Insurgo mistaking novelty for quality

Insurgo Theater Movement's "24 Hour Theater" Saturday night was apparently a fun exercise for the people who participated. If only audiences could have been let in on the joke.

According to artistic director John Beane, the show was put together in a day. I'll have to take his word on that. Topics were submitted by the public, and a series of sketches were, reportedly, created by five writers, 10 actors, five directors and two musicians around the subject, "Piece By Precious Piece, We Are Being Stripped of Our Civil Rights (Not That I Care; I've Been a Fascist All My Life").

We got bits like two diners, sporting head chips tracking their movements, dealing with the lack of privacy in their lives and the "1984"-ish physical threats that surrounded them.

We had a guitar-strumming singer crooning, "I learned the guitar so I could get laid," and other witticisms.

We had what appeared to be a dominatrix physically violate a man to snap him out of his blind acceptance of religion.

We had Beane climaxing the 65-minute evening with a star solo turn in a nearly-silent monologue (communicated through video projections) about a man battling a spiritual obsession.

The evening had an uncomfortable air of familiarity about it -- as if the people who put this together did not realize that we have all seen the same movies and TV shows.

Some jokes hit the mark, most fell flat, leaving me to suspect that it might have been wise for Beane to have given less attention to projections and more to the scripts. The pseudo-seriousness with which the writers approached the subject of Big Brother often bordered on the adolescent. What was most disturbing was watching so many intriguing performers -- among them, Erik Amblad, Beane, Sean Critchfield, Erica Griffin -- giving their all to self-indulgent material.

With only three productions behind them, the talented folk at Insurgo are clearly mistaking novelty for quality. Being different can be the first step in creating something exciting and new, but it's no substitute for discipline and craft.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.