Check out this post on the Mumbling Madly blog about being an extra in the Superamas show: Team Seattle: A Behind the Scenes Look

Click here to see a larger version. - Sara E.

Welcome to our review blog for BIG, 3rd episode (happy/end). Read our patron reviews, click on the Comments button to read the comments of others and post your own thoughts.

We found our seats near the front. A beautiful woman in tight fitting jeans and red heals took the mic. Downstage, a man started strumming a guitar. I started tapping my foot to a song I thought I knew, but couldn’t quite remember. A few minutes later the whole cast came downstage to sing the refrain, coaxing the audience to clap along to the uplifting beat. My sister turned to me and whispered,  “I’m not clapping, they’re fucking with us. ”

In the program notes (which, thankfully, I read after the show), Gillian Harkins of UW says this show is "deeply uncomfortable" -- which I find baffling, because I had quite the opposite response: The show is all too comfortable, blandly so, really. It's a handful of scenes -- some live, some on video -- and some songs (including "Smells Like Teen Spirit" -- can there be a ban on anyone using that song in any movie or live performance for at least the next ten years? It might regain its potency by then), some dancing.

My personal experience with Superamas has been quite intense and immediate. Its been interesting to work the load-in/tech for the show, as well as being one of the local, high-kicking extras for the performance. I got a sense of the piece from seeing some video during rehearsal for the dance extras, and was initially put off a little by the extreme content. However, after watching a run-through in the theater and seeing a majority of the piece (except for when we had to run backstage to get into place) I felt the power and the draw brought on by the focused execution of the performers.

Listen. I want you to hear from me, I mean really hear, but how do I do it in an unapologetic-politico-equivocal, diesel-engine, hyperbolic-radio-shout-advertising-saturated world? Common wisdom is if you want to be heard then you better speak the power language, get on board, put up or shut up. If you can’t do it, you’re weak, apathetic, obstinate, and/or impaired. Challenged. I do a lot of double-thinking, double-speaking just to figure out how to communicate authentically, even with myself. The result can often be publicly embarrassing.

*The author of this blog assumes that you are already familiar with "small metal objects", by reading other posts or summaries, or seeing it yourself. This piece left me with a rare emotional dichotomy: I'm certain that I understand what happened, how it was constructed, why certain choices were made...and yet I'm simultaneously lost in the uncertainty of meaning that seemed to permeate the piece. DID I GET IT? Do I really understand what I just saw? I suppose it doesn't matter. It gave me a certain feeling, and that feeling was warm and compassionate.

 “I don’t want to lose you Gary. ” To sit within the Olympic Sculpture Park with the mandate to look and listen, aided by microphones and headphones is to occupy a place of privilege. Suddenly, rather then hiding the fact that you are engaged in voyeuristic practices, you are laid bare as a spectacle. The Voyeur. The Audience.  “I don’t want to cry in front of a guy. ” The story of small metal objects is partly a story of masculinity that, much like the performance, is always in motion.

That place, those moments, this relation, these voices, when they capture something of the essence of being human and makes it immediate, there, staged, is the heart of the matter for me when it comes to theater. Here the stage is the Sculpture Park. We watch and listen a long time before we see any actors, yet the actors are certainly there. The noises of the city and the passers by in the park even the obnoxious jets roaring by overhead seemed to be somehow choreographed into the strangely affecting minimalist music and the funny, affirming, thoughtful dialogue.