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I enjoyed the performers: Miller, with his unending energy and dynamic physicality Wanda Holland, with her rich, deep voice and Ebony Stewart, morphing effortlessly from one distinct character to the next. None of which is to say I didn't enjoy things about the show.
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I want to enjoy myself, and I don't if I can't understand what's going on. I don't go there to stretch and strain after meaning. I go to the theatre primarily for entertainment. While I believe that an audience asking itself, "What does it all mean?" can often be a good thing, it becomes a not-so-good thing when the question is posed because nothing much can be understood. Here, during those too few times in the first act when I could actually follow what was being said, I found myself wondering why the actors were doing what they were doing, which, of course, additionally distracted from the words spoken. My preference, however, is that an actor's physicality has some immediate – I would go so far as to say obvious – connection to the words spoken. I realize that, with the popularity of acting techniques such as Viewpoints and Suzuki, physical approaches to acting are a prevalent trend. Exacerbating the tempo was Ananda Mayi Moss' omnipresent choreography, which didn't assist my understanding. I'm all for a quick tempo but not at the expense of meaning. Piece after poetic piece flew by, powerful versifying reduced to flying saliva. And that idea of lack of communication very well may be the reason why, so often during the first act of this show, I could not understand very much of what was going on. The phrase is a paradox, implying both sound and its absence, echoing fear and anticipation, a forced lack of communication. Here, it's held together by the thematic thread of a personal history of radio. Subtitled a word opera, Radio Silence is like Miller's earlier Evidence of Silence Broken and My Child, My Child, My Alien Child (the latter winner of last year's David Mark Cohen New Play Award from the Austin Critics Table): a compendium of poetry and poetic prose about, among other things, race, rage, love, and parenthood. Zell Miller III is many things: hip-hop performance artist, sometime slam poet, and, as with this show from Vortex Repertory Company and UpRise! Productions, author and director.