At the event there was a silent auction and my mom won us dinner for 2 and 2 tickets to the Quantum Theater's production of "The Task." We decided to make it a mother's day event (well, after we spent the morning doing yard work for my mom, of course!)
We showed up at the Quantum Theater and my first thought was- I am not dressed for this! It was basically a warehouse, open garage doors on one side, and port-o-potties. I was in 4" heels and red lipstick. I was not alone, a lot of the other theater-goers were looking around nervously. And it was cold, and this warehouse was obviously not heated. My mom was also less than thrilled. Suddenly the big garage doors shut and one of the actors appeared announcing to us all that this was "environmental theater." My first thought- ahhh, no heat = saving the environment, ok, I get it. But I was wrong! Environmental Theater is when the audience follows the actors from "room" to room in the warehouse, sometimes standing sometimes sitting.
I read the program and learned that the Task was written by a German playwright considered to be the next Bertolt Brecht and immediately started having NYU Tisch School of the Arts flashbacks. Ahhh Brecht, we bow at your alter! Brecht, for those of you not lucky enough to have sat through theater studies classes, was a modern/avant-garde German playwright, marxist, political activist, who students all over the world read and then have conversations like- "oh the clown, it represents the crumbing society, and the fist that punched the clown- so obviously the distant mother who will always love her first born more." what? I never got it in college. Why couldn't we read Our Town? Maybe that's why Im not currently in the theater profession!
So this play, The Task, is about a group of Frenchmen sent to Jamaica to incite a slave revolt to overthrow the British colonials. That's what it's about. That's it. However, the other 89 minutes of the show involved an androgynous gray angel, a masturbating marilyn monroe (representative of treason, first love of country, and an old french whore, naturally), a circus ring, black face, white face, dildos, naked old men, a scene in an elevator where a business man ends up stranded in peru when the doors open and he was expecting the 20th floor of his office building. You get the idea.
The best part? I loved it. Well, I love it now. At the time I only liked it, probably because I was freezing and the dust in the warehouse made my allergies so bad I could barely open my swollen eyes by the end of it! My mom hated it and said it reminded her of middle school. I don't remember my middle school play ending with a phrase about a quivering labia, but maybe I just blocked that out.
I think what I loved most is that this play had equity actors (so was obviously not middle school or small budget) and the cast were all from very big important schools of drama like Carnegie Mellon and Yale. Best of all- this was in Pittsburgh. Yes, Pittsburgh, for anyone who follows these things, has a good art scene. The downtown cultural district has 3 gorgeous theaters where broadway tours, local companies, and the symphony plays. But Pittsburgh also has a great visual art scene and some off the beaten path theater. Unlike other gentrifying cities (I remember the LES of Manhattan going from scary to expensive in about 3 years) Pittsburgh's once forgotten neighborhoods are being remembered and slowly turning around- not with chain restaurants or commercial main stream businesses but with grass roots Pittsburgh based organizations, designers, artists and builders. I have seen tons of LEED certified new construction in otherwise crumbling neighborhoods recently, which I think is so great. Im really glad we came back to the Burgh when we did. It's not all pierogies and football. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
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