Review: Dayna Hanson/Gloria’s Cause. Idea by Dayna Hanson and Dave Proscia. Co-creators: Peggy Piacenza and Dave Proscia. Directed by Dayna Hanson. Choreographic creation by Dayna Hanson, Jim Kent, Wade Madsen, Peggy Piacenza, Pol Rosenthal, Jessie Smith. Original music by Maggie Brown, Dayna Hanson, Paul Moore, Dave Proscia. With “collaborating performers” Maggie Brown, Dayna Hanson, Jim Kent, Wade Madsen, Paul Moore, Peggy Piacenza, Dave Proscia, Pol Rosenthal, Jessie Smith. Now through December 5 at On The Boards.
I’m exhausted after typing out those complicated credits! Really, wouldn’t it be easier just to say, “Created by the Ensemble” and list everyone? Choreographer/artist Dayna Hanson is a collaborationist and her latest piece, “Gloria’s Cause” is a multi-hyphenate wet dream. EVERYONE in this show pulls their weight and then some with multiple talents on display. There are nine performers on stage and each and everyone of them wears a number of different hats: singing, dancing, playing instruments, acting. This show features dialogue scenes, storytelling scenes, nude dance scenes without music, clothed dance scenes with music, musical numbers, filmed projections, and a depraved dancing eagle who sexually molests Ms Hanson. Not featured: any shirtless men as depicted in the ad seen on The Stranger. I cry “Foul” at this misrepresentation! (Or, would that be “Fowl” as the shirtless male in question is wearing the Eagle headpiece?)
And, what IS this show all about? Gloria’s Cause is Ms Hanson’s take on American history with particular emphasis on the Revolutionary War and some of the disenfranchised participants in that war, including Deborah Sampson Gannett, a Continental soldier who cross-dressed so she could join in the fight. We also get moments with the Founding Fathers: Washington, Jefferson, Ben Franklin, (who talk in funny voices and lose their pants) not to mention visits from the aforementioned depraved American Eagle, Paul Revere and sundry real characters from the time period. Later in the show, we get a corny, but moving video montage that brings us up to 2010, but the focus is primarily on that late 18th century period in American history when our country was being created, and what we can learn from those beginnings to better help us understand how we have become, for better and worse, the complicated and confounding country we’ve become. It’s an interesting premise, and if you’ve ever read any of the work of noted historian Howard Zinn and appreciated it, you’re going to find some common ground in this piece. Ms Hanson, like Dr Zinn, wants to look at the stories behind the obvious ones…not to focus ONLY on the famous white men who “made” history and the big moments they created, but the lesser known men and women of different colors and social castes who contributed to those moments and other less well known events, in the history of this country. It’s an interesting premise and largely I think Ms Hanson and company have pulled it off…Gloria’s Cause is thought provoking and informative. It is also sometimes a bit diffuse and confounding. There’s a lot going on here.
There’s a take-off on a Jerry Springer type talk show confrontation, cherry pie eating, and lots of pulsing rock music that at times vaguely recalls Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. Yes, it’s a mixed bag show and it doesn’t always make sense, (at least to me) and at times, like a lot of contemporary performance theater art, it teeters over into self-indulgence (the opening didn’t work for me/the video montage was cliched) but Gloria’s Cause is very entertaining, with some great high energy music and dance numbers and it’s own sense of self. It’s arty but it’s accessible arty. You leave the theater satisfied with the quality of the work and particularly of the stagecraft involved in creating that work. It’s a handsome show with a handsome, hard working talented cast and crew.
What’s good about this show? The dancing was very good and I particularly enjoyed Jim Kent’s sharply executed work. The music wasn’t brilliantly original but it was brilliantly executed. The panel discussion/pie eating/personal anecdote scene was clever and funny and smart. (I also coveted the high backed, white chairs some of the cast were sitting in). Dayna Hanson is very talented stage director and her experience as a dancer and choreographer only enhances those talents. I loved the fluidity of the show as we segued from one sequence to the other; it was a graceful but artistically mannered and stylized progression. I would love to see Ms Hanson direct some more mainstream work…I think her take on any of Brecht’s plays would be fascinating.
Other stuff/people I liked: Peggy Piacenza’s Eagle was not only well danced, but well acted as well, though I was confounded by a couple of audience members laughing at sections of her scene, especially when the character seemed to be in its death throes…to me, it was tragic, but there was a few people chortling through that segment. And I only very much enjoyed Wade Madsen in a variety of characters including an enraged George Washington appearing on a “Springeresque” talk show, and Pol Rosenthal’s wry, ironic take as an “Individual” and what it means to be “born free” and his stint as the talk show host.
More kudos to the lighting and set design by Dave Proscia. It’s an impressive set with wall to wall carpeting and interesting set pieces that glide around the stage and it’s all lit with a flair for the dramatic.
Who’s this for? History/Art/Dance/Theater nerds. AKA, the Liberal Agenda.
– Michael Strangeways
