Posted on: Tuesday, August 20, 2002

STAGE REVIEW
Compulsions still focus of theater group

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

'Still On My Back' • Presented by Monkey & the Waterfall Theatre • 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; 9:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday, through Aug. 31 • The ARTS at Marks Garage • $12 (advance at Hawai'i Theatre box office), $18 (door) • 528-0506 (Hawai'i Theatre box office)

Monkey & the Waterfall Theatre is on the wagon again.

"Still On My Back," which opens at The ARTS at Marks Garage on Thursday for a 10-performance run, continues the company's decidedly avant-garde look at obsessive-compulsive extremes.

Last summer, all five performances of "Monkey On My Back," a metaphor-heavy exploration of addictions and addictive personalities, played to sold out audiences. After that, there was no question the mask-and-dance theater company would explore the topic again.

"We were surprised that so many people were interested in our kind of experimental work, because it's really performance art and it's not traditional in any way," said "Monkey" creator and director Yukie Shiroma.

We'll say.

At last year's show, a character addicted to power wraps herself in electric cords before capping her performance by plugging one into her mouth.

In another vignette, a cleaning woman obsessed with — surprise! — cleanliness goes on a disinfectant bender, scrubbing everything including herself before downing a Clorox martini.

The entire production ended with the 14-strong cast doing a conga-line out into the street and onto an idling pickup that whisked them away. The end.

"There's something about metaphors that allow the audience to enter in," said associate director Ben Moffat, also the cast's resident "stilt maestro." "One of my students saw that piece and said, 'Oh, you covered all chemical addictions (with the cleaning woman vignette)!' And that really wasn't our intention."

The ideas for each addiction and its interpretation come from the cast. After weeding out ideas that don't work, Shiroma assists the cast as they turn the concepts into theater.

Shiroma and Moffat declined to reveal the addictions being readied for exploration in "Still On My Back," but said the production would continue the company's use of masks (designed by artist Michael Harada), dance, odd visuals and wildly divergent background music choices. (Tom Waits, Golden Palominos and Peggy Lee fans should buy tickets now.)

New additions will include puppets and acrobatic dance. Action will again take place both inside and outside the street-front windows of ARTS at Marks.

Hawai'i Theatre patrons and downtown denizens sometimes wandered into the conga line. "We liked that element of surprise," said Shiroma. "We didn't know what was going to happen."