Lathrop Walker (Sonny), Marc Bovino (Video Puppet), Luis Vega (Rus), and Dax Valdes (Video Puppet)
Sex, lies and videotape
By Adrienne Urbanski
In a news-saturated world where YouTube and reality television have become our way of experiencing the lives of others, it’s fitting for a theatrical work to use video to bring us closer to the characters’ interiors.
James Scruggs, who wrote the script and shot video footage for Here Arts’ production of (RUS)H, previously used this technique in “Disposable Men,” an examination of the media’s portrayal of African-American men.
The bare stage is lit with a giant folded blue screen upon which evocative footage is displayed. The real wows of the piece come from “video puppets,” handheld screens that two puppeteers flash in front of characters, giving us glimpses into their pasts, memories and emotional states.
Their longing to feel intensely unites all of the characters. Rus and Sireene are a formerly passionate married couple who find themselves lacking the spark that once burned so brightly between them. As Rus discusses his marriage, a video of his bare chest being buried in dirt appears next to him. The single commonality between them is the memory of how passionate things were. One night while driving home from the city, Rus accidentally runs down Sonny, a gay hustler. Rus finds himself obsessed with visiting the hospital bed where Sonny lies and praying for him to recover.
Underscoring the play are near-constant Latin dance beats, a backdrop for Rus’s habit of tangoing, which is the clear influence of director Kristin Marting, who comes from a dance theater background and is known for adding choreographed form. Rus often slips out of bed with his wife—or ducks out of taxing situations—to tango across the stage, perhaps reminiscing about an easier time when he and his wife tore up the dance floor. His tangos with the other characters come to symbolize the sexual encounters between their two bodies.
The play’s shining scenes center on Sonny (expertly embodied by Lathrop Walker), who devotes his time to chasing pleasure—whether in the form of a one-night stand, an orgy or the next hit of crystal meth. The video screens display the curl of Sonny’s meth smoke and the glistening white powder. Flashing screens cover both the puppeteer’s inner thighs and face, showing the endless variety of bodies from which Sonny can seek out fleeting sensation as he clicks away online.
When Sonny awakens from his coma, he looks upon Rus in adoration, asking why he didn’t just drive away. Sonny hints that he may have stepped in front of the car on purpose in his own attempt to experience intensity. He leaps upon Rus, trying to kiss, offering up sexual gratification as a show of gratitude. Taken aback, Rus responds to the advances with violence that eventually turns sexual.
As Rus’s wife, Sireene, watches her marriage deteriorate, she looks wistfully to a stack of video screens displaying her as the dance floor vixen who was once able to invoke passion in her husband. And as she stands in sadness, the video fragments of her spinning in a bright dress break off into fragments across the stage.
With mounting desperation, the characters address the audience directly, asking members to provide them with the answers to their problems (and the members often answer right back.) As Sonny craves another hit of crystal, he walks into the audience, stroking and begging male audience members to accept his sexual favors in exchange for drugs. Sireene locks eyes with audience members, asking for explanations for why she can’t seem to be enough for her husband. The unnerving method of direct address evokes a feeling of discomfort in audience members wishing to remain in the anonymous darkness of a theater, but it allows for a deeper connection to the fictional lives at play.
The tension between Rus and Sonny is perhaps the one dip in an otherwise compelling script, though it is somewhat eclipsed by the smoke and mirrors of the constant video tricks. Both in staging and in the script, we are shown little of just what highs Rus is able to cull from his violent sexual encounters with Sonny. Marting stages the encounters as wrestling matches and tangos, a strategy that doesn’t quite seem to capture the passion Rus so strongly declares.
Overall, Scruggs and Marting successfully use what could be a distracting amount of technology to add new dimensions to the characters. While (RUS)H may not be the masterpiece of their careers, both show signs of great potential.
Even with the warmth of steady Latin beats and Rus’s tangoing, there remains a coldness and disconnect throughout the work. We long for the characters to sit down—to embrace one another—for there to be more in their lives than the flashes of images against the austere blue screen. When in bed, the couple stands in front of a video projection of a bed, making even their slumber seem sad and artificial.
This may have been what Scruggs had in mind: displaying the coldness of a life cut off from reality through video, television, and the Internet, where feeling anything real is a rare occurrence.
