Review: Angelus Novus/National Headquarters
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New troupe National Headquarters’ debut production of Angelus Novus is steeped in concept and experimentation, based on a Paul Klee painting and the related writings of German cultural critic Walter Benjamin. While there’s no questioning the piece’s academic pedigree, the show’s narrative basics get lost in lofty aspiration.
The Angel of History (Angeline Gragasin) visits the down-and-out enclave of McKraken, Illinois. Heroine Angie Lou Lee (Gragasin) proposes that the depressed town hold a pageant to honor the angel and generate tourism’s filthy lucre. But the story dissolves as Angie and ambitious Mayor Minot (Brian Moore) fight for control of the pageant, only to have the whole thing falsely wrapped up as someone’s fever dream.
While Noe Cuellar’s sound design and Meredith Ries and Asta Bennie Hostetter’s costumes capture a ragged carnival atmosphere, the competent, energetic ensemble loses the language to the space’s muddy acoustics. Back to basics: Benjamin deserves better. (Lisa Buscani)
At AV-aerie, 2000 W. Fulton, #310, (312)850-9729. Through October 12.
13 Responses to “Review: Angelus Novus/National Headquarters”
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Monica Westin Says:
October 11th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I’m not sure whether it’s because I saw the show last night, by which time they’d gotten sound issues resolved, but I found that the storyline carried through beautifully. The Benjamin passage chosen was illuminating (no pun intended) without being pedantic, and the strength of the production, I felt, lay in the balance it kept between the archetypal and the specific, as well as the narrative and the physicality. It’s also very, very funny, which I didn’t expect– the night I went most of the audience was in stitches at about half a dozen moments. Perhaps I’m biased because I did speak with Angeline before the show and got more background on its influences, but I really can’t praise “Angelus Novus” enough.
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Lisa Buscani Says:
October 12th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I know Klee, I know Benjamin. I’m familiar with the references. I couldn’t hear half of the piece, no matter how the performers tried to enunciate. My audience was not laughing. The ending felt hasty and tacked on. Gotta stand by what I said.
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Monica Westin Says:
October 13th, 2008 at 2:15 am
By influences I meant the genres of historical reenactment and pageantry that informed the performance– I’d never accuse you of not knowing where the name of the show came from. And I wasn’t attacking your review or asking you to change anything, just describing the very different experience I had that I wanted readers to hear about as well as yours.
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orejonejo Says:
October 23rd, 2008 at 1:10 am
I sat in the front because I knew there would be issues with the sound -having been in a place with such awesomely high ceilings…
As for the issue of someone from the past deserving better.. I think your unnecessarily harsh.
What was portrayed, regardless of it’s influence, was and is an amazing commentary on our as a people’s issue with our selves and that - which we believe, is. Our mind’s and sight being clouded by the tenable. You yourself projecting your own views on a piece you had no part in other than bystander does no justice to a perspective new and fresh and strangely reminiscent as is that of the Headquarters’.
That line from the angel about not only being a crutch but a force is SUPER!
Thank you National Headquarters for producing something new and excitingly funny… if not a bit chaotic.
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imakeplays Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Yeah, my audience wasn’t laughing either. But, jeez, if an audience was a litmus test for the quality or merit of art, then most artists are going to be hosed until they die. Like it or not, much of modern art has eluded the tastes or perceptions of it’s immediate audience. I’m sure I don’t need to mention to you informed critics about “The Rights of Spring”, and I’m sure you’ve both read Leonard Shlain’s “Art and Physics” which charts progressive visual art slightly ahead of real scientific understanding (mostly because we need to see something before we can believe it). But we should leave out the bewildered herd and just assume that because they didn’t walk out, they must have been compelled by SOMETHING they saw, even if they didn’t laugh.
Lets just talk about Lisa’s thesis, “narrative basics get lost” and her snarky sub clause “in lofty aspirations”. First of all, doesn’t the play on words “lofty aspiration” sort of cancel out the snark in redundancy? All aspiration is lofty as it seeks to be above itself. But what “narrative basics” are we comparing this show to? Does Lisa put this side by side to Russian novels? Or maybe a good Neil Simon play? Certainly not Adam Rapp… How about just “theatre she’s seen before”. It certainly means walking in with a lot of pre-concieved notions (I think see the above comment?). And how can anything with such little form “get lost”? Do you “get lost” looking at landscape painting from the American Western Expansion? All it is is a really good representation one place and one time from one persons perspective. No story, no history, no future. Just a beautiful image that invites you to be a part of it. Makes you wish someone had put words and music to that painting of the grand canyon.
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imakeplays Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 2:18 am
pardon my impassioned grammar, particularly my misspelling of The Rite of Spring.
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imakeplays Says:
December 9th, 2008 at 2:37 am
oh, and P.P.S The whole audience-litmus-test-Argument. It’s my opinion that the critic is not a public advocate for the audience. That seems too much like manufacturing consent. The critic is merely one voice, and does not need to channel or assess the crowd. In fact, that sort of herd mentality greatly decreases the position of the critic. Don’t bring a posse to duel. It’s cowardly. I really don’t mean to Rag on Lisa, Tony Adler and Hedi Weiss are just as guilty of this sort of review. But Lisa seems to have less of a record of this and I would love to not see my preferred critics phoning in reviews.
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Angeline Gragasin Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Re: “Benjamin deserves better.”
Dear Lisa,
Thank you for coming to see my performance. I am sorry you did not enjoy it.
Here is an excerpt from the NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS website, wherein I explicitly state that ANGELUS NOVUS is in no way an adaptation of the work of Paul Klee nor Walter Benjamin:
You can read more about ANGELUS NOVUS by visiting the “Questions Answered” page at: http://www.nationalheadquarters.org/angelus%20novus/questions.htm
The text I have excerpted above can be found under the heading:
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT ALL YOUR THEORY. HOW WILL THIS EXPERIENCE BE RELEVANT TO ME?”
Although, admittedly, this first iteration of ANGELUS NOVUS fell short of some of these ambitions – for example, opting to enact a commercial for “The Army’s iTeam” in lieu of a pharmaceutical spoof, or only taking the North Korean influence as far as a brief cameo by Kim Jong-Il — your review only confirms our success at offering an “original, multi-dimensional theatrical experience” by way of mixing form and function.
Ultimately, it is of very little consequence that this experience is one you were either unable or unwilling to grasp. You are still just a critic. And only one of many.
We, meanwhile, are the next generation of artists whose voices and visions will only grow louder and clearer with time. It is only a matter of time before works like ANGELUS NOVUS are popularized, commercialized, and commodified – at which point like-minded and –hearted artists will have to work even harder to baffle and “bewilder”– as The Chicago Reader’s Laura Molzahn put it.
What matters is that a great many spectators in the weeks and months since ANGELUS NOVUS have made it known both publicly and privately that they found it not only engaging and inspiring, but even enlightening—with regards to both process AND product. The two are inextricable.
Or did it not occur to you that we perhaps hadn’t subscribed to the same formulaic processes by which most Chicago theatre productions are created?
That we did not adhere to the conventional order to which many companies adhere when their priority is not experimentation, expression, and inquiry, but the selling of tickets?
Or were you simply grumpy that night?
Rumor has it you complained about the number of stairs you had to climb in order to enter the performance space. Even my own mother didn’t complain about the number of stairs she had to climb, and she’s 62 and complains about everything! How is it that a non-theater-going “regular person” such as my mother was both able to understand the productions “narrative basics” and forgive its “lofty ambition,” while a seasoned professional such as yourself was not?
(You might say it’s because she’s my mother, but let it be known my mother would have much preferred and I’m sure continues to hope that one day I forfeit my artistic ambitions for a more lucrative career in medicine or law. That is to say, my mother does not enjoy nor understand theater in the same way a professional theater critic ought to. For shame for being outsmarted by a regular person!)
Finally: Can it be possible that this is the most conceptual and ambitious project you have seen in Chicago?
If so, then all the more reason to celebrate!
Thanks Newcity writers and readers for your interest and support!
Angeline
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Lisa Buscani Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Angeline,
I’m disappointed you’ve chosen to respond to my criticism so negatively. As to your response:
1. If the Klee and Benjamin works were not key influences on your work, you should not quoted them within the show or referenced them so extensively on your support materials.
2. I was not being sarcastic about your lofty ambitions. It is ambitious to try and make theater out of art works and criticism that are not regularly referenced in the mainstream.
2. The Army i-team and the Kim Jong IL references, if they were in the show I saw, were unclear to me. Perhaps that was part of the problem; so many references were touched on and not developed that trying to find the common thread became impossible. I can handle a fragmented, non-linear structure. But ultimately the show didn’t pull together to make a unified comment. To more accurately quote Laura Molzahn’s review of the same show, “every time a scene starts to get a little comprehensible it abruptly ends in a lot of running around, screaming, and random circus feats. Scenes and characters shift in a phantasmagoria seemingly dictated only by the whims of creator Angeline Gragasin. And the convoluted text is often lost in the cast’s flawed articulations, vanishing in the upper reaches of a towering space.”
3. The multidisciplinary approach to theater is nothing new. Locally, the Neo-Futurists, a group I’ve been associated since 1989, borrow from all disciplines and harness them to create a unified work. Feel free to check me out with them at that their New Year’s Eve benefit or January 2-4. The Big Goddess Pow Wow, a show Paula Killen and I curated at Metro in the 90s, brought together female artists from all disciplines. Feel free to check us out at the reunion show on February 7 as part of the Rhino Fest. You can also read my monologues and performance poetry at http://www.freshyarn.com. I’ve been out there for a long time, watching and participating.
4. I don’t remember complaining about the stairs. I have a slight case of cerebral palsy, the stairs were a little hard, someone might have asked me why I was winded. I don’t think it made me grumpy or affected the way I saw your work.
5. I’m glad your mother liked your work. She liked it, I didn’t. It’s a matter of opinion, not being “outsmarted.”
In the future, when you encounter a negative criticism, I suggest that personal attack is not the best mode of venting your frustration. If you continue with your artistic aspirations and do your job properly, you’ll meet plenty of people who don’t agree with you. When that happens, a little graciousness goes a long way.
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theatrician Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Whether or not an artist should respond to criticism is a decision that can be left only to the one who makes it. In this case, the artist is not, however, responding to criticism, she is responding to a review. Criticism is something which requires of the judge 1) an attempt to understand the case as good or better than anybody and 2) careful consideration over time. I think that is what W. Benjamin deserved, and probably preferred, to say nothing of what theater companies around town might appreciate. However, a critique is almost never to be found in any Chicago publication or periodical, including this one. A review is at best a patronage, and always an opinion, and a negative one isn’t worth writing. Moreover, if you accept payment to air your bad opinion, you deserve whatever gets tossed back your way. People have done worse for money, but people have also lived happier with less grief. I would go on, but I have a train to catch.
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Angeline Gragasin Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Dear Lisa,
Thank you for the thoughtful response. Would you care to respond to any of the other commenters on this thread?
I am not launching a personal attack on you, merely criticising your analysis. Critiquing the critic. I think I am entitled to respond however I feel appropriate; if that response is negative, does that make it personal?
If this is the case, shouldn’t I then take your negative criticism as a personal attack?
Well I haven’t, and you shouldn’t either. I respect your opinion enough to respond to it, and I appreciate the fact that–at the very least–you found my work engaging enough to write a review, negative or not. And I appreciate your participation in the conversation.
Sincerely,
Angeline
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Lisa Buscani Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
All of my comments were confined to your work. My having trouble with the stairs at the space had nothing to do with critical dialogue, that’s personal attack. Keep it professional.
Again, if you still question my ability to accurately access your work, I invite you to attend any of the projects I’ll be involved in. Decide for yourself.
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Angeline Gragasin Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Dear Lisa,
Thank you for the thoughtful response. Would you care to respond to any of the other commenters on this thread?
Sincerely,
Angeline