'Early Shaker Spirituals' - A Twirling Twisting Review

1976 Vinyl Album

The Wooster Group’s ‘Early Shaker Spirituals’ is a combination of rawness and sweat, which isn’t usually associated with the religious group, the Shakers. ‘Early Shaker Spirituals’ is the Wooster Group’s latest performance at the Performing Garage in SoHo. This recent performance isn’t the typical Wooster Group aesthetic of technology engaging with canonical plays and popular culture. Instead this record album interpretation of the Shaker's songs and interviews is low-tech by Wooster standards.

Kate Valk takes directorial role, a first in Wooster Group history and Liz LeCompte joins the stage with Oscar-winning actress Frances McDormand, Suzzy Roche and Cynthia Hedstrom. The four actors sit calmly and sing the 1976 recording of hymns and interviews of the Shaker women, mimicking the album’s inflections and pauses. 

Elizabeth Lecompte, Suzzy Roche, Frances McDormand and Cynthia Hedstrom in a scene from "Early Shaker Spirituals."                   Photo by Andrew Schneider from New York Post

The women are dressed in Shakersque clothing while wearing audio equipment in which they can hear the record through their earpieces. As the vinyl is played on the side of the stage the audience can hear a faint under-layer of the original sound. It creates a ghost like effect throughout the space in which the actors enter a possessed trance as they become the voices of the past. The stage is still and open creating a raw tensity throughout the audience as the actors and their mistakes have nowhere to hide.

At the climax of the show four young men join the women in a dance. Particular Shaker songs are repeated and this time the men and women twirl and twist like a record around the stage. The simple movements work up a sweat among the young men who pull out handkerchiefs and check in with each other before continuing onto the next dance. A precise detail of positioning and calculation is seen through each movement allowing the essence of the Shaker society to emerge within the Performing Garage. It’s strict yet simple way of life is brought forward among a technology-driven audience.

Photo by Richard Termine from The New York Times

For the entire performance you are drawn to its simplicity. Simple set, simple costumes, simple dances and yet it is entirely mesmerising. The show may not have the typical cluster of multiple televisions, sound effects and architectonic set but it is still contains that Woosterestic atmosphere. As the company approaches its fifth decade, the performers join together as if it was a Wooster reunion. (McDormand, Roche, LeCompte and Valk haven’t all worked together as a group since 2002 in 'To You, The Birdie! (Phèdre)'). These women might be slightly older with their grey hairs now showing, however, it is this rustic bareness that women bring to the performance that allows the voices of Shakers to be brought to life. 

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