In On It: da da kamera
The work of da da kamera’s Daniel MacIvor is already known to Austin audiences, thanks to Hyde Park Theatre’s productions of his House, The Soldier Dreams, and Marion Bridge. This past weekend brought us not only the latest work from MacIvor, but MacIvor himself, performing his In On It with James Allodi. The story concerns itself with romantic situations, both comic and tragic, in the lives of two separate groups of people: one ostensibly real and performing, the other ostensibly fictitious and portrayed, all brought to life by MacIvor and Allodi. That these two disparate groups intersect in a single instance at story’s end is the point to which the narrative has been driving, you might say, but along the way the characters break from one group to the other as a way of exploring what it means to tell a story, to perform a show, to be able to make choices in theatre that are unavailable to mere mortals in real life. Two actors, one chair, and a jacket are all that are enhanced by Kimberly Purtell’s precise lighting and Richard Feren’s delightful and unnerving sound design; nothing more is necessary in da da kamera’s beautiful and quirky evocation of chance, choice, love, and life’s inevitable drift (or plummet) toward death.
This article appears in January 31 • 2003.