ARTS The Michigan Daily Thursday, September 18, 1986 Page 5 Two women awaken in 'night Mother' By Noelle Brower A mother and daughter are spending a quiet evening together at home. The daughter, Jessie, is in her mid-thirties, divorced and has just begun to feel in the last year that she has finally taken charge of her life. Normally reticent and withdrawn, on this evening she is talkative--almost jovial. This scene of familial life is certainly not an uncommon one for many except for the fact that on this night Jessie declares to her . mother that she intends to take the final step in becoming her own person; she states at the outset of the play that she will take her own life by the end of the evening. 'night Mother, the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Marsha Norman, cuts through the usual layers of melodramatic outbursts and cliches that revolve around the quest for self-identity and focuses upon Jessie's struggle both within and without to become responsible for herself. "It's a play about intention being the motivating factor in creating a sense of self," says director R. Neil Alexander of the thematic pulse that drives the piece. As 'night Mother unfolds, a battle between Jessie and Momma ensues. But as Jessie argues against her mother's pleas not to take her own life, one realizes that Jessie is really battling for her life and her right to do with it what she pleases. Whether she chooses to kill herself or not is actually secondary to the themes of self-realization and growth involved in the play. "It (sui - cide) is an act of her own self- determination and resolve to take her life into her own hands--to be responsible and acknowledge that she has dignity," explains Alexander. During the course of the play suicide becomes the only option for Jessie--her last stand. It is the first act that she has decided to commit on her own, and certainly dying is an act that must be performed alone. At first stupefied by her daughter's strange declaration, the mother soon rallies to save Jessie from her decision. But Momma learns about herself as well and must allow her daughter her own life. Both Momma and Jessie had to make concessions in their lives to get by. Stated Alexander, "(Momma) comes to an understanding of herself; she has always been in the same situation as Jessie and has made peace with it whereas Jessie has not. They both take a step forward." In fact, it is out of a tremendous love for her mother that Jessie decides to tell her of her decision to kill herself, knowing full well what her mother's reaction will be. Most of us do not know when we will die; for some it is like living with a time bomb, for others it is a godsend. Though the idea of suicide is never one to be taken lightly or encouraged for self- realization, a life is liberated in 'night Mother. Jessie decides to live her life and death with dignity. Alexander and his cast of two have tried to rely this feeling of calm. "My purpose and my concept is to create as best as possible a sense of peace within Jessie. It becomes a half- acceptance for Momma--finding out a lot about Jessie." Jessie and Momma reconcile their lives together and in doing so free themselves. There is joy in Jessie's decision. Ann Arbor Civic Theatre's production of 'night Mother exemplifies the new direction the group is heading in. This production at their Main Street stage (the forum AACT uses for their more avant-garde pro- ductions as opposed to the more mainstream fare of the Main Stage productions), is their flag- ship for the season, and future, to come. ,night Mother opens tonight at the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre located at 338 S. Main. Performances will be September. 19-21 & 25-27 and October 2-4. For more information call: 662-7282. - ---------- Hardbodies IIs soft on quality, weak By Geoffrey Riklin A dishonest bunch of people are behind AMC theaters. Their intense, self-congratulatory introduction to their marvelous chain boasted of showing the finest films. Perhaps they consider Hardbodies II fine entertainment. If they do, I would advise all those who own stock in AMC or its parent company to sell it at once, for such appalling bad taste in film certainly indicates a profound lack of judgement, which will result in inevitable Screen art at Museum By Elena Deutsch 3eing only steps away from the Union and Angell Hall, the Un- iversity Museum of Art is readily available for a brief or extended xisit.t A further incentive to walk through the doors may be the hibit of Oriental screens in the West Gallery, which will be showing until October 26. As one enters the gallery, he finds himself in a comfortable room. Plush carpeting and warm lights illuminate a variety of screens that line the walls. Many of the screens are from the Japanese Edo period, with a few from China and India adding variety to the exhibit. Screens became very popular in Japan in the fifteenth and six- ateenth centuries. During that per- iod, the Japanese war lords, or shoguns," built great estates. They would decorate their rooms with mats and screens comis- sioned by popular artists. The screens served outdoor functions as well, marking off the lord's "turf' in the garden. Marshall Wu; the curator of Asian Art at the Museum, explained the screen's function as decorative and defi- nitive of status. "The one sitting in front of the screen is the lord. It is similar to two people in a room with one seated behind a desk and the other merely standing before him." The Edo Period, which produced one of the largest collections of Japanese art as well as screens, ranges from 1615 to 1868. Many different schools of decoration came, went and co-existed during the two-and-a-half century per- iod. One of these, the Kano School, used a highly decorative style with bright color pigments depicting realistic scenes in na- ture. The detail is very precise, the work highly stylized, and the effect very serene. Another style of screen decorating is the Naga school. In this style black ink predominates the palate. Color is used rarely and sparingly. The exhibit houses three pieces by Keno Taiga, one of the masters of Japanese Naga screen painting. In one of his single screen works, A Mountain Landscape with a Waterfall, one side of the panel is done in tremendous detail, solely in black ink. On the other side, s flrgcnif (knvkuran nainted financial disaster for AMC. But of course they don't regard Hardbodies II to be fine enter- ainment; it's simply an easy way to make a buck. There is nothing the least bit in-teresting about Hardbodies H itself, but it does provide the opportunity to make a few observations. (If you must know, the plot is as follows: a film cast and crew go to Greece and many hijinks ensue. The whole thing is just an excuse to reveal several dozen sets of breasts.) The first observation is that while there have always been and always will be cheap, rotten movies, many of the cheap rotten movies of the past ten years or so display a certain amount of sheer meanness. Not meanness that is intrinsic to the plot and can have artistic justification, or the I- couldn't-care-less-if-you-like-it- or-not attitude of some directors and producers in past and present (once again that is inevitable). I'm referring to overtly exploitative meanness. The backers of Hard-bodies II will, it's safe to assume, make a profit from it. The people who actually made the thing got their paychecks. But was the reward-- both the financial reward (and it must have been miserly) and the reward in publicity-- commensurate with the humiliation that the women in par-ticular endured? The answer is no. Until about ten years ago when the current enthusiasm for nudity and mad slasher movies began, an as-piring actor, actress, director, writer, whatever, cut his teeth making mo-vies as bad, or nearly so, as Hard-bodies II. But much more often than not, the cast and crew could chalk it up as the unavoidable first step, something they perhaps learned from and would be able to laugh about in retrospect. Will the women who hu-miliated themselves, or at the very least were humiliated, or the men who fared not much better, be able to laugh about Hardbodies IL? Again, the answer is no. Call it exploitation. As far as the audience is concerned, with one or two in plot movie lasted roughly 90 minutes. On the way out one of them muttered something about get- ting ripped off. I couldn't agree more. exceptions, they were all teenagers looking for some fun on a Saturday night. They laughed four or five times , a dismal number considering the I a ,' Sho Mic w how you feel with ... higan Daily Personals 764-0557 Tuesday Lunch Lectures CURRENT WORLD ISSUES: AN UPDATE 12 Noon At The International Center - 603 E. Madison St. September 23: "Israel and the Palestinians" Speaker: DR. ANTHONY SULLIVAN, Director, Near East Support Services I Sponsored by theA U ECUMENICAL CAMPUS CENTER } : : ,. . . I .... T. } Don't Forget DIAGNOSIS: General depression Loss of appetite Refuses to eat ... U " Aerobic Dance " Ballroom Dance " Bartending * Beer Appreciation " CPR " Entertainment Tonight " Financial Planning " Massage " Macintosh Magic " Pool " Sign Language * Speed Reading " Study Skills " Vegetarian Cooking * Winetasting " Your Colorful Image * Yoga " Yoga Philosophy PRESCRIPTION: SUPER STIR as needed /g Dr. Date a I Registration begins Monday, September 22 and runs through September 26 at the Michigan Union Ticket Office. _ 763-1107 NEW