“Ocean Filibuster,” a Theatrical Wake-Up Call on Climate Change

Jennifer Kidwell as The Ocean in PearlDamour’s “Ocean Filibuster” opening Saturday, Nov. 12 inside the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center as part of Live Arts Miami’s EcoCultura series. Photo: Maggie Hall.

By Helena Alonso Paisley

Actress Jennifer Kidwell in PearlDamour’s “Ocean Filibuster,” a work of multimedia immersive theater. Photo: Maggie Hall.

PearlDamour, the Brooklyn-based creative duo made up of director Katie Pearl and writer Lisa D’Amour, envision an imaginary showdown between the Ocean and a fictional World Senate that wants to cut her down to size, thus making room for—you guessed it—more people and more of their stuff.

The action takes place at the Senate’s international chambers, where Mr. Majority is lobbying. In his view, according to Pearl, the Ocean is “dangerous and sick and needing to be tamed” and he wants to ship her off the planet. After all, wouldn’t it be great to be able to just hop into your car and drive from Hialeah to Havana?

As Mr. Majority argues his case, the Ocean arrives to give her defense, making her entrance on a mound of trash.  The kicker is that both Mr. Majority and Ocean are embodied by one actor, OBIE-winning performer Jennifer Kidwell.

A graduate of Philadelphia’s Pig Iron School, Kidwell is well-versed in the rigors of experimental, physical theater. Critics often praise both her acting chops and her onstage charisma. She recently appeared in the Tony-nominated “Fat Ham” at New York’s The Public Theater and this October premiered the comedy “Those with 2 Clocks” at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater.

“Jenn just loves a performance challenge,” says D’Amour, “and what a challenge it is to play these two roles. The piece is not that long, but it really is quite demanding.”

The actor morphs from one character to the other in transformations that are subtle but compelling.

“It’s a jacket coming on and off, sometimes it’s glasses coming on and off . . . it’s very slippery and sneaky,” according to D’Amour.

Whether the Ocean fascinates you or frightens you, audiences learn in this show how crucial it is to our survival on this planet. If you enjoy breathing, thank the ocean, which produces more than half of our oxygen. Hungry? The ocean is the primary source of protein for a third of the world’s population. Finally, oceans are a critical carbon sink, sequestering in their depths the carbon dioxide we humans so busily produce on Terra Firm.  In that regard, Pearl says that the ocean “is a little bit of a human enabler because we’re putting all this carbon into the air and the ocean is just taking care of it—until it can’t anymore.”

Although the work’s subject matter is about as serious as a heart attack, Pearl says that the show can nevertheless be “abstract and experimental and playful,” often using music to convey its message. The wildly creative New York composer Sxip Shirey, who turns to everything from electronics to found objects in order to create rhythm and melody, explores many different musical genres in “Ocean Filibuster.”

“There’s one song that feels like a faux patriotic anthem, one feels like a ballad, one feels like a straight-up pop song, one has a little bit of a sort of a punk energy to it,” D’Amour says. “We don’t call it a musical because it doesn’t have a traditional musical structure, but there’s song throughout.”

Here in Miami, singers Tyle Hooker, Nikita Orlhac, Kevin Martinez, Caterina Petti, Gabriella Villalobos, all BFA opera students from New World School of the Arts, join Kidwell on stage and do much of the singing. In flowing, pleated costumes designed by award-winning Serbian costumer Olivera Gajic, the chorus looks like they could have just stepped off a winning float from Key West’s Fantasy Fest. Gajic fashioned their fanciful headpieces from water bottles that were heated, melted and stretched to form elaborate coronas.