Art Event: S-E-X-Oh!, 2/17/07

I, personally, really enjoyed the show. I felt that they were funny in the right places, serious in the right places, and altogether treated their various subject matters with the attitude appropriate to it. I also feel like that they did not switch tones too suddenly, which can be a problem in shows that are not unified by a single plot. They paced it well, giving the audience time to digest some of the heavier stuff, but returning with lighter fare to conclude the show on a happier note. I left feeling good about my experiences, as if, I don’t know, as if they had been my friends and we had spent the last hour and a half commiserating instead of me watching their play. I liked all of their performances, and I could tell that real emotion was behind the performances of these experiences, which, I think, helped me get into the play more. I also liked their backdrops and machine-like profiles/introductions dispersed throughout the play; again, I thought that that they made the performances more “real” and relatable.

However, I think that there were one or two points of the play that could be improved, that I felt threw me out of the flow of watching the performances a little bit. The first one was the Spanish. I knew that all of the performers would be Latina so I figured that there would be Spanish in the play, I definitely agree with that. However, usually when there is another language in a predominantly English-language performance, there tends to be enough context surrounding the use of the second language for non-speakers of that language to understand the usage and follow along. That was mostly true in S-E-X-Oh!, but there were some times that it wasn’t and I felt left out. (There were other people in the audience laughing along, but they obviously had a better grasp of Spanish than I.)

So, in conclusion, I felt that the performers presented their material well and engagingly, resulting in an enjoyable performance.