Laurie Anderson's Delusion: Living,Waking and Dreaming

Photo credit: Leland Brewster

“I love the stars because you can’t hurt them.”

On Saturday Sept, 25, 2010, Tony and I attended “Delusion” Laurie Anderson’s most recent multi-media work that received its world premier at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Many of the stories recounted are from her newest release Homeland, and deeply explore themes of how humans cope with the realities of everyday existence, including the distrustful nature of memory, the blurry lines between waking and dreaming states, and the delusions we engineer to navigate love and loss, life and death.

Delusion unfolds at the BAM Harvey Theater, (an acclaimed Majestic Theater renovation by Hugh Hardy in 1987) a fitting surrounding for this show, since the grand building is more decayed preservation then renovation; the old columned and arched interior looks to have been heavily shellacked in the moment just before collapse.

As the performance begins, a small window high on a wall allows a glimpse of autumn leaves blowing across a grey sky, while an Arabic woman chants and wails (a lament of grief over death?).
Laurie enters dragging her bow across her violin, adding to the sorrow. “I want to tell you a story/about a story…”, she begins, and we soon learn her life of accomplishments is based on her internal construction of tasks and rewards, a carrot and donkey system that served her well. “Then one day, my donkey died”.

As You Like It

Posted by Mondschein 

"As You Like It" presented by the Bridge Project at Brooklyn Academy of Music, January 26, 2010

(photo: Joan Marcus)


This is my first opportunity to see a production by the Bridge Project, a three-year partnership between the Old Vic Theatre in London, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Neal Street (Sam Mendes' film and theater production company).  Last season's offerings were Chekov's The Cherry Orchard in a new adaptation by Tom Stoppard and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, both of which were pretty well-received (well enough received that I couldn't get a ticket!).  For their second season, it's a Shakespeare double-bill of As You Like It and The Tempest.

Tickets have been much more readily available for the first of this year's productions.  Telling the story of Orlando, searching for a reason to be in the world, coached by his love, Rosalind, hiding in front of him wearing trousers, Mr. Shakespeare asks for a substantial suspension of disbelief from his audience.  Certainly the writing is romantic and the story, at times, compelling.  Still, never having seen or read this play, I couldn't help but feel that this production, while pleasant, is unremarkable.  The actors are generally skilled in the language, with an exception here and there, and the staging is functional.  It was all very pretty.