Challenging Power Plays in "The Burning Cauldon of Fiery Fire" and "Practice"

Getting others to see the world in a certain way and then convincing them to do almost anything to preserve that point of view requires a toolbox of skills that include charisma and a fervent belief that one's way is the only right way. And as two recent plays demonstrate the fallout from that dynamic can be destructive—and it can happen anywhere: in a social community, a theater company or maybe even a country.

Thomas, the patriarchal leader of a small northern California commune is willing to go to great lengths to defend the way of life in the sanctuary he’s created with a group of wounded souls in Anne Washburn’s The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire, which closed at the Vineyard Theatre last weekend. 

One of the group’s survivors, who grew up in that community and who serves as this memory play’s narrator, recalls how its peaceful but fragile existence was disrupted by the arrival of two outsiders and the death—perhaps a suicide, perhaps a murder—of one of them. But although this whodunnit eventually turned into a somewhat confusing what-was-that, the thing that remained clear was how an ideology, no matter how initially benign, can turn ugly.   

Washburn and her director Steve Cosson refused to answer other questions—why the basement door is padlocked, how people just eking out a living manage to buy elaborate costumes for the pageant staged by the commune’s children—but Burning Cauldron dared its audiences to think about how much of one’s self an individual should be willing to give up for what someone else dictates to be the peace and security of the larger community.

Practice, Nazareth Hassan’s cautionary tale which has been extended at Playwrights Horizons through Dec. 19, is more direct about the tyranny it wants to challenge: it’s theater itself. Or, as Hassan explains in his program notes, it's the harmful ways in which he believes some gatekeepers in the theater world operate.

His play centers around the eccentric Asa Leon, a MacArthur genius grant winner who heads up an avantgarde theater company that places great demands—physical, spiritual and emotional—on its members as they devise a new performance piece. 

These selected performers, who are introduced as each of them puts their distinctive spin on the same audition speech, are required to live together and to bare their souls to one another under Asa’s imperious commands. Secrets are revealed, and exploited. Demands, sexual and otherwise, are made. People are intentionally pushed to their limits. Only one opts out. 

Practice places demands on the audience too. The first act runs for two hours and is filled with repetitive acting exercises, including running in place almost to the point of exhaustion (when one character threw up, I wasn’t sure at first if that was part of the script or a real reaction). There are also multiple instances in which director Keenan Tyler Oliphant has the troupe members set a table, eat a meal, clear the table and then moments later do the same thing all over again.   

The shorter second act is devoted to the actual performance piece and to Asa’s spoken manifesto about the kind of theater he believes in. The question of whether he is indeed a genius, a sadistic cult leader or just a manipulative fraud is left up to the audience. As is the question of how much of one’s self should be sacrificed for the sake of art. Or for the sake of anything else for that matter. 

I found both of these shows to be well acted and obviously thought-provoking. But I can't really say I fully enjoyed either because they made me feel so uncomfortable. But I suspect that may have been exactly what they intended.