Every house has a door takes on Bergman, Makavejev, and Cavell in Coil production at P.S. 122

Performance Space 122
150 First Ave. at Ninth St.
Through January 9, $20
Festival runs through January 29
www.ps122.org
www.everyhousehasadoor.org

At the beginning of Every House Has a Door’s Let us think of these things often. Let us speak of them never. the audience is told that it doesn’t need to know anything about Dušan Makavejev, Ingmar Bergman, or Stanley Cavell to enjoy the show, but a brief look at the source material does provide valuable insight to help one better understand and appreciate what they are about to see. In January 1978, philosopher Stanley Cavell attended a presentation by Dušan Makavejev at a Harvard conference entitled “Bergman and Dreams” in which the Yugoslavian director of W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism screened a short experimental work composed of nonverbal scenes from films by Ingmar Bergman. Cavell described the experience in an article that dealt with time, audience involvement, artistic reappropriation, and other elements. “The question Is it possible to construct a Bergman film . . . ? serves to make us think again about the relation of film and theater, about the fact that plays have productions and performances whereas films, by comparison, have their awful integrity or finality: modifying them feels like mutilating them,” Cavell writes. “In contrast, members of an audience of a (live) performance are participants in it in varying degrees; writing can be read at any tempo, at any length, in any order, and a passage reread at will. . . . [Film] does not lend itself — with but minor exceptions — to incorporation by the other arts. It is the perfect consumer, with a stomach for anything.”

Chicago troupe presents thought-provoking theater that traps the audience (photo by John W. Sisson Jr.)

Indeed, the audience for Let us think of these things often. Let us speak of them never., which continues at P.S. 122 as part of the Coil festival through January 9, becomes an unwitting participant right from the start, as the seats are set up on three sides of the stage in such a way that if someone needs to use the bathroom or wants to leave before it’s over, they’d have to walk right through the action. Not that the show necessarily warrants early departure, but it is a conceit that makes the audience feel trapped. Conceived by Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish, formerly of Goat Island, and performed by Ghoulish, Selma Banich, Mislav Čavajda, and Stephen Fiehn, the eighty-minute production features disembodied narration referencing the show itself, a re-creation of Makavejev’s “Bergman film” (with moments from such works as Persona, The Virgin Spring, The Seventh Seal, The Silence, and Through a Glass Darkly, using a rolling light source, the presentation of various theories about live vs. cinematic entertainment, using loaves of bread as weapons, and a mimicking of a scene from Makavejev’s Sweet Movie that involves fake flowers and Ghoulish teasing the audience by allowing only glimpses of the original film as he follows Čavajda around the stage while the movie plays on his laptop. It all makes for a wildly inconsistent, intriguing, thought-provoking, confusing, engaging, and frustrating evening of avant-garde theater, with some parts working well (the Bergman re-creation), some appearing downright silly and amateurish (the Makavejev re-creation with plastic flowers), but with a wonderfully devised existential ending that will make you glad you stayed, even if you’re not quite sure about what you’ve just experienced.