On some levels, one might think that Michael Bettencourt's Mine Eyes, a one-man confessional from a mouthpiece for the militia movement, has been written in response to the frighteningly lacerating view of government conspiracy and idiocy from the Brooklyn Drama Club, The Situation Room. Taken together, they make a fascinating combination at FringeNYC 2003.
Bettencourt has written a compelling and intelligent play in which a once-promising marketing executive attempts to explain to a reporter (unseen) how the supremacist militia movement works, his involvement in it and the reasons for his ultimate decision to move away from those who seek to overthrow big government and see civil liberties eroding on a daily basis.
Bettencourt's script and David L. Carson's performance are at their most compelling when the character, Albert Lawrence Tekton, delivers what he considers a standard speech for convincing a crowd gathered somewhere in Middle America that the movement is the way to fix their lives. Crafted as carefully as Marc Antony's eulogy for Caesar, Tekton's oratory does not ask the people to act, but rather incites anger and the need to act through a series of leading statements about what is wrong and how he identifies with their disenchantment. As Carson's gray-blue eyes gleam, one senses how such a speech might pull in the unseen listeners, even as one worries about the violence his words will provoke.
A chief metaphor in Mine Eyes is that of Zeus' rape of Leda. Tekton sees Zeus' transformation into a swan to seduce the woman as the ultimate marketing come-on and he believes that what he did as a spokesperson for the militia was no different, turning "violation into revelation."
Ultimately, Tekton has the revelation about the evil inherent in his cross-country rabble-rousing addresses when he is mercilessly beaten on a subway ride while trying to perform a good deed. He moves away from the movement and, in granting the interview to which the audience is privy, seeking some form of redemption.
Here, performer Carson becomes almost childlike in his helplessness and confusion. His rugged frame seems to soften and the fire that one has seen burn in his eyes gives way not to tears, but a kind of milky opaqueness, darting around looking for some kind of answer or salvation. One cannot help but feel pleased for the redemption, but also a little sense of revenge for the evils that the man has instilled.
Director Ed Chemaly has helped Carson to find the pieces varied rhythms and nuances in Bettencourt's language. The hour-long piece seems to whisk by and as the performer leaves the stage, one feels privileged to have had the chance to experience some of Tekton's inner life.
If the portrait of covert operations presented in The Situation Room were 100% accurate, one might be tempted to join in some sort of anti-big government movement oneself. In this work which uses both live action and video, audiences are taken inside of a briefing room lined with storage boxes to watch as as two scientists and two, one assumes Washington, bureaucrats wrangle over covert operations in a third world country. America, it would seem, is at war with this unnamed nation and working diligently to ensure that pockets of resistance do not continue to assemble.
A leafleting campaign has had little or no effect and the scientists are being asked if they have developed any sort of contingency plan. In fact, they have and it involved fires, fruit bats and aircraft. To say any more would spoil the black comedy nature of the piece. Suffice it to say that the plan is deemed as a worthy one and, thus, operation "Infinite Number" is underway.
The operation's title is only one of the superb word games that creators Garrent Kalleberg, TedMacLeon and Heather Ramsdell have devised for The Situation Room. Listening to the group try to develop an operation name makes for creepy, satirical fun. Also inventive are the demands that certain words not be used in official conversations. Thus, "kill" becomes "adjust" and "poison" becomes "taint." The world they have created reeks of Havel and Kafka.
Part of the success of "Room" comes from the dry performances by the six person ensemble. MacLeod makes for a comically smarmy, Mr. Franks, the bureaucrat on hand who's constantly trying to placate Berton Schaeffer's Secretary James. Schaeffer, who looks like a just-pubescent gawky teenager, imbues his character with enough officiousness to make ones skin crawl. Juliet Furness provides a dry, no-nonsense portrayal of one of the scientists, Dr. Rose, while Bristol Pomeroy brings a whipped-too-often puppy dog reticence to his portrayal of Dr. Gmatt. As the most ominous character in the piece, Corina Capp menaces slightly as the stenographer taking down the activities in the room with a wordless menace.
Making the proceedings seem more dire is the video created by Daniel Vatsky that runs on a television set just behind the group's worktable. Sometimes projecting just static and at others, projecting images of targets in the third world country, the video adds consistently and effectively underscores the sense of conspiracy and stupidity that reigns in The Situation Room.
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