Audience Reviews

AUDIENCE REVIEW: The Search for a Chiliastic Moment: Paul Budraitis in "I Love That for You" in Berlin

Company:
Paul Budraitis

Performance Date:
October 27 - 29, 2023

Freeform Review:

Paul Budraitis
I Love That for You
Acker Stadt Palast
October 27 - 29, 2023
Berlin, Germany

Paul Budraitis is a performance genius.

Paul’s greatest ability is to fill the emptiest spaces and make them fully alive — full of people, sounds, stories, feelings, conversations with others, thoughts, emotions,  psychologies of desires. As the best of actors, he does this simply: with just  his words, his stories, and a few simple gestures of choreographed moments is all it takes to take us on journeys we never have experienced before.

The premiere of his new solo performance in Berlin last month, was just that: a revelatory, almost religious (lets make that in the personal soul-searching sense) experience.  The catharsis of the shared experience the audience receives from Paul’s performance is as intense and powerful as a theater piece gets. It is inventive, and it’s effect on the audience was clear — from wiping away tears to, after the performance ended, touched deeply to the point that for minutes there was silence: some could not speak — could not get up and leave— folks just sat there in their seats, some for quite a long time, after the show had ended.  

That is the power of Paul Budraitis’ new work I Love That for You at Acker Stadt Palace last month.

In a simple black box theatre, empty except for a couple of white rectangular boxes on a deep-blue carpet, Paul fills the theater with stories of encounters he has had with individuals — other artists, teachers, friends, lovers —- conversations and moments potently full of, well, pain, intense emotion, joy, self-doubt, sorrow, and moments of extreme self-reflection. This might be a tough place for some to go, but Paul has a motive — a goal or really a quest that he wants to take us on — to be able to find and give to us a type of “medicine” or “remedy” for these.

Paul tells us he is searching for a “remedy”, a “medicine” of sorts he can share with folks, for those who experience deeply-felt emotions in interpersonal relationships — especially those extreme moments when we experience intense sadness or extreme happiness. He takes us to a number of these experiences, questioning them, their value, and then moves to that place where, when the extreme subsides and that extreme emotion starts to calm. It is almost a chiliastic moment when peace and calmness reigns — just after the deepest felt emotions begin to subside, but are still there. In this still, intense calmness, Paul explains, you feel and hear things differently, more intensely, see things “more verdantly” as your senses remain at their peak, but like a calm after the storm, everything is perceived  — the smells, the colors, what you see and feel — ardently, profoundly.

That might be a tough place for some people to go, but Paul brings this to amazing  effect on the audience, as he may have found it, that Remedy he is looking to give us,  or maybe we have found it, as it slowly dawns on us that in this shared theatrical moment, in this theater, at this very moment, this is the medicine that he is looking for, that he is sharing with us. It is partly the power of life sharing experience and live performance in a shared theater as a medicine or remedy that Paul is performing for us.  As Paul shares his moments of reflection, and peace — we all feel it — our remedy, Paul’s remedy, that  he is sharing with us and our shared humanity, experiences of life and relationships, and here, in a bare theatre with only one actor and a blue carpet.

We need the remedy.

Experiencing or understanding this chiliastic moment in ourselves in this shared space is part of the reward, Paul is so good at making the bare stage full of people, thought, emotions, wishes, dreams The audience sees and feels the space as alive and full with many actors, imaginary props — full scenes built with the barest gesture or detailed story.  And so powerfully, strikingly simple; that truly it is the performance itself, in Paul’s understated way, that is the awesome, remarkable reward. 

Note: Paul Budraitis appeared in Seattle recently as director and  performer in Timothy White Eagle’s Indigo Room at On the Boards in Seattle. Look for I Love That for You, soon to play in Seattle and New York in 2024.

Author:
John C. Robinson

Website:
www.paulbudraitis.com

Photo Credit:
John C. Robinson