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Steel Hammer at #Artsideas16

June 18, 2016 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

steel_hammer_0In the middle of Steel Hammer, an occasionally brilliant but also wayward show with music written by Julia Wolfe and performed by the Bang on a Can All Stars and SITI Company, Patrice Chevannes, playing the role of John Henry’s wife Polly Anne, sat still in center stage and told her story. She met a strong man named John in an overcrowded shack filled with migrant laborers during Reconstruction, and she knew — maybe before anyone else did — that John Henry was special. The joy and wonder of her solo tall tale lingered at the center of a busy performance that featured six actors, at least eight musicians, and the not always integrated writing of four playwrights.

I’ve seen Chevannes a few other times recently, in Tamburlaine and Pericles, both at Theater for a New Audience. Her infectious smile, powerful presence, and dazzling stage charisma tend to steal the show, as she did again last night. I was also intrigued by Steel Hammer’s layered engagement with the folk tale and musical history of John Henry, who — according to research one of the characters presented early in the show — appears to have been either very short or very tall, from Alabama or Kentucky or Georgia or Elizabeth, NJ, or perhaps someplace else. Possibly a criminal, or maybe not. But we are sure that he’s the most famous American folk hero who’s African-American — and possibly the only folk hero who dies on the job.

At a certain point, when the actors were exhausting themselves running circles around the center stage for what seemed a very long time, I wondered if the performance might be trying to represent the experience of painful and tedious work — which is a tricky thing to perform. (My daughter, alas, just thought it was dull.)

I love the John Henry song, and its ambivalent celebration of the human heart struggling against the machine. I also enjoyed the music in this show, especially the inventive clarinet playing and percussion by the Bang on a Can All Stars, featuring Ken Thomson on clarinet. This show feels like a work in progress, though I guess it was at BAM last fall. It’s hard to stage painful work!

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About Steve

Steve Mentz
Professor of English
St. John’s University
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Shakespearean. Ecocritic. Swimmer. New book Ocean #objectsobjects Professor at St. John's in NYC. #bluehumanities #pluralizetheanthropocene

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stevermentz Steve Mentz @stevermentz ·
20 Jan

Send us your book proposals!

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stevermentz Steve Mentz @stevermentz ·
31 Dec

Much to remember in '22, including a fantastic fall in Germany at the @CarsonCenter. But especially one day in late October, while isolating with Covid in a rural farmhouse in Bavaria, when I saw my first all-creative publication, these little poems --

http://www.ghostbirdpress.org/2022/10/swim-poems-by-steve-mentz.html

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