Arts & Ideas: Still Time To See Unique Shows

If there was a general theme of the 2017 International Festival of Arts & Ideas, it would have to be “economy.” This is not only due to festival budget cuts this year. Many of the artists are simply good at stretching their resources.

The backdrop for Camille A. Brown’s “Black Girl: Linguistic Play” (which had two performances June 15 and 16) was a chalk mural created by the company itself. The dances were enhanced by clouds of chalk dust, the patter of sneakers on bare wooden platforms, and the brash, rhythmic, purposely childlike movements of the five female performers.

“Black Girl,” which Brown will bring back to the state Feb. 16 at Fairfield University’s Quick Center, is a striking work of social consciousness. To a live bass-and-keyboards soundtrack of original jazz compositions and traditional children’s street rhymes, the dancers evoke both the freedoms and the oppressions of youth.

Another of the main performance events of the Arts & Ideas 2017 is the world premiere of “The End of TV” by the Chicago-based multidisciplinary performance ensemble Manual Cinema, playing through June 22 at Yale University Theatre. With uncanny technical precision, “The End of TV” creates a vivid, glowing distillation of ubiquitous televised yammering (mainly from shopping networks and frozen food ads). But Manual Cinema uses this noisescape as the background for a tender tale of modern urban life, poverty, community, humanity and hope. Complex shadow puppets share the screen with silhouettes of live actors. The story unfurls clearly but silently, amid all the sharp TV satire.

Manual Cinema’s stage is a post-modern three-ring circus. You see the performers projected onto a screen (by old-school overhead projectors — economy rules!). You see the same performers on the stage, creating and performing the images being projected. Also completely on view: a live quintet (keyboards, electric guitar, cello, flute and violin) punctuating the show with original songs that sound like a mix between ’70s soul/R&B and the ’80s pop group Tears for Fears. “The End of TV”‘s artistry is awesome. Its impact is profound, unique, indescribable.

Many of this year’s Arts & Ideas events — “The End of TV,” the new Martin Bresnick composition “Passion of Bloom” — were billed as oratorios or song cycles. “(Be)Longing,” a world premiere from playwright Aaron Jafferis and composer Byron Au Yong, was billed as a “choral/hip hop theater forum” with a cast that numbered in the dozens.

The multistyled piece was anchored by a powerfully moving, beautifully sung oratorio. But “(Be)Longing” ultimately sank under the weight of its own good intentions. It had a theme: the community reaction to large-scale tragedies such as Newtown and Virginia Tech. But it wanted to be about everything: education, civil rights, freedom of expression, civil discourse, generational issues…

A new series created for the festival this year, “Altar’d Spaces,” proved to be a godsend. “Altar’d Spaces” utilizes the three churches on New Haven Green (plus a fourth, very nearby) as venues for smaller acts that didn’t require big stages or elaborate backdrops. Washington, D.C.’s Happenstance Theater’s “BrouHaHa,” with its troupe of Samuel Beckett-like clowns embarking on a wasteland odyssey, seemed to benefit thematically from being done in a church (though there were still some deadly dull moments).

Some of the most “international” events of this year’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas are happening in the last few days of the fest. They all involve Chinese artists.

Phoebe HUI and CAI Ying present “In-Between/The Chaos Project,” an interactive art installation, June 22 to 24 in Yale’s Green Hall Gallery, Onnie Chan uses the ancient game of Mahjong as the inspiration for a globally aware performance piece June 22 to 24 at Yale’s Iseman Theater, and Chinese pipa player Wu Man returns to Arts & Ideas June 22 to perform the world premiere of “Gardenia” by Xiaogang Ye, with the Miró Quartet.

Arts & Ideas ends June 24 with a nighttime, much-ballyhooed free concert by The Wailers and Rusted Root on the New Haven Green. Information is at artidea.org.