A king finds a sadistic past time of marrying, deflowering, then murdering virgins. He continues this perverse hobby until the kingdom is almost out of unwed women. At this time, his advisor’s daughter, Scheherazade, asks to him to marry her. She has plotted with her younger sister to tell the king a story every night at bedtime, and to stop right before the ending (something that would speed up her death if I was him). This keeps him more interested in finding out the ending than in killing her, therefore saving the kingdom. The stories jump back and forth in time from snippets of The Arabian Nights to a modern day love story between an Arab and a Jew in pre-9-11 America. 1001 was written in a style that’s a little hard to define; at first it seems like a stylized meld of comedy and pseudo-realism. As it progresses, you realize that it’s a piece of work about the issue of post 9-11 anti-Arab movements, though, as it kind of punches you in the face with, was there before 9-11. It has a similar feel to the feature Crash.
The actors were astounding. The king, Shahriyar and, Scheherazade, were the same actors that played Alan and Dahna, the pre-9-11, boundary-crossing lovers. There are only six actors in all, but thirty total roles. Maybe it’s because of the specific theater space used, but the actors did a lot of the technical aspects of the play, adding movement to a parachute like thing during Alan and Dahna’s first meeting, as well as when Sinbad talks about his adventures. They moved around props and switched the settings around for different scenes. The minute little details that separated the scenes, such as the lamps that dropped down on opposing sides of the stage to differentiate between Alan’s apartment, and Shahriyar’s palace, were visually stunning as well as just enough to adequately jump worlds. Also it was similar enough in design to provide an odd sense of similarity. The technical director completely bitch-slapped the space. Phenomenal. The way the Space Center Theater was utilized was twice as interesting as the dialogue and the story all together. I can’t even begin to image what a complete pain blockingg the stage for this play was.
No matter where an actor stands, their back is to someone in the audience, but I always felt like the actors were talking directly to me, or at least that I was some creepy peeping-tom voyeur-like fellow, in a grayish off-white, almost yellow trench coat and hat, in an almost noir villain sort of way, peeping, peering into someone’s window like a total freak. I didn’t even notice the lack of intermission, but on the other hand, had there been an intermission; the play would have been difficult to “get back into.” The scenes jumped around too much, plus I personally hate intermission except when it’s really, really, really long, or I have to pee. Otherwise they’re dumb – it’s distracting, it takes too long to get back into the play, the people next to you talk about stupid things, people ask you to explain stuff to them, etc. It was impressive how the play jumped all over the place, to different worlds, but there wasn’t ever a break in the continuity of scenes; one flowed easily into the next, as if the entire story world was interwoven like a piece of knitting. 1001 was amazingly performed, and even though I really didn’t like the story itself at first it grew on me as I thought about it. The production of a play is about more than the story and the dialogue – it’s about the performance.
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Theater and every medium of story telling for that matter, is about not only what it’s saying, but how the combined eftorts of a group interpreting an idea in both objective and non-objective ways can convey a message. In other words, language is just one tool humans have to assign meaning. Imagine how dull life would be if everything could be effectively stated in five or ten words and the entire world would understand regardless of race, creed, language, personal opinions, or mental capacity. Art would be pointless. ILife would be pointless. Maybe the meaning of life is the search for understanding. Maybe we’re forever doomed to not ever be able to directly say what we mean to. Maybe life is to be interpreted. Maybe we’re just a collection of stories, and the human experience cannot be simplified to such ideals without knowing everyone that ever lived and their experiences. Maybe life is a giant quilt, and we’re all a piece. Wouldn’t it be nice to be god? It would be nice if he existed.
