Theatre
In My Basement will be performing after every Third Friday
Artwalk at Modified Arts thru October, 915pm-1030. $5 admission
407 E. Roosevelt Street. After that, TIMB, will perform it's
annual Teatro Caliente on November 9, 10, and 11 at Modified
Arts.
At the age of 14, Chris Danowski
met Cesar Chavez. He was aware enough then to know how important
it was to touch this man's hand, even if he didn't understand
his politics. The long days of listening to Jim Morrison, reading
Vonnegut and Jung, smoking pot, drinking, and playing the leads
in South Pacific, Arsenic And Old Lace — and the female
lead in The Elves And The Shoemaker as well — were taking
their toll on his psyche. He needed something more, and now
credits the Eugene Ionesco play Rhinoceros as the catalyst.
In Ionesco's play, people in a French city begin to argue over
a rhinoceros running into the street, and then they themselves
change into rhinoceroses in succession. Finally, one man is
left, who keeps crying, "I'm the last man! I won't surrender!"
This kick-started Danowski's obsession with the absurd. He graduated
high school and got accepted to Arizona State. He then enrolled
in U. Nevada-Las Vegas for a year, where he took Russian and
a playwriting program, then hoofed back to ASU for 2 years and
picked up a BA and an MFA.
Chris then moved to Minnesota, where he met his future wife
and toyed with the corporate life for a while at Target. Every
day, though, was filled with writing. Amiri Baraka happened
to be on a radio show one night and talked about showing underground
films in his basement that could not be seen anywhere else.
Danowski rolled this idea around and realized that the theater
readings he and Tamara had been doing in their tiny studio apartment
needed to continue in the house they were saving up for, and
that this house had to have a basement. They wanted a theater
in that basement.
A couple of years passed while they entertained their neighbors
and friends and also got married. Chris and Tamara traveled
to Latin America, where Chris immersed himself in a language
he didn't understand while working with the theater and performance
group S'najztci bajom in Chiapas, Mexico.
They had their baby in Minnesota and eventually Tamara's job
moved them back to Phoenix in 2001. Danowski credits the birth
of his daughter Elliana, for helping him to walk the walk. "She
made me fearless," he says.
1999-2004 were exciting times, as Danowski enjoyed his newfound
fearlessness and freedom. He was working with theater companies
in Seattle, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Portland.
The famed Theatre Of Note in Los Angeles produced many of his
plays, and Stark Raving Theatre in Portland performed one of
his screenplays (there is a difference) and he was trading emails
with a young sound designer named Illana Lydia. He and Illana
started writing together, and created the first of many written
works. My Mouth Is Full Of Babies, Brandohead, 911:Operation
My Big Hands and IM/UR are works created as frantically and
as absurdly as possible, while still retaining underlying political/social
satire as well as density of plot. He worked with actress/performer
Sherry Macht during this time, who performed the hilarious solo
piece Underwood. It's all about ghosts and the elements and
tracing memory. He also performed his one-man play Mexotica,
which concerns his travels in southern Mexico after the Zapatista
uprising, to over 120 people at the Phoenix Art Museum.
Currently, his works with the sublime performance artist Natalia
Jaeger are "dada experimental Zapatista performance art,"
mainly performed at the funky Modified Arts in downtown Phoenix.
Danowski wants people to experience and judge his work, to chew
it thoughtfully like a sandwich, a sandwich made out of a dream
of a life as a piece of corn or a land dart, and then he wants
them to wash it all down with a cold glass of newborn baby spouting
feminist theory.
Sadly, too many people in Phoenix are stubborn when it comes
to realizing what absurd theatre can mean to the city. Just
ask Planet Earth Theater, who were bullied out of town in 2000,
but are now living the high life in San Diego.
Danowski imagines plays performed for English-speaking people
set entirely in Spanish, which in a government technicality
some may see as unlawful, while others may see as not worthy
of their attention at all, a huge mistake, but he stays busier
than ever by subverting the minds of our young adults as a teacher
of experimental theater and screenwriting at ASU.
He tells me most of the kids in the classes seem to follow the
Hollywood modus of a happy ending, which he is trying desperately
to alter.
"Life does not have
happy endings, life has happy middles and sad beginnings, or
just cleaning days,"
he says. He only needs a semester with these kids to change
their minds, to help them to open their eyes to the absurd in
daily life. It seems Chis Danowski is the last man standing,
refusing to be turned into a rhinoceros, crying, "I'm the
last man! I won't surrender!" Let's hope he doesn't.
review.gif){kind=small}
