Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Dec. 8--It's back. That hand-wringing, insult-slinging time of the year, when egos are cruelly bruised and age-old grudges revived. No, not the holidays (though that springs to mind), but "Grudge Match," the theater/dance performance from Callous Physical Theatre that so wickedly satirized all our holiday hopes and dreams last year.
Callous directors Paul and Josephine Zmolek have decided to remount the show this December -- but true to their mission of originality, it'll be different. Very different.
If you missed last year's "Grudge Match," you missed a great time. Four women dressed to the nines gradually stripped away both clothes and any veneer of civilization, until the boxing gloves were brought out to really express those holiday sentiments. But don't go along to Barefoot Studios expecting fighting attire this year. "Grudge Match: ReMatch" not only changes cast, music and setting, it also delves far more deeply into the personal psychology of Christmas and holidays, allowing for subtle choreography, monologues and as much theater as dance.
"We don't like repeating ourselves," says Paul Zmolek with a grin. "And since we intend "Grudge Match" to be the antidote to "The Nutcracker," it can't be the same as last year."
It also represents Barefoot Studios' first project since the successful and innovative Siteworks dance festival outside the Museum of Glass last May. "We needed a deadline," says Josephine Zmolek.
Judging from rehearsal, the deadline has been well and truly met. On a stage centered around a festive table, with a Martha Stewart-perfect Christmas tree in the corner, a family of five dances the inner fears, desires and puzzled disappointment inherent in a lifetime of Christmases.
Stephanie Kriege and Katherine M. Stricker of last year's cast are joined by Callous newcomer Susan Chapel to form an unholy trio of siblings. They take the viewer in sweeping stages through painful memories, sugared-up excitement, rough-and-tumbling, vicious whole-body thumb-wrestling (over who baked the best pie, of course) and tension at barely-understood parental suffering. The movement vocabulary and spoken text, developed by each dancer after a journaling period, is knitted tightly and intelligently.
Jeannie Douville, a Callous regular, and dancer-actor Jamie Pederson make a glazed-smiling mom and dad, by turns acting out their internal psychologies and going zombielike through Christmas motions.
With red-velvet outfits and ironic music ("Nutcracker," anyone?) the "Grudge Match" sequel looks to be just as much fun as the first, if more introspective. And it shows the growth of Callous' abilities to weave a multidisciplinary, multilevel story.
"Of course we used the holiday motif like any other company: to generate capital," says Paul Zmolek. "But more importantly, we used the motif to generate original work based on the American ritual of the extended family's annual holiday gathering. We all have so many stories to tell."
Or, as Douville's character puts it, "Some things never change."
What: "Grudge Match: ReMatch"
Who: Callous Physical Theatre
When: 8 p.m. Dec. 8-9, 15-16, 2 p.m. Dec. 10 and 17
Where: Barefoot Studios, 311 Puyallup Ave., Tacoma
Tickets: $13 advance, $15 at door
Information: 253-627-2273, www.barefootcallous.org
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568
rosemary.ponnekanti@ thenewstribune.com
-----
Copyright (c) 2006, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
