By Mike Hoban
‘Happy Hour’ – Presented by Celebrity Series of Boston and Monica Bill Barnes & Company, March 12-16, District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue in Boston’s Seaport. All performances at 6 p.m. with a Friday 8:30 PM show added to accommodate additional demand Tickets available at www.celebrityseries.org.
Celebrity Series of Boston will bring back Monica Bill Barnes & Company to Boston with their two-woman dance/comedy piece, Happy Hour, an immersive show that promises to “blend cringe-worthy humor with socially awkward empathy in an after-work get-together.” Part office party, part dance show, and part karaoke event, performers Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass, dressed in men’s suits, crash an office party playing two utterly feckless would-be alpha males who attempt to seduce their way through the office happy hour. The performance is preceded by a 30 minute pre-show warmup hosted by Robbie Saenz de Viteri, who serves as MC for the event. Happy Hour features a potpourri of American dance styles – jazz, theater dance, tap and a bit of ballet and modern for good measure – along with a massive dose of broad physical humor. Theater Mirror caught up with Barnes and Saenz de Viteri by phone as they prepared for the upcoming performance March 12-16 at District Hall in the Seaport.
Theater Mirror: How would you describe Happy Hour to people, particularly those who don’t typically attend dance performances?
Robbie: When we talk about ‘Happy Hour’, we just say that we created a dance show that is set in an office. And you’re really in a genuine immersive world in which – like it or not – you’re a part of this slightly awkward but actually charming and fun office party that the dancers essentially crash and kind of ruin the fun (laughs).
Monica: In those types of conversations, we really try to focus on the relatability and the humor of the work. I think modern dance has a bad reputation of being inaccessible, and so I think one thing that we as a company really believe in is finding ways to have movement have meaning to audiences that aren’t typical dance audiences. We really go a long way to create an environment that brings people into the experience so that the audiences feel like they’re being welcomed into a dance show that looks and feels nothing like a dance show.
Theater Mirror: Robbie, how would you describe your role in the piece?
Robbie: When the audience first walks into the room, I play this overly gregarious, incredibly friendly, maybe a little too-much-up-into-your-personal-space guy who’s just trying to make everyone feel comfortable. I get the audience to sing karaoke, and we all sing ‘Sweet Caroline’ – which I’m sure will go over well in Boston. My whole job is to set up the whole experience of the office party that feels really familiar to everybody and kind of puts them in that mindset and also to foreshadow all of the events that will happen during the show.
Theater Mirror: Monica, how would you describe the men that you and Anna, as women, are portraying in the show? Because they seem to be the types of guys who want to be alpha males but really aren’t.
Monica: We were very conscious of that as we were making the piece. We don’t have any interest in making fun of men. The point of the show is to find what feels really universal to all of us in trying to do a little bit more than we are comfortable with. I think it’s like karaoke, where we all have impulses to express ourselves, to try and meet somebody new, to exist in a social setting where there is so much at risk in just attempting to have yourself go beyond what you’re comfortable with. And these two guys are just in this constant cycle of failing. But in those big and small failures, I feel like we’re representing that common feeling that we all go through when we’re questioning and doubting our own behavior, and simultaneously trying to connect and be more than we are. It feels very universal and it’s fun to watch.
Theater Mirror: But why men instead of women?
Monica: It somehow feels more fun to see these guys fail than I think it would be if we were playing two women. And that alone feels like such a wonderful, meaningful statement on gender in that we are more forgiving or feel more like men are somehow more resilient to failure than women. And the fact that we just continue to laugh at these guys over and over feels that it implies that the audience has such a confidence that they’re going to be okay. And I think we’re a bit more comfortable or familiar with laughing at men because we have some confidence in their ability to keep on believing in themselves (laughs).
Theater Mirror: Like Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello. Although this is technically a dance piece, it really plays more like one of those archetype male comedy duos. To me, dance as performance always feels really intricate, and while you are interacting with the audience, it’s in a completely different way than with comedy. Have you and Anna trained in comedy as well?
Monica: No, we don’t have any comic training. Dance really is intricate, but part of what I really love about having decided to put all of this time and effort into (dance) training physically, is that you can really study small gestures and nuance and figure out how to re-create it. And I think so much of dance is also just timing, and I think so much of comedy is timing. So part of why it takes me a long time to understand a show as a performer is that I feel like I’m trying to understand the timing that leads to the comedy, and what gestures feel too big or too small and what feels really genuine and comical. It’s funny, comedy and dance sort of share the specificity of timing and nuance, so it’s really a shared world.
To get a flavor of the upcoming performance, here’s a trailer for Happy Hour https://vimeo.com/266926204
