'Culture Shock' offers pleasant jolt

Author: Eliza Hulme

"This is what we want to show you. An exploration." So went the production notes in the program of this past weekend's Zoo offering, "Culture Shock." The show, encompassing the senior work of Liz Hammett, investigated themes of language, isolation and connection using material that focused primarily on Chinese and American cultural exchange. Having spent half of her junior year abroad in Taiwan, Hammett explained that she felt herself to be divided between a crass, loud "English-speaking self" and a more respectful, demure "Chinese-speaking self." In assembling the piece, Hammett chose to examine this dichotomy through words and movement in a series of scenes, some of which were written by professional playwrights and others of which were the result of the cast's collaboration.

In all, the result was a moving piece of theater that succeeded in provoking thought without being oppressively didactic. Longer scenes were interspersed with shorter monologues that catalogued Hammett's experience abroad, and occasional dance pieces served to keep the evening moving along smoothly. Though the professionally written material was compelling and well chosen, however, it was the scenes on which the cast had collaborated that proved the most interesting. The cast did a comedic take on the idea of the divided self in "Fighting Selves," one of the later scenes of the evening. Hammett played a girl whose American self (Matty Van Meter) and Taiwanese self (Magdalena Widjaja) both came to life and proceeded to fight with each other. Hammett's sense of helplessness and confusion was palpable as a very heated argument took place on either side of her. The effect was both hilarious and poignant.

Certain scenes were slightly less successful, perhaps because some had been removed from the context of larger works. "Breaking Glass" in particular was confusing and seemed to suffer from a lack of exposition. It depicted a brother and sister discussing their family life, but, though the emotional intensity of the scene ran very high, it remained too obscure to latch onto. On the other hand, it did showcase a fine bit of acting on the part of Hammett who threw herself into the desperation of the role with an impressive intensity.

The evening's performances were generally solid, and Hammett was backed by an ensemble of first-time performers and more experienced actors. The diversity of the ensemble became especially apparent through the use of multiple languages thoughout the evening. The cast's multiplicity was especially apparant in the scene from "The B File" that closed the evening in which Hindi, Hungarian and Spanish were spoken as the actresses playing the Bs and the interpreter hurtled around the set in a desperate attempt to understand each other.

The actors were assisted throughout the performance by the gorgeous set and lights, courtesy of perennial and endlessly talented designers Katie Polebaum and Haylee Freeman, both '06. The costumes were also beautiful in their Asian simplicity, and the color choices made by costumer Cassandra Guild '07 were gorgeous without being distracting.

Ultimately, "Culture Shock" succeeded in providing an enjoyable evening of theatre while posing questions that many of us, encased in our Middlebury bubble, fail to consider. Communicating her own struggles with identity in the face of the unfamiliar, Hammett and her company not only explored the problems of communication, they surmounted them and entertained their audience in the process, regardless of which language they spoke.