330434-155487-14There aren’t any nois­es to speak of in A Col­lec­tion of Nois­es. The play con­cerns the men­tal break­down of an awk­ward young woman and claims Lynchi­an influ­ence, so obvi­ous­ly there’s lots of arch­ly deployed old-time rock ’n’ roll; but every metaphor is visu­al. The cen­tral image is a bank of black and white pho­tographs tak­en by the pho­tog­ra­ph­er pro­tag­o­nist, whose men­tal break­down revolves around a famil­iar clus­ter of gaze anx­i­eties and moth­er com­plex­es. Audi­ences expect­ing the aur­al engage­ment teased by the title adjust expec­ta­tions accord­ing­ly.

Though if noise–as opposed to sound–signifies an ele­ment of mys­tery or the impen­e­tra­ble, we might still press the title into crit­i­cal ser­vice. A noise is what one makes when one can­not make the sound of speech. And while a noise or two hap­pens all the time–grunts, mum­bles, assents and acknowledgements–for most humans, the only lan­guage described by the phrase “a col­lec­tion of nois­es” is that spo­ken between the pre-ver­bal child and the par­ent.

So the lack of any actu­al nois­es in A Col­lec­tion of Nois­es mir­rors the gap­ing lack probed at anguished length with­in the piece: that of the moth­er, whose absence is felt through such cre­ative choic­es as hav­ing the pro­tag­o­nist glare into the audi­ence and scream “MOTHER WHAT CAN I DO I CAN NEVER BE AS PERFECT AS YOU.” We hope we are on the right track here?

This is not the medi­um for too-fine exam­i­na­tion of the show’s cen­tral ten­sion, that of a bare­ly-tamed gaze which ever-threat­ens to erupt through the pro­tag­o­nist’s frag­ile Oedi­pal web of san­i­ty into mon­strous vio­lence; hap­pi­ly, there is the entire genre of fem­i­nist film the­o­ry to which the inter­est­ed read­er may refer. Nois­es’ Alice could prob­a­bly van­quish most all of her so-urgent psy­cho­log­i­cal demons by just see­ing what Mul­vey or Clover had to say about Michael Pow­ell’s Peep­ing Tom, arguably the mod­ern orig­i­na­tor of the sub­genre to which A Col­lec­tion of Nois­es belongs.

Also her­ald­ed by Peep­ing Tom–whose pro­tag­o­nist, just like Alice, lives for cam­eras, blades and mater­nal fixation–was a revived pro­cliv­i­ty for the sort of Brecht­ian audi­ence-hec­tor­ing whose hard­core title belt nowa­days adorns the Gal­lic waist­line of Michael Haneke. Haneke’s unclaimed influ­ence on Nois­es is strong, in that the denoue­ment echoes Fun­ny Games’ fourth wall-fum­bling scenes of audi­ence belit­tle­ment; and in that the play’s sole shock­ing moment is han­dled in the exact same way as that of Haneke’s Cache.

In as much as peo­ple go to per­for­mances to see rit­u­al­ly-enact­ed dra­mas of sac­ri­fice (which is quite a bit, cave­men etc), A Col­lec­tion of Nois­es ful­fills its con­tract with the audi­ence; and in as much as peo­ple come to a hor­ror show to be con­front­ed with the mar­gin­al­ly unex­pect­ed and mon­strous, a per­son screech­ing at you about how fuck­ing dare you come to a psy­chodra­ma expect­ing a hor­ror show is per­haps apro­pos, all of the above notwith­stand­ing. To invite audi­ences to a show and then to present anoth­er show, and then to berate them for expect­ing the show they paid to see, smacks of those col­lec­tions of nois­es which we call “tantrums” and which we expect of the very young and the devel­op­men­tal­ly fix­a­tive. Hope­ful­ly it felt good to get it out.

A Col­lec­tion of Nois­es at Fringe Bar, March 1, 2