economic rationale behind privatizing prisons, and using all that cheap labor, could be stronger still, but is telling Perhaps part of the problem is that in the five years since this piece was first conceived, certain problems included have increased in a way which makes Chong's take on them just a bit dated. Corporate greed, for example, has been made much more evident; indeed, we may just have gone to war over it. This production doesn't have the artistic clarity usually associated with this particular artist, but the material works quite well, given C1's committed efforts.