Review: On Faye Driscoll’s Life Raft, Spinning Toward the Unknown

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In "Weathering" at New York Live Arts, the performers seem like the last holdouts of a civilization clinging to survival.

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By Siobhan Burke

The artist Faye Driscoll has always taken her performers and audiences to the edge, or tried to, but never so completely as in "Weathering," an enthralling, epically adventurous work that had its premiere at New York Live Arts on Thursday.

At times on this turbulent yet finely tuned journey, you genuinely fear for the performers’ safety — and your own. They hold nothing back. But by the time the most perilous moments roll around, you’ve also come to trust that they know what they’re doing. Everything will be OK, at least within the motley microcosm of humanity they’ve formed. As for humanity itself, and this planet we inhabit, spinning through the universe, that's another question, one prompted by the work's visceral, apocalyptic imagery.

The physical centerpiece of "Weathering," which marks the culmination of Driscoll's two-year Live Arts residency, is a large cushioned platform, reminiscent of a raft or a bed, in the middle of the Live Arts stage. The audience sits all around it, close to the action (with the front row in "the splash zone," as an usher warned before the show). Over 70 minutes, 10 core performers — with assists from others, including Driscoll herself — shift through tangled, violent, sensual tableaus on the platform, vying not to fall off, like the last holdouts of a civilization clinging to their survival.

Heralding their entrance is an overture of sorts, sung by the sound director Sophia Brous and other voices that seem to come from the audience or backstage. As if priming us to consider what constitutes the work — described in promotional materials as "a multi-sensory flesh sculpture" — they recite parts of the body in harmony. "Hand, diaphragm, pupil, vein." "O, fascia. O, sweat." The inorganic vocabulary of technology creeps in: "screenshot," "algorithm."

Dressed in street clothes as if plucked from an ordinary day (Karen Boyer did the layered costumes), the performers stand atop the platform in stillness, until incremental motion begins to reveal itself. Shayla-Vie Jenkins, in tights and a winter jacket, reaches for Jennifer Nugent's raincoat, as Nugent extends a hand toward Jo Warren's shoulder. Things continue in this ultraslow manner as stagehands appear and rotate the platform, displaying the group from another angle.

This opening phase of "Weathering" calls for patience, but it illustrates something important about change and the passage of time, foundational to what follows. It might seem as if little is happening, but when the platform, in this first rotation, returns to its original position, you see how the scene has transformed. What's almost imperceptible from moment to moment becomes apparent across time. It's a bristling response to one of Driscoll's guiding questions: "How do we feel the impact of events moving through us which are so much larger?"

The spinning accelerates, the platform now rotating without pause, along with the pace of the performers’ interactions, which grow messier, more intimate and more absurd. Fingers hook into a mouth; a nose presses into a shoulder. Signs of exertion appear: beads of sweat, or maybe tears. Scented water, periodically spritzed over the cast and the audience, coats everyone in the same mist, which I could have sworn smelled briefly like barbecue sauce. Clothing comes off, and amplified breathing — eventually wailing — replaces silence. Personal belongings, spilling from backpacks and pockets, drop to the floor. (A tube of mascara landed at my feet.)

The velocity intensifies in an exhilarating climax, as the indefatigable team — and they are fabulous — increasingly plays with veering off-center. Yet as memorable as these final moments may be, the progression toward them remains just as vital to the impact of the whole.

Weathering

Through April 15 at New York Live Arts, Manhattan; newyorklivearts.org

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