Walker Art Center's "Out There" series began 30 years ago as a way to get arts lovers out of the house during the dreary, nothing-to-do first month of the year. These days, there are more reasons to venture out in January, but "Out There's" concerns haven't changed.
"Where is theater going in the future? How can the form be played with/distorted/expanded? How can it speak to our time and the next?" asks Walker performing arts curator Philip Bither, listing some of the questions in the back of his mind as he considers possibilities for "Out There," a series he says he envisions as "a chance to cleanse the palate in the new year, after lots of 'Nutcrackers' and 'Christmas Carols.' "
One challenge of always looking for the next thing is that audiences catch up. The nipple slip that might have shocked audiences in 1987 is barely Tweet-able now. And walk-outs, once common during "Out There" performances, have become less frequent as audiences figured out what to expect from the series — and as artists have stopped thinking of inaccessibility as a badge of honor. That moving-target-of-innovation is why the Walker has become more involved in commissioning works for "Out There," such as this season's "Real Magic" and "Quizoola!" from Forced Entertainment. And it's why Bither has had to cast a wider net; work in the series has become more international over the years.
As Bither scours the world, what is he looking for? It may be easier to say what he's not looking for: No "well-made plays," meaning traditional works with beginnings, middles and ends. No new pieces from established darlings of the indie art world such as Laurie Anderson or theater-maker Robert Lepage, although the latter will appear at the Walker in his "887" in April). Those folks are too big for the kind of surprises "Out There" craves.
"It's a chance for us — and for audiences — to take different kinds of chances, to see pieces that are entertaining but, at times, unlike anything else you've ever seen," says Bither.
Despite all that innovation, some tropes have emerged over the years, so we've added labels to help identify "Out There" standbys that loom large in this year's shows: nudity; politics; playing around with gender; inter-disciplinary (or mixed-media) works; investigating the relationship between artists and audiences, and grappling with the question "What is theater?"
"It's a dense work, but very playful and very funny," says Bither of this work by the Cuban troupe Teatro El Público, in which the late Fidel Castro is depicted as a monkey. "There is a critique of the lack of freedom that's pretty irreverent and that has lots of built-in questions." One Walker fave over the years has been theatrical troupes that boldly re-imagine classic works (Bither says the half of the audience that didn't walk out still comes up to him to rave about a Belgian take on "King Lear" in 2001). Teatro El Publico fits squarely in that tradition with its loose take on the ancient Greek "Antigone," which pits human will against the gods. The piece will be performed in Spanish, with English subtitles. (8 p.m. Jan. 4-6)
NUDITY, INTERDISCIPLINARY, POLITICAL
