Homage to a Lumberjack

by Steve Luber

The Gods Are Pounding My Head! (AKA Lumberjack Messiah) reviewed January 18, 2005

As long as I have lived in New York City, I have made a yearly pilgrimage to St. Mark's Church, ascending the stairs to Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysterical Theatre. I make my way across the dense jungle of folding chairs and spectators, and eagerly await for the sheepish, exhausted-looking Foreman to sit in his wooden throne among the audience and hunch over his soundboard to begin the performance.

Every year, I am treated to Foreman's chaotic worlds, ones that reflect the dissonance and violence of the psyche, but remain incredibly lyrical as well. Alarms, demonic voices, and woodblocks ring in my ears, and the ever-present lights pointed at the audience force me to squint to see the grave tableau of bodies onstage.

There was a different sort of anticipation this year, however. Foreman's newest piece, The Gods Are Pounding My Head! (AKA Lumberjack Messiah), may also be his last. Two weeks ago, Foreman told The Village Voice, "I've always claimed that I have a love-hate relationship to the theater. And it's reached a point where I think this is the last sort of play like this that I'll be doing." It appears as though, after 37 years, Foreman is packing up the soundboard.

Needless to say, this will color anyone's impression of The Gods Are Pounding My Head!, and appropriately so. In addition to the stock themes of sex, death, and artistic drive, among others, Foreman has given us two of his most stirring characters to date in the form of two lumberjacks (brilliantly played by Jay Smith and T. Ryder Smith), who struggle with the forging of their own identities and legacy in the face of a world that encourages "pancake people"—flat, superficial, and ultimately meaningless.

Foreman gives us a glimpse into his current sea change—his lumberjacks are at the brink of exhaustion but forge on, trying to cut down set pieces, including a giant heart, as well as each other—all in an attempt to prove their potency as workers, lovers, even thinkers. Much of their showiness is perpetrated by Maude (the haunting Charlotta Mohlin), who forms the point of Foreman's typical and abusive love triangle.

As usual, the design of the piece is spot-on, with Foreman's adornments of letters and numbers dancing around; plates of fried eggs darting off and on; and skulls and severed heads galore, which surround the surreal set—a sort of white-trash Victorian parlor. The music and sound run by Foreman are both jarring and rhythmic, setting the pace for the show, and the lighting is a fantastically intrusive force that is both intriguing and an interruption in the viewing experience.

Interestingly enough, Foreman points to technology and information overload as the undercurrent of The Gods Are Pounding My Head!—a subject he has never dealt with explicitly (granted, he deals "explicitly" with very little). Foreman himself is a pioneer of experimental theater, not just in his id-inspired writing but also in his use of theatrical technologies in sound and lighting that had been taken for granted, and he gives them a completely new context and meaning.

In his program notes, Foreman writes that he is concerned with a "new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance." Implicit in his statement is his disappointment in the efficacy of the theater and his simultaneous distrust of other forms of communication. This inevitably contributes to (or detracts from) the artistic legacy that he will leave.

But give him his due: 37 years producing consistently brilliant theater is no small feat. And despite the innumerable disciples and knockoffs, no one can do it quite like Foreman can. For those who have never seen a Foreman performance, The Gods Are Pounding My Head! is an amazing and essential foray into the consciousness of experimental theater. For the veteran Foreman audience, expect all that we love about the productions, with small twists and great struggles that set this one apart from previous years' performances.

And as for Foreman's pseudo-"retirement," take heart: he is a self-described "man of the theater" and will undoubtedly return to his deepest of roots. Dutch the lumberjack hints upon his exit, "Don't worry—I'll be back." With Foreman's departure, however, the experimental theater world has incredibly large ontological (not to mention hysterical) shoes to fill.