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Skull session
Shrink and patient share their Mind
BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

The idea that theater and therapy are related is as old as the Greeks and as new as Woody Allen. But what Marvin Novogrodski and Doug Vogel, patient and hypno-therapist, respectively, have done is to make theater out of therapy sessions, specifically Out of My Mind, at the Carriage House.

First seen as a work-in-progress last spring, this play/performance piece is by turns clever and funny, wrenching and heart-tugging, just like therapy, just like life. Novogrodski and Vogel wrote and perform the piece together, with direction and set design by Novogrodski. It is a melange of music, movement, monologues, dialogues, mock therapy sessions, and not-so-mock therapy sessions. Novogrodski explained in a question-and-answer session after the show that he and Vogel videotaped their improvs and on-the-spot therapy sessions from which they scripted their "one-act psychological thriller."

In this expanded version of Out of My Mind, Novogrodski, a member of Everett Dance Theatre, includes even more dance-like movement and gesture to express feelings and moods. But, most significantly, Novogrodski goes back in time to tell more of his parents’ stories, to illuminate what’s behind the blown-up family photos that dominate the panels on foldable screens behind the two actors.

In the 2002 presentation of Out of My Mind, we were bemused by tales of terrible family feuds, but in the current incarnation, Novogrodski and Vogel have created a narrative device that incorporates haunting flashbacks. Whenever Vogel tells Novogrodski to "step into the corridor," we watch Novogrodski mime opening a door, then enter a narrow shaft of dim light (lighting design by Lisa Zagarella and Novogrodski) and then take on a different voice, indicating his mother, father, grandmother, or even his little-boy self.

His parents’ stories are impressionistic, one of them a breathtaking adventure after World War II, when his grandmother drove a truck through the German woods to a river where a rope was thrown so that she and others could get across the bridgeless stream and race to the train station to snatch his father off a train headed for Israel. His mother, for her part, spent time in the Israeli army before coming to the States and meeting Marvin’s father. The feud that sprang up between Marvin’s father and his uncle over "a little money and a lot of blame" led to Marvin’s father and mother changing their last names to Si, Henry Si, and Ida Si. Marvin quips that if it had only been Ho, his mom could have been Ida Ho.

Those silly asides are never gratuitous. They always hit the mark when the information Novogrodski is relating or the psychological analysis Vogel is making becomes too, too heavy. Novogrodski also loves playing with the language in the script, sometimes looping phrases in a similar fashion to dance movements, sometimes turning words on their head. For example, Vogel asks him to "experience being unsure," and Novogrodski replies, "I’m feeling more unsure, I’m sure about that." Or when Vogel asks him to be "deep," he replies, "On the surface, it seems deep." Or when he reflects on his life overall, he says, "I get the feeling I’m settling down, and that’s unsettling."

Those examples give a very tiny taste of how much there is to absorb in Out of My Mind. One could listen several times and still not get it all, but that’s what makes it so fascinating. Novogrodski talks about his failed attempts at making friends as a child, his doomed relationships with women, his discovery that he had a son when the child was 11. He also touches on his itchy Hanes underwear, his itchy bar mitzvah leisure suit, his son’s bar mitzvah, his mother’s persistent plea to "keep in touch," his siblings, his several vocations, his hairstyle: "I just position it forward — it’s a metaphor for my life."

Vogel acts primarily as a Greek chorus, making succinct and insightful commentaries on Novogrodski’s revelations as well as leading him into other topics, getting him to be even more vulnerable. And Vogel himself begins to open up a little. He joins in the hair conversation, explaining that he combed his so much that he went bald.

But it is the physicalization of Novogrodski’s spillover emotions that is most memorable about this show: his running in circles at the beginning, nervous about starting the show; his throwing his tension down an imaginary chute by sloughing it off his arms, his legs, his hair, shaking his body like a dog; his all-out temper fit when Vogel pushes him to let out his anger, a series of fast-whipped karate kicks to which he returns several times; and his miming of batting a home run whenever he needs to think positively.

Out of My Mind is a polished collage of drama, dance, mime, storytelling, even juggling, plus psychology and, as Vogel and Novogrodski would have it, "neuro-linguistics." It’s a captivating combination of thought-provoking wit and poignant soul-baring. Don’t miss it.


Issue Date: May 9 - 15, 2003
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