Blackbird’s Ventriloquy, a 50-minute solo performed and created by Molly Shanahan, opens on a contrast between image and sound—the wood floor and white walls of Links Hall an empty cavern for a score by Kevin O’Donnell that presents small effects hardly heard—a melody, an engine—under a deceptively uniform layer of water rushing. There are always at least two surfaces to peruse in Ventriloquy, which Shanahan describes as meaning, etymologically, “speaking from the gut,” but which Merriam-Webster lists as an alternate for “ventriloquism,” “the production of the voice in such a way that the sound seems to come from a source other than the vocal organs of the speaker.”
Most striking is Shanahan’s use of the iPad not as a screen, but a mirror, which she holds facing the audience as she faces upstage, making a two-headed, Janus-faced monster of herself. She puts in earplugs and sings along to an iPod—raw, thin, and uneven against any grander contemplation of the self. v
Thu 9/28-Sat 9/30, 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall.org, $20, $15 industry, $10 students.
