Stopped Bridge of Dreams

Walking into La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre for John Jesurun’s Stopped Bridge of Dreams, one is struck by the compelling stage design. The seats are arranged across from each other on either side of the room with projection screens hanging and sitting in the space between them. A video swirls pinkish red above on two of the screens – is it blood or is it fire? The play even begins floating above the audience’s heads. The action drops to the ground with Black-Eyed Susan and Preston Martin playing Mrs. X and Hiroshi – the Madame of the flying brothel and one of her whores - respectively. Video and performance and a multiplicity of stories swirl between the audience until pouring into the core story of a flying whore-house, an embodiment of disincorporation and groundlessness. Even sex, normally so earthy, is uprooted in the frank and business-like manner with which the characters treat it. All emotion, in fact, was pulled from its normal human-centricity, and an atmosphere of flight supplanted it. Instead of emanating from the humans, it incorporated from the composition – the juxtaposition of dialogue and narration, human flesh on the floor and their video images projected from multiple angles above. The groundless atmosphere and lack of sentiment are a response, according to Donald Keene’s program note, to the work of Japanese novelist Saikaku Ihara, “whose books are called ukiyo-zoshi or tales of the floating world.” The broader genre of Saikaku’s ukiyo-zoshi or Jesurun’s Stopped Bridge of Dreams – fiction – is one uprooted from reality. What Jesurun does is radicalize that core element of fiction, and he does it in a smooth and seamlessly constructed way. It closes this February 5^th, but if he brings it back in your area, I highly recommend seeing it, especially if you’re interested in seeing the art of fiction exploded spatially before you.