The Neo-Futurists are the rare troupe of actors that commands a cult following by not, in any conventional sense, acting. The wildly popular Chicago-based collective brought their dynamic style of “non-illusory theater” to the CFA last weekend with their signature show, “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.”
A staple of the late-night Chicago theater scene since the Reagan administration, “Too Much Light” was billed as “an ever-changing attempt to perform thirty plays in sixty minutes.” The performance combined the manic energy of a deranged sketch comedy revue with the scrappy self-conscious artiness of an avant-garde happening to produce an atmosphere in which it seemed as if anything could happen, and almost did.
In their programs, audience members found a “menu” of thirty play titles—all of them written by members of the ensemble—and were instructed to choose the order of the plays performed by shouting out, at designated times, the number of the next play they wanted to see. A cast member would then pull down the first number he or she heard shouted from a clothesline of numerals strung across the stage, the title of the corresponding play would be read and, at the word “Go,” the play would begin. To increase the pressure still further, the cast – and the audience – raced against an oversized alarm clock placed to the side of the stage and set to go off sixty minutes after the start of the first play. When it went off, a cast member announced the show was over regardless of how many plays had been performed.
No matter how funny, abstract, political, or earnest, each of the Neo-Futurists’ plays are written and performed from what they say is a position of “absolute honesty.” Ensemble members portrayed themselves on stage, gleaning material for the plays from their own lives and experiences.
The plays ranged in tone from the somber and earnest (“There Is No Fate”) to the hilariously self-deprecating (“What I Assume People Think I Do When I Tell Them I’m A Performance Artist”). The ensemble also deftly navigated political satire, sex jokes, and irreverent youthful fantasy, incorporating a range of techniques from political and “poor” theater movements including flashlights, placards, songs, and collective exhortations. The resulting random configurations of styles generated its own unique structure and took the performance in unexpected directions.
The frantic mixing of styles proved disconcerting for some audience members, even as they responded enthusiastically to the performance.
“It’s definitely theater for the A.D.D. generation,” said Jesse Young ’06. “It could be a little jarring to go from ‘my father didn’t love me’ to jokes about foreplay . . . [But] you really got a sense of the playfulness of the players, and the audience seemed to love it.”
By far the most engaging element of the performance seemed to be the high level of audience participation in the plays. In “Hearts and Minds: Yours and Mine,” cast member Jonathan Mastro interviewed an audience member who raised his hand when Mastro asked if anyone in the audience was a supporter of President Bush. The play, limited to two minutes, was a surprisingly poignant attempt at a genuine exchange of ideas in a political moment characterized by hostility and a lack of meaningful dialogue.
Perhaps the most unexpected moment of Friday evening’s performance came during a play in which Neo-Futurist Greg Allen offered a dollar to any member of the audience willing to come on stage and follow directions. The tasks were harmless enough at first (“Bark like a dog,” “Show us your bellybutton”), so it came as a bit of a shock when Allen instructed Jess Lane ’06 to tear off all her clothes. It was even more of a shock that she actually did it.
“I hesitated every second of the way, but I had on a lot of layers,” Lane, a member of the Desperate Measures improv comedy group, said. “Improvisational training teaches you to make a strong decision and commit to it, so once I began taking off my clothes, on stage, I felt like I was a part of the performance, and I kept going. My biggest reservation was that I knew there were two ten or twelve-year-old boys in the audience, but they grow up fast these days anyway, I guess.”
Overall, the audience responded enthusiastically to the frenzied style of the performance.
“As a Chicago person having grown up on going to ‘Too Much Light,’ it was exciting to see it here and have a lot of other people not from Chicago see it,” Emily Rabkin ’08 said. “It was very different to experience it in the fancy theater, rather than in their dingy little fire hazard of a place in Chicago.”
In Chicago, the play is performed three nights a week, fifty weeks a year, with a rotating cast and a new lineup of plays each week. Lane also participated in a workshop presented by members of the cast on Saturday, and said that she found the Neo-Futurist style relevant to her own experience as a performer.
“Nothing they do attempts to deceive the audience,” she said. “I found it very appealing, and it’s a principle that improvisers already embrace, although not quite so literally: ‘Truth in Comedy.’”
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