| I'll make a stab at it... | |
| Posted by: fm_15 12:56 am EDT 06/06/18 | |
| In reply to: Band's Visit - What am I missing? - MetaTheatrical 07:50 pm EDT 06/05/18 | |
|
|
|
| I can only speak for myself but I responded most to the cross-cultural tension that is maintained throughout the entire show. I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. (I myself am not Jewish but my partner is half) Right next to us was a fairly large Pakistani neighborhood. I grew up with a front row seat of the tension between the 2 groups. I remember 9/11 vividly and all the aftermath when I was living in yet another part of Brooklyn that had Jewish/Arab crossroads. My current job in Jersey serves a large Egyptian/Arab population. A few years ago I visited Israel and the Palestinian territories and the settlements. "Unnerving" is the first word that comes to mind but it is such an understatement because how is one to describe a situation where a building is split in half-- one half serves as a mosque and the other half as a synagogue -- and the street it is on is literally divided between the two groups with soldiers carrying automatic rifles lined up along the sidewalk? So taking all these experiences together, you can imagine what I felt walking into this show last year. That moment the Egyptian band first walks into the cafe for me was not just *tense*...it was downright heart stopping. I think I held my breath for as long as the actors paused staring at each other. Of course I can't claim that you need this background appreciation of the conflict to like this show...but I do wonder if the lack of appreciation causes some audience members to expect "more". I think the predictable course of the narrative would have been to have a lot of loud yelling/crying histrionic drama. I felt it was like a breath of clean air that this show didn't have that. Instead, the story that unfolded was unpredictably gentle. The key for me is the show's tag line --SPOILER ... the fact that "nothing happened". There is no cathartic cross cultural mind-meld. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not magically solved. You're right: nothing earth shattering has happened. It is just a story about humans being very human in the simplest of ways -- two lonely souls share their love of romantic cinema, a suave man gives pointers to a shy one on how to woo a girl, a group shares their family troubles... Yeah, maybe nothing has truly changed at the end as you say, but for one brief night, in one village in the desert, two groups with contentious backgrounds are gentle to each other. For me, that was gratifying and incredibly uplifting. I left that theatre on cloud nine and surprisingly optimistic. |
|
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | re: Band's Visit - What am I missing? - lowwriter 02:21 am EDT 06/06/18 |
| Next: | re: I'll make a stab at it... - Backontheice 01:41 am EDT 06/06/18 |
| Thread: |
|
Time to render: 0.010623 seconds.