What I liked
Intense presentation!
What I didn't like
This show was perfect just as it was presented.
My overall impression
Larry Cedar, shirtless with long, scraggly hair and as rail-thin as one might imagine a fading 19th century street performer, once famous for his capacity to survive weeks on end without food, would look, speaks of his past, his somewhat strange talents, his dreams, victories and failures, behind his bravado lies his continual conundrum contemplating his purpose and the meaning of a life eternally set against by forces beyond his control.
But isn’t The Artist really the one in control? So it would seem to me with Larry Cedar acknowledging the throngs of people who would come to watch The Artist in his cage with nothing but a straw to have a sip of water to moisten his lips every now and then, and a bed of straw on which to sit rather than a chair. Wasn’t his condition really his choice? Cedar certainly presented it as such.
But who would make such a choice? None other than a Starving Artist of course, who will do whatever it takes to draw attention to his (or her) plight by drawing others to watch what happens as their performance art takes place. The half hour performance, which traverses themes of art, isolation, spirituality, and death, is presented virtually during this year Hollywood Fringe Festival on a darkened set, giving off the cage-like existence of a man searching for something which apparently can never exist for him. Or does it?
And what better way to describe the writing of Franz Kafka?
