Hot, Hip and on the Verge

A dozen young American companies you need to know

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BLUEFORMS THEATRE GROUP

Mix Masters
by Jay Weitz

Two years ago, BlueForms Theatre Group burst onto the Columbus theatre scene with an ambitious theatrical imagining of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land—and made Eliot's rubble bounce with emotion and wit. In what was intended to be a single-night debut (ticket demand prompted a repeat performance), BlueForms showed off what was to become its modus operandi: knitting together songs and scenes, quips and quotations, into a brilliantly eclectic anthology that illuminates a play's subject from every conceivable angle.

And it's not just the words that spin. An energetic core of actors vivify those words through the compositional and choreographic techniques of innovative director Anne Bogart, leading one critic to note the company's work could just as easily be categorized as spoken word or dance. Sporting a strong group ethic, these dozen-odd artists in their mid-twenties to early thirties exhibit a passion for both movement and ideas—and, happily, a well-honed sense of humor.

"We absolutely believe that if you're going to get people to think about things and maybe change something within themselves," says founder and artistic director Matt Slaybaugh, "entertaining them is a great way to do it. If you can get people laughing, then obviously they're thinking about it already."

BlueForms followed the Eliot collage with A/ThePostModernLoveStory, a full evening's Bartlett's on love, which swept the voting for best new work of the 2002–03 season among the Central Ohio Theatre Critics Circle. Since then the group has launched such original shows as The Pursuit of Happiness (a frantic chase through modern-day culture, from television to shopping) and InVulnerable (politics in post-9/11 America), and infiltrated the Cincinnati Fringe Festival.

"We've had people tell us how our work has changed the way they think and act," Slaybaugh says. BlueForms's impact has been nearly as significant off stage. In 2003, it organized the Columbus Theatre League, a collective of five under-the-radar groups pooling resources. Since then, CTL has published five issues of Theatre Summit, a fanzine extolling the Columbus theatre scene. On the first Tuesday of each month, BlueForms presents readings of contemporary plays by the likes of Neil LaBute, Naomi Iizuka, Tony Kushner or Gina Gionfriddo.

BlueForms—the name, says Slaybaugh, is a variation on "new forms"—has become especially valuable to Columbus because of its commitment to the city itself. Some members are natives and some are transplants, but each had a choice: "You can go to a city that has a big thriving art scene—New York, Chicago, L.A.—or you can stay where you are and try to create a thriving art scene from what's there already," Slaybaugh says. BlueForms chose the latter, and the thriving is mutual.

Jay Weitz is a freelance writer for the weekly newspaper Alive: Music, Art, and Culture in Columbus.

Next: Charter Theatre, Washington, D.C.

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