Review: Joan Didion’s ‘The White Album,’ Now in Living Color
Architectural firm P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, led by partners Marcelo Spina and UCLA Assistant Adjunct Professor Georgina Huljich, has gained international recognition as one of the most intriguing and progressive firms working in architecture today. Recently, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S was commissioned to design the set for the theatrical production of Joan Didion's White Album as part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The performance will be coming to CAP UCLA in April.
"Artists like to wrestle with strong texts; it’s good exercise for them. But what does it do for the audience? What value is added, for instance, to Joan Didion’s classic essay “The White Album” by turning it into a piece of theater?After all, you can read the original easily enough on your own. Or, right now, as part of a trial offer from Audible, you can hear it recited, if somewhat dryly, by the actress Susan Varon for free.
Neither of those experiences will be especially visual, so one enhancement provided by the elaborate production of “The White Album” that opened on Wednesday night as part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is something spectacular to keep your eyes busy.
To begin with, at center stage, there is a kind of glass house — the kind whose inhabitants shouldn’t throw stones. Over the course of the 90-minute work, this structure, designed by the P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S architectural firm, will represent several locales, including the Los Angeles home Ms. Didion lived in during the period covered by her essay. But it also represents the essay’s central theme: The attempt to corral chaotic experience within the architecture of storytelling."— Jesse Green, Nov. 29, 2018
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the New York Times website.
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