Mix ‘n’ match

Flying dummies, pill popping and orgies flood the absurd, while
floating hoop skirts, dinner parties and love express the en vogue.
Satire takes two opposite forms in the theater as a 1920s Polish
comedy and a 19th-century American comedy of manners strike the
stage.

Although set in completely different time periods and settings
and adopting different tones, both comedies comment on social
barriers that confine individuality. On two consecutive nights as
part of the UCLA theater department’s season of comedy,
“Fashion” opens tonight and “Mad Acts” on
Feb. 25 in the Little Theater.

“Fashion,” written in 1845 by American socialite
Anna Cora Mowatt, is a traditional American comedy of manners
satirizing New York City life as America tries to adopt European
fashion.

Mowatt was one of the first prominent American female
playwrights. Stemming from her opulent lifestyle in a prominent
family, she experienced the shallowness of materialism and its
adverse affects.

“”˜Fashion’ is really a commentary on status,
showing the influences of materialism upon society,” said
Nicole Reding, a first-year graduate acting student.
“It’s a struggle between the city mouse and the country
mouse, and family values and fashion.”

The play stresses the liberation from materialistic pursuits. By
satirizing the binding situations people get themselves into,
Mowatt comments on society’s constricting boundaries of
acceptability.

“Money has a permanent place in our society that gets off
balance,” said director Ellen Geer. “Mowatt makes fun
of the situations people get into when trying to fit into
society’s mold: They are squeezed.”

“Mad Acts,” by Polish playwright Stanislaw
Witkiewicz, consists of two one-act parts: “The Madman and
the Nun” and “Dainty Shapes and Hairy Apes, or the
Green Pills.”

“This style of comedy is farce and very physical.
It’s in the same style, in some ways, as the Marx brothers
and Monty Python, possessing that quality of things that can happen
in a surreal mainstream-like way,” said Michael Hackett, the
director of “Mad Acts.”

Witkiewicz wrote between World War I and World War II. Although
he was Polish, he was in the Russian army and witnessed the Russian
Revolution. He was concerned with the coming of the mechanization
of culture, where people would lose their personal identities and
become part of the vast political machine that he saw in the Soviet
version of communism.

“Witkiewicz was very aware of the cruelty of war and the
absurdity of the human situation in times of stress,” Hackett
said. “He is very interested in these themes of the loss of
personal identity, of mechanization, of people turning into
automatons and robots.”

Witkiewicz proposed a different kind of theater based on the
philosophy or theory of “pure form,” in which the
artist was the ideal man and would ultimately prevail.

“He believed that the theater should not try to reproduce
photographic reality like a film, but it should try to produce
dream realities,” Hackett said.

In the second act of “Mad Acts,” “Dainty
Shapes and Hairy Apes, or the Green Pills,” the fight against
conformity becomes a trap of self-deception. Relative individual
identity is compromised by the fear that mass behavior and culture
destroys individual freedom.

“In order to fight against conformity, people become
individualistic in a ridiculous way. They lose their identity by
trying too hard to be individual,” Hackett said.

In each artistic pursuit, both plays incorporate different
styles of acting. Reding, who plays Gertrude in
“Fashion” and the Nun in “The Madman and the
Nun,” had to adopt new styles for each role.

“Mad Acts” has physical, silent acting characterized
by bold, extreme strokes. The wild characters confront absurd
situations with jerky movements and confrontational attitudes.

“In the characters, rock star meets clown,” Reding
said.

Meanwhile, “Fashion” has the dainty, delicate acting
of the Victorian period. Working in the acting styles of the day,
the acting is very presentational and the characters float.

“Mowatt’s characters are very finely drawn. She
pushes strong characters against the innocent music and
lighthearted jeering,” Geer said.

The manifestation of comedy on stage diverges into severely
different forms of social commentary.

“”˜Fashion’ is vaudeville meets situation
comedy, similar to an Oscar Wilde play,” Reding said.
“”˜Mad Acts’ is vaudeville meets the absurd and
dark, like Oscar Wilde on drugs.”