Gob Squad's Kitchen

Comments (0) By Ed Huyck Wednesday, Jan 12 2011

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The British-German group returns to the Walker Art Center's Out There festival with Gob Squad's Kitchen (You've Never Had It So Good), a piece that recreates several Andy Warhol films live onstage—albeit behind a projection video screen. The piece takes its cues from Andy Warhol's Kitchen, a rather obscure film from the pop artist. Made in the mid-'60s, the original featured Edie Sedgwick and other Factory denizens romping around in the titular room. Apart from that, little is known—only two copies of the film exist, and the Gob Squad members were unable to see it. No matter, they take the basic concept and craft it into a commentary on the nature of art, performance, and the influence Warhol and his contemporaries still wield on our culture. Kitchen isn't the only piece, however. While that action takes place on the central screen, it is flanked by two additional re-creations, Screen Test and Sleep, the latter an infamous eight-hour piece of a man sleeping. As the show continues, the action between the three begins to intermingle and the cast slowly replaces itself with participants from the audience, first for the side pieces and then in the kitchen itself. From the advance screener, it looks like an intriguing experience that could easily slip over the line into pretentiousness, but that tension is often what makes for the best theater—even when it's all performed behind a screen. (Image by David Baltzer)
Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Starts: Jan. 13. Continues through Jan. 15, 2011