In the eleven episodes comprising Beyond Words,Bill Bowers narrates, mimes, sometimes dances and acts parts of his life. From his sketch, “What Is a Boy?” through “What Makes a Boy a Man?”, he matures to his present self--happy as a performer and as a partner in a gay marriage.
The performance is much aided by recorded music of Randy Redd, Nanci Griffith, Erik Satie, Suzzy Roche and Lori McKenna -- much of it sung. Bowers also uses Karen Bashkirew’s poem “Sounds” for a segment in which he mimes a bicyclist coming across the bloody scene in “Laramie, Wyoming 1998” and exploring it.
For an adaptation of “Winesburg, Ohio 1919,” he uses the part of Sherwood Anderson’s novel that describes a man who uses his hands deftly doing “picking” in fields and how, under his previous real name and vocation as a school teacher, those hands got him into terrible trouble. Bowers’ miming is graceful, but it plus his narrating lack dramatic punch.
The first part of Bowers’ program resembles a vaudeville review. Maybe because it uses stereotyped country-and-western people. An extended late re-creation of Bowers’ week as a visiting mime (and then some) in “Choteau, Montana 2002” thrills with authenticity. One could welcome a complete one-act devoted to people and place interacting with a visiting artist there.
It is ironic that the best part of mime Bowers’ program is not beyond, but dependent on, his words. And there’s the abovementioned music that underlies and bolsters the “Narrative in Motion” theme of the Ringling Museum’s “Art of Our Time” series of performances.
