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- 0 to 6 in 60
69 Moments of Life
Actor, You're Killing Me
Air Tight Security
Almost True Adventures ...
Amazing Improvised Musical
Animal Farm
Ballerina on a Horse
Beautiful Man
Berserker
Caffe di Amore or ...
Check the Box
Clearing Hedges
Corned Beef
Countless
Crime & Variations
Death Blow II: ...
Demon Pope
Diagnosis: Jew Pain ...
Disco Prophecies
Ethan's Gift
Far From Springer
Fixed Boundry
Forty Love
Got Water
I Can't Believe They're Not Oriental!
Idiot Machine: ...
In Cahoots
John Muir: Watch, Pray, Fight
Late Night Talk Show
Ludlow and Canal
Magic at the Fringe
Man 1, Bank 0
Marx in Soho
Mixed Signal
Mother: A Modern Buddhist ...
Naked Inqisition
nEO - surrealists present: ...
Neon's Crazy Blue
Nharcolepsy
Original Action Pack
Park - N - Ride
Passages
Sandwich
Scabaret!
Searching for God in Kerala
Seventh Game of the World Series
Shadow Kissers
Strobe Vision
This World is Not My Home
Total Improvisation - ...
Train Stories
Tripping on the Equator ...
Twinspeak
Play: Countless
Reviewer: Simone
Reviewer Email: sieleeb@hotmail.com
Rating: 5 Stars
I can understand why some people could find the show boring but for me it
has been fascinating. It was like being home, watching my own soul. Indeed
it didn't feel very pleasant at the beginning, but the last look of Sara
to the audience before she came all the way up touched me so much that
it catched my breath. As we say in French "j'etais bouche bee(with
an accent on the first e)", and I love when a show can trigger this
kind of rection.
Play: Countless
Reviewer: Morgan
Reviewer Email:
Rating: None
Sara and Ed are both very good performers. clean, committed, precise. the
cello is cool. also, the section of video wherein sara's face is accelerated
through rapid contortions on the projection screen is rad. countless has
its moments, as all the other posts here have noted. unfortunately, it does
have the following problems:
a) the initial narrative premise (a man who has found a formula to predict
the fluctuations of the market) is exactly the same as that of the movie
Pi. if it was not simply looted from that movie, the fact of the film's
existence was carelessly ignored.
b) the repeated ascending/descending, optimism/pessimism movement on the
staircase. it happened too many times. the conceptual point is made the
first time sara does it. the first time it happens, it really lets us in
to the piece, because it's the first time we can link the worlds of the
two actors. subsequent repetitions begin to shut us out again.
c) most of the video is lame. cars at night, people on city streets...these
are the same things that everybody puts in their multimedia video pieces.
yes, the piece refers to the repetitive patterns of human behavior, but
there have got to be fresher ways to portray that. when the images were
most abstract the video was good.
d) there is no middle. initially, ed's character advances an entirely deterministic
conception of history and market fluctuation. patterns exist, are absolute,
can be analysed and interpreted. this perspective is apparently proven by
sara's confessions (we see that her experience of privation is only one
point in a cyclical pattern).
fine.
then ed tells us that in fact, the stock market can't be predicted, that
the patterns change too rapidly, that we are always one step behind, much
like sara's character with the premonitory dreams. it seems implicit that
in life and markets, as in dreams, there is some stuff that just happens,
some things that don't make sense, some dreams that are truly random or
insignificant.
the piece would be much stronger if there were a progression through that
discovery of randomness. i don't know. maybe the show actually posits a
scenario in which the future is written, we're just too hungry/tired/lonely/stupid
to read it. even so, accepting our limited knowledge necessitates accepting
a degree of chaos, and i never felt that the play revealed that moment of
acceptance.
that's basically it. there is obviously a great deal of talent among the
major contributors to this piece, but the creators of text and video should
hold themselves to a higher standard.
thanks
Play: counless
Reviewer: henk smits
Reviewer Email: henk@garlic.com
Rating: 5 Stars
BEAUTIFUL; the movements together with the video-images;the cello-musician
just composing her sounds while performing; the
song of the woman;it was my last perfromance of the day (saterday) but I
awoke at once!
10 times Bravo!
Play: Countless
Reviewer: Marsha
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 3 Stars
5 stars for the music, 4 stars for the English actor, 3 stars for the video,
3 stars to Sarah Kraft for putting them on the same stage.
Play: Countless
Reviewer: n person
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 5 Stars
With such thoughtful reviews; there's not much for me to add. I agree more
cello, more digital loops, & the comic bits of the actor's bits were
great. Also while I enjoyed the gallery setting, it was hard for the back
rows to see Sara's face.
Thanks to the 4 collaborators for their excellent work.
Play: Countless
Reviewer: Carl Thelin
Reviewer Email: parchedcamel@yahoo.com
Rating: 5 Stars
This show has a tight thematic focus unusual in the world of performance
art. It is a strong piece, stirring up thoughts and feelings like a tasty
stew. The acting is excellent, the video and music interesting and effective,
and the space is extremely well-used.
Play: COUNTLESS
Reviewer: Eric Klein
Reviewer Email: futonyessir@yahoo.com
Rating: 3 Stars
I found the theatrical elements of the piece very entertaining, and the
multimedia elements distracting. This is a matter of taste.
Same piece, same performers, but without the video/computers and I would have felt more involved. There would have been more space for more "acting" and then they could have developed their ideas further, and I would have been happier.
Play: Countless
Reviewer: StFo
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 4 Stars
Countless falls somewhere in the eighties-ish pop performance art camp.
If you like Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Pamela Z, or the films of Zbigniew
Rybczynski, Robert Wilson, or just about everything that went on at The
Kitchen in New York in 1989...you'll like Countless.
I really wanted to get deeply into this performance, especially because
of Sara's
collaboration with Zoe. Unfortunately about ten minutes into the show, the
ceiling
opened up and it began to rain someone else's bathwater or sinkwater or
God only
knows what water on us. The house manager tried one of those little pretzel
bowls
to catch the drips which only made the drips louder. Then an audience member
sacrificed his sweatshirt to dampen the dripping. I sincerely hope someone
was on their way upstairs to figure out where the dripping was coming from
and stop it and avoid ruining the whole gallery.
Either way, my show-trance was irreparably broken and all I could think about for the rest of the show was the dripping, and when the ceiling was going to cave in on us, and if my bag was getting wet, and if they were going to evacuate the theater, and just about anything except what was going on on the stage.
Damn the drip. Oh Lord, damn the drip. -StFo
Play: Countless
Reviewer: Vince Vitale
Reviewer Email: WorldGazer@aol.com
Rating: 5 Stars
Sara Kraft is one of the greatest living performance artists of our time.
Her work is immediately accessible, intellectually, emotionally and viscerally.
A true multimedia event, “Countless” is her best work yet. Complete
with two screens of cam-looped images, mostly from the performance itself
(orchestrated by Gregory Cowley), as well as Zoë Keating’s cello,
also performed and looped during the performance, “Countless”
is based on the quest to master the fluctuations of the stock market. Ed
Purver gives the narration for the theory of this mastery, as well as portraying
the lover who sequesters himself in a room for years at a time to decipher
the sacred knowledge necessary. It is Kraft herself on a staircase, however,
portraying what we otherwise only see on graphs and charts, which makes
this work resound, resonate, conquer. Performed at Rx Gallery, next to Fringe
Central, “Countless” is not to be missed.
Play: countless
Reviewer: Curtis
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 5 Stars
Great piece, really did feel like a lucid dream
Play: Countless
Reviewer: petra
Reviewer Email: petrasatellite@yahoo.com
Rating: 4 Stars
About how society repeats it's self, this show makes the subject matter
very personal. The stairs metaphor works beautifully in this space. The
live multimedia mixing pulls you into the spontaneity of the experience
and the feeling that anything can happen. The moody tone of the venue was
great until the lead actress pulled us way out with announcements at the
top of the shop - wish that was kept to the end. Overall absolutely worth
seeing.
Play: Countless
Reviewer: Brien E Rullman
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 5 Stars
Countless. I loved the looping elements. The story matched the set, music,
video, lights, and actors so precisely it felt like a deja vu lucid dream.
I was transported into the new media experience. I love when high tech is
totally transparent and the story flows seamlessly. I was imitating the
happy/sad face right after the show. Its cool when a piece immediately connects
with you and what you are doing in your life, and you see yourself ....and
different parallels.
MORE CELLO! what a wonderful player Zoe is!
she needs more parts, i wanted to hear her jam.
More Video! unique MSP/Max patches and loops, i love custom software video
patches that create a fresh look. the mix between live and sampled elements
was a powerful effect!
beautiful meloncholy songs.
Eds' delievery on the dream sequences is hilarious ,and provides the glue
to the whole piece.
Thanks,
Brien
congrats on a great show!
Play: Countless
Reviewer: Kim
Reviewer Email:
Rating: None
In the (perhaps misquoted) words of Sara Kraft in Countless "beautiful,
whatever it means." The real time video playback, haunting cello, Sara's
voice, even the cool venue - all sensually appealing. I loved this performance,
I think it could have come off too heavy and self-conscious but the intermittent
dream-calls of the male performer lightened the piece and kept the audience
(or at least me!) from drifting with the repetive images, movements and
sounds. Sara is so charismatic - even when she's sitting still you want
to watch her. My only caveat - a bit heavy on the "clever" wordplay,
it would seem/seam.
Play: Countless
Reviewer: Alex
Reviewer Email:
Rating: 4 Stars
An abstract multimedia piece playing on the theme of the repetitiveness
of life and the hope that maybe one day things will change. The show is
well performed, the multimedia stuff works (apart from the technical glitch
on friday), and sara sings in this one, and sings well. And yet, I left
feeling strangely empty. The theme is only presented at a superficial level
and I had got everything I was going to get out of the piece half way through.
The second half needs new elements and more development to keep its audience.
The venue also has its problems - if you are sat in back, the sight-lines
are bad and you cannot see sara's expressive face in red-light as she delivers
much of the play's text.