Imagine androgynous 1980’s glam rock, indie music with an iPhone T-Pain app, a tinfoil lightshow, and a group of zombified Jems. You’d have Michael Howell’s Romulus Ate.
When going to the student theater, you go past the well-known B. Iden Payne Theatre and walk through an alley with mazes of metal pipes bolted against the grimy brick walls with the sound of gasses and fluids churning inside them. You’ll soon hit the UT Lab Theatre—a small, black, well kept secret.
Romulus Ate isn’t exactly a play. It’s more of a concert with the zombie Jems dressed and choreographed in a way to question and experiment with the polarizations of gender. There are obvious jabs to contemporary pop artists, such as Ke$ha, as they satirize the typical club dance moves of women. Director Michael Howell seems to lead the five female dancers with his own androgynous look: shaved pits, long hair, tight leather pants, and a neon muscle shirt. Even his voice is masked to higher and lower octaves, which beckons the audience to question his gender even further. Yet this leaves an unanswered question: is a male still dominate in an androgynous society? I doubt this was the intention, and that the characters were supposed to be seen of the same gender, if any gender at all.
There is virtually no plot, only vague guidelines for the audience to interpret as they wish. Although some of the crowd seemed to crave more substance, I felt that the interactive cast, crawling on top of and through the audience, lifting, laughing at, and handling random people in the audience set a clear enough story—we are the aliens. We’re new, and the Jems are exploring the existent of light as we explore their world. We inadvertently became a part of the plot, which only adds to the depth of the “story”.
The light effects created a unique experience with this play. Rather than being an added effect, the lights became characters themselves. In one instance, the five girls are investigating the nature of their lights. As each one extinguishes, the girls look in pain and frustration, even beating the bulb on the hip, as if to bring the light back. The last girl with a lit light cradles it within her arms, desperate to keep it alive. A second girl leaps on her back, as if trying to pry the life from the girl’s hand. The light’s death clearly brings pain to both girls’ eyes.
I’m hopeful that Romulus Ate will expand with Howell’s dreams of integrating video and taking the concert on tour. I can only hope that there will be a CD alongside those plans.
