The Premiere of Brendalinda Performance Collaborative's "Do You Ever Wish You Were Better at Things?"
I fought wind and cold tonight to arrive at the difficult door of LePop Gallery on 101 N. Main Street in Ann Arbor, MI (make sure you pull extra hard, don’t worry, we all looked like fools when we did it too). What I met behind that door was an astonishingly human experience in “Do You Ever Wish…” a performance art show and gallery by Brian Carbine’s Brendalinda Performance Collaborative. It was certainly worth the January wind. This performance will remind you, among so many other things, that you are not alone.
The space, occupied by Charlie LaCroix Art Brokerage, has been transformed with a small stage, a bedroom, and a series of photographs of people you may have met before, holding plain white signs stating what they wish they could be better at. You too will have the chance to create a sign, conveying your wish, and be photographed. As is the modus operandi of Brendalinda, the show takes place all around you, it shifts as you shift, it appears right beside you, and it reminds you that art is not inaccessible.
When the performance begins, it is at once abrupt and graceful. The cast presents a series of physical manifestations of our insecurities and hopes with dance, monologue, and skits. The performers and their shadows draw attention to identity, mistakes, and the questions that we are haunted with, like “Have you ever created anything of substance?”
Marisa Dluge’s performance of a monologue written by her co-cast member Luna Alexander, will make you fidget with the hauntingly accurate specificity of not-quite-making-the-cut. When she delivered the line, “I bet there’s no part of her body that you could describe as puffy,” I squirmed and choked down laughter all at once. Dluge is alarmingly good at portraying a unique character with the ability to speak to each of our anxieties.
Grocery store sounds will click as Brian Carbine and Karila Forshee portray one experience that we have all dreaded at least once in our lives. As Jesse Arehart-Jacobs moves their bodies like mannequins you will wonder, There’s no way they could know that same thing happened to me, right?
The performers will make conversations you’ve had over and over again feel like falling from the top bunk and landing on hardwood – they will hit you right where you thought you were sleeping. Forshee in particular will plant an apricot pit in your esophagus – the universal sign that tears are on their way. Emily Roll will make her fellow artists grip firm fists at their sides as she tap dances.
Alexander and Roll will convey interpersonal thirst and effort without need for words – all exerted energy, harsh breaths, and skin on skin, their shadows will remind you how it feels to be swimming against a tide. Alexander, a personal favorite artist of mine, will deliver heartsick that brings slam poetry and A Capella and dance together.
While undoubtedly wondering at times what the creators were thinking, you will feel your own ripe set of emotions that are unwillingly rattled from you. Their movements, mastery of sound, intentional selection of words and lack of words, the setting – all will compel you to feel. You will leave your comfort zone when you enter this show – but at the same time you will find the greatest comfort any artist can give you: that you are not alone and your experiences and insecurities are shared with those around you. By putting this cast, space, and writing together, Director Brian Carbine has, yet again, brought us beauty in honesty that is refreshing, terrifying, and extraordinary to be a part of.
See this show. I’ll be going back tomorrow night. And make sure you stay through to the end.
The show continues each Friday and Saturday now through February 2nd, 2013 with the doors opening at 8:30PM and the show beginning at 9PM. RSVP on Facebook Here.