A brief introduction to Elevator Repair Service’s aesthetic: performance of a found text, in this instance oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the case of Barnes v. Glen Theatre Inc. The case was argued in 1991, and concerned an Indiana statute that regulated go-go dancers in nightclubs and the like: a dancer was required to wear pasties and a g-string. Two South Bend clubs and three of their dancers brought suit, claiming the right to perform completely nude, citing First Amendment protections.
Whether you stand with the State or with the nightclubs on this issue, either before seeing this performance or after, hardly matters. The first two-thirds of the play is a whirlwind of citations and closely reasoned legal points, beyond the ken of a layman. It is precisely executed, retaining every harrumph, um, and disfluency (a lawyer’s fumbled “communicamating” is a happy accident). Ben Williams, in a distinctly unflattering wig, makes us sympathetic for the nerdy prosecutor from Indiana, Mr. Uhl.
Gradually, the play leaves realistic portrayal behind, commencing with a ballet for rolling desk chairs and culminating in a fantastical, graphic display (one could call it gratuitous, but what does that mean, in this context?). The battling lawyers do raise an interesting ontological question, certainly underscored by ERS’s performance: what is the difference between a depiction of conduct and the live performance of that conduct?
The justices display razor-sharp imagination: one of them speculates about an “adults-only car wash.” Justice Antonin Scalia gets off some of the best one-liners, among them a reference to the “Good Taste Clause” of the Constitution.
- Arguendo, by Elevator Repair Service, directed by John Collins, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington