Willamette Week - June 14, 1999
by Steffen Silvis
As defined by the performance swcholar Victor Turner, “liminal” is a threshold state-the ambiguous state between reality and illusion where all theater resides. The Liminal performance group has become one of Portland’s most innovative and exciting companies and is deserving of its growing following. Fusing dance, mime, music and text, Liminal achieves what most theaters fail to: It brings its audience to the hallucinatory threshold along with it. Written and directed by Bryan Markovitz, The Evening with the Photograph begins and ends with a man’s entertainment of suicide. In between, all of existence is dragged in for scrutiny. The Liminal corps are exceptional performers: Rich Southwick, Jennifer Olson, Christoph Saxe, Amanda Boekelheide (those who saw the company’s production of Jowl Movements I-IX will especially delight in her performance) and Trent Moore, who would make a brilliant stand-up theoretician. John Berendzen’s sound design is a rich sonic stew. Like Ionesco, Liminal strives to make something that’s truer than reality by creating a heightened theatrical state.
The Evening with the Photograph (1999)
Liminal returned in summer 1999 to present The Evening with the Photograph, an original work that continued Liminal’s exploration of synthetic and hallucinatory theatre The Evening with the Photograph was an ever-changing mystery that explored the lives of five characters trapped in various parallel worlds. The different worlds of the play were connected by Dr. Saxe, a scientist living on the border between genius and insanity. As Dr. Saxe’s experiments progressively fail, the performers and audience are led along a course of events that question the nature of gesture, performance and the point at which the virtual becomes real. The random sequencing of scenes within the show (or metaphorically, the dance along the artery) meant that each night was a truly unique experience, with an outcome that was never fully predictable.
The Evening with the Photograph was performed in Northeast Portland in an old ballroom. The show brought together Liminal’s usual stable of talent. Bryan Markovitz wrote and directed. Amanda Boekelheide directed movement. John Berendzen designed sound. Trent Moore designed set and lights. Julie Burtis designed costumes, and Liminal’s regular company members made up the cast.
