POWER PIPES
Reviewing a work in progress is a lot like evaluating a restaurant by walking around the kitchen and smelling the food as it’s being prepared. The fact is, you never really know how it’s going to turn out. It could be great, but then again, it might not.
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I left wondering: Is it me? Admittedly my exposure to American Indians and their cultures has been limited. Am I insufficiently educated to get it? Or was my gut feeling that the piece was not up to par justified?
A series of stories and monologues, Power Pipes attempts to tell stories from an Indian perspective while touching upon universal themes of love, loss, identity, spirituality, and survival. But though the show was technically very good and the performances were strong, the writing and direction were wholly unfocused.
In most of these pieces reality exists on different levels, but unfortunately the transitions from one level to another are often clumsy. In one scene, Monique Mojica takes a shower while deities from another dimension engage in a metaphysical discourse; in another she’s simultaneously sitting at her kitchen table and resolving a spiritual conflict on another plane.
