TRR photo by Charlie Buterbaugh Raymond Bobgan, facing the stage, creator of Wishelm Theater in Cleveland; Tannis Kowalchuk, left, co-director at NaCl; and Ker Wells, creator of Number Eleven Theater in Toronto, collaborate on composing their play, “The Punch and Judy Show,” on NaCl’s theater floor, which Kowalchuck and her husband, Brad Krumholz, recently refinished with the help of friends. (Click for larger image)

Theater meant to make contact

NaCl opens fourth Catskill Festival of New Theater

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

HIGHLAND LAKE, NY — It grew clear to Brad Krumholz that theater could do more than what he saw, and he submerged himself in experimental drama.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, he traveled to Denmark to study theater with Eugenio Barba, an inventive actor and director who devised new ways of community exchange through performance. Krumholz worked with Barba’s group of actors that had performed together for some 30 years, and something about the way they worked compelled him.

“I wanted to get at it. I knew theater could provide a unique experience, though I seldom saw American theater activated to do what it should,” Krumholz said.

	TRR photo by Charlie Buterbaugh Brad Krumholz, NaCl co-director, in the background, prepares lunch for Evan Mazunik, left, pianist, and Jim Whitney, bassist in the Walter Thompson Orchestra. (Click for larger image)

Since 1997, co-directors Krumholz and Tannis Kowalchuk have worked to establish The Catskill Festival of New Theater at the North American Cultural Laboratory (NaCl), a spacious theater and three-story home open to actors and directors who have set out to touch audiences with experimental theater.

“The performers I choose to invite to the festival must be working to develop new systems of communicating on stage,” Krumholz said. Groups such as the Walter Thompson Orchestra stay at the NaCl house for a week and in exchange help prepare house meals, share their performance ideas with other resident artists and perform for a community audience at the conclusion of their stay.

Krumholz said the best performers have the ability to control an audience’s response, though many people struggle to say what they want with language and gestures in daily communication.

	TRR photo by Charlie Buterbaugh The NaCl Theater is located on the Highland Lake Road, 1.5 miles from the intersection of County Road 26 in Eldred. (Click for larger image)

“As hard as it is to have this kind of control off stage, it is even harder to do it in front of an audience.”

Artists at NaCl pursue experimentation as a line of research, working to discover new and sometimes avant garde ways of arousing fear, pity, laughter and other emotions that leave audiences feeling connected with a performance.

NaCl’s fourth summer festival opens on Friday, August 1 with a variety of short acts, or vaudevilles, and “10 Brecht Poems,” a performance of Bertolt Brecht’s poetry compounded by the movement, song and spectacle with actresses Kowalchuk and Leese Walker of the Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble.

Opening night will begin at 7:30 p.m. as young stilt walkers of NaCl’s Stilt Club greet visitors on the theater lawn. The vaudeville evening will feature the Circus Amok Band, a circus troupe with Terry Dame and Jenny Romaine and “Angry Baby,” a comedic puppet show with Alex Endy, Erin Eagar and Nick Butler. Also, NaCl has invited WJFF’s Jason Dole, host of the hydro-powered radio show, Telepathic Radio, to act as master of ceremony.

Then, on Saturday, August 2, Walter Thompson will direct his orchestra in a production of Soundpainting, ensemble music composed live as Thompson and his musicians communicate with a language of some 700 gestures, or signs, invented by Thompson over the past 20 years.

	Contributed photo Kesse Wakjerm keftm if Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble and Tannis Kowalchuk will perform "10 Brecht Poems" on August 1. (Click for larger image)

“Armed with a shared vocabulary, each player reads my hands for the style of the next sound, movement or utterance, its duration, its tempo or key,” Thompson said, sitting on the front porch just before lunch. As with any language, the performers—musicians, actors, dancers and singers—reciprocate communication; the conductor and performers respond to one another in an ensemble Thompson calls structured improvisation.

“Sometimes the outcome is predictable, and sometimes it isn’t,” he said. To be sure, one production of Soundpainting never looks or sounds like another.

In practice and theory, Thompson advances Krumholz’ determination to connect with audiences—to deliver clear aesthetic, visceral and political messages—in new ways. “My main desire is to create theater. For me, that is a gift that I give to the world,” Krumholz said.

For more information or to reserve seats call 845/557-0694. Tickets are available on a sliding scale from $8 to $20; audience members are asked to pay what they can. Visit nacl.org for directions to the theater and a complete description of the 2003 festival of five weeks of performance.