January 21, 2006

Neo-Benshi, Small Press Traffic at California College of the Arts (January 20).

SPT again revives the Japanese benshi tradition in which a narrator describes, explains and adds to the story line of the silent film for the audience. The neo-benshi pulled out their poetic kit bags and barred no holds to turn selected film sequences on their heads and into an amazingly entertaining evening of live performance.

The highlights:

Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy and Colter Jocobsen turning the John Wayne vehicle The High and The Mighty (1954) into a commentary about the US annexation of Hawaii, not-so-closeted homosexuality, and crass American materialistic stupidity, all while being extremely laugh-out-loud funny.

Ronald Palmer's doppelgangered, oepidalish twist on the violence of American Psycho (2000).

The way that Summi Kaipa seemed to keep all the overt and covert tensions (sexual, familial, class) of the Baliwood film Bobby (1973) while transfering the action to the greater suburban South Bay area.

Tanya Brolaski and Dan Fisher's reworking of the Bette Davis flick Another Man's Poison (1952). Their use of homophones to create followable non-sequituurs, the timing of their dialogue matching so closely with the film so as to seemlessly coopt it, the flippant sexual and drug related references pouring out of Bette Davis' mouth all worked to make their performance a serious exercise in poetry fun.