Gigante Thanks

Theatre Gigante makes a quick, little appearance the weekend before Thanksgiving with a captivating spoken word performance by Artistic co-Director Mark Anderson. Mark’s words are punctuated with thoughtful audio interludes by composer/collaborator Frank Pahl. The intimate East Side studio space on the fifth floor of Kenilworth warms to a deeply engaging show by a very experienced storyteller. The towering, soft-spoken Anderson reaches deeply and casually into an intellectual mood that carries the imagination fluidly through an appealing series of thoughts.

As it opens, he’s waking up into a narrative of a Sunday that could be any some day in the long and winding March of COVID lockdown. Somewhere between the lights and the shadows and the audience, Mark moves through an honest, casual, conversational spoken word performance discussing matters of life, death, writing, thought and so much more.

There is real insight in inspiration and Mark Anderson’s work. Mark’s words search for meaning in everything without pretense. His words gracefully tumble through a pre-deconstructed series of stories. Metaphors and assumptions and amplifications all tumble around playfully onstage. It’s all very carefully composed. Every moment in the winding flow of consciousness has a very specific reason for being there. Mark Anderson is brilliant at delicately scoping our and sculpting silences, shadow and empty spaces in popular consciousness into something memorable. 

What could have come across as a restless meandering through thoughts during the COVID pause become something much more than that. Anderson has been thinking about death. As have we all. And while he is working with the same basic understanding and framework the rest of us are, he manages to find those specific spaces and places that make it on perspective vital and insightful from his perspective.

There’s a profoundly social soul to Mark's performance. At times the sheer casualness of the whole experience can seem almost breathtakingly nonchalant. As the show wraps itself up into a kind of beginning, one has the impression of having had a remarkably deep conversation with a deeply feeling and thinking human being. Which is odd considering that he was the only one who had actually been speaking the whole time. ​

Anderson isn't the only one speaking the whole time. Well...he IS the only one speaking. But there's another guy up there singing. And playing guitar. And percussion. Anderson and Frank Pahl link-up beautifully in places. At one point Anderson is mentioning something about the US and the nature of imperfection (I think) and Paul punctuates it with a wittily flawed performance of the melody from a patriotic tune that jangles and mutates around the edges of the melody. Much like Anderson’s own work, Pahl is capable of breathing through the soulful beauty of his own imperfection. Pahl is playing guitar, percussion and his own voice all at the same time. People do it all the time, but it's still really amazing watching it happen with Pahl's distinct personality behind it. 

Anderson and Pahl clearly have it together. The repetition on thoughts of death and ending might seem like kind of a sad place to be looking down the barrel of another holiday season, but Anderson delivers a sense of peace about it that's very reassuring. After all...this IS an expression of thanks. That's the recurring message, which feeds into the end of it all. One goes through so much in the course of one lifetime. Mark Anderson takes a moment onstage to consider it all.

It's a nice moment.

Anderson has performed onstage so much in various roles as various other characters. It's nice to have an opportunity to hang out with Mark Anderson playing "Mark Anderson" for a few fleeting moments on the way in to the holiday season. 

Theatre Gigante’s Thanks a Lot! has one more performance today at 2:00 pm at Kenilworth 508 Theatre on the fifth floor of 1925 East Kenilworth Place. For more information, visit Theatre Gigante online.