- OTHER MEDIA
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- DIVAfest's centerpiece gives intense look at meth addiction
- SF Chronicle May 1, 2007 (Robert Hurwitt)
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- The opening dance sequence pretty much says it all. As a tall, tawdry,
bespangled goddess of methamphetamine struts and beckons, two angelic-looking
young women rise from their beds, change their nightgowns for T-shirts
and sweats and dance. Their moves evolve, as the music changes eras, from
naive joy to aroused sexuality to manic ecstasy, lap-dance come-ons, compulsive
repetitiveness and the skin-crawling terrors of withdrawal.
Deborah Eubanks' "Crystal Daze," which opened Saturday at the
Exit Theatre, is a play about meth addiction -- about the desperation of
young women trying to escape the drug and the anguish of the mothers of
addicts. Perhaps fittingly, it's often as hazy and repetitive as the cycle
of drug dependency, as Eubanks and her collaborators attempt to chronicle
aspects of the experience and draw connections to the commercial uses of
addictive behavior in our media-saturated world.
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- The result is fairly wearing for much of the performance meditation's
intermission-less 90 minutes. But "Crystal" is a daringly honest,
partly autobiographical effort, earnestly and engagingly performed and
laced with passages of gripping intensity.
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- "Crystal" is the centerpiece of this year's DIVAfest, the
Exit's sixth annual showcase of new work written, directed and performed
by female artists. Exit Artistic Director Christina Augello has changed
the format somewhat this year. Instead of producing several new plays,
the festival features just one fully staged world premiere and staged readings
of four works in progress, as well as its popular late-night DIVAfest Cabaret,
around the corner at Original Joe's, and a few other events.
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- The cabaret, hosted by Sean Owens, has a new makeup this year, as well.
All the songs are new, commissioned from composer Don Seaver and various
Bay Area female lyricists. Featured performers include Lua Hardar, Alison
Bloomfield, Amy Tobin, Janet Roitz, Diane Valory, Mia Paschal and Sri Lankan
poet Pireeni Sundaralingam. It opened Saturday, after the first performance
of "Crystal," which had been preceded by a reading by Beat poet
diva Diane di Prima.
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- Staged by Michelle Talgarow and the author on a stunning set of sliding,
translucent window panels (by Amanda Ortmayer, who also designed the evocative
lighting), "Crystal" is a still-lumpy blend of allegory and drama.
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- The allegory looks promising at first, with sardonically domineering
performance artist Sadie Lune prowling the stage in an ever-changing array
of pseudo-sexy lingerie-and-tails costumes (by Lisa Eldredge) as the magnetic
Lizzy Sell and Joelle Wagner depict the addiction-withdrawal, angelic-demonic
young addicts. The rhymed-couplet doggerel Lune speaks is neither revealing
nor interesting, though, and the routines in which she plays TV commentators
and advertisers pushing other drugs are too predictable. Even Jessica Fudim's
intense choreography begins to grow tiresome after a while.
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- More engaging are the interactions between the addicts' mothers, played
with nice understated realism by Augello and Cheryl Smith. Eubanks and
the ensemble create some thought-provoking insights into trying to cope
with one of a parent's worst nightmares, with some clever material about
Freud, Winnie the Pooh and alcohol thrown in.
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- It isn't clear what all the verbal and movement references to horses
have to do with anything, and there's a strange disconnect between the
local references and the piece's general British tone. But in the mothers'
tentative bonding and some of the looks at addiction, "Crystal"
begins to find its dramatic focus.
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