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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > February > 12
Friday, February 12, 2010
Review: ‘Arrhythmia’
What is love?
Writer Zell Miller III ponders that question in “Arrhythmia,” his newest piece of hip-hop performance theater now getting its debut at Vortex.
In Miller’s hands, love is a many-faceted thing, the source of questions more than answers — the lens through which bigger questions of identity, politics, history and the fundamental roles of men and women are examined.
But mostly, love is the catalyst for Miller — whose interdisciplinary theater works include the award-winning “My Child, My Child, My Alien Child” — to spin a compelling web of lyrical, image-packed verse that intrigues.
Against a spray-painted backdrop of brilliantly-hued graffiti art by Nathan Nordstrom, four actors (Sean Tate, Aaron Sanders, Toni Ringgold and Ebony Stewart) use gesture and movement in complement to the rhythm-based poetry. Like an intricate musical composition voices overlap, phrases repeat or echo back and forth. The performers break off in couples, flirt, argue and try to negotiate the give-and-take.
Miller packs plenty into the two 30-minute intensely-presented music-laced acts. There’s a little Civil Rights history, a discussion of the death and storied reputation of rapper Tupac Shakur, lots of negotiating the unsteady path of male-female relationships. Even the “I Love Lucy” show is tapped, its upbeat theme song and goof laugh track bursting in as the characters spin Miller’s rapid-fire poetry.
So what is the secret of love? Miller seems to suggest it’s the ability to use language as true communication. “Anger and jealousy makes us illiterate,” the characters say.
“What is the essence of poetry? There is no answer, only stories.”
And with “Arrhythmia,” Miller hands us plenty of stories.
‘Arrhythmia’
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Feb. 20
Vortex Theatre, 2307 Manor Road
www.vortexrep.org
Photo: Left to right — Toni Ringgold, Aaron Sanders, Ebony Stewart, Sean Tate. Photo courtesy Uprise Productions/Vortex
