by Michael Richards
On the evening of Dec 11, I had the pleasure of attending a performance of “LINGUA II: Maledetto” by Evergreen’s Experimental Music Ensemble. To summarize the summary provided in the show program penned by “Maledetto” author Kenneth Gaburo, it is an attack attempting to reconstrue one’s meaning of an opera, music, and the word “screw” in order to lubricate the brain before mind-fucking it into understanding the relationship between orgies, denotation, the American Standards Act, and (of course) screws.
The performance took place in the dining hall of an event space called The Lord Mansion, an incredible building right behind the state house that is available to be booked for performances and other events. This is provided we don’t all die if we start gathering in-person again. After taking a small tour of the building, admiring the architecture, and dreaming of starting an Evergreen Greek program with no gender separation and hazing centered around intense spiritual experiences followed by personalized therapy and orgies, I took a seat in the middle row of about thirty chairs lined up in the dining hall in front of a set consisting of a suburban sitcom dinner table, a solitary chair, a music stand, and a podium.
Before the performance of “Maledetto” was an experimental guitar piece by Ben Kapp performed by him and ensemble director Arun Chandra. It too was designed to make us think of music in different ways, and did this by exploring what you could do with different sounds of the guitar. This included lots of tapping. Harmonics. A bit of slapping! And a surprising amount of spoons, but overall was quite impressive in terms of synchronicity. I found it made me think quite a bit about what was intended to be music and what was intended to be sound. It was anxiety-inducing but at the same time enjoyable. Fellow Cooper Point Journal writer L Kravit said at its conclusion, “I am extremely uncomfortable.” And I concurred.
After a brief break and an explanation of the piece by Arun Chandra, the performers took their places on stage. At the music stand was Kate Slaymaker, dressed in all black with a turtleneck which confirmed that this was, in fact, going to be an experimental theater performance. Sitting in the chair at the front was Ben Kapp, dressed in an unkempt suit. At the podium behind them was Ben Michaelis, dressed much like a senator about to give a speech. Sitting around the dining table like attendees of an upscale dinner party was the chorus, containing Amy Shephard (Soprano), Shannon Kerrigan (Alto), November Wrede (Tenor), and Alice McIntyre (Bass).
Intrigued about what could possibly come to fruition from a performance described in an ad by Chandra as “The tongues of seven performers lick[ing] you through sound,” I was not disappointed. It began with the entire cast hissing together creating a sort of white noise in the room. After a minute or so of various “sssss” sounds, the man at the podium began to speak in a very monotone voice much like a professor attempting to explain quantum physics or historical materialism. His topic was “screw” and the various uses of the word. Through the entire play he stayed in the same position and spoke at almost the same volume, delivering an Encyclopedia Britannica entry for the term “screw.” While he was doing this, Kate Slaymaker would interject with a mixture of remarks, random words, and subtly sexual quips about what was being preached at the podium or about the explicit things being shouted by Ben Kapp from his chair in a way which reminded me of Cookie Monster. To round it all out, there was the chorus in the back. They acted much like casual attendees at this screw-based dinner party and would make comments about things that were said in a liturgical unison that sounded like a telegram going back and forth between the high and low pairs, Amy and Shannon, and Alice and November.
As the performance progressed, the chorus got rowdier and rowdier at multiple points after Slaymaker started getting explicitly sexual once Michaelis started talking about lubrication of screws to increase their effectiveness and mentioned the word come. After this, for the next half hour or so, the performance became a cacophony of cum. Lines like, “You cum in tobacco.” “You cum in perfume over the performance of feet.” “You come alive” echoed throughout the dining hall as I got more and more back pain from both the dining chair I was sitting on and my inability to sit in positions where I don’t get cramps.
This very dysphoric but syncopated blast of words was quite disassociating ,but I found myself entranced in the ways these different forms of speech and song interacted with each other. I was also very compelled by the information being read by the encyclopedia. Did you know that early irrigation systems were carved out by a giant Archimedes Screw? Or that robber barons in the screw industry fought over the American Standards Act’s regulation of what standard screw sizes should be? I sure as fuck didn’t. And I probably would not have retained that kind of information were it not charismatically read by a man in a suit trying to explain it over a chorus of people yelling about cum.
Overall, the night was marvelous. I spoke briefly with the performers and Arun Chandra on my way out and congratulated them on performing something that must have been incredibly difficult to rehearse and discussed how it was truly something unique to experience. During these conversations, I was reminded about how much of a pleasure it is to enjoy a live performance. The joy of watching people put on a show. The appreciation you feel for the labor that it takes to perfect something to the point that it actually hits home.
Screw harder.
