The Rice Thresher, Vol. 92, No. 20, Ed. 1 Friday, February 25, 2005 Page: 7 of 16
sixteen pages : ill. ; page 19 x 15 in.View a full description of this newspaper.
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THE RICE THRESHER ARTS ft ENTERTAINMENT FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2005
THE THRESHER'S
RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR EVENTS AROUND
HOUSTON THROUGH
MARCH 3,2005.
mm g
W*
picks
tomorrow and
Sunday
r
I
STRANGERS
WITH CANDY
If you've been hankering
for the public service
announcements of
yesteryear, don't miss
Blackboard Bungle, a
collection of newsreels
from the '60s and '70s.
Tomorrow at 8 p.m.
and Sunday at 3 p.m.
$5.
The Aurora
Picture Show.
800 Aurora St.
Please call
(713) 868-2201
for more information.
sunday
AND THE OSCAR
GOES TO...
Anyone who's anyone
in Houston watches
Hollywood's big night at
the River Oaks' viewing
party. So get dressed up
(black-tie attire will be
rewarded) and soak up
the glam.
Sunday at 6:30 p.m.
$10 donation to the
Houston Gay and
Lesbian Film Festival.
The River Oaks.
2009 West Gray.
Please call
(713) 866-8881
for more information.
thu rsday
MOOLAADE
This film, which caused a
stir at last year's Cannes
Film Festival, makes
its Houston premiere
Thursday.
Thursday at 9 p.m.
The Rice Media Center
$6 general admissions,
$5 students.
Please call
(713) 230-1600
for ticket information.
THE HORSE W lHSPERER
Players wrangle 'Equus' with skilled production
Julia Bursten
THRESHER EDITORIAL STAFF
'Hie Rice Players' production of
Peter Shaffer's Equus will have you
seeing red. The simple, abstract set is
covered in it, and it gives an accurate
expectation of what the audience wit-
nesses in the next few hours: anger,
fear and blood.
w
equus
The Rice Players
Rating:
(out of five)
Tonight and tomorrow
at 8 p.m.
Six metallic sculptures hung
from the walls give contrast to
the overwhelming color. They are
masks, horseheads fashioned in the
style of Donnie Darko's Frank the
rabbit, and they intensify the chill-
ing mood even before the bouse
lights dim.
Equus, which debuted on Broad-
way in 1974 and won aTony for Best
Play, tells the story of Alan Strang
(Lovett College sophomore Evan
Ross), a troubled 17-year-old who
has gouged the eyes of six horses,
and his psychiatrist Martin Dysart
(Baker College senior Scott Banks).
The script takes on significant,
universal themes — God, pain,
identity, society, sex, family and
violence. It is challenging for actors
and audience alike to confront all
these issues in one night's enter-
tainment.
Rising to the challenge. The
Rice Players take on complicated
scripting and staging with con-
fidence. Choreography, often a
matter of common sense in non-
musical theater, plays an important
role in Equus' success. A rotating
platform, spun by one of the cast
Tin: PIAYER
ANNA WHITMIRE/THRESHER
Martin Dysart (Baker College senior Scott Banks) comforts Alan Strang (Lovett College sophomore Evan Ross) in
the Rice Players' production of Peter Shaffer's Equus.
members wearing a horsehead,
creates unexpected impressions
of motion in an otherwise static
set. In scenes where Alan is riding,
the cast members playing horses
hoist him into stylized piggyback
positions. These moments appear
more sexual than equestrian. Here,
as elsewhere, the line between the
two blurs.
The bulk of Equus contains
simple scenes of no more than
three actors, although the full cast
remains on stage throughout the
performance. The non-speaking
performers stay on benches be-
neath the horseheads and provide
echoes and Gregorian chant-like
choruses. The onstage seating
increases the background crowd
with haunting effect.
Equally intense are the perfor-
mances by Ross and Banks, as well
as Sid Richardson College senior
Meg Bayer, who plays a stable hand
named Jill. All three fill their charac-
ters with raw emotion that heightens
the play's psychologically suspense-
ful moments.
But, more than individual talent,
the three have a brilliant chemis-
try that reveals itself only in the
climactic scene, in which Martin
compels Alan to reenact the night
he blinded the horses, and the
scene becomes a triple entendre.
To Martin, Alan is pantomiming the
night and is the only other charac-
ter present. To Alan, however, Jill
accompanies him on a date that he
allows Martin to witness, and to
Jill she and Alan are young lovers
alone with each other.
It is a difficult scene, especially
as clothes start to shed and imagi-
nary set pieces shift in and out of
the characters' consciousnesses.
See EQUUS, page 10
Harris talks heroes, 'Imaginary' and otherwise
Jonathan Schumann
THRESHER EDITORIAL STAFF
Dan Harris has not seen
Ordinary People.
"That is not a movie of our genera-
tion," he said definitively.
He's right on two counts. Harris,
25, is of our generation. Ordinary
People, Robert Redford's quiet, in-
tense family drama which came out
in 1980, is not.
"You weren't even born yet. I was
one," Harris said with precision.
' I am a neurotic person
and I fear that it is all
going to fall apart and
people will realize that
I am a big fraud.'
— Dan Harris
Writer/director of
Imaginary Heroes
It was midnight and we were on
the phone talking about his new
film Imaginary Heroes, a heartfelt
rumination on how a family copes
in the wake of tragedy. Redford's
film heralded the upper-middle
class family in cri-
sis sub-genre that
films as diverse as
American Beauty
and The Ice Storm
have filled out and
in which Heroes
fits. Although He-
roes covers similar
ground, its mix of
humor and tragedy
make it distinc-
tive, original and
refreshing.
COURTESY SONY PICTURE CLASSICS
Emile Hirsch stars as Tim Travis in the new family drama Imaginary Heroes, written and directed by Dan Harris.
Although Harris had heard of
Redford's film, which won the 1980
Oscar for Best Picture, before he
started his own film and had vague
notions of its plot ("I knew Mary
Tyler Moore played a bitch of a
mother"), he did not want to see it
for good reason.
"I did not want to ... subcon-
sciously steal from it or realize that
it's too close to my movie and then
change it," Harris said. "And then the
movie comes out and people don't
believe me."
Rather than look back to other
films for inspiration, Harris drew
from bis own life.
"I grew up in the aftermath of a
series of tragic events in high school,"
Harris said. Making the movie was
an attempt to "recapture that world,
to find the action, themes, ideas
and the overall sense of what my
journey was."
Perhaps Harris' personal con-
nection to material — he both wrote
and directed the film — accounts
for its fully realized, expertly
rendered characters, particularly
the matriarch of the struggling
Travis clan, played by Sigourney
Weaver.
"She is a hero of mine and an icon
of the movie industry," Harris said.
After seeing the film, one
has the desire to write Harris a
handwritten thank-you note for
providing one of American film's
best actresses one of her bright-
est roles in years. It is a treat to
see Weaver sink her teeth into
Sandy, an atypical housewife who
smokes pot and toys with the idea
of fooling around with a younger
man — a grocery cashier no less.
But behind all of this oft-hilarious
eccentricity, Sandy is a character,
like all the others in Harris' film,
who is just trying to hang on and
keep her family together.
Set HARRIS page 10
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Gilbert, Lindsey & Yardley, Jonathan. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 92, No. 20, Ed. 1 Friday, February 25, 2005, newspaper, February 25, 2005; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443168/m1/7/: accessed June 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.