Author: David Gorsline

Transportable

Christopher Joyce and Bill McQuay inaugurate the series Close Listening. The editing on the piece is a little Radiolab-ish for my taste, but the sounds of science are ear-opening.

[Trevor] Pinch has made a career of studying how scientists listen. He notes that listening has certain advantages over vision. “The visual field is kind of in front of us — like a kind of screen,” he says, while sound is “all around.”

If seeing is like being in an art gallery, hearing is more like being in a swimming pool — where we’re swimming all the time.

Wilds of South Jersey

Mark Garland led two days of field trips to various off-the-map locations in southern New Jersey.

first stop of the morningMonday we spent at three spots in the Pine Barrens (dressed up by the marketing people as the Pinelands, these days).

from here to therecould be betterFrom one of the area’s numerous sketchy sand roads, we walked in to a generously-sized bog, where White Fringed Orchid (Platanthera blephariglottis) was in bloom. We also found two species of sundews (which I have decided are impossible to photograph; I’m not satisfied with my image of the orchid, either).

tolerably tastycrush a leafAlong the way, huckleberries (Gaylussacia sp.) were in fruit all over the place. The ground cover here is one of my new favorite shrubs, Common Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens): crush the leaves for a hit of natural teaberry aroma.

shadow selfieAt the end of the day, we strolled through one of the pygmy forests, the pines and oaks dwarfed by lack of nutrients and water — a natural bonsai arboretum.

lovely lightTuesday we caravaned around the saltmarshes lining the Maurice River, which drains the Millville/Vineland area into Delaware Bay. Hot and sunny, it was a much better day for birds and butterflies, nudging my paltry butterfly life list above the 50 mark. The demure lighthouse at East Point is quite nice.

rails are taking a breakI hadn’t really expected anything too exciting in terms of birds for this trip. So it was a nice surprise to total up the species count for the two days: 44, plus two or three that I didn’t bother to count. I definitely counted Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) (I’ve never seen them this far north), Seaside Sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus) (a bird that I rarely see at all), and #415 for my life list, Clapper Rail (Rallus longirostris). We found the rails, about five or six of them, at this tidal gut at spot called Turkey Point, on the other side of the Maurice (locally pronounced “Morris”). A- looks at the birds, from some distance and somewhat backlit, not visibly distinguished from King Rails, but you go with the local expert’s knowledge of distribution.

At the park: 80

good enoughLast Sunday at the Park was a work day to install wire fencing as a low-tech, low-impact means of exclosing beavers from some of the larger trees just above the new berm and water control structure. The idea is not to protect the life of the trees, as they are in the new flood plain and will be inundated and eventually die; but rather to preserve them as standing dead trees (snags), so that they can support woodpeckers, Wood Ducks, other cavity-nesting birds, and all the wildlife that depend on such a vertical, natural structure.

The beavers, if we would let them, would take these trees down, and while there’s nothing wrong with downed trees (just ask your favorite stand of moss), we’ve got plenty of them right now.

Some icons

David Warsh pens a good piece, a longish read (with a surprise in it) about the twin careers of America’s best-known economists of the latter third of the 20th century, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman. They first overlapped at the University of Chicago in 1932.

three colors and blacksimple designMy textbook for Economics B01 (Macro) was the 9th edition of Samuelson’s Economics. The color scheme and overall design of that text retain their simple power. The book’s endpapers are something special: in the front, a line graph of per capita GNP* for the period 1870-1973 for the U.S., Germany, the U.K., the Soviet Union, Japan, and (creeping in at the very bottom) India; at the back, a family tree of schools of economic thought, from Aristotle through the Mercantilists down to the Socialists and post-Keynesians.

*Yes, that’s right: at the time, Gross National Product was the headline aggregate, not GDP (Gross Domestic Product). (What’s the difference?)

Gut check

Javier A. Ceja-Navarro et al. suggest a novel means of controlling the coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei), as summarized by The Economist. The authors provide evidence that one of the species of bacteria that reside in the beetle’s digestive system, Pseudomonas fulva, detoxifies the caffeine that the coffee plant produces as a natural herbivore deterrent. Knock out the bacterium, perhaps with a targeted bacteriophage, and you knock out the pest.

Contemporary American Theater Festival 2015

A Festival that gives the design departments an opportunity to shine.

¶ In her new play, World Builders, Johnna Adams revisits some of the territory she last explored in the distasteful Gidion’s Knot (this time to better effect): the power and importance of personal worlds of the imagination, albeit streaked with fantasies of revenge and death. Whitney (Brenna Palughi) and Max (Chris Thorn) are psychiatric patients enrolled in a clinical drug study who face a familiar dilemma: continue treatment, but at the loss of their individual universes, hearts, and souls.

While Whitney’s interior world is an elaborate multiplanetary melodrama, something out of George R. R. Martin (a writer mentioned by Adams in her program notes), Max imagines a constricted place more suggestive of Beckett’s The Lost Ones. In a rather intense, economical 90 minutes, it’s a bit of comic relief when Max finds logical inconsistencies in Whitney’s complex apparatus.

Whitney and Max develop what you might call a relationship, and along the way find a way to accommodate one another’s fantasies—a good metaphor for the space each of us sacrifices to make room for another person in our worlds, our hearts.

Arshan Gailus supplies the subtle, effective soundscape.

¶ The strongest and most ambitious piece is Everything You Touch, by Sheila Callaghan, a rich, dark comic fantasia of fashion and body image, nougat laced with hot sauce. We follow the paired journeys of Jess (Dina Thomas), a schlubby software technologist of the present day who has rejected her mother’s ideals of feminine beauty (and disparages herself for it); and Victor (Jerzy Gwiazdowski), a 1970s fashion designer who breaks onto the scene as an Alexander McQueen/Malcolm McLaren-ish child of the avant garde and undergoes a Damascene conversion into an easy, breezy Halston-like esthetic. Scenes interleave, mixing up present and past. Victor and Jess, each in their own way, come to a crossroads of identity, asking am I defined by this schmatte that I’m wearing? by the fast-food restaurant I frequent? Do I want to make art, or be accepted by the buyers for Dillard’s? And each makes a choice, although Victor’s is quite different from Jess’s.

The technical elements of this production need to be on the Festival’s highlight reel. Foremost among these elements are the costumes designed by Peggy McKowen, launching the play with a series of outrageous couture pieces for Victor’s 1974 show. The actor/models in that show also serve as ensemble, as well as autonomous set pieces to fill in the multiple locations called for by the script. What a luxury for director May Adrales to be furnished with a bedside table that can react to a remark by Jess about her mother. Also key for getting us from place to place are the projections, designed by Shawn Duan and projected against David M. Barber’s set. (I’m still wondering how Duan achieved the effect that ends the prologue.)

Some parts of the more outré costumes feel out of place in the mid-seventies, at times leaving us a bit confused about when we are. And the dialogue (and relationship) between Jess and her engineer colleague Lewis is rather weak.

But if you’ve only time for one show in this year’s Festival, Everything You Touch is the one to see.

¶ Michael Weller’s adaptation of David Carkeet’s novel, The Full Catastrophe, is an entertaining comedy of relationships that doesn’t reach too far. Jeremy Cook, a professional linguist down on his academic luck, takes a position as an unconventional marriage counselor with the Pillow Group, led by eccentric magnate Roy Pillow (Festival favorite Lee Sellars). To say that Pillow’s methods are opaque would be utter understatement.

In bringing the book to the stage, Weller excises an unnecessary subplot of professional jealousy but retains Jeremy’s point of view narration. If the early passages are a bit too expositional, Jeremy’s wry asides to us are usually worth it. T. Ryder Smith, covering the enesemble roles (his program credit is “Everyone Else”), earned his ovation for his last character’s final exit.

¶ Steven Dietz, in the program notes to his thriller, On Clover Road, says that the play is “built to take members of the audience certain that know what is going to happen and instead something wholly different happens.” Unfortunately, what does happen here, especially at the crux of Act 1 into Act 2, is wholly implausible.

The set, designed by David M. Barber and lit by John Ambrosone, is a grungy, crepuscular abandoned motel room. Much of the action is primarily illuminated by a portable mechanic’s work light, positioned down center on the floor. The lamp’s position and the slight rake of the stage make a powerful shadow play on the back wall.

The story of the play concerns a dissolute mother seeking to extract her teenage daughter from a religious cult with the assistance of a deprogrammer of questionable means. We’re left with no one to root for, even when the cult leader, played with silicone-slick determination by Tom Coiner, appears in the second half.

WE ARE PUSSY RIOT, by Barbara Hammond, brings new life to the expression “show trial.” The play provides a context for the antics of the provocative Russian feminist group, a punk artist collective whose means and motives are easily misinterpreted by Western media.

The piece incorporates a jumble of overtly theatrical elements, some more successful than others: exaggerated gesture, lines spoken as a chorus, audience participation, a dance break with Madonna (who has spoken publicly in support of the group). If the pre-show in the cramped lobby of the Marinoff is a muddle, the cast are quick on their feet in dealing with audience members. (On premiere night, T. Ryder Smith, as Russian prosecutor, gave somewhat willing volunteer Paul a sheet of charges to read; when Paul begged off, saying that he needed his reading glasses, Smith bounded back to Paul’s companion in search of the specs.)

The scenes of the 2012 trial of three members of Pussy Riot, with dialogue taken almost exclusively from public statements, are interleaved with scenes in the cell of dissident Sergey (Smith, again), a composite character. While we are left with the impression that the young women’s movement will prove to be a flash in the pan, the passages with Sergey give the play gravity, bringing all that dancing on the catwalk back to earth. Russia’s problems and injustices aren’t going away soon, and maybe this kick in the shins from these young women with their guitars and video cameras will spark something of lasting impact.

  • Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
  • World Builders, by Johnna Adams, directed by Nicole A. Watson
  • Everything You Touch, by Sheila Callaghan, directed by May Adrales
  • On Clover Road, by Steven Dietz, directed by Ed Herendeen
  • WE ARE PUSSY RIOT, by Barbara Hammon, directed by Tea Alagić
  • The Full Catastrophe, by Michael Weller, based on the novel by David Carkeet, directed by Ed Herendeen