Under the Skiff

UNDER THE SKIFF
What a beautifully conceived and realized production. Starting with the conceit that we in the audience were fellow immigrants in the waiting room through to the final, astonishingly poignant group project as we all constructed our own paper boats, this show, by turns, inspired me, delighted and surprised me, and brought me to tears.

What a perfect alignment of technique with content. Playing with rhythm, gesture, timing .. with space and object, escalations and imagery .. these two highly-skilled, sympathetic actors sweep us from one game to the next with play so organic and seamless it feels like sleight of hand. When the games shift from simple child’s play to complex psychological real-life situations, as in the transformation of one clown into an abusive interrogator, or the competition between the two for first place in line which involves tearing up a dollar bill, what is stunning is not just the impact of the event itself, but the fact that it has been accomplished without ever leaving the realm of clown logic.

And those little boats “that had babies” laid out like a perspective drawing, receding into the distance .. or were they emerging out of the past, reaching toward this new shore .. our ancestors, our lineages … all the immigrants longing for entry. What an image! And finally we are all folding paper together .. like breaking bread … we have become a community of souls-at-sea searching for the same port.

There was a purity here, a deep, almost reverent understanding of clownesque sensibility and urgency. Content to play into the silences, to work a moment for its depth, rather than to milk it for its laughs, when the laughs came they were earned and deep. Nothing was sentimental or gratuitous. The games these clowns played were literally a matter of survival. And we believed every moment.

This was Clown taken to the level of poetry. The clown as poet, and sage, and fellow traveler. It was a tribute not just to these beautiful young performers, but to the spirit and the craft of Clown.