{"id":5297,"date":"2018-01-20T07:42:39","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T12:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=5297"},"modified":"2018-01-20T10:49:24","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T15:49:24","slug":"liars-believers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/01\/20\/liars-believers\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Irresistible\u2019 Is An Immersive Variety Show With A Message About Our Politics Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe moment you walk in stuff is going on around you already,\u201d explains Jason Slavick, director of Liars & Believers\u2019 new show, \u201cIrresistible,\u201d<\/a> which they\u2019ll perform for one night only, Jan. 24, at Sonia in Cambridge.<\/p>\n

Maybe there\u2019s video and sound. \u201cAnd you sit down. The audience gathers and at some point it begins,\u201d he says. \u201cThe dramatic moment of a dance piece starts off on a stage in front of you. As soon as it finishes, there\u2019s video sequence that flashes behind you. Just as it finishes, three actors run in front of you doing a silly clown piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we chatted this week, the show was still being shaped, but he said pieces might include a rap about \u201ca black man stopped by a cop,\u201d a \u201cresistance fashion show,\u201d and a \u201clive silent film black and white theater piece in the style of a Charlie Chaplin film that\u2019s based on the #MeToo movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI never know 100 percent until right before we put it on,\u201d says Slavick, who also serves as the Cambridge theater troupe\u2019s artistic director. \u201cBut I can tell what I\u2019m thinking. I feel battered by the negativity that has swallowed up our society, our political discourse. I think our only way forward is a path of empathy, a path of discourse, a path of listening. I don\u2019t think we can heal our nation by screaming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIrresistible\u201d is what Liars & Believers calls a \u201ccoLAB,\u201d in this case a collaboration of more than dozen actors, dancers, writers, musicians and visual artists that began discussions last fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone makes individual work and shares it,\u201d their website explains. \u201cWe get into each other\u2019s pieces, comment on the them, juxtapose them, and contradict them. We put it all together\u2026 then we drop the audience down Alice\u2019s rabbit hole.\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end, we gather together for one week with everyone in the room together to present an immersive, multimedia experience that takes the audience on a journey. We do it one time and we never do it again,\u201d Slavick says. \u201cSo you have the room to take risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is an experimental variety show with a point about, in this case, the #Resist movement opposing the Trump administration and the \u201cirresistible forces\u201d propelling the United States. Slavick describes \u201cregressive, reactionary\u201d and \u201cxenophobic\u201d conservative groups as well as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and other liberal movements. \u201cSo we stand in the middle of these irresistible forces claiming our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or as the group\u2019s website explains: \u201cIn a time of turmoil, will resentment, anger, and fear tear us in opposite directions? Will our better selves triumph? Where will we and our nation end up? Deep inside us, what irresistibly pulls\u2026 and at what cost? From the Constitution to cake\u2014from sex appeal to social construct\u2014what is\u2026 Irresistible?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we bring is the ability to create a single cohesive experience to weave all the disperate things into one journey through this multidisciplinary evening,\u201d Slavick says. \u201c…Hopefully we\u2019ll end this maybe with a lighter spirit or a spirit willing to listen and try to heal rather than just fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Help us keep producing our great coverage of local arts by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe moment you walk in stuff is going on around you already,\u201d explains Jason Slavick, director of Liars & Believers\u2019 new show, \u201cIrresistible,\u201d which they\u2019ll perform for one night only, Jan. 24, at Sonia in Cambridge. Maybe there\u2019s video and sound. \u201cAnd you sit down. The audience gathers and at some point it begins,\u201d he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[42,230,231],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5297"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5328,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297\/revisions\/5328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}