PERFORMANCE ART REVIEW : Munroe’s ‘Woodworks’ at LACE

The late George Balanchine liked to define choreography in terms of carpentry, but locally based actor-mime Jan Munroe obviously considers those occupations worlds apart.

Introduced at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) on Friday, Munroe’s hourlong, dance-based “Woodworks” depicts the indignities he endured six years ago when financial pressures forced him into manual labor.

The piece is dedicated “to anyone who had to get a job,” a fate that the sensitive (or sheltered) Munroe recalls as a living death. Doggedly, he piles up the evidence, aided by five actor-dancers, two guest musicians and the Cal State Fullerton Percussion Ensemble.

Through ironic spoken text, broad playacting and tepid neo-minimalist choreography, Munroe strains to make the routine of carpentry seem oppressive. The offhand things that workers say on a job are linked in a mantra of triviality. The foreman becomes a brutal power-monger, the toiling masses a mob of mindless victims.

But “Woodworks” is too confused to function as a satiric protest against capitalist exploitation. To begin with, Munroe depicts a non-union job, and it’s never clear whether he hates the outrages that a good union would prevent or just loathes physical labor in general.

Moreover, the finale provides a look at the living space that the workers have constructed: walls, doors, windows neatly outlined in lumber. Is Monroe suggesting that an abusive work process was somehow negated by this finished product--that ends justify means?

Thematically muddled, “Woodworks” is also too smug and obvious to be compelling as an evocation of personal experience. Significantly, the most inventive section is a duet that Monroe created with Ian Cousineau back in the early ‘80s. Nearly everything new in it--always excepting Steve Moshier’s majestic, propulsive score--is both feeble and fatally out of touch.