[ad_1]
Inside their white-walled home on the surface of a hostile planet, Alma and Baya only have each other.
In a worsening crisis, they are adult women who share their food and can’t get out, but their utilitarian pods have the comforts of a perpetual sleepover. Alma is bossy, she’s exuberant, and somehow they relax together.
Then a shadow appears outside: a stranger who will die without their help.
“Should we let us in?” Baya asks softly and curiously.
“Are you crazy?” It says take.
“But this is human,” Baya argues.
“More reasons not to,” says Alma.
Edward Einhorn’s prismatic new sci-fi game “Alma Baya” at ART/New York can be seen as a metaphor for the many existing disasters, pandemics and climate change. But last night, hours after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, when I saw the news filled with images of desperate people flocking to Kabul airport in hopes of escape, that was the worst disaster in my mind.
“It could be you,” Baya says to Alma as the stranger knocks on the door. “On another occasion.”
But it’s not, Alma said contemptuously.
Beyond each other, Alma and Baya never knew another human being. These are variants – more »Loki“It makes more sense than the coronavirus sentiment, but feel free to choose your metaphor, a survival experiment for the benefit of the distant society that puts life on their airless planet there, in their own capsule, with instruction manuals that tell them how to do it. live.
directed by Einhorn Anonymous Theater Company #61, and performed with two alternate casts as a pandemic precaution (I sometimes saw the poorly polished Cast A), “Alma Baya” is the bleak, humorous speckled tale of what happens when Baya lets the stranger in.
This escapade is a late-night act, but it’s also promising—because what if this wild-haired woman, clamoring for a glass of water, could help them survive?
After all, he’s wearing exactly the kind of oxygen suit that Alma is wearing (Ann Marie Yoo) and Baya (Sheleah Harris, the glamorous star of the cast) will need it if they’re going to take their crops out again and take care of their crops, which they abandoned months ago when their team collapsed. and foreign (Rivera Reese) claims to have a green thumb.
The balloon-head suit has a playful vibe (the costumes are by Ramona Ponce), but Mike Mroch’s set looks a lot cheaper than it does in the photos, even under Federico Restrepo’s flattering lighting. Still, this production is also available on demand, and I wonder if the natural design is tailored to the cameras rather than the eyes in the room.
In their little compartments, Alma and Baya live by the dictates of their scriptures, their instruction manuals—although they have safely, comically misinterpreted an important piece of advice contained therein. The assumption being challenged by the stranger is that everyone gets the same operating instructions, and if you can find a line of text that tells you that, cruelty is okay, Grimmer said.
“Alma Baya”, then, is a sci-fi meditation set in a world plagued by recurring human problems – because survival is brutal work and selfishness is one of our dominant traits.
Alma Baya
through August 28 at ART/New York’s Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theater in Manhattan; On request until 19 September; untitledtheater.com.tr Working time: 1 hour 15 minutes.
[ad_2]
Source link