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Last Gasp (WFH) by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver (review)
Theatre Journal Pub Date : 2021-06-26
Heidi Łucja Liedke

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Reviewed by:

  • Last Gasp (WFH) by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver
  • Heidi Łucja Liedke
LAST GASP (WFH). Written and performed by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver. Directed by Lois Weaver. Movement by Morgan Thorson. Video design and editing by Nao Nagai. Sound design by Vivian Stoll. La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, New York City. Streamed, December 6, 2020.

When a global pandemic brings most areas of life to a halt, it is perhaps not surprising that self-reflection and virtual journeys to the past set in. This is, on the surface, what Split Britches’s Last Gasp (WFH) did also. The “series of verbal and physical essays,” as the duo put it in their event description, invited viewers to catch their breath, consider the personal, the (im)permanent, and how to care for one another in a series of scenes. The order of essays presented in the show did not seem to follow a particular logic; instead, the show’s structure resembled a storytelling jukebox set on shuffle. What Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver created with their latest performance, filmed in a mostly empty house in London entirely via Zoom’s recording feature, was a warm blanket, held together by seventy-five years of words. Some of its patches might have been scratchy and uncomfortable, but words can hold up amid the turbulence.

The first Zoomie (as Shaw has called it) that I saw, Last Gasp (WFH) began with Weaver conjuring up the sound of a storm of bees, directing them or perhaps something else in her memory. She then used these movements to start a meditative but ragged dance through a barren room containing only one table and cracked wallpaper. While an unusual beginning, the reference to the waggle dance of bees and their humming served as an anchor for the show: Mother Earth’s quiet version of white noise. Weaver then left the room briefly, returned putting on glasses, turned around and looked at what was before her in a seemingly disappointed, concerned, and exhausted manner as if to say “What can I say to you anyway?” She then began with the words: “This is a very emotional moment for me. Because, twenty, thirty, forty years ago I bought this dress.” In Last Gasp, time played an important role, as naming points in time triggered our memory, but linear time structure did not have to be obeyed exactly.

This relegating of linearity and time frames to the coincidental was what set Shaw and Weaver on a series of eclectic wordscapes that were held together and enabled by acts of attentive and mutual listening. The latter was not only a performative device, but also a necessity, since Weaver fed Shaw her lines over bulky headphones throughout the show. Shaw has been unable to remember lines since suffering a stroke in 2011. What held Shaw’s scenes together were songs and music, and snippets repeated on loop, such as the line “I know, I know, I know” from Bill Withers’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” that functioned both as a reflection on Shaw’s inability to know or remember everything any longer and the way in which “I know” has become an empty phrase nowadays. That which could be a profound declaration of one’s certainty has become an offhand phatic silence-filler.


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Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw in Last Gasp (WFH). (Photo: Split Britches.)

Shaw’s reminiscences were personal: when she talked about the role Black male musicians—quite a few of them called Johnny—had played for her [End Page 225] as butch role models, for instance. When she presented the singer Johnnie Ray, she went through the window curtains next to her, which in the next shot became the curtains through which she entered the stage. To a karaoke version of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” she informed us that the song was sent up on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 because NASA thought it would represent life on earth to extraterrestrials. These bits of trivia and episodes from her childhood were delivered by a static, towering Shaw who only sometimes smirked tentatively. Shaw’s smirk reemerged throughout the...



中文翻译:

Peggy Shaw 和 Lois Weaver 的 Last Gasp (WFH)(评论)

代替摘要,这里是内容的简短摘录:

审核人:

  • Peggy Shaw 和 Lois Weaver 的Last Gasp (WFH)
  • 海蒂 Łucja Liedke
最后一次喘息(WFH)。由 Peggy Shaw 和 Lois Weaver 编写和表演。由洛伊斯·韦弗执导。摩根·索森的机芯。Nao Nagai 的视频设计和编辑。Vivian Stoll 的声音设计。La MaMa 实验戏剧俱乐部,纽约市。流媒体,2020 年 12 月 6 日。

当全球大流行使生活的大部分领域陷入停顿时,自我反省和过去的虚拟旅程开始也许并不奇怪。 从表面上看,这就是 Split Britches 的最后喘息 (WFH)也做了。正如两人在他们的活动描述中所说的那样,“一系列口头和身体散文”邀请观众喘口气,在一系列场景中考虑个人的、(非)永久性的以及如何照顾彼此。节目中呈现的文章顺序似乎没有遵循特定的逻辑;相反,该节目的结构类似于一个随机播放的讲故事的自动点唱机。Peggy Shaw 和 Lois Weaver 用他们最新的表演创作的,完全是通过 Zoom 的录音功能在伦敦一个几乎空荡荡的房子里拍摄的,是一张温暖的毯子,用七十五年的文字粘在一起。它的一些补丁可能会沙哑和不舒服,但在动荡中,言语可以站得住脚。

我看到的第一个 Zoomie(如 Shaw 所说),Last Gasp (WFH)开始时,Weaver 召唤出蜜蜂风暴的声音,引导它们或她记忆中的其他东西。然后,她用这些动作在一个只有一张桌子和破裂的墙纸的贫瘠房间里开始了一段沉思但破烂的舞蹈。虽然是一个不寻常的开始,但对蜜蜂摇摆舞和它们的嗡嗡声的引用是该节目的主播:地球母亲的安静版本的白噪音。韦弗短暂地离开了房间,重新戴上眼镜,转身看着眼前的东西,一副失望、关切、疲惫的样子,仿佛在说:“我还能对你说什么?” 然后她开始说:“这对我来说是一个非常情绪化的时刻。因为,二十、三十、四十年前我买了这件衣服。” 在最后的喘息中,时间起到了重要作用,因为命名时间点会触发我们的记忆,但不必完全遵守线性时间结构。

这种将线性和时间框架降级为巧合的原因使 Shaw 和 Weaver 建立了一系列不拘一格的文字景观,这些文字景观通过细心和相互倾听的行为结合在一起并得以实现。后者不仅是一种表演设备,而且是必需品,因为韦弗在整个节目中都用笨重的耳机为肖提供了她的台词。自 2011 年中风以来,Shaw 一直无法记住台词。将 Shaw 的场景聚集在一起的是歌曲和音乐,以及循环重复的片段,例如比尔威瑟斯的“Ain”中的“我知道,我知道,我知道” t No Sunshine”既反映了Shaw无法再了解或记住所有事情,也反映了“我知道”如今已成为一句空话。


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Lois Weaver 和 Peggy Shaw 在Last Gasp (WFH) 中。(照片:Split Britches。)

Shaw 的回忆是个人的:例如,当她谈到黑人男音乐家——其中不少叫约翰尼——为她扮演的角色[End Page 225]作为布奇榜样时。当她介绍歌手约翰尼·雷时,她穿过了她旁边的窗帘,在接下来的镜头中,窗帘变成了她进入舞台的窗帘。对于查克·贝瑞 (Chuck Berry) 的“约翰尼·B·古德 (Johnny B. Goode)”的卡拉 OK 版本,她告诉我们这首歌于 1977 年在航海者号航天器上发送,因为美国宇航局认为它可以向外星人代表地球上的生命。这些来自她童年的琐事和插曲是由一个静止的、高大的肖提供的,他只是有时试探性地假笑。整个过程中,Shaw 的假笑再次出现……

更新日期:2021-06-28
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