Over the past four weeks, theater collective Implied Violence has
built and performed three ambitious shows in a massive warehouse that
used to be a repair station for the waterfront trolley. Each was a
gigantic, messy spectacle about the primal side of life—the title
of the final installment, which closes August 16, is Eat Fight
Fuck.
That warehouse has seen a lot of action this month: two orchestras,
several rock bands, Civil War costumes, marching-band uniforms, Busta
Rhymes raps, pitchers of fake blood, a little real blood,
interpolations of dance and text about the tempestuous life of an
everygirl named Barley Girl, people suffocating each other with plastic
wrap and buckets of water, jackhammers demolishing chunks of
cement, bricks of ice stacked into tall walls, sheaves of wheat,
and a fleet of live chickens that, over the course of the trilogy, have
grown from pullets to flying size.
It’s not punk-rock theater—though the company looks like a
pack of punk dandies, all tattoos and suit vests—it’s heavy-metal theater. The work is dense and virtuosic, fun and
frightening, like somebody might get hurt. On purpose. Implied Violence
makes experimental theater that is (almost always) the opposite of
pretentious. Wherever they perform—usually in fields, warehouses,
and other abandoned spaces—you can feel the charge in the air.
You can tell they mean it. Exactly what
they mean is more difficult to say, which is why so much writing about
Implied Violence descends into lists of images from their performances.
The images are so dramatic and improbable, they set the brain on
fire.
Watching the triptych has been exhilarating and exhausting—you
could feel the energy draining from the company as the weeks wore on.
The first installment, BarleyGirl, was a big bang of
carefully choreographed chaos. The second installment,
Versus, was a meditation on images from BarleyGirl, with
more music and dance. By the third installment, which opened last
weekend, Implied Violence seemed tired. (One of their actors,
Neil Fannin, was actually, torturously tired—he’s staying up for
96 hours as part of the performance.) For once, Implied Violence has
stretched itself too thin. Eat Fight Fuck lacks IV’s typical
rigor and feels like aborted potential: It begins with a truck backing
into the space that disgorges actors and then goes unused. The
Joker, from Batman, makes a lame appearance.
One man keeps shouting, “I want to fuck a baby!” All shock, no
value.
But a tired IV is still better than most: Two weeks ago, a 16-member
panel of artists chose Implied Violence for a fall residency at Robert
Wilson’s Watermill Center on Long Island. Among the panelists:
P.S.1 director Alanna Heiss, Opéra National de Paris manager
Gérard Mortier, and novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. Compared to
the Watermill, the Stranger Genius Award we just gave IV seems a little
paltry.
