WASTED: A BRIEF HISTORY OF GARBAGE
Wasted: A Brief History of Garbage, a half-hour performance work incorporating dance, mime, and installation elements, is topical, politically correct, and utterly unaffecting. If it weren’t for the performers’ deadly earnestness and sophomoric intensity, you’d think the performance itself was meant to be garbage.
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Wasted begins with Abiogenesis director Angela Allyn performing a spoken and danced prologue, a factual recital of acres, tons, and viruses accompanied by relaxed, flowing movement punctuated with short, chopped hand gestures. The movement is unrelievedly pretty; the text dire. Allyn addresses the audience directly, not in the straightforward manner the text suggests, but with the arch self-consciousness of a comic. She is conspiratorial, coy; stops to ask “Are you feeling guilty yet?” She reappears, dressed and hooded in black, to introduce the next six sections: displaying hand-lettered signs with section titles, adding more rubbish to the stage, and sometimes miming poorly realized characters.
“The Average Consumer” lurches into precious camp. Four blobs swathed in bridal colors, their costumes hung with unrecyclable bits and topped with masks of bright Marilyn Monroe lips, stomp and hop to the beat of a rock score. They stuff themselves with litter, only to regurgitate it over the fifth performer, the dancer guilty of sharing her plastic-encased cheese and crackers with the audience moments before. “Garbage Consumes Us” features a shuffling herd dressed in more garbage bags, and one characterization carefully crafted and presented without affectation: a shivery bag lady (Denise Klibanov) carefully spreading her garbage bag to cover her legs and timorously clutching her Cheerios boxes.
