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G.I.F.T.
Collaboraction’s ponderous new work is a remarkably precise, presumably unintentional parody of obtuse conceptual performance. Actors in outlandish costumes and otherworldly makeup adopt semblances of childlike wonder and talk circles around a general idea, with abstract video images projected behind them. If Family Guy’s Peter Griffin made a non-sequitur reference to performance art, the cutaway gag would look like this.
There’d be nothing wrong with that aesthetic if G.I.F.T. had anything to say. Conceived by Porretta, Collaboraction’s art director, the piece is reportedly inspired by Lewis Hyde’s 1983 book The Gift (which, coincidentally, made an appearance in Adam Bock’s new play The Flowers last month). Porretta and his ensemble filter Hyde through Dr. Seuss: We’re gathered in a holding pen with the “giftistas,” blissed-out beings dressed like couture Krishnas who ritualistically bestow audience members with brightly colored nonsense objects constructed from materials like polyethylene foam and electrical tape (gifts, see?!). This goes on for some time, until a silly, overextended Fischerspooner dance sequence heralds our move into the next room, where we’re seated for the rest of this silly, overextended show. Here the lead giftista’s careful, point-by-point presentation on the nature of gifts, in which the performers act out “the gift of apology” and “the gift of surprise,” is slowly—very, very slowly—derailed by rebels who insist that gifting is too complex to be so rigidly defined. Our relationship with giving and receiving gifts is complicated: That’s as insightful as this repetitive, impenetrable piece gets. It’s hardly a present worth opening.
