Where's The Beef?

As America's performing arts organizations respond to pressure for their boards of directors, staffs, and creative teams to be more representative of the diversity among audiences and artists, there has been a growing emphasis on hiring women for leadership positions.

• In 2015, Mina Morita assumed the reins of Crowded Fire Theatre Company from Marissa Wolf.
• In 2018, Pam MacKinnon took over from Carey Perloff as artistic director of American Conservatory Theater.
• In June it was announced that Lily Tung Crystal (the founder of San Francisco's Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company) had been chosen to become the new artistic director of Theatre Mu in Chicago.
• In September, Johanna Pfaelzer took over the helm of Berkeley Repertory Theatre from Tony Taccone.
• That same month, Magic Theatre announced that Loretta Greco would be stepping down at the end of its 2019-2020 season after 12 years as the company's artistic director.

When Marin Theatre Company announced its 2019-2020 season, Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis proudly noted that five out of the six plays chosen had been written by women. However, not every female playwright is as wildly prolific as Lauren Gunderson, Theresa Rebeck, or Lauren Yee. Nor is every female stage director as blazingly gifted and admired as Julie Taymor, Francesca Zambello, or Mary Zimmerman.

Patricia Cotter's recent triumph with The Daughters (a new play about the founding of the Daughters of Bilitis which received its world premiere from the San Francisco Playhouse as part of that company's Sandbox Series For New Works) has been due in large part to the play's loudly enthusiastic and heavily female audiences. However, assembling a largely female cast, and creative team to work on a play with a feminist-centric theme is no guarantee that the end product will be a success.

Whether a playwright is male or female, straight or gay, Asian American, Caucasian, or African American, a common trap is falling so deeply in love with their work product that they cannot see its weaknesses. Sometimes this is due to working primarily in academia; at other times a drama can implode under the weight of too much exposition or suffer from being overproduced. When Jerry Herman chose to adapt Jean Giradoux's play, The Madwoman of Chaillot, transforming it into 1969's Dear World, a delicate play was blown so out of proportion in an attempt to make it into a traditional musical that its Boston tryout and New York previews were an agonizing experience.

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If the mere thought of a powerful woman unnerves insecure men, the idea of a female goddess, wizard, or magician should be enough to make their dicks shrivel up and disappear. From Druid priestesses like Bellini's Norma to Greek goddesses like Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis and Hera; from Gilbert and Sullivan's lustful Queen of the Fairies in Iolanthe to contemporary political icons like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren, an increasing number of extremely intelligent and articulate women (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Katie Porter, Ilhan Omar) have no problem candidly dealing with men from a position of power.

With Cirque du Soleil's production of Amaluna making a return visit to San Francisco, I had a fascinating opportunity to revisit a production that has been overhyped as being female-centric. When Amaluna premiered in Montreal in April of 2012, the show boasted a majority of women in its cast, an all-female band, and more than 130 costumes designed by Mérédith Caron that were made up of nearly 1,000 different items.


In her 2010 screen adaptation of Shakespeare's play, The Tempest, Julie Taymor changed the character of Prospero from a male to a female (Prospera).
Taymor is certainly not the only female director to think of changing Prospero's gender. In Amaluna, writer-director Diane Paulus has taken a similar approach. The difference is that, whereas Taymor is a creative force with strong artistic visions, Paulus is not. Whereas Taymor can create a thrilling opening number for the stage version of The Lion King ("Circle of Life"), Paulus's attempt to build a show around the theme of "women" barely managed to reach for "Circle of Wife."

A troupe of Amazons performs gymnastic tricks in a

scene from Amaluna (Photo by: Markus Moellenberg)

Citing The Tempest, as her inspiration, Paulus stressed that she did not want to build a ‘women’s agenda’ show but, instead, aimed to create a show "with women at the center of it, something that had a hidden story that featured women as the heroines.” The show's press kit states that:

"Amaluna invites the audience to a mysterious island governed by Goddesses and guided by the cycles of the moon. Their queen, Prospera, directs her daughter’s coming-of-age ceremony in a rite that honors femininity, renewal, rebirth, and balance, which marks the passing of these insights and values from one generation to the next. In the wake of a storm caused by Prospera, a group of young men lands on the island, triggering an epic, emotional story of love between Prospera’s daughter and a brave young suitor. But theirs is a love that will be put to the test. The couple must face numerous demanding trials and overcome daunting setbacks before they can achieve mutual trust, faith and harmony."

Romeo (Danny Vrijsen) searches for Miranda (Anna Ivaseva) in a
magic water bowl in a scene from Amaluna (Photo by: Matt Beard)

In addition to a reptilian character and juggler named Cali (after Shakespeare's Caliban), the backstory initially offered for Amaluna's clowns was that "Romeo’s manservant Papulya arrives with the young men and promptly falls head-over-heels in love with Maïnha, Miranda’s childhood nurse. The feeling is mutual, and pretty soon they are starting a family." The new clown acts (featuring Kelsey Custard and Thiago Andreucetti) are a huge improvement over the 2012 staging.

Precious little of the Shakespearean dramaturgy came across when I first saw Amaluna in 2013. Six years later, it seems to have been pretty well dwarfed by Cirque du Soleil's artists and artisans, leaving me happily lusting after "lizard boy" and fantasizing about a three-way with the two male peacocks whose outfits are detailed as follows:

"The peacock costumes are made up of 14 layers of heat-pleated materials trimmed in leather and stretch metallic fabric. The tails open out to a 'fan' of eight feet with hydraulic pistons that compensate for their weight. Made in the same proportion to the performers’ bodies as the bird’s fans have to theirs, the tails are attached to the artists with belts that hide the mechanisms under embroidered feathers. The skeleton and leaves of the fans are made of the same fiberglass material used in the manufacture of fishing rods. Screen-printed metallic paper is glued to the leaves to recreate the iridescent look of peacock plumage."

The peacock costumes are one of the most
delightful designs in Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna

Anyone who has staged a production of Aida, Turandot, or Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg knows that being called an effective traffic cop is not necessarily an insult. When large numbers of people have to move on and off a stage without hurting themselves, the precision of one's stage direction can be of paramount importance. Much of Paulus's work on this show involves creating transitions between the production's acrobatic acts and utilizing Cirque's formidable stagecraft to showcase its artists.

Shakespeare's Caliban becomes Cali in Amaluna

But there is no denying the difference in the audience's level of excitement when women are performing (Japan's Satomi and Yuka Sakaino on unicycles; Canada's Sabrina Aganier on aerial hoop, and Russia's Anna Ivaseva in the Waterbowl) as opposed to the male acrobats performing on teeterboard, Chinese pole, and banquine. Bottom line? Even in a female-centric show, the beefcake factor seems to get more attention.

Cirque du Soleil's male acrobats dazzle in a scene from Amaluna
(Photo by: Markus Moellenberg)

What I find particularly interesting about Amaluna's concept is the heavy emphasis on circles and curves in Scott Pask's designs for the show's scenery and props.

• The six chandeliers spread over the audience (each has a span of over 14 feet) are made of aluminum tubes that have been bent and positioned to create the effect of a mobile.
• The remote scenic elements (which often resemble a phosphorescent sea of reeds made with curved glow sticks) help to soften the environment, making it possible to imagine that one is either in a tropical forest or an underwater jungle of kelp and brightly colored coral.
• The stage floor contains a rotating turntable which allows a layered circular effect during acrobatic acts that involve poles. During these moments, sections of the stage revolve in order to ensure that everyone in the audience can see each act from every angle (although they are in plain view of the audience, the set's automated mechanical elements have been designed to be nearly invisible).
• The Waterbowl, which becomes a centerpiece for key balancing acts (as well as a "womb with a view" love scene) stands 5’5” tall, is 7’3” in diameter, and weighs 5,500 lbs when filled with water.

In a production meant to showcase female empowerment, so much of Paulus's attempt to draw inspiration from The Tempest seems wasted on the audience. There is very little sense that Prospera and her daughter, Miranda are onstage for any reason other than to kill time between circus acts.


Although the frond balancing act performed by Lili Ciao is an obvious hit, the two solo performers who scored most strongly with the audience were Danny Vrijsen (who, as Romeo, took some amazing head-first dives as part of his Chinese pole act), and Vladimir Pestov, who nearly walked off with the entire show. Throughout the performance, Pestov stalked the stage and audience as Cali. When he finally got around to performing his astounding juggling act atop the Waterbowl, the talented Russian artist brought the kind of electricity to the performance that is absent from a great deal of Amaluna.


Part of Pestov's success is that he makes the kind of genuine emotional connection with the audience that has been denied to most of the other artists (who are either forced into staged attitudes or kept in motion by the show's revolving stage). Performances of Amaluna continue through January 12 at Le Grand Chapiteau (click here for tickets).

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What happens when a play's flaws are so obvious that they cannot be masked by acrobats, clowns, music, and spectacle? The answer can be found in the world premiere of Testmatch, which is currently onstage at the Strand Theater. Playwright Kate Attwell and director Pam MacKinnon have carefully labored to bring a time-traveling drama to fruition in the form of a piece of edutainment that uses the history of cricket (reported to have been played as early as 1550 in Surrey) to its current status as one of the most popular and strictly-regulated international sports.

Avanthika Srinivasan as a member of the Indian cricket team
in a scene from Testmatch (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Attwell's play (which is divided into two segments) begins in 2019 as athletes from rival women’s cricket teams representing India and England find themselves stuck in a locker room as rain threatens to cancel their test match. While a great deal of their grumbling focuses on personal and professional gripes (whether one is cheating, another plans to retire, a third is being treated differently because she is a lesbian, or old prejudices between Brits and Indians still simmer beneath the surface). However, when push comes to shove, much of the dialogue resembles the same kind of trash talk heard in locker rooms of every size, shape, and location.

Millie Brooks and Madeline Wise in a scene from Testmatch
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

A sudden shift transports the audience to Fort William, India in 1790 as two idiotic British administrators in the Calcutta office of the East India Company (played by Arwen Anderson and Millie Brooks) work to formalize the methods of stealing India's wealth while they separately attempt to formulate the rules of a new sport they call "cricket." When a young Indian woman named Dannya (Avanthika Srinivasan) proves to be an infinitely more capable athlete than any man these privileged fools in powdered wigs could possibly imagine, the two Brits (who are as smug, inept, and clueless as members of President Trump's cabinet) are stunned by the sheer force of her talent, which effortlessly defies their silly rules.

Madeline Wise as the Memsahib in Testmatch
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

Meanwhile, the opium-addicted wife or Memsahib (played by Madeline Wise) of one of the administrators has become a royal pain in the neck while the Number One Sepoy in the compound, Abhi (Lipica Shah), keeps trying to refocus the Brits' attentions on the harsh reality of the devastating famine their country's colonialism has unleashed upon the local population. When an Indian messenger (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) arrives to deliver a gruesome description of life outside the privileged bubble in which the East India Company exists, Abhi can no longer bear to be a witness to the history unfolding before his eyes. As the playwright explains:

“I felt that the legacy of empire was lying dormant, uninterrogated, and that was unacceptable to me. I wanted to go to a root moment of Western history and challenge it. White people invented racism to start the project of capitalism and maintain it. Britain’s colonization of India had a particularly capitalist bent (it was fundamentally about wealth and the trade of goods). By the 19th century that was just what things were. I was looking at the atrocities of the 1770 Bengal famine and the catastrophic loss of life as a result of that colonization. There’s a clear prioritizing of one gender over the other and a sense of what’s acceptable and ‘normal’ for women to do. I want to really investigate this history and the lasting dynamic between these two countries coming together in a sport in which they are equal opponents. For me, Testmatch looks through the sport to the connection between various kinds of (largely male) desires to own and control both land and bodies. That applies, in very different ways, to gender and to race.”

Arwen Anderson and Millie Brooks in a scene from Testmatch
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

“What I want to do with this play is challenge the notion of empire and the way it’s been historicized. We need to remember that we are being fed particular narratives to maintain power and wealth for specific members of society. I want to confront the way people talk about empire to take down the idea that ‘We British went all over the world, took so much and destroyed so much, but now we’re going to talk about it as this wonderful time when we built the railways.’ That’s the story we’ve been told. Theater has the power to be a pretend world that we totally believe in. Then it can turn around and say, ‘Hey, this is a game. This is fake.’ For me that’s powerful. It shows that structures we assume to be ‘just the way things are’ can be revealed for what they are and dismantled. Once we understand systems, once we see them, then we can start to undo them.”

Lipica Shah, Arwen Anderson, and Millie Brooks
in a scene from Testmatch (Photo by: Kevin Berne)

The opening night performance of Testmatch proved to be difficult for me for largely personal reasons. The lobby of the Strand Theater has such terrible acoustics that the sheer cacophony prior to the performance was cringe-inducing, with people struggling to hear what others were saying. The problem continued inside the auditorium and, once the performance began, struggling to cut through the cast's thick English and Indian accents became an exercise in futility. By the time it became apparent that much of the dialogue in the first scene was not particularly interesting, nearly 45 minutes out of a 95-minute performance felt supremely wasted.

The switch to the second scene (set in India nearly 230 years earlier) delivered some nice farcical moments until, suddenly, a wonderful sight gag elicited hearty laughter and applause from the audience, bringing the performance back to life. By the time a messenger in traditional costume arrived to deliver a sober lecture to the Brits about the devastation they had caused, I couldn't wait for Testmatch to end.

The messenger's speech was well crafted and beautifully delivered by Meera Rohit Kumbhani. But considering how this world premiere had been marketed as an exciting cricket-based adventure, the overall performance seemed more like a tedious slog that culminated in a classic bait-and-switch. While I'm usually embarrassed listening to friends harrumph about feeling like they've "just lost 90 minutes of their lives that they can never get back," that's exactly how I felt by the end of Testmatch (and I've sat through some really disappointing plays during the past 50 years).

I tip my hat to Pam MacKinnon's six-woman ensemble as well as set designer Nina Ball, costume designer Beaver Bauer, lighting designer Marie Yokoyama, and Elisheba Ittoop (the production's sound designer who also composed some of the show's appealing original music) for their hard work. But I'm pretty sure this play will have much greater resonance with British audiences who, for cultural, historical, and demographic reasons are much more likely to be invested in feeling some guilt over their country's long history of empire building.

The Messenger (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) shares wisdom with
Daanya (Avanthika Srinivasan) in a scene from Testmatch
(Photo by: Kevin Berne)

I sincerely doubt that even the most avidly "woke" Americans are going to have a strong response to Testmatch. It's rare that I find myself loathing a new play (although the memory of Eleanor: The Musical still festers like a malignant cancer). But on my way home from the theatre, the words that kept echoing through my mind were from a lyric written by Sherman Edwards for the musical 1776: "Is anybody there? Does anybody care?" Performances of Testmatch continue through December 8 at the Strand Theater (click here for tickets).