"Playtest" by the San Francisco Neo-Futurists

This isn't exactly a play. Indeed, it was thirty plays in one hour. So the definition of "play" here is a bit different than we're usually dealing with.

I caught the SF Neo-Futurists performance last year as part of the Shotgun Players' first Blast Festival. And they came back this year to participate again. The original Neo-Futurists are based out of Chicago, and pioneered a show they called "Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind." It's all quite creative and chaotic, but a whole lot of fun to watch (and certainly, to perform!). The SF troupe normally performs in San Francisco every Friday and Saturday nights, with a new show (or at least, a new variation on the same show) every week.

Recently the Neo-Futurist founders announced that after almost thirty years, "Too Much Light" was done, and they were going to try some new things. The San Francisco troupe is currently running "Playtest," where they not only change up some of the plays in their arsenal each week, they also change the structure of the show. The performance I saw last Thursday seemed much like their traditional "Too Much Light" approach, where the audience shouts out numbers from 1 to 30 from a printed menu, and the first one the cast hears is the next item they perform.

The individual items in the show vary a lot. One of my favorites (#4, "Resisting the Feminine Norm") is very short, but to the point (it's a single sentence). Others range from audience-participation quizzes to frantic group dancing to surreal slapstick to a voiceover "guided meditation." The group writes all their own material, and each week they dispense with some of the old and replace it. But the overall scheme of 30 plays in 60 minutes holds.

Within the frantic, antic action, it's easy to see this as kind of off-the-cuff and improvised, but it's all scripted, learned, and rehearsed: though it be madness, there is method in it. Each of the bits represents some kind of statement about life, culture, politics, or society. Some are more effective than others, obviously, but it's clear that they all come from a place of examining how we think and feel, but rather than delving deeply, they aim to push as many buttons as they can in the course of the hour. So it's unsettling, but in a good way.

I keep meaning to catch the regular SF Neo-Futurist show in their home turf, but haven't managed to do so yet. I like to encourage experimental artists to keep trying new things, as well as expanding my own horizons and vision of what art, theater, and performance is all about. These guys are definitely out on the fringe somewhere, and it's truly a treat to see what they are up to.

Check them out if you get a chance!