Toward the end of Reason, a collaborative work by renowned theater experimenter Ping Chong and associate Michael Rohd in its world premiere at Market Theater, a 12-year-old girl turns up to replace her possibly dead professor mother at the lectern. The older woman has been teaching a class on " the mystery of consciousness. " " How do we develop the ability to tell the difference between waking life and dreaming life, if we have developed that ability? " , the child queries the class, perfectly aping her mother’s upturned hands.
In this latest piece by the prolific Ping Chong and the Oregon-based Rohd, there is more mundane waking life than dream, though anything approaching the latter is better. The same little girl, confronted with a catatonic (or worse) mom, begins her takeover of adult responsibility by constructing a shopping list consisting entirely of things that begin with " P " : paper towels, peppers, etc. " Pumpkin, " the endearment her mother uses for her, does not make the list, but pomegranates do. As the scene concludes, the figure of the mother turns slowly in an alarming aureole of red light. In another vignette, one meant to illustrate the impenetrable concept of faith, figures with swathed faces and bearing candles parade before strings of garlic; at the vision’s end, a ghoulish gondolier turns his masked face toward the audience. Such haunting abstractions notwithstanding, too much of Reason, which is made up of fragments framed in a phalanx of windows, remains prosaic.
Ping Chong’s reputation precedes him. The 55-year-old New York–based experimental theater artist, who trained in film and the visual arts, initially intended to become a filmmaker but resorted instead to " theater that was influenced by film. " At the beginning of his career, he was a member of Meredith Monk’s House Foundation and collaborated with her on several works, including The Games, for which they shared an Outstanding Achievement in Music Theatre Award in 1986. Chong has won two Obies, including a 2000 award for Sustained Achievement. His work has been characterized by its multimedia aspect and by a gestural element rooted in kabuki and Chinese opera.
Reason borrows its physical frame from a piece Chong created for puppets: the action is confined to non–Hollywood squares in which the actors, visible only from the waist up, are framed. Perhaps this above-the-waist approach reflects the work’s preoccupation with " reason " or, as the play tags it, " consciousness " — though, as Reason bears out, one of the things we are conscious of is our bodies. The music ranges from ska to Bach to a spoon pinging on glass, and it seems to take as its catchy mantra " You can close your eyes and never be alone. "
But the piece, which was commissioned by the Market Theater and the Office for the Arts at Harvard (where Chong and Rohd are in residence), is not particularly fluid. Using a grid of windows backed by Mondrian-like cross-hatched cubes of color, Reason intercuts several stories. An elderly man celebrates a birthday, then finds himself hospitalized. A former railroad employee, he recalls (or dreams) a story of an old man who deliberately puts himself in the way of a train. A lonely, conversationally stunted businessman tries to make contact (his fullest conversation is with his mother’s ashes). The icy, aforesaid professor ( " Have a weekend, " she admonishes her class) coolly lectures on human awareness as she herself retreats from it. One young woman abandons the study of poetry to become a nun. Another, a recent Russian immigrant to the USA, flits from one job to another like a bee among flowers. And in a continuing Brief Encounter bit, two commitment-phobic travelers connect in transit, after which one pulls back.
It seems to me that Reason is as much about movement and stasis as it is about consciousness. Its characters either can’t stand still or can’t go out. It also touches on the way in which technology — from answering machines and cell phones to heretofore undreamed-of mobility — distances us from connection. Certainly there is poignancy to the various characters’ isolation. But the piece was created through improvisation (incorporating some of the performers’ biographies, along with sources ranging from Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy to Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dime), and parts of the dialogue are embarrassingly banal. The performers, who include both professionals and Harvard undergraduates, do their best to put it across. In the end, I thought it was great that Harvard and the Market had invited Ping Chong and underwritten this collaborative enterprise, but I wondered whether Reason wasn’t still looking for one.
