Samedi

by William Dilella

"A folk-ritual-sport-dance-game-show-live-feed-live-mix-live-screen event," the promotions described "Infernal Cakes/Adjacent Manias," and rightfully so, as the spirited (albeit avant-garde) performance included a little bit of everything in that list. Writer/Presenter Joseph Herring explained exactly just what all that was and why it was there.

"'Infernal' comes from 'Infernal Cake-Walk,' which is a very early film from 1903, and 'Mania' comes from a mid 2000's video game," said Herring.

Those two are the crux behind one of the goals for the play, Herring said, which was to use these two aforementioned titles as 'bookends' on the narrative spectrum. He wanted to show how each idea has evolved, mostly to draw correlations between these ideas over the century. This included using football plays and practices as a means of expression. They also explored how certain dances, like the cat-walk and modern touchdown celebration dances, become stigmatized.

"Both have been banned in their own ways," said Herring. "You pay thousands in penalties [in the NFL]...and the cake-walk went though its own contested history."

And that history in the play is also steeped in Florida's lore, as the cake-walk  is part of southern plantation and Seminole history, according to Herring. Considered to be somewhat controversial, certain stories cite that the cake-walk was taught by the slaves, who were using the dance to lampoon all that was happening inside the plantations or even mock the ballroom dances of white slave-owners.

The play itself, put on at the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Center, was performed by a group of student actors from the University of West Florida, where writer Herring is also a professor. The student actors put on an immensely physical performance, essentially running football drills and going through numerous costume changes, and attacking cakes like Gallagher's mallet. The comedy was also ripe thoughout—holding true to some of that lampooning history—with song performances such as, 'If I had a penis, any kind of penis, just what kind of penis would you have?'

"I was happy to be involved in something different and something new," said Tyler Nicholson. 

Emily Barkesdale had worked with Professor Herring before, and knew what was to be expected. From her prior experience in acting, things like singing about, 'what kind of penis,' was all part of the gig. 

"I'm used to doing weird things in front of people," she said.

But it was not all shock value. The use of streaming video segments was effective (providing an active background, or to offer the actors a chance for a costume change or to cleanup cake from the stage). Casting actors all about the area surrounded the audience and put them in the middle of scenes, Meanwhile, the use of some improv by the actors created a natural flow for certain segments of dialogue (even though there were times one had to struggle to hear what was being said). That all being considered, whacky still took top billing (thought I was going for the cake pun, didn't you?). Or as Zeitgeist proprietor Rene Broussard put it:

"Some whacked out sh**. What else would you expect from Zeitgeist?"