Journalist Ben Fritz and former Navy officer-turned-actor Ricky Ryba on the marketing and accuracy of "American Sniper" (pictured); Frances McDormand and Suzzy Roche discuss "Early Shaker Spirituals"; the documentary "Red Army" looks at how the former Soviet Union built a hockey dynasty.
How the edgy Wooster Group turned Shaker traditions into a stage show
The New York-based company, Wooster Group, is known for its experimental approach to theater. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise when the group chose to perform traditional songs from The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing — the religious group more commonly known as Shakers.
"Early Shaker Spirituals" is a performance based on hymns, anthems and marches by Sister R. Mildred Barker from a 1976 album. The Wooster Group interpret these pieces through song and dance.
Actress Frances McDormand and singer Suzzy Roche are members of the Wooster Group. They joined us in the studio to talk about how the genesis of the production and about the similarities between Shakers and the theater company.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Did you find any similarities between the Shakers and the Wooster group?
McDormand:
There's something really gratifying about the discipline of the Shakers' life. And it's very similar to the way that we work as musicians and actors in The Wooster Group.
Roche:
The Wooster Group connects to the Shakers through the work ethic and the attention to detail in a particular aesthetic.
Part of the aesthetic in the Shaker community is how they seem themselves as a whole. Is that the way you see yourselves in the theater group?
McDormand:
It's also a matriarchal society. Liz LeCompte — the artistic director at The Wooster Group — has been at the center of the artistic development of [the company] for almost 40 years. And Mother Ann Lee was the founding leader of the True Believers. And it's also the gender politics of the Shaker community and The Wooster Group — there's an equality to it.
Frances, you grew up in a church. What is the difference between the music you used to worship and this music?
McDormand:
Part of what I love about the process that we're in is that it takes me back to the thing that I loved most about growing up in a Christian environment — but more importantly, a communal environment — is that if you have a voice to lend, you are invited to offer it. I sang in the church choir from the age of nine and loved it. And [music is] the one thing that I can separate from the religious dogma, which I no longer believe in or practice, and can still give myself to, uncynically. What I love about the Shaker music that we're doing is that it's not religiously based. It's more poetic. There are parables to it, but it's not about Jesus so it's a little bit easier to latch on to.
Roche:
It's about work, it's about humility, it's about simplicity. A lot of the songs were received, as [the Shakers] would say, as gifts from birds and dreams. So the people who wrote these songs were just receiving them from someplace else.
Do you see this piece as a time capsule as what this community represents as it's going away?
McDormand:
It's already gone but, that being said, it feels very alive. It doesn't feel like a museum, it doesn't feel like it's gone. Maybe the conversion to a large community lifestyle is gone, but not the spirit of it. And that's what I think is effective for an audience when they come to see the piece. But also, it's about us being older, too.
Roche:
There's something so vital about the recording and the urge that these women have to sing these songs that I relate to [as I'm] getting older myself. You sort of feel [like you're] resisting that wilting feeling.
The Wooster Group performs "Early Shaker Spirituals" at REDCAT through Feb. 1.
'Red Army' doc examines Soviet hockey team's political and cultural impact on Russia
Veteran sports fans know that the United States shocked the world when its ice hockey team upset the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics. It was as much a a Cold War showdown as a sporting event.
But the Soviets' loss was also an anomaly: that Olympics was one of the few times the Russians actually lost. The new documentary “Red Army,” by director Gabe Polsky, examines how one of the greatest teams in modern sports was created, with Kremlin politics shaping the team, its coach and the players.
When Polsky came by The Frame, host John Horn asked him about the connection between sports and politics, the disappearing notion of teamwork in sports, and just what it was that made the Soviet hockey team the best on the planet.
Interview Highlights:
How did you find yourself immersed in the world of Soviet hockey?
I was born in the United States, my parents are immigrants from Soviet Ukraine, and when I was growing up I wanted to be a professional hockey player. I really didn't look into my roots that much. At the time, the Cold War was still happening. It was in the '80s, and it wasn't that cool to say that I was the son of Soviet immigrants.
So I really pushed that to the side, but then when I was 14 and I saw the Soviet Union play on a VHS tape, it was mesmerizing. I couldn't believe it. It was like a creative revolution. That really inspired me and I wanted to know more about my roots and I looked into the story of the Soviet hockey team. It became something much different and something much bigger, a huge story.
"Red Army" posits that there is an intense, almost inseparable relationship between sports and national identity.
Yeah, especially during those times, which were very charged. Everything in the Soviet Union was political, and that meant sports as well. Chess, ballet and the space program were all heavily funded by the government. And regarding the sports program, Stalin said that he wanted sports to be number one in the world.
The reason for that is that sports are a way to communicate ideas to people. The Soviet Union developed hockey in particular to be the most dominant program in the world, and they achieved that. In these totalitarian systems, you can decide that you're going to do something, and there's no resistance.
The Soviet Union dominated hockey by creating a version of the game that was unbelievably poetic. Explain a little bit about what the Soviet Union's game style was and why it was so effective.
The Soviet hockey system was created in the 1940s by a man named Anatoli Tarasov. He was a visionary, a creative thinker, a philosopher who read a lot of literature, and he's the man [who] took hockey and created an entirely new system of play. It really became an art form, in the way that they passed and possessed the puck. Sometimes they would pass 100 times more than the other team.
The ideology was not to think as individuals, or about who scored the most goals, but rather about this collective creativity and the team, and serving the country. After all, they all [earned] as much as engineers or teachers.
We're living in an era of professional sports, particularly in the United States and European soccer, in which it's all about star athletes, some of whom are paid enormous sums of money. One of the things that worked in the Soviet model of hockey was that it was a team sport, that everyone was relatively equal even though there were great players. Has that kind of play vanished?
You hit it on the head — you don't see that kind of collective mastery and creativity that you saw in Soviet hockey. It's just not there nowadays. If you watch an NHL hockey game, you'll see maybe one or two good, fantastic plays a game.
But then when you watch old tapes of Soviet hockey, you see that every time they touch the puck they do something interesting, and that's amazing. That's what people want to see, but that can only happen when you're working as a unit and the unit understands each other so well that they can play more or less blindfolded.
One of the things that set the Soviet style apart is that they would pass backward—they would move backwards to go forward. Did you see that as an analogy for politics? They were working in a creative yet mechanized system that needed a certain kind of math to lay out their game, and there was a real plan for the ways in which the Soviet Union approached politics and propaganda.
One of the ironies of the story of Soviet hockey is that these guys could only be free on the ice. In literature or poetry, it's pretty clear what the intent of the author is, but on the hockey rink you could be creating a revolution that the KGB or the government might not recognize as an expression of freedom. They were winning, too, so the players could create their own revolution of creativity on the ice, and that was the only place that they could really be free.
"Red Army" opens in theaters on Jan. 23.