Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Auckland Arts Festival
Gravity & Grace by Eleanor Bishop and Karin McCracken.
Q Theatre
Until March 24
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Gravity & Grace is adapted from Kraus’ account of the unsuccessful film she made in the 1990’s – Gravity & Grace. That film follows Grace as she finds a connection to a cult predicting doomsday and the arrival of a spaceship, and Gravity, who leaves New Zealand to try her luck as an artist in New York City.
Kraus is probably most well known for her book and TV series “I Love Dick” but Eleanor Bishop and Karin McCracken have mined he obscure Gravity & Grace to make a play which addresses ideas about the flawed or failed artist as well as reflecting on the creative process generally.
The play set in the US and New Zealand where much of the filming was shot because she had obtained NZ Arts Council funding. We follow her inexperienced attempts as a director and her unsuccessful efforts to get interest from the film festivals and agents. Along with this we delve into her personal and professional relationships which blight the films development.
Her own attempts at creating art works are paralleled in her homage to three other flawed creatives: the French writer and philosopher Simone Weil and her book La pesanteur et la grâce (Gravity and Grace), the American artist Paul Thek whose star burnt out after an initial burst of success and the German Red Army activist Ulrike Meinhof.
Its as if she is saying these great artists also made mistakes, just like me.
The two writers of the play also are the stars of the work with Eleanor Bishop’s faultless direction and Karin McCracken giving an incisive portrayal of Chris Kraus.
McCracken is on stage the whole time and holds the play together with her range of emotions as well as some witty dialogue . She is also cleverly presented with many sequences featuring her filmed. Often her projected head loomed over her as she sat at her desk or she was shown from strange angles suggesting the characters many dimensions.
The cast play a variety of roles including Andy Warhol (Sam Snedden); Ulrike Meinhof (Ni Dekkers-Reihana); Simone Weil (Rongopai Tickwell) and Paul Thek (Simon Leary). Sneddon also plays Sylvère Lotringer, Kraus’s husband as well as Gavin her S&M phone lover.
Much of the success of the play comes from the innovative staging created by designer Meg Rollandi, the visuals of Owen McCarthy, and Rachel Neser, the soundscape designed by Emi 恵美 Pogoni and lighting by Rob Larsen.
The work is overwritten at times and could do with a trim and there are a few sequences such as the cast working on what was possibly a Paul Thek mural which doesn’t seem to add much to the work.
But it is one of the most refreshing and inventive recent New Zealand works with fine writing, and suburb stage craft.
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