Sunday, September 10, 2000 Arts and Books

NEXT EXIT, IMAGO

by Judy Berck

Portland knows Imago best for the tremendously creative original productions dreamed up by co-founders Carol Triffle and Jerry Mouawad -- "Frogs, Lizards, Orbs and Slinkys," for example, or "House Taken Over" or "Oh Lost Weekend." But now, Imago is restaging a classic: Its award-winning production of Jean Paul Sartre's "No Exit," a play about three people who find themselves together in a hell that's utterly unexpected.

Director Mouawad first produced the play in Portland in 1998 and also acts in the show along with Triffle, Marc Weaver and Michael Vertlieb. The production won Drammy awards for best actor and best set design in 1998 and mesmerized audiences along the way.

Even though somebody else wrote the script, Imago's ingenuity and originality make this production like no other. Imago's sets are typically stunning, but the "No Exit" stage is unique: The play takes place on a 17-foot square floor that is suspended 3 feet off the ground and pivots from its center. As the actors walk across the stage, it tips like a three-dimensional seesaw, so much so that the actors experienced several weeks of seasickness during rehearsals.

We spoke with Mouawad and Triffle about Imago's production of "No Exit," Sartre's existentialism and theater itself.

Q: "No Exit" is a psychological drama. Why is the stage so important?

Mouawad: We've taken the psychology in the play and manifested it in a physical way that the audience can see, and that we as Imago performers can relate to. If you step off the center of the stage, the stage will start to tilt. If you continue to the edge, it will dip to a very acute angle. Now the interesting thing about doing a drama on it is that two characters may be in balance in terms of what is happening in the play, but if one says a line meant to overpower the other, that actor just walks to the center, which imbalances the stage. This makes the other actor dip and be less dominant. It becomes even more complex when you have three people on the stage. In other words, the stage tipping gives a physical presence that Imago is accustomed to, so it helps to marry the psychological with the physical.

Triffle: The architecture can create the drama sometimes. The movement of the stage forces the physical space to change, which forces the tension to change. When the stage moves and dips, the presence of somebody going through the anxiety of being left alone and dropping is really psychological, and makes it very present.

Something my teacher Jacques Lecoq said is that movement in theater is about balance and imbalance. You're always looking for the balance, which never completely happens, because the moment there's balance, we imbalance again. Even when we walk down the street, we have to imbalance to get balance to walk. It's science, it's human nature, and it's theater. That's what this stage reflects.

Mouawad: The stage is also continually altering perception, which is a lot of what Imago tries to do. Even though the audience is stationary, the moving stage is showing different angles, much like different views in a film. For instance, the stage might tip toward the audience, and then you might get a sense of a close-up. In film, which has been a huge influence on us in recent years, the director can stylize the show so that it takes it away from naturalism or realism. On the conventional stage, most of the stylization is left up to the actors. But with "No Exit," the stage itself is going to stylize the work for the director in such a way that it has to pull away from naturalism or realism.

Q: In many Imago shows, the set plays a major part. Why?

Mouawad: In most of Imago's work, the set is as much a participant as the actors or director. Even if you might not be aware of it, the space in most of our shows, even the empty space in "Frogs," is architectural. When you come into the theater to watch a show, the first thing the audience is responding to is the architecture -- whether there's a set or no set. The "No Exit" stage is not allowing the audience to deny the architectural involvement in the drama itself.

Architecture is a big part of our human interactions. Why do people move through a room in a certain way? When you enter a room, say during a party, there's a lot psychological stuff going on. You might have an inferiority complex, you might have an ego, you might think you should go talk to that person. You place yourself spatially in relation to others. There are many dynamics going on. It's as ongoing as breathing.

Q: Isn't doing a drama like "No Exit" a big departure for Imago?

Triffle: I'm often hearing from people that Imago does avant-garde theater or performance art, and I don't think we do that. I think we do theater. If anything, we're doing pretty normal theater, to me. Jerry takes scripts that come out of the past and makes them alive in the present, which is pretty normal theater.

Mouawad: We may do a show for many different reasons. It may be that there's a physical attraction to the show as to how we would present it, or a challenge -- this doesn't look like a show Imago should do, so we'll do that. That's probably one of the reasons we put on "No Exit." We'd never done a scripted play as wordy as this one, since we're primarily a physical company. I thought combining the concept of the stage I'd been daydreaming about with Sartre's play would be a good match.

Q: How does putting on a scripted play compare with an original show?

Triffle: It's really hard to put on a grand big text in a way that's new. You have to be confident and not confident to do that. You have to be confident in trusting the words and trusting yourself because you're exposing yourself. And then you have to be unconfident so that you can do something new.

Mouawad: It's amazing how much you can put in a production and still not detract from the Sartre itself. That's a lot of what contemporary theater is doing, much like contemporary painting. When you look at a contemporary painting, you're noticing and trying to understand the artist's view of life and perception -- you're not just looking at the painting anymore. I think with theater a lot of that is going on. It's not just Sartre anymore -- it's Jerry, Carol, Imago and the perception of life. It's putting more on that canvas than we're accustomed to. That's the challenge of doing classics.

Q: Why are you restaging a 1998 production?

Mouawad: We're starting to bring back the repertoire we've created over the last eight years, in order to have time to continue the process of creating new work. Imago shows generally require two to four months of rehearsals, rather than the typical six weeks.

Q: What does the "No Exit" set have to do with existentialism?

A: Interesting question. Let's say in the play a dramatic or humorous section goes by, and the actors are moving because the set is tilting. Then all of sudden, everything stops. The stage comes to a balance, and you're left with an emptiness -- Sartre leaves you with an emptiness quite a bit. Everyone, the actors and the audience, feels the set stop moving and the emptiness, the space in the room. There's a certain quality that this is all that there is. That's what existentialism in essence means to me -- this is it. You are the sum of your actions on Earth. So architecturally, I think we're tying into existentialism.

Q: Is your production of "No Exit" for intellectuals?

Mouawad: No. It's a fun piece of spectacle and drama, with lots of humor and an interesting situation. A lot of the time there are two or three things going on in the play. On one level, it's chitchat between three people; on another, it's exploring deeper philosophical questions about life itself. We could intellectualize and dissect it, but when you come down to watch it, it's pretty good as plain entertainment.

Triffle: I think this play offers both. You could certainly go away and talk for hours about the intellectual things, or you could go away and talk about the actual physical sensations you got from the play, or the humor. My hope is that people would go there to experience it rather than to look at it as an intellectual exercise. It's more than literature. It's a world that needs to be experienced.

Judy Berck is a Portland writer. She is the author of "No Place to Be: Voices of Homeless Children." This is her first contribution to ArtsWeek.