February 21, 2013 | Theatre,

New York City Players and Vision Disturbance: The Next Thing

 

The way that we see is ever questionable, and is of profound consequence in our lives. In Vision Disturbance, the combination of story, physical space and directorial style turns the production into an experience that reorients audiences in a new way. Vision Disturbance lends a new perspective—one that reaffirms the speculative and immersive qualities of theatre with an invitation to view life differently.

The inaugural production of the New York City Players’ American Playwrights Division, this play is a major effort in the linking of legendary and emerging artists to collaborate in American theatre. The production initially began at The Public’s Under The Radar Festival in New York, and ArtsEmerson revives the piece this week for performances in The Next Thing (TNT) Festival, which brings many major experimental companies to Boston audiences for the first time.

Playwright Christina Masciotti wrote this play focusing on a person who’s blindsided by infidelity and the idea that you can’t trust how close things are, or how far away they’re getting—emotionally and literally. When the main character, Mondo, loses her husband and one eye’s vision, her perception of the world changes. “When you see only from one eye, it’s like you’re looking at a series of pictures,” Masciotti says. “You’re not in the world; it’s like looking at a snapshot of it.” In this case, Mondo’s altered perception leads her to feel she doesn’t have a sense of where she belongs in space.

As the play developed though a series of public readings, the Vision Disturbance team began to adapt the piece a bit. At first, they used projections to capture the flatness of Mondo’s world: the streets she walked down, her apartment, the doctor’s office, the symphony. After a while, they realized it was much more interesting to only have the words of the characters to rely on. Masciotti says, “You can decide for yourself what to believe… it was redundant to add any video.”

Both designer Adrian Jones and director Richard Maxwell implement their minimalist philosophy of theatre-making to focus the audience’s attention on the words of the play. They believe a lot on stage is artifice, and it was very much about stripping away what was unnecessary in the performances and in the visual aesthetic. The scenography itself is minimally created by two walls of plywood up against each other. Jones describes this compact performance space as heightening the actors’ presence on stage. His design also focuses on making the set as opaque as possible, hence the basic, raw plywood, and limiting the lights. He wants actors to achieve “neutrality,” and allow themselves to be as “naked” as possible, with little affectation. When acting, it’s as if the actors consciously distance themselves from the audience and the characters they are portraying. The intention is to find the most essential, central thing on stage to tell the story. As Mondo’s relationship develops with the doctor, an intimacy begins to occur that factors heavily in Jones’ use of lighting of the show. Together with Maxwell’s directorial vision and Masciotti’s powerful text, Jones works to find a way for the scenography to bolster the emotional development between characters and audience.

“With this lyrical and quirky play, the playwright and director gently subvert our expectations about how a ‘play’ is staged, heard and performed,” Under The Radar Festival’s Associate Artistic Producer Meiyin Wang comments. “One of the challenges we faced was how to present the smaller scale touring work in the large theatres of ArtsEmerson. Vision Disturbance, on this particular stage, retains all of the intimacy of the performance, while celebrating the beauty and grandeur of the Paramount Center Mainstage.” This talented team delivers an engaging new work to Boston audiences, making it a festival selection not to be missed.

Buy your tickets to Vision Disturbance, presented through Feb. 23,  here.

If you’d like to see anything else in the Festival, the  festival pass admits you to see all of the groundbreaking companies and works: Blood Play by The Debate Society, A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Funny Thing I’ll Never Do Again after David Foster Wallace by Daniel Fish, Birth Breath Bride Elizabeth by Sleeping Weazel, and Spring Training by UNIVERSES, as well as a concert with The Army of Broken Toys, The Shakespearean Jazz Show, films, workshops and more!

Stefan Martin is a senior at Emerson studying theatre, and a Creative Producer-in-Training.