Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din
Opening Night: January 25, 2012
Closing: February 11, 2012
Theater: The Bushwick Starr
An examination of aural stories collected from our veterans layered against a visual journey that follows the archetypal characters of American war films, Gonna see a movie called "Gunga Din" examines the cinematic depiction of the American soldier juxtaposed with stories shared by men and women who have served.
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January 31, 2012
Whether you prefer your war stories low key or over the top, hesitant or harrowing, “Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din” has you covered.
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January 31, 2012
In Mark Sitko’s labor-intensive experimental work Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din, the frame outshines the picture in a dozen ways. Despite being scrupulously designed and palpably intelligent, the piece drifts and falters and ultimately fails. Early on we adjust to Sitko’s technique of juxtaposing high-drama war-movie moments with verbatim veteran interviews, and no matter how many times the episodic piece digs in, it can not take new ground. Sitko has so firmly committed to his methodology (superimposing pop-culture “physical scores” on docudrama-style monologues, per his company’s manifesto) that when the piece most desperately wants to rip away from its armature, Sitko can’t let it.
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January 30, 2012
Though video and film are fashionable onstage these days, a show that would seem ripe for it actually steers clear. Last week I caught "Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din" at the Bushwick Starr — one of my favorite theaters in terms of atmosphere. The Van Cougar company was founded in 2007 "to explore and document contemporary oral storytelling," and with "Gunga Din" they set themselves quite a challenge. They interviewed vets then staged their stories by reproducing movement from war movies. Doing it old school, director Mark Sitko relied just on his cast, except for screening the "Apocalypse Now" scene in which an air attack is set to "Ride of the Valkyries." A couple of recruits are watching with great delight, hooting and hollering along — in a hall-of-mirror effect, this short sequence is lifted from the movie "Jarhead."
READ THE REVIEWJanuary 25, 2012
Where do war stories go when the battle’s over? As a country, we ask real soldiers to submerge traumatic memories, even as we guzzle souped-up, testosterone-laden combat drama at the movies—or so suggests theater company Van Cougar in their unsettling, meticulously staged new piece, Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din. Conceived and directed by Mark Sitko, Gunga Dinis a darkly witty collage of American war sagas, mixing cherished fictions with gruesome truths.
READ THE REVIEWJanuary 30, 2012
The structural conceit of Van Cougar’s Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din (at the Bushwick Starr through February 11) makes intuitive sense: articulate personal trauma while subverting collective catharsis by juxtaposing the experiences related by U.S. veterans with the portrayal of American soldiers in war movies. Most scenes meld excerpts from the creators’ interviews with veterans and the actions (and some dialogue) from films like Apocalypse Now, Patton and Saving Private Ryan. All the action takes place in a perfectly run-down and generic VFW post—designed by Chris Morris—where a bartender warns us early on that with soldiers’ stories, "there’s a lot of embellishment." But the veterans’ stories are incredibly frank and mostly combat-free, while their big-screen hardships and heroics are elaborately embellished. The juxtapositions make for some compelling (and at times uncomfortably funny) mashups, but the pantomimed movie scenes sometimes detract from soldiers’ monologues that would be even more powerful delivered without the elaborate choreography.
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