Full Article Text
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 07, 2019
THEATER: To Delete or Not To Delete, That Is The
Digital Question in "User Not Found"
USER NOT FOUND ** out of ****
BAM NEXT WAVE AT GREENE GRAPE ANNEX
The UK theater company Dante or Die specializes in site-specific
performances. Hotel rooms, self-storage units, ski lifts -- they've been
there, done that. The company's latest show is User Not Found and it
takes place in an actual café, in this case Brooklyn's Greene GrapeAnnex near BAM. As part of the Next Wave festival, Dante Or Diedelivers a mediation on grief in our digital age. Audience membersaren't just seated in the intimate space of a working café. They're alsogiven headphones and a cell phone which displays key bits of
information like text messages and social media posts. As with so
many envelope-pushing shows, you can't help feeling more time wasspent working out the bells and whistles of how it will all work ratherthan the actual story.
That story is a familiar one. Terry (played by Terry O'Donovan) is
occupying his usual seat at the local coffee shop, pointing out otherregulars and their various quirks. Then Terry gets a text from a friendexpressing their deep sorrow. That, of course, would send a chill downanyone's spine. But Terry has to receive eight more (and a phone call
from an older woman, which he doesn't answer) before ponderously
texting back that he doesn't know what has happened. What arepeople texting sympathies about? And then it clicks. Terry dated Luca(sic) for about nine years and then Luca broke up with him. And nowLuca is dead. As Terry says, first Luca left him and now Luca's left the
world.
Terry is distraught, as anyone would be. Clearly Terry hadn't gotten
over the break-up yet. As if the pain and grief weren't bad enough,Terry discovers a very modern twist to all this. When they were still
together, Luca named Terry his digital executor. Terry now has fullMICHAEL GILTZ AT WORK
Michael Giltz is a freelance writer
based in NYC and can be reached atmgiltz@pipeline.com
FAVORITE LINKS
Americablog
Five O'Clock Lightning baseball blogDeep Pop -- Lori Lakin's Blog
The Back Page -- Jason Page on ESPN
Radio
Cine-Blog -- George Robinson's Blog
Documents On Art & Cinema - Daryl
Chin's Blog
Brucie G's Wondrous Blog Of
Adventure and Mystery -- Bruce
Greenspan's Blog
BLOG ARCHIVE
▼ 2019 (86)
▼ November (6)
BOOKS: Is Finance The Root Of
All Evil?
access to all of Luca's social media accounts and must decide what if
anything should be preserved and what should be tidily erased from
the internet. It's the five stages of grief, 2.0.
Possibilities abound. Luca blocked Terry from his Facebook account
(and presumably Twitter et al), which Terry says he appreciated -- lesspossibility of turning into an online stalker, he confesses cheerily. Now
Terry can see exactly what Luca has been up to since they separated.
Did Luca have an online journal? Did he have an account on a gaydating app? Did he have an account on a gay dating app before theybroke up? But none of the voyeuristic possibilities are explored. No
secrets are revealed.
Instead, Terry grieves over his lost love while looking at public
Facebook posts and the like. Terry also reconnects with Luca's motherMaria who, in one of the show's few subtle touches, mentions in a textshe regrets not asking Terry to speak at the memorial. Really, he just
mourns and remembers why he loved Luca in the first place and all
those digital files help him do so. Terry might just as easily be sortingthrough Luca's closet or cleaning out his desk drawer, clutching abeloved t-shirt or discovering a birthday card Luca tucked away. Theresult would be the same.
Technology adds very little to User Not Found. The piece is a
monologue and the information we get via headphones and cell phone(or should I say mobile?) is minimal and mostly unnecessary. It begins
with some scene-setting music by Norah Jones and background
chatter. But why over headphones? In fact the room is filled with themusic before we put on the headphones so it makes a seamlesstransition. But why transition at all? Most of the time, we're nothearing the inner thoughts of Terry. We're watching him talk out loud
and then hearing the audio feed. It leaves his performance at anTHEATER: Good Intentions No
Substitute For Good Me...
THEATER: "Richard III," A
Schemer Undone By Greed,...
THEATER: "Enchanted April" --
The Charming Tale Th...
THEATER: To Delete or Not To
Delete, That Is The D...
MOVIES: "American Dharma"
Bum Steve Bannon
► October (21)
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► June (3)
► May (6)
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► January (8)
► 2018 (38)
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► 2016 (2)
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► 2013 (5)
► 2012 (17)
► 2011 (15)
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► 2009 (43)
► 2008 (86)
► 2007 (781)
► 2006 (2412)
► 2005 (5)
unnecessary remove.
Further, the texting and other visual information is generally clunky
and slow. Why does it take Terry so long to text someone to ask whatthe heck they're offering condolences about? And when he does textit's very cumbersome indeed and I can't imagine why. The same is true
when Terry scrolls through Luca's social media. It takes forever and is
quite unrevealing.
Terry focuses in on one photo of Luca holding a balloon and it was
actually more powerful just to listen to him describe it rather than
actually look at the darn thing. Hmm, we can look at a music videofrom one of Luca's favorite artists...or we can watch Terry talk aboutthat annoying pop artist and eventually break down as the song hits
him emotionally. And when Terry describes a leopard (or panther? or
lion? some cat-like creature, anyway) coming into the café andprowling around the other customers it's a lot more interesting toimagine than anything we might see on screen. Yes, they sweeten themix with the howl of the creature, but Terry already fired ourimagination without it.
Again and again, the bells and whistles of the tech got in the way. With
the audience isolated in headphones for much of the show, Iunderstood why they sweetened the mix with some low-key cannedaudience laughter at appropriate moments. Still, it was distracting.
Other ideas worked better, like the time Terry was leaving a voice mail
message...and kept leaving it on the audio track but in real lifeaddressed us and said his message was even boring himself. Terrystruggles to remember some moments...and photos of them appearblurry on the screen of the mobiles we're holding. A fine idea though ithad little dramatic impact for me. Ditto the many abstract videos
meant to convey the emotional turmoil Terry is undergoing. A little
better was the use of that one photo of Luca holding a balloon. AsTerry went on about it, the photo became subtly smaller and smalleruntil it seemed to float away into the distance on the phone screen.
Again, this was more interesting than impactful but at least it showed
them trying.
The piece was written by Chris Goode and directed by Daphne Attias,
who co-founded the company with actor O'Donovan. As Terry, he
offers an immediate intimacy with the audience, not to mention some
wonderful body work as he rolls and crawls and glides around theroom at one key moment. But strip away all the toys and themonologue itself is banal. If there were any insights at hand, I was toobusy looking at my cell phone to catch them.
Worst of all, the show never even starts to grapple with the question it
insistently raises: if you could delete your digital legacy when you die(or a loved one's after they're gone), would you? In the show, that'sapparently just a simple yes or no answer and Terry makes a choice.
But he barely scratches the surface of how he makes his decision or
why.
Isn't there some curating to be done? If every image of a loved one is
stored online on their Facebook or Twitter account, would you want tojust delete them all? How about choosing the best? How about askingthe man's mother if she'd like some or all of those photos to be placedin an online album she can access? Or printing the best in a book you
give her? Are there images of your former lover and his new
boyfriend? Do you save those? Do you reach out to the lover? If you'rethe only person with control over all these potential memories, isn't itimportant to think about everyone else? And what does it mean to save
a static Facebook page? Do you really just want it sitting there? If the
person who died only had four Twitter posts ( like Terry does), whythen it's not much of a decision. Get rid of it. Since Luca had tens ofthousands of Twitter posts, you've got some thinking to do. Are they
just boring images of the meal he's eating? Or is there a thread, a
celebration of the life he led or the causes he championed or thefriends he had that are reflected by those posts? Then you get to thedating apps (be they Grindr or OKCupid) and a whole other host ofethical questions arise. And hey, does the loved one who just died haveonline friends you knew nothing about? How much of our life are we
leading online? Is it meaningless or does it have substance and import
and matter?
As you can see from above, overseeing the social accounts of some
who died raises a host of practical and philosophical questions. In
dealing with them, we should learn more about Luca while Terrywould perhaps reveal more about himself, what Luca means to himand how Terry views this life. Instead, Terry makes his choice andthat's it, beyond a quick aphorism. What does this decision mean tohim? We don't know. And the bells and whistles of technology can't
distract us from realizing that.
THEATER OF 2019
Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen * 1/2
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia ***
BLKS ** 1/2
Moulin Rouge ** 1/2
Bat Out Of Hell **
Unchilding **
Sea Wall/ A Life ** 1/2
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ***
Betrayal *** 1/2
Fifty Million Frenchmen ** 1/2
Freestyle Love Supreme ** 1/2
Derren Brown: Secret ***
(A)loft Modulation * 1/2
The Great Society **
I Can't See *
Heroes Of The Fourth Turning ** 1/2
Chasing Rainbows: The Road To Oz ***
The Glass Menagerie (dir Austin Pendleton & Peter Bloch) **
Terra Firma (debut of The Coop theater company) **
Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation ***
Dublin Carol ** 1/2
Soft Power **
The Decline and Fall of The Entire World As Seen Through The Eyes
Of Cole Porter ***
For Colored Girls ** 1/2
Scotland, PA **
The Sound Inside *** (great cast, clumsy ending)
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book
lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the
way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new
releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal
recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz
Sandbox , a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on
entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as
guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website.
Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called
Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
POSTED BY MICHAEL GILTZ AT 12:56 AM
NO COMMENTS:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)Newer Post Older Post Home
THEATER: To Delete or Not To Delete, That Is The
Digital Question in "User Not Found"
USER NOT FOUND ** out of ****
BAM NEXT WAVE AT GREENE GRAPE ANNEX
The UK theater company Dante or Die specializes in site-specific
performances. Hotel rooms, self-storage units, ski lifts -- they've been
there, done that. The company's latest show is User Not Found and it
takes place in an actual café, in this case Brooklyn's Greene GrapeAnnex near BAM. As part of the Next Wave festival, Dante Or Diedelivers a mediation on grief in our digital age. Audience membersaren't just seated in the intimate space of a working café. They're alsogiven headphones and a cell phone which displays key bits of
information like text messages and social media posts. As with so
many envelope-pushing shows, you can't help feeling more time wasspent working out the bells and whistles of how it will all work ratherthan the actual story.
That story is a familiar one. Terry (played by Terry O'Donovan) is
occupying his usual seat at the local coffee shop, pointing out otherregulars and their various quirks. Then Terry gets a text from a friendexpressing their deep sorrow. That, of course, would send a chill downanyone's spine. But Terry has to receive eight more (and a phone call
from an older woman, which he doesn't answer) before ponderously
texting back that he doesn't know what has happened. What arepeople texting sympathies about? And then it clicks. Terry dated Luca(sic) for about nine years and then Luca broke up with him. And nowLuca is dead. As Terry says, first Luca left him and now Luca's left the
world.
Terry is distraught, as anyone would be. Clearly Terry hadn't gotten
over the break-up yet. As if the pain and grief weren't bad enough,Terry discovers a very modern twist to all this. When they were still
together, Luca named Terry his digital executor. Terry now has fullMICHAEL GILTZ AT WORK
Michael Giltz is a freelance writer
based in NYC and can be reached atmgiltz@pipeline.com
FAVORITE LINKS
Americablog
Five O'Clock Lightning baseball blogDeep Pop -- Lori Lakin's Blog
The Back Page -- Jason Page on ESPN
Radio
Cine-Blog -- George Robinson's Blog
Documents On Art & Cinema - Daryl
Chin's Blog
Brucie G's Wondrous Blog Of
Adventure and Mystery -- Bruce
Greenspan's Blog
BLOG ARCHIVE
▼ 2019 (86)
▼ November (6)
BOOKS: Is Finance The Root Of
All Evil?
access to all of Luca's social media accounts and must decide what if
anything should be preserved and what should be tidily erased from
the internet. It's the five stages of grief, 2.0.
Possibilities abound. Luca blocked Terry from his Facebook account
(and presumably Twitter et al), which Terry says he appreciated -- lesspossibility of turning into an online stalker, he confesses cheerily. Now
Terry can see exactly what Luca has been up to since they separated.
Did Luca have an online journal? Did he have an account on a gaydating app? Did he have an account on a gay dating app before theybroke up? But none of the voyeuristic possibilities are explored. No
secrets are revealed.
Instead, Terry grieves over his lost love while looking at public
Facebook posts and the like. Terry also reconnects with Luca's motherMaria who, in one of the show's few subtle touches, mentions in a textshe regrets not asking Terry to speak at the memorial. Really, he just
mourns and remembers why he loved Luca in the first place and all
those digital files help him do so. Terry might just as easily be sortingthrough Luca's closet or cleaning out his desk drawer, clutching abeloved t-shirt or discovering a birthday card Luca tucked away. Theresult would be the same.
Technology adds very little to User Not Found. The piece is a
monologue and the information we get via headphones and cell phone(or should I say mobile?) is minimal and mostly unnecessary. It begins
with some scene-setting music by Norah Jones and background
chatter. But why over headphones? In fact the room is filled with themusic before we put on the headphones so it makes a seamlesstransition. But why transition at all? Most of the time, we're nothearing the inner thoughts of Terry. We're watching him talk out loud
and then hearing the audio feed. It leaves his performance at anTHEATER: Good Intentions No
Substitute For Good Me...
THEATER: "Richard III," A
Schemer Undone By Greed,...
THEATER: "Enchanted April" --
The Charming Tale Th...
THEATER: To Delete or Not To
Delete, That Is The D...
MOVIES: "American Dharma"
Bum Steve Bannon
► October (21)
► September (10)
► August (9)
► July (7)
► June (3)
► May (6)
► April (10)
► March (5)
► February (1)
► January (8)
► 2018 (38)
► 2017 (6)
► 2016 (2)
► 2015 (22)
► 2014 (2)
► 2013 (5)
► 2012 (17)
► 2011 (15)
► 2010 (10)
► 2009 (43)
► 2008 (86)
► 2007 (781)
► 2006 (2412)
► 2005 (5)
unnecessary remove.
Further, the texting and other visual information is generally clunky
and slow. Why does it take Terry so long to text someone to ask whatthe heck they're offering condolences about? And when he does textit's very cumbersome indeed and I can't imagine why. The same is true
when Terry scrolls through Luca's social media. It takes forever and is
quite unrevealing.
Terry focuses in on one photo of Luca holding a balloon and it was
actually more powerful just to listen to him describe it rather than
actually look at the darn thing. Hmm, we can look at a music videofrom one of Luca's favorite artists...or we can watch Terry talk aboutthat annoying pop artist and eventually break down as the song hits
him emotionally. And when Terry describes a leopard (or panther? or
lion? some cat-like creature, anyway) coming into the café andprowling around the other customers it's a lot more interesting toimagine than anything we might see on screen. Yes, they sweeten themix with the howl of the creature, but Terry already fired ourimagination without it.
Again and again, the bells and whistles of the tech got in the way. With
the audience isolated in headphones for much of the show, Iunderstood why they sweetened the mix with some low-key cannedaudience laughter at appropriate moments. Still, it was distracting.
Other ideas worked better, like the time Terry was leaving a voice mail
message...and kept leaving it on the audio track but in real lifeaddressed us and said his message was even boring himself. Terrystruggles to remember some moments...and photos of them appearblurry on the screen of the mobiles we're holding. A fine idea though ithad little dramatic impact for me. Ditto the many abstract videos
meant to convey the emotional turmoil Terry is undergoing. A little
better was the use of that one photo of Luca holding a balloon. AsTerry went on about it, the photo became subtly smaller and smalleruntil it seemed to float away into the distance on the phone screen.
Again, this was more interesting than impactful but at least it showed
them trying.
The piece was written by Chris Goode and directed by Daphne Attias,
who co-founded the company with actor O'Donovan. As Terry, he
offers an immediate intimacy with the audience, not to mention some
wonderful body work as he rolls and crawls and glides around theroom at one key moment. But strip away all the toys and themonologue itself is banal. If there were any insights at hand, I was toobusy looking at my cell phone to catch them.
Worst of all, the show never even starts to grapple with the question it
insistently raises: if you could delete your digital legacy when you die(or a loved one's after they're gone), would you? In the show, that'sapparently just a simple yes or no answer and Terry makes a choice.
But he barely scratches the surface of how he makes his decision or
why.
Isn't there some curating to be done? If every image of a loved one is
stored online on their Facebook or Twitter account, would you want tojust delete them all? How about choosing the best? How about askingthe man's mother if she'd like some or all of those photos to be placedin an online album she can access? Or printing the best in a book you
give her? Are there images of your former lover and his new
boyfriend? Do you save those? Do you reach out to the lover? If you'rethe only person with control over all these potential memories, isn't itimportant to think about everyone else? And what does it mean to save
a static Facebook page? Do you really just want it sitting there? If the
person who died only had four Twitter posts ( like Terry does), whythen it's not much of a decision. Get rid of it. Since Luca had tens ofthousands of Twitter posts, you've got some thinking to do. Are they
just boring images of the meal he's eating? Or is there a thread, a
celebration of the life he led or the causes he championed or thefriends he had that are reflected by those posts? Then you get to thedating apps (be they Grindr or OKCupid) and a whole other host ofethical questions arise. And hey, does the loved one who just died haveonline friends you knew nothing about? How much of our life are we
leading online? Is it meaningless or does it have substance and import
and matter?
As you can see from above, overseeing the social accounts of some
who died raises a host of practical and philosophical questions. In
dealing with them, we should learn more about Luca while Terrywould perhaps reveal more about himself, what Luca means to himand how Terry views this life. Instead, Terry makes his choice andthat's it, beyond a quick aphorism. What does this decision mean tohim? We don't know. And the bells and whistles of technology can't
distract us from realizing that.
THEATER OF 2019
Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen * 1/2
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia ***
BLKS ** 1/2
Moulin Rouge ** 1/2
Bat Out Of Hell **
Unchilding **
Sea Wall/ A Life ** 1/2
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ***
Betrayal *** 1/2
Fifty Million Frenchmen ** 1/2
Freestyle Love Supreme ** 1/2
Derren Brown: Secret ***
(A)loft Modulation * 1/2
The Great Society **
I Can't See *
Heroes Of The Fourth Turning ** 1/2
Chasing Rainbows: The Road To Oz ***
The Glass Menagerie (dir Austin Pendleton & Peter Bloch) **
Terra Firma (debut of The Coop theater company) **
Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation ***
Dublin Carol ** 1/2
Soft Power **
The Decline and Fall of The Entire World As Seen Through The Eyes
Of Cole Porter ***
For Colored Girls ** 1/2
Scotland, PA **
The Sound Inside *** (great cast, clumsy ending)
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book
lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the
way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new
releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal
recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz
Sandbox , a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on
entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as
guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website.
Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called
Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
POSTED BY MICHAEL GILTZ AT 12:56 AM
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Post a Comment
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