Cork Midsummer Arts Festival

June 29, 2010

For about two weeks each summer, Cork celebrates the best in music, theater, dance and performance during the Cork Midsummer Arts Festival. Every night, venues throughout the city host events in theaters that range from a small black box to those that are full sized performance spaces.

Last week, a group of us went to see “Showstopper!”, an improv musical. Improv requires talents that don’t come naturally to me, but it’s incredible – or showstopping – to watch those that are skilled in improv. The ten or so actors did not know what the show that evening would be about until it was actually happening. The narrator led the audience through choosing a setting – Egypt, various musical themes – Sweeney Todd, Grease, Chicago, and song names. What resulted was an hour-and-a-half on-the-spot musical complete with good versus bad, a love story, tension within a family, complicated characters, and more. Throughout, the narrator would freeze the scene to get more ideas or to give the actors specific directions (“He gives an emotional monologue that brings a tear to his own eye.”). At one point, when there were several characters and back stories, he made them do a rewind and fast forward scene. The actors, who played different characters in different scenes, swapped red and black hats and scarves while whirling across the stage. I could barely keep up with what was going on, so I don’t know how the cast did it! These are the best of the best in improv, and the program named prestigious theaters and programs in each bio. A musical probably has a model that you can tweak as you go, and these actors had mastered it. Over the weekend, the Festival also featured a 26-hour soap opera drama with recaps at the beginning of each 2-hour segment. I can’t even imagine how actors from around the world prepare for such a marathon event, or how they all know what is happening in each subplot. I think it’s something that JMU’s New & Improv’d should try out?!

The second show that most of us went to was “FML.” All of us have visited the popular website where people write blurbs about an instance where their life was messed up or embarrassing. The program advertised the show as the story of 15 teenagers in Cork and how they deal with their day-to-day lives, from the happy to the sad. But the show ended up as something that I didn’t expect at all, and I left the theater depressed. It began with a classical overture playing as all the teens sat beneath the stage lights slouched in chairs or perched on chairs. They were acting throughout the show, but it wasn’t a show in a traditional sense with plot and setting. They took turns at the mics at the front of the stage telling stories or having conversations with one another. The most powerful scene was when one of the girls, Lydia, was standing at the mic alone. She stuttered and couldn’t get through her story, so one of the boys stood beside her. He at first whispered things in her ear to prompt her, but since she repeated anything he said, he soon said inappropriate things that the audience then laughed at. But to me, it wasn’t funny; it was heartbreaking to see him take advantage of Lydia. After he left, she started screaming into the mic with a thumping bass behind her: “U-G-L-Y. You ain’t got no alibi. You ugly. Yeah, yeah, you ugly.” It felt as if she was never going to stop, and her voice grew louder and more pained with each refrain, until one of the girls came to lead her away. Other stories throughout the show were more lighthearted, such as the petite gay boy who idolized Lady Gaga and showed off his own dance moves across the stage, but each scene was tied together with a theme: Life as a teenager is hard, and too many think it’s too hard and end life abruptly. One of those was Lydia. It was hard to watch the raw emotion on the stage, and throughout the show you grow to see the teens as real teens (which is why they received a standing ovation for their incredible talents). That boy could be someone in your high school class, and that girl could be your neighbor. Seeing their agony and struggles was almost too much, and it makes you think about what is going on in the lives of your peers and friends. What else is there within?