If RIT’s Wearable Technology Fashion Show, held at the Little Theatre Friday
night, had been presented by students at critique, they likely would’ve
received a poor grade. There were stops and starts each time there were
technical difficulties with the light and motion capabilities in the costumes,
or when one of the too-few models had to change costume. The presenter was not
remotely enthusiastic, and none of the LED light additions to the designs
particularly blew me out of the water. But it was not
presented by students, it was presented by faculty and staff of RIT and
Brockport. Of the 45 minutes slated for this event, only about 20 minutes were
used for the halting presentation, followed by a few members of the audience
crowding toward the front to ask questions (no formal Q &A session).

I learned at the show that some of the LED-spangled gowns
were to star in the “Spirits Within” event held at Christ Church later in the
evening. This presentation should have been a post-“Spirits Within” optional
extra-interest opportunity for audience members to check out the light-up
dresses used in the performance, because as a stand-alone presentation, it was
not impressive.

Next I stopped over for the staging of “Howard & Emily” at Writers & Books, where Dr. Kielbasa-Funk
(Robert Kulik), a sex-obsessed Polish Freudian
acolyte who spoke with a German accent, addressed the audience as “class” while
he described his fixation upon discovering a connection between writers Emily
Dickinson (Alexa Scott-Flaherty) and H.P. Lovecraft
(Rick Scott), and more than once hinted at how badly he wished he could get
either yearning yet repressed soul on his couch and “treat” these ailing
spirits.

The good doctor’s presentation was interspersed with quotes
by the “ghosts” of the writers, also present on stage at lamp-lit desks, who
spoke up to recite bits of poetry, prose, and letters in order to punctuate the
doctor’s points about their lives. Before long, the doctor sat between them
silently, watching the pair trade quotes with similar subject matter back and
forth, describing of her reverence of and his horror
in the alien-ness of nature. Dickinson’s words are
injected with a love of living weighted down by the despair of multiple losses
of loved ones, while Lovecroft’s belie an obsession
with pantheons of monstrous deities which were “profoundly uninterested” in us,
or else “actively hostile” toward humanity.

The parallels in their recitations sped up until they were
both speaking of an unnamed love in a near conversation before the doctor spoke
up to tell the audience that the writers knew truth through the negation of
belief and the negation of fact, and that love was all that was required for
truth.

This quizzical little experiment of a play, though pretty
contrived in the concept of comparing the works and experience of two sensitive
souls whose lifespans didn’t overlap at all, will
certainly delight literature nerds, and got some good chuckles from the
audience. But it might be a bit too slow-paced and far-fetched for the
non-bookish types. (NOTE: “Howard &
Emily” also takes place Saturday, September 22, 4-5 p.m. at Writers &
Books. Tickets cost $10.)

On Saturday I’m seeing “Beyond the Spheres” and “Signal” at
the Little (2:15 and 3 p.m., respectively), “The
Solitude of Self: Elizabeth Cady Stanton” at 5 p.m. at Blackfriars,
and “Dragon’s Lair” at 9 p.m. at Christ Church.

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This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2012.