“In addition to its considerable wizardry, Sobelle's piece is concerned with food as an expression of civilization. If we are what we eat, what does that say about us, and do we really want to know? Sobelle, who is possessed of a Keatonesque precision and restraint, steps lightly (and, largely, wordlessly) through each sequence, captivating us and making us think about his subject in entirely new ways.”
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“You can’t help but be amazed at the third-act transformation, and the perfection of the props, while at the same time being vaguely nauseated by its speed and by how thoroughly human activity occupies what once was open space...We’ve stepped outside the realm of the individual, from being awed at to the rapaciousness of a man to being chagrined at the overpowering gluttony of humankind.”
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"The eighty-minute piece might feed your hunger for unique and unusual entertainment, but it won’t satisfy your stomach; no food or drink is served, although it will be seen, sniffed, and touched. But Geoff Sobelle will satiate your appetite for pure, unadulterated pleasure with the show, in which he reimagines the concept of 'farm to table' as he explores humanity’s overconsumption and preference for capitalism at the expense of the natural environment."
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“Using the seemingly simple lens of his show’s title, Sobelle zooms out to reflect on how crushingly, irreconcilably enormous — and how precipitous — the human footprint currently feels...But the show is no somber, finger-wagging affair...the performance remains light, buoyed up by a flow of sleight of hand and ingenious object play.”
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“For all its playfulness, this brilliant show has the power to make you look with fresh eyes at a daily act that you probably take for granted — a surefire sign of its worth as a work of genuinely thought-provoking art.”
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“Geoff Sobelle’s FOOD” is not easy to sum up. It wasn’t one thing; it was a journey, an unexpected one: dinner party, history lesson, freak show, parable. My reaction traveled too, from expectant to baffled to amused to amazed to disgusted to inspired to impressed.
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“Geoff Sobelle’s ‘Food’ at BAM Fisher is performance art of the most engaging kind. It provokes rumination about man’s relationship to nature, to the use of the environment, and to the distance between tilling the earth with dirty hands and the meal that arrives on a plate at home or in a restaurant...Despite the title, food itself is less important than the questions Sobelle raises about mankind’s treatment of the earth that gives us sustenance.”
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