Performance

SITI COMPANY: CAFÉ VARIATIONS

Imagine a café. A deft waiter maneuvers among the tables, delivering wine, tea, coffee and delicate sandwiches in a constant ballet. He stops occasionally to catch glimpses of furtive meetings, lingering separations and to hear conversations that evoke longing, desire and loss. Light shifts sensually from day to night and back again, evoking time’s transitory nature. As the relationships intensify and develop among the café denizens, this social intercourse accumulates to an intensely symphonic conclusion. Cafe Variations weaves longing, lust, lost love, found love and budding romantic adventure through dance, music and theater within the social arena where anything can happen: a cafe. This new theatre piece based on short plays by Charles Mee features songs from the American Songbook – familiar tunes that evoke a time, place and way of life. Each story stands on its own, with a beginning, middle and end; together, the stories create a rich tapestry of shared experience.