As its name implies, the Brooklyn Academy of Music's (BAM) Next Wave Festival, which opened in October 1988 and continued almost to the end of the year, was intended as a harbinger of things to come in the arts. "Next Wave" was a way of denoting that the performances were avant-garde, innovative, the way ahead. They included a spectacle titled The Warrior Ant from the creators of The Gospel at Colonus; a piece by Argentina's Teatro del Sur called, promisingly, Tango Varsaviano and The Power Project, a performance piece by clown Bob Berky.
Of the three pieces, Berky's work was by far the least publicized and proved the most accomplished. While the other two pieces were hardly successful (one might even consider them debacles), they were instructive in that they demonstrated what currently masquerades as the avant-garde.
Seeing all three in the context of the much talked-about Lincoln Center production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot starring Steve Martin and Robin Williams was extraordinarily ironic. Though the Mike Nichols production of Beckett had, God knows, its own hornet's nest of problems, it did point up the fact that Backett's seminal play, first performed in 1953, was far and away more sophisticated, "modern," and, thirty-five years later, more avant-garde than anything being witnessed anywhere at BAM.
A New Godot?
Nobody expected, of course, a new Godot to emerge from the Next Wave Festival; and comparisons, though odious, remain valuable. Nor is it without interest that, in this day and age particularly, with its mania for celebrity, Waiting for Godot can be Hollywoodized beyond belief and tolerance by its two stars, even by F. Murray Abraham as Pozzo, with only modern clown Bill Irwin left to create a poignant Lucky faithful to both the letter and the feeling of Beckett.
Beckett, of course, based his characters on clowns: Estragon (Martin) is physically clearly modeled on Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp (Beckett makes no bones about the homage), and the influence of Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon does not go unnoticed, either, in the creations of Vladimir. The play extends the profoundest of philosophies through what is essentially a vaudeville act.
Clowns, true bohemians, have always been perfect metaphors for artists. Fellini loves them. Bergman used one to harrowing effect in The Naked Night. Leoncavallo's pagliacco is the archetype of self-pity. Clowns are the common denominator: Their feelings are raw, on the surface, and their every action resonates. Their concerns are so mundane--eating, sleeping, coping with the banal abuses of the universe--that they achieve a universality. They are effortlessly metaphorical.
Communicating Kazoo
Bob Berky is a clown. He has a bulbous red nose and he wears baggy trousers. Using a kazoo to communicate (which alternates as his George Burns-ish cigar), Berky can create extremely human sounds with his funny instrument. He gets the tone down pat, making noises that sound like "Very nice," "You're kidding," or "Give me a break." It's surprising how much "conversation" he can whip up with his little kazoo. (On the other hand, it not so surprising at all if you've
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