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Chris Davis: One Man Apocalypse Now

The setting of this complex performance is based on Vietnam. We are waking up in Saigon to the voice of Martin Sheen. The voiceover is convincing, and this man is coming to consciousness on a flower motif mattress. This mattress seems to represent the shitty hotel.  An army lead by Colonel Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando (1979), is the end result. 

Chris Davis gets up to take on many roles: entering a war he goes insane, and he makes different points about being a soldier, an entertainer, a commander, or a hero. The omniscient perspective is allowing us to transcend his irrational state of mind. I get the feeling that it revolves around this insomniac and relates back to the mattress in the shitty hotel.

We are in a cement basement and it adds to the black box effect. I am with half a dozen others waiting to go into the theater. We are told to take a seat in the hallway. It is like a body of a Vietnam War Aircraft. There is a staircase down to the basement like a bunker. The transfigured civilian into military camouflage attire comes to mind.



 

As an art performance Chris Davis shows various stages of Apocalypse Now (1979) and he takes the viewpoint of a journal reading. Chris Davis washes himself from a bucket, brushes his teeth, and with a sick sense of humor there is tension between us in the audience, the vigilant and the story of a madman.

For one minute he is Colonel Bill Kilgore taken directly from dialogue in the movie, and then he gives a bottle of Southern Comfort whiskey to someone in the audience. We thought it was about to get real,"is he really going to drink it?" This turn of events imitates the attitude of American patriotism, "did they really believe in this war?" Short stunts like this one are throughout the performance to hint at the context of Vietnam War movies. They flew over seas, leaving behind a home or a family, and arriving in an unknown world not knowing what/who to believe. The politics of the Vietnam War in history created a fictitious character, and I think Colonel Kurtz was a product of malicious military activity. Chris Davis is Marlon Brando, the stage is completely dark and all we can see is his bare back.

The Last Emperor of Mexico by Chris Davis - story of Maximilian I of Mexico in the a Mexican Butcher Shop Feb 18

I was on my way to meet a friend at an art gallery, when I thought that I would see if there were any places to grab a quick bite to eat. The lights were on at Los Amos and I was in luck. Not only were they still selling hot tamales, Chris Davis was in the middle of his performance, The Last Emperor of Mexico. Chris Davis performances are high energy and tonight he is an emperor, Every act is intertwined with some new insight through the changing characters, mood, and outbursts. The scene of the Mexican restaurant was signs of pork and salsa, burritos and other spicy things, along with a Pepsi Cola refrigerator and I could see the employees hanging out in the kitchen past the ovens. Chris was wearing a deep blue colonial jacket with a red Silk cape. The story of a fallen emperor was comedic, and true to any life and death scenario, "that feeling you get when you walking to your death in front of a firing squad, time just slows down, and then speeds up, (bang, bang, bang) There is nothing better than seeing how one man can shift from acting natural to just becoming a world of something familiar yet so bizarre. Chris Davis performances change your perception of what is expected and how it can seem so far off from what it is in real life. I think his one-man shows are an amazing array of imagination that separates him from the actual place of viewing for the audience, and the space in which Chris is making up as he goes from character, to emotion, to commentary and back to the Chris Davis as the theater artist he actauly is in real life.

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