DF: My intention is not to create a painful experience, to make people angry, or to confuse people. Actually, my video is meant to be an enjoyable, entertaining and pleasurable experience. As I said earlier, if a viewer watches my video expecting a story, consistent characters, a clear concept or any kind of intellectual construct, they WILL experience pain, irritation and anger, because their desire will be continually frustrated. The video HAS no consistent themes, concepts, or storyline. That is because the video is designed to encourage people to learn how to watch it in a different way; to enjoy the flow of rhythm, emotions, and dynamics, rather than ideas. To enjoy it the same way you enjoy music (despite the use of language). To encourage the viewer to be inside of their feelings rather than inside a concept. Viewed this way, the video, I believe, is very rewarding, entertaining and enjoyable, full of interesting things to look at, interesting music to listen to, interesting thoughts to think about, and powerful emotions to identify with and by moved by. Fortunately, quite a few people who have seen the video agree with me. My favorite films and theater pieces have always been ones which teach me a new way of seeing. (Examples of film directors would be Hans Jurgen Syberberg, Mathew Barney, Ulrike Ottinger. Examples of theater directors would be Elizabeth LeCompte or Robert Ashley.) Very often, when I see these works, for the first half or so of the piece, the experience really is bit painful or frustrating, because I have not yet learned how to watch it. But when I finally catch on and learn how the film or play is meant to be watched, it becomes exhilarating, not only because of its inherent beauty, but because my own perceptual apparatus has been opened up and enlarged. I am trying to do something like that with my work. JH: Where can your approaches find a place in a more narrative production? DF: That's something I'd like to explore in the future. One of my long term projects is to make a film version of Shelley's PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. Although it would not be a conventional film in any sense, it does have a storyline of sorts and a written text. JH: Improvisation is so much more than just making things up. Any secrets you can share that are at the heart of your improvisational acting technique? DF: Yes. The focus for an improvising performer is not on what he is trying to communicate to the audience, but on what he is feeling. His feelings are the source of his performance. But these feelings must be experienced as physical sensations. If the actor feels it in his body, the audience will be able to see it. If he feels it in his voice, the audience will be able to hear it. That's just one example. Improvisation technique is a subject I'm obsessed with, so I could go on and on about it for days at a time. JH: We hear a lot about "classically trained actors," are your acting approaches part of a classical regimen? DF: Unfortunately, no. The kind of training that most people receive in acting school does not prepare them at all to do the kind of work I do. I say 'unfortunately' because it means that I have to train anyone who works with me from scratch. They have to work incredibly hard for at least a year before their work is anywhere near good enough to present in public.
Review from the Charolotte Observer 1/26/2011 (click to open in new window) Review of "Marvelous Discourse" by Jack Foley in "The Alsop Review" 10/7/2011: That was followed by David Finkelstein's equally amazing Marvelous Discourse. Two men, one of them the filmmaker, talk on endlessly, hilariously, while a somewhat androgynous "sorceress" moves around, dances, mugs. The often astonishing dialogue was improvised by the actors and has the effect of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry on steroids. BVFF's program comments, "The text for the video is a spectacular example of language unfolding from an intuitive physicality," which seems, like the video, simultaneously puzzling and heroically accurate. Review of Lake Ivan's production of "Permanent Brain Damage" by Charles McNulty in "The Village Voice" 7/27/1999: The Beckettian power of Foreman's vision is on display in director David Finkelstein's version of Permanent Brain Damage, a three-character enactment of a woman's journey into the core of her damaged being. An older actress (the haunting Alice Teirstein) and a younger one (Moira Stone) speak cryptically from the balcony, while a middle-aged puppeteer and dancer (the drag performer Agnes DeGarron) mutely flails around in her own colorful confusion. A split red cabbage occupying two bowls of fiendishly bubbling seltzer water serves as the physical reminder of the damaged brain, the apparent source of the ensuing interior pageant. To an eclectic soundtrack of music and elliptical comments, the silent woman (whose life, we are told, has left her mentally short-circuited) dons an array of cockeyed head wraps and hats, vestigial signs of a life once filled with hope. Impressively performed in an understated yet profoundly absurd manner, the production derives a powerful emotional current from DeGarron's wounded, clownlike persona. With his saucer eyes, rubbery limbs, and peculiar genius for handling scarves, he brings poignant life to this elusive, mind-tickling stage poem. Review of "Episode #21: The Bathroom " by Jason Pankoke in Micro-Film " Summer 2002 issue Vibrant spoken-word meets colorful cable-access technology in LAKE IVAN EXISTS, an interesting spin-off from the popular New York-area improvisational theater group led by David Finkelstein. In "The Bathroom," Finkelstein and James Martin engage in simultaneous monologues about cleanliness, life, and death while roaming about a lavatory dressed up to resemble a Roman bathhouse. Along with videographer Eileen White and musician Bob Goldberg, the group coagulates into a living, breathing collage of sound and image as their performance is augmented by video-generated graphics and scrolling text. Although definitely not for everyone's tastes, "The Bathroom" is a tight example of how to make a successful experimental video without succumbing to pedestrian production, inappropriate bells and whistles, or a bloated running time. The Lake Ivan players did not have the most sophisticated resources at their fingertips, as the shimmering on-again, off-again auto-focus reveals that a consumer camcorder was used to tape this episode, but the overall result keeps us engaged when it could have easily been distancing. Finkelstein also took much care in choosing the graphics -- some textural, some literal --and mating them together specifically for this home video edition, as the raw, weekly episodes consist solely of the recorded improv. For those looking to dive into something far removed from typical narrative devices, "The Bathroom" harbors a mesmerizing "lake effect" that might just do the trick.
© 2003
David Finkelstein david@lakeivan.org
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