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Berkeley’s talented 10-year-old Shotgun Players theater group, which grew out of repeated performances at LaVal’s Subterranean to play other venues in Berkeley and San Francisco, has now developed a new producing arm of its organization called Black Box Productions. 

The purpose of Black Box Productions is to develop new plays from the beginning, and try things that are experimental, rather the “kitchen sink realism,” that’s been the staple of Shotgun's previous productions, said Shotgun artistic director Patrick Dooley, 

Black Box is currently running its first show at LaVal’s Subterranean, an original piece called “7th Veil,” conceived and directed by Shotgun alum Gina Pulice, and created by an ensemble cast of six performers. 

“7th Veil” is a retelling of the Salome story, with a nod to Oscar Wilde (who wrote a play about Salome), the Bible, and other sources.  

Salome was the woman who danced for her step-father King Herod, and in exchange he granted her any wish – which was to have the head of John the Baptist brought to her on a plate. 

Running about 80 minutes with no intermission, and divided into seven segments, “7th Veil” is more a dance and movement piece than it is traditional theater. 

From her notes in the playbill, it seems that director Pulice is going for some kind of feminist reconsideration of temptress Salome – a good enough idea for a play, but one that in my view isn’t very well realized in this production. 

“7th Veil” contains six characters: Salome, her mother Herodias, her stepfather Herod, John the Baptist, a Roman soldier and a mythological goddess. At the top of the show, each character is assigned an animal, a color, and a characteristic. 

Pulice’s staging is an impressionistic one, with most of the story told in dance. There is some poetry recitation, and a few scenes with a little bit of dialogue.  

In all this, the play tries to understand the veils of identity surrounding Salome. 

The production has some strong choreographic moments, such as when Salome is caught under a cloth and held down struggling by the other performers. Or when a blob of stretched red fabric seems to give birth to a string of performers. 

The story in this frequently dialogueless play can sometimes be hard to follow. This problem is compounded by the fact that the actors switch parts all evening, so that everyone plays most of the characters at one time or another. 

A single character being played by several actors is an interesting exercise for actors in a scene study practice, and from doing that a lot can be learned by actors about a play or about their acting craft, but for an audience it is confusing and distracting.  

In this case, it interferes with the audience gathering information about a character as the show progresses. Using different actors to portray the same character also adds to the confusion. 

In addition, the play’s dialogue tends to be modern day personal growth vocabulary dropped into a Biblical story, but with little or no light derived from that exercise. In the final analysis, there was no real illumination for me about Salome’s sexy dance and why she chose to do it. 

Structurally, the beginnings and ends of the play’s seven segments are not clearly demarcated. It all runs together. 

Different colored veils are hung on the wall of the stage, and the actors don them when they play different characters, but the veils’ colors aren’t distinctive enough to help in defining character. In addition, the color values of the veils change under some of the colored stage lighting. 

This is a script that cries out for a dramaturg to help sort out its thinking and its goals. 

Actors Jason Arquin, Vince Camillo, Ali Dadgar, Tori Hinkle, Allyson Kulavis, and Amy Sass are certainly game in their performances, and they have some strong moments with their physical movement theater. 

Their dancing and occasional singing are accompanied by on keyboards, percussion and guitar by musicians Aaron Krasner and Rob Gwin. 

“7th Veil” feels like a legitimate exercise for exploration of craft among actors and a director, but it hasn’t yet made the jump to being an audience piece. 

Black Box plans another three or four shows in the upcoming year. They are looking for original scripts that employ music and dance.