Theatre in Review: After/Margarete (Under the Radar/The Public Theater)The Under the Radar Festival, an excellent venue to take the measure of the theatre's current avant-garde, has kicked off with two very different pieces about the nature of life, perception, memory, and identity. Together, they offer a fine picture of the festival's continuing vitality. Andrew Schneider is the theatrical poet of raw nerve endings. His earlier piece, YOUARENOWHERE, was a torrent of run-on words combined with knock-'em-dead lighting and sound effects and allusions to physics, the theory of relativity, twelve-step programs, relationships, and concepts of identity, among many other things. It also featured a song by, of all people, Ricky Nelson. His latest piece, After, which, he developed with Alessandra Calabi, Bobby McElver, Alicia Ayo Ohs, Kedian Keohan, and Peter Musante, is seemingly obsessed with human perception and the end of life; it features a cascade of microscopically brief scenes linked by blackouts, shimmering star effects, blinder cues, and deep rumbles that cause one to fear that the Public Theater has been hit by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake. And there are generous helpings of Jefferson Starship's "We Can Build This Dream Together." Many exchanges, featuring Schneider and Ohs, constitute a series of satirical revue sketches about the thousand and one ways that couples, even the allegedly well-attuned, can misunderstand each other. Occasionally, the performers look out at us and apologize before launching into another testy conversation, as if tacitly admitting their essential banality. These bits are generally amusing, and don't be surprised if they sound as if they were eerily lifted from your own life; in this piece's worldview, communication is a hugely overrated concept. If this were all, After would, despite its rapid pace, probably devolve quickly into tedium. But Schneider is an expert player of audience mind games: Both actors sport boom mics, and, indeed, they sound amplified; then, suddenly, he starts speaking with her voice -- and vice versa -- and you realize that, for at least part of the time, they are lip-synching. In a startling flash, another couple appears on stage -- speaking in the voices of Schneider and Ohs. The sequence of scenes gets wilder, switching between little two-handers and party scenes featuring nearly two dozen performers. One of the most startling things about After is how, over the course of a five-second blackout, one precisely blocked tableau replaces another; crowds come and go in the blink of an eye. Schneider could give many theatre directors lessons in the art of changeovers. If After is remarkably light on its feet, moving at a rapid, not to say frantic, clip, Schneider, who also directed, has a number of additional disorientations to deploy: the audience is kept in the dark for an unsettlingly long period of time, stunned by the quiet and, later, provoked by the sound of Ohs' whispery voice moving through the auditorium. Certain brief scenes end in sudden death. Statements such as "This is going to end" and "Your life flashes before your eyes" are heard, repeatedly. Ohs, lying on the stage, her face illuminated only by a flashlight, describes a body shutting down, organ by organ; as she does, her voice (obviously recorded this time), slows down and deepens until it takes on the quality of a monster growling from the bowels of the earth. Later, we are invited to imagine what the very last second of consciousness, the split second that separates life and nothingness, might be like. If any of this sounds morbid, it's not; in fact, much of After is, oddly, exhilarating, in large part, I think, because Schneider's fascination with the workings of our brains only serves to underline the fragility and mystery of existence. And even when After threatens to turn frustratingly opaque, the uncanny precision of the production -- lighting, projection, and scenery by Schneider, and sound design by Bobby McElver and Schneider -- provides its own justification. Because one feels so thoroughly in the hands of professionals, it's easy to sit back and let After work its magic, reaching us on an almost subconscious level. (In one especially gripping effect, a blackout lifts, revealing a thick bank of fog, lit in white from underneath. The fog quickly disperses, another suggestion of the evanescence of life.) Even with a relatively brief running time of eighty minutes, After could probably be trimmed by about five minutes or so; during the latter sequences, I began to get the feeling that no clear ending was in sight. Nevertheless, this is a work of a theatre artist with a distinctive vision. Watching it is like visiting an existential funhouse designed to warp one's senses and reshape one's perceptions; as such, it is masterfully done. At the other end of the theatrical spectrum is Margarete, a kind of investigatory documentary offered by the Polish theatre artist Janek Turkowski. We are led into a small room somewhere deep in the Public, where its administrative offices are located; entering, we are offered coffee or tea and invited to sit on chairs, sofas, or pillows. (There is room for about two dozen audience members). There, we meet Turkowski, who tells us about the cache of eight-millimeter home movies he purchased at a flea market in Germany nearly a decade ago. During the introduction, Turkowski discusses his purchase of an old-fashioned movie projector, an object he observed with mystified fascination, studying each button and speculating about its function. (As someone who grew up in an era when every family had a home movie projector, I have never felt so old.) The films, which were, apparently, originally owned by a woman named Margarete Ruhbe, were shot in East Germany in the nineteen fifties and sixties. When not focused on rolling landscapes, they feature a still-vital gray-haired woman on various trips. Some appear to be documentaries of group bus tours -- possibly employee picnics -- that seem almost comically devoted to the ideal of hearty Socialist good times; another depicts a parade that, Turkowski notes, would not be out of place in North Korea. At least one of them records an ocean voyage. Turkowski, who was still a boy when the Berlin Wall fell, became obsessed with the films, and one can see why, as they offer tantalizing glimpses of a vanished way of life behind the Iron Curtain. This is not an exposé of political repression; the woman in the films seems fairly prosperous, not least given her extensive travels. Reviewing each reel repeatedly and toying with music and other effects as possible enhancements, Turkowski recalls how he began to tease out certain mysteries. If the woman depicted in the films is Margarete, who was the cameraperson? Who are the man and woman who turn up separately in different films, who closely resemble each other? And how did these films end up for sale to the highest bidder? Turkowski's detective work yields a meeting with a surviving subject of the films -- I won't say who -- but, for various reasons, it proves to be too late to unravel many of the mysteries associated with them. Nevertheless, Margarete, which runs only an hour, casts quite a melancholy spell. Like Say Something Bunny, a piece built around a wire recording of a Brooklyn family in the 1950s, it is the latest entry in what you might call Found Object Theatre. It offers a fascinating glimpse into a past most of us know little about; it is also a touching comment on the fragility of memory and the brevity of even the longest human life. I'm willing to bet that the many questions it raises will linger in your mind. Combined with After -- check the Public's schedule for exact times -- it makes a compelling double meditation on mind, memory, and the passage of time. -- David Barbour 
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