REVIEW: ‘Eye Piece’ illuminates issues of blindness, philosophies of treatment

By Diana Nollen

IOWA CITY - Rinde Eckert's vision always leaps beyond convention. “Eye Piece,” his latest theatrical work commissioned by Hancher, stretches the norm by leaps and bounds.

This is Eckert's three-hour exploration of the physical and metaphorical realm of blindness. The project's genesis reaches back to November 2006 when Hancher applied for a Creative Campus Innovations Program grant. The $148,700 award was announced in March 2007 and meetings between the collaborating groups began in earnest in September 2007.

Put on hold when Hancher was destroyed by floodwaters in June 2008, “Eye Piece” was back on track by April 2009 when Eckert returned to Iowa City from his home in New York for the first of many trips to continue collaborating with folks in the UI's Center for Macular Degeneration, the English and Performing Arts departments and students in the Carver College of Medicine Writing Program.

This was a huge undertaking that has reaped huge rewards. Beyond the obvious educational value of integrating students and professors from so many disciplines, the end result is a wonderful piece of performance art. It is long, but is divided into three acts and Friday's opening night audience at the UI's Mabie Theatre lingered in the lobby afterward, buzzing about what they had just seen.

The show is fairly linear, in that we meet several key characters suffering from various sight-stealing diseases and follow them on their journey toward darkness and enlightenment. The young painter thrown into despair from retinitis pigmentosa, the 73-year-old woman determined to make her doctors see her outward dignity as they probe the inner recesses of her macular degeneration. The child who bumps into things on his tricycle as explores his environment, the blind woman who shouts random words to passers-by so they will see her.

A large cast serves as a Greek chorus, explaining the action and becoming various characters, from medical students debating courses of treatments to pedestrians sighted and blind, walking casually in and out of each other's worlds. Oedipus and Tiresias, two of literature's most famous blind characters, weave their thoughts through the texture of the rich dialogue and even richer action.

Something is always in motion, sound is always present throughout the show. Walls fall with a dust-stirring thud. Accordion, strings and percussion provide incidental music gently in the background or growing louder as a chorus of voices intoning the 23rd Psalm.

We care about the patients, their doctors, the philosophers, the slivers of personality - Fear and Ignorance being especially powerful visual and aural personifications - and the families and friends supporting the patients.

The strength of this show is the way it makes us care. And think. And stretch.

Fast take

What: Hancher presents world premiere of “Eye Piece” by Rinde Eckert

When: 8 p.m. Feb. 6, 12, 13; 2 p.m. Feb. 7 and 14

Where: Mabie Theatre, University of Iowa Theatre Building, 200 N. Riverside Dr., Iowa City

Tickets: $17 adults, $15 seniors, $5 UI students and youths, at the Hancher Box Office in Old Capitol Mall, (319) 335-1160 or 1-(800) HANCHER, www.hancher.uiowa.edu or at the door

Artist information: www.rindeeckert.com