Conception of Modern Art

My dad is an artist, and so growing up, during family vacations, art museums were almost always part of the itinerary. However, this did not foster an understanding and appreciation in me for modern art as one might expect or hope. It wasn’t that I disliked it; it was more that I was indifferent to it, puzzled by it, coming to a lot of the same conclusions as other people, like, “well, I could splatter paint on a canvas like that too. In fact, a three year old could do that.” You know, the usual comments we hear about modern art. However, during this class, I started questioning my conceptions of modern art. There wasn’t necessarily one particular article or one particular artist that we talked about that suddenly had me in a tale-spin, it was more of a gradual shift in thought due to many class conversations and articles.

            I am fascinated and frustrated by this concept of art being like a wheel that keeps moving forward. There is a sense that ideas are recycled and re-used but in a new frame or context, so that there is a progress to the recycling. Idealistically, I would like to think that there are still endless possibilities for theatre and art that have not been explored. Perhaps, that is not so impossible to hope for, but chances are that most things to come will be some form of reincarnation of what has come before.  Not a bad thing necessarily. My frustration comes from a feeling that theatre and art are kind of stuck right now, as though this evolving wheel has gotten caught up on some gum, or is rolling through molasses. Theatre is losing its power, there isn’t a lot of importance focused on the arts, and there isn’t a whole lot of funding for the arts either. So in class, when we started talking about different art movements that I might previously have found ridiculous or been indifferent too, I found myself having a growing appreciation and admiration for their determination to explore something new and different, turn the tide of art, make people question things, turn the tables, etc. Like the Futurists, for example, I don’t feel a huge connection to their work, and if I saw it performed, I may absolutely hate it, but they were reacting to what came before them and trying to explore something totally different, and in doing so, they created a new conversation in the art world.

            There was also a day in class when Dr. Fletcher talked about Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. One of the characters in the story having a moment where he addresses a group of people about his art, as they have been saying such things as I mentioned above, “a three year old could do this.” In this speech, he says something along the lines of: he wishes a three year old had made his art; he wishes that a three year old could come to the same conclusions and revelations and simplicity in one blissful moment that it took him many years and painful experiences to discover. I could be butchering this moment horribly, but the conversation we had in class about it struck me. If I think about what we try to accomplish in our acting work all the time, it is trying to take all the knowledge and experience we have as humans that make us complex and interesting, but then distill it all down to a fundamental sense of imagination, curiosity, listening, responding, being in the moment, and all these things are things that come naturally to children. So, why should I look at a piece of art that looks like it has been made by a child and let that be all I see? Why shouldn’t I look at it and see a childlike wonder combined with the pain, complexities, and knowledge of an adult? Suddenly, with that lens, I am much more interested in what the piece is saying.

            We also watched a clip of Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present, which then prompted me to watch the whole documentary on Netflix.  Previously, Performance Art had always been something that escaped me. So often it just seemed to be weird and interpretive for the sake of being weird and interpretive. Perhaps, this conception stemmed from a Performance Art class on Fluxus that I took while studying abroad. I never had any idea what was going on in that class. When I think back on it now, all I remember is a girl shaving a kiwi and throwing it into the audience. Why? I have no clue. But when I watched Marina’s documentary, I was captivated. Maybe, it was because it was about presence and that has been a hot topic for us lately, but I found her passion, dedication, and need to share through art incredibly profound. I ceased to think of it as weird and interpretive, and instead found myself viewing her work as an expression of her. There is an intense need in her to express something to the world and her art is the most visceral and powerful way she could find to express it.

            These are just a couple of examples, but I have found myself being much more open to finding the meaning behind something and not writing things off at face value just because they seem ridiculous, simple, or outlandish.

AIDA

I grew up in a town in Northern Michigan that had very little diversity. A predominately white town, which led to my high school of about 1,500 students being predominately white. We had a thriving music department, and so my choir director liked to do new and popular shows for our musical every year. My senior year, he chose Aida. It is a rock musical, set in Africa, about a Nubian princess, Aida, who is captured and enslaved by Egyptians. Aida and the Egyptian Captain fall in love, though he is engaged to the Egyptian Princess. An interesting choice for our group. We had a big enough group that the show was double cast. However, even though we had a very large group, we only had three African American students. Two of them were sisters, and they both played Aida. The rest of the Nubians were played by white students, including Aida’s father, the Nubian King. Imagine a group of white high school students from Northern Michigan singing The Gods Love Nubia. Here is a clip of it, if you are unfamiliar with the musical:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmgG6CjnNFI

We did NOT do black face, thank God. But we were told to use bronzer, and most of us wore scarves over our hair. Even as a high school student, not immersed in a diverse culture, the choice of this musical seemed a bit absurd. Now looking back on it, it was not just a bit of absurd; it was absolutely ridiculous. Our version had to be color-blind cast, because we simply didn’t have the choice. I take that back, there was a choice: we shouldn’t have done it. It is a great musical, and we gave it as much heart and soul as we, a bunch of angsty white teenagers from Northern Michigan, could, but don’t do it unless you have all the people to pull it off. It was a color-blind casting gone wrong!

            With that being said, I think there are many examples of successful color-blind casting. I think Shakespeare is a great example of this. There is a lot of freedom to play with Shakespeare: color-blind casting, gender-bending, switching time periods. Which is why I think Shakespeare is still done so often; his plays often deal with issues that are still relevant and are issues that cross barriers of race, heritage, struggle, and time. Romeo and Juliet is a wonderful example of a play that almost begs to be color-blind cast. Originally set in Verona with two feuding Italian families, but for most of us now-a-days, two feuding Italian families doesn’t really hit home. It is a still a heart wrenching, tragic story, but moving that feud to something closer to home allows the story to have significantly more impact. Aida, mentioned above, is a Romeo and Juliet like story between Nubians and Egyptians. West Side Story is a contemporary musical version of R&J pitting a white gang and a Puerto Rican gang in New York against each other. What would hit closest down here in the South? What would the reaction be to a version of R&J set during the Civil Rights Movement with the Montagues and Capulets divided black and white? An age-old play can have very different affects when brought into a new context, especially when that context is very much a part of our country’s history. 

Student Loan Debt

I’m going to be embarrassingly honest, and say that I have been so incredibly disconnected from real life while in this orb of Grad School, that I am completely unaware of the local issues in Baton Rouge, and I am also so far disconnected from my hometown in Michigan, that I am likewise unaware of issues there. This is, of course, completely on me for being stuck in an obscenely narcissistic mindset. I should come out from under the rock of our program, and be more informed about the state of current events. That all being said, I’m having a very hard time with this post, so I apologize in advance.

            My issue of social importance is student loan debt. This is, of course, a nation-wide issue, not simply local. In the US, the standard of living is high, the job market is competitive and difficult, and student loan debt is crippling. This is an issue that is important to me as I am getting ready to step back out into the world with a huge financial burden on my back simply for pursing higher education that may or may not allow me higher paying job opportunities (considering that my field is acting, I probably shouldn’t bank on higher paying job opportunities).

            I will form my protest in the style of a march. The choreography would be as follows: we would start at LSU on the parade grounds. The uniform would be to wear clothes representing your current school/Alma Mater or business casual (what you would expect someone in a well-paying job to wear). We would have signs saying what our plans would be after school if we didn’t have debt. Examples of this could be moving to other countries to expand our cultural knowledge, move to other countries or places around the US to research x, y, or z, go to grad school, start a family, etc. Underneath this on the sign would be “but I have X amount of student loan debt I need to take care of first.” Other signs could say things like, “What did I do to deserve X amount of debt? I got educated.” Or “My degree cost me X amount of debt. Am I guaranteed a job after school to pay it off?” The march would move from the LSU parade grounds through neighborhoods, where people from all walks of life and all ages who have struggled with or are still struggling to pay off their debt would join in. Our end destination would be the Capital building. So, in march fashion, this would be a demonstration of non-violent direct action.           

            Since we are so dependent on media and technology in this day and age, we would use that to our benefit. We could use facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. to make the community aware of the protest well in advance, to spread the word and get conversations buzzing. This would hopefully improve the number of people joining the protest on the actual day. Any media coverage on the day of the protest should show the planned choreography of a large group of well-behaved, well-articulated, and given the topic, well-educated people, marching in a civil manner. There would be nothing rowdy or seemingly disorganized about the march. If we are concerned that the media will portray us in a poor light, we can have some protestors filming throughout the march, creating a video of the protest from the inside that accurately depicts the image we are going for and shows us in the light we are hoping to be viewed. These videos can then be posted on facebook and youtube to counter any undesirable media against us.

            Our protest will end and be complete when more serious discussions start occurring about what must be done about the student debt crisis and when actual solutions start coming to the forefront.

Blurring the Real and the Imagined

Jeremy Gable’s The 15th Line is a good example of time and pace reinforcing the Reality Effect.  He wrote this play via Twitter over the span of two months, starting with an announcement of a subway disaster.  Over the next two months, “the play followed the reporter and five other imaginary characters whose lives intertwine in the aftermath of the accident (48).” So, these imaginary characters are posting on Twitter as any real-life person does, and they are dealing with the accident in real time. This isn’t a night in the theatre where you see a character have a journey and transform from beginning to end over the span of two hours. These Twitter characters are dealing with life as life actually passes not just for the characters themselves but also for the audience experiencing the play. As Muse says, “works like The 15^th Line call attention to current events and ape the format of ordinary interactions on Twitter reveal Twitter’s potential to blur the line between everyday life and performance (44).” Since The 15^th Line spanned over the time of two months, Gable also acknowledged events that came up over that time. Holidays and political happenings were not ignored, but included in the action, which further strengthened the Reality Effect.  Someone coming into the play a month late might actually wonder if this were real-life or imaginary. “Twitter plays help to expose the newly fragile distinction in a digital age between theatrical spectatorship and the experience of real-life events (44).” Since the Twitter audience/participants are all involved in some kind of theatrical spectatorship while browsing Twitter, how are the imaginary circumstances of these imaginary characters any different from the goings on of any real-life person’s Twitter page? Yes, a real Twitter page reflects a life that is actually being lived, but in the digital world of Twitter, that looks no different from the pages of these imagined characters. Whether real or imagined, everyone is bound by the same rules and limits on Twitter, and real and imagined alike changed and evolved over the same span of the two months it took Gable to write The 15^th Line.

            The common thread between all the types of theatre we read about this week seems to be the merging of performance and reality. The Reality Effect is taken even further than it is with naturalistic kitchen sink dramas. On Twitter, imagined characters live life alongside real people. In durational theatre, it is about unscripted, unpredictable, and unplanned interactions. Essentially, you are watching people just being and existing.  The element of truth becomes incredibly important, and the conventional theatrical format becomes less important. Where will we go from here? Theatrical events will most likely slip into every digital app we spend an excessive amount of time on such as Instagram, Snapchat, and whatever the next new social media fad turns out to be. I am actually more interested in the evolution of the durational pieces, because I am much more interested in watching theatre than I am in reading it. We live in an age that wants to be able to do everything from home, including be an audience of theatre. Pretty soon, we’ll have no reason to step outside our doors. This is not to say that theatre shouldn’t be explored in the digital world, by all means, it should be explored on every frontier. I suppose I am just a bit old-fashioned in that I still want to see the interaction that exists between people when you go see live theatre. So, I would be interested to see the six hour durational pieces taken to the next level where not only the line between performance and real-life is blurred, but it would also be interesting to see what would happen if the line between audience and performer was blurred. This idea harkens back to what we talked about last week with space and focus and having certain spaces where there is no forth wall and every part of the space becomes fair game as the playing area, and focus can be set on the general audience or on one person or a small group of people. I’m sure this has all been done before, but it seems like after the real and imagined start merging together; the next step would be to blur and bend the confines of audience and performer.

Oak Alley

I think it would be interesting to take Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and put it on in one of the historic plantation houses down here. There is a specific one I am thinking of called Oak Alley Plantation that is located between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in Vacherie, LA. Here is a link:

http://www.oakalleyplantation.com

The architecture of this house would be ideal for the idea I have in mind, because it has expansive verandas that surround both the first floor and the second floor. The show could be done intimately, with smaller audiences, so that people are not crammed too harshly into small and uncomfortable places. The audience would come to see the show under the pretense of attending Big Daddy’s birthday party. The party itself would be held on the main floor, and as audience members come in, they would be treated like party guests/family members; their coats and tickets would be taken, and they would be offered a drink and perhaps some food. The party would be complete with entertainment provided by the screaming “no-neck monsters” as Maggie so lovingly calls Grooper and Mae’s children. This would all be part of the pre-show, and at any point, audience members may choose to go upstairs to Brick and Maggie’s room. While downstairs at the actual party, audience members may be allowed to sit at the dinning room table with the actors. However, once they go upstairs, the audience would be outside Brick and Maggie’s room, on the veranda. Ideally the window/door leading from the room out to the veranda would be large enough that when open, the audience gets the sense that they are looking in on the private lives of these characters, but their vision of the action is not obstructed enough to be aggravating. This would create an interesting dichotomy of being part of the family downstairs, and feeling intrusive, like they are interrupting a private conversation, while upstairs. Anytime the characters come out on the veranda, the audience would again be included in the action as if they too belonged there as part of the family.

            I think by creating an environment that is incredibly similar to that written in the play and using the found space of the plantation home, it would cause the audience to feel closer to the action and subsequently closer to the characters, as though they are just observing and being a part of these people’s lives instead of simply going to see a show. Whether the space would be accommodating for an audience would factor into how much the space enhances or diminishes the overall experience. Obviously, for money-making reasons, it would be better to have a large audience, but this idea would be much more successful for a very small audience. Again, this would increase the intimacy as well as narrow the focus of the actors and the audience as a whole. With this idea, it would put the show in a very naturalistic frame.

            I think the quote from Kantor is incredibly valid. Often times, just walking into a theatre sets up an expectation for what is to come. In found spaces or site-specific places there is more of a chance for spontaneity and the unpredictable to happen. Audiences know what to do when they walk into a theatre. They find their seat, sit down, blend into the crowd, and watch with a certain distance existing between them and the action onstage. There is a safety to traditional theatre spaces, because there is an understanding for how they work. With found spaces and site-specific spaces, it takes the audience out of the realm of the comfortable and puts them in a situation where they don’t know what to expect; there is more risk, a little more danger, and therefore an excitement and perhaps a little fear of the unknown. So, before the show even starts, there is already an air of anticipation and wonder.

It's a wheel

First of all, I’m really sorry this blog post is late. But without further ado, onward to answering the questions! I think the theatre is in an interesting bind right now with this dilemma that you mention, because our current world is so technology hungry and driven and we crave instant gratification and spectacle. These things will, of course, have an impact on the current theatre we create and present. Perhaps it will, as you suggest, melt into other forms and became diluted. We have talked about art and theatre being dialectic; they are in a circular evolution where they change and develop out of a reaction to what has come before. Yet, this circular evolution is like a wheel, so instead of being stationary, it is also always moving forward and advancing in its evolution. Perhaps, at this time, theatre and performance art as well as other forms are converging and being overrun and bogged down by the rampant technology of our age, but whether change is just around the corner or years down the road, I do think theatre will again be reinvented as its own form. I think we are still trying to figure out how to coexist with technology in a lot of ways; it is still a fairly new concept. Yes, it is quickly and constantly getting more advanced and more prominent in our daily lives, but we will learn to adapt with it. The thing about theatre that I think will ensure its escape from extinction is the presence at its core, the truth. No matter how advanced or spectacular technology can be, it cannot be as powerful as simple human connection and presence. We just need to figure out where and how the theatre can thrive in this day and age.

            This may be a stretch for the “imagined memory”, but I thought of my first trip to California. Growing up, whenever we went on family vacations, they were usually out east. It wasn’t until after I graduated from undergrad that I actually went out west. Before this, my “imagined memory” of California was shaped mostly by what I had heard about LA. Since most media about California is centered on LA and Hollywood, I had formed this idea, no matter how ridiculous I knew it might be, considering that I had never been there, that all of California was hot, sunny, busy, superficial, and obsessed with beauty and perfection. However, when I finally made it there, I was in Northern California, and it was January. I found myself surrounded by red woods, mountains, and small towns. It was cold, especially at night, as no one we stayed with turned on their heat at night. I can’t remember another time I have been that cold at night.  I realized my whole vision, my whole “imagined memory”, of the huge state of California was shaped entirely by the media focused on LA, just one city in a vast state. The places I visited in California on that trip ended up being nothing like what my preconceived notion was.

            I think this idea of “imagined memory” can have a huge impact on theatre and art. I wonder though, if it is more of an obstacle to overcome, than it is any kind of asset. Theatre and art should break people’s preconceived notion. Theatre and art are not about creating judgments based solely on second hand knowledge that the media supplies. They are about breaking conventions, general conceptions, and unsubstantial judgments. However, in order to break those things, I suppose they have to exist in the first place . . .

Dark Matter

I hesitate to use this example, but it is what most strongly came to mind. Mary Shelley as the narrator in the version of Frankenstein we started working on this fall is, I think, an incredibly interesting use of dark matter. Initially, her presence seems to negate the idea of dark matter, being that authors do not usually appear onstage to play a role in their own fictional tale, but in this case she not only appears, she is seemingly conjuring the story. So where is the dark matter in that? Any usual production of Frankenstein does not include Mary Shelley as a character. Why would it? She is not a character in the story itself; she is its creator. But that is what makes this interesting, because her being onstage perpetuates a whole new level in the cycle of Frankenstein being a story within a story within a story. As Victor creates his monster, Mary is creating them both. She is the creator of the creator. With that coming into play, the story is no longer simply about Victor’s struggle with his creation; it is simultaneously about Mary’s struggle with her creation. However, since her struggle is only portrayed through the narration of her characters’ struggles, her own life experiences that inspire and prompt her to write the story remain unspoken; they are not literally presented in the script, but they are intertwined in the story all the same. Which brings up an interesting point that Sofer makes, “what is invisible always holds what is visible in place (7).” Everything starts to have a duel meaning. Victor and the Creature’s journey present the more overt meaning, while Mary’s meaning is masked but acts as a fuel and driving force. Her presence compels us to ask what is motivating her to tell this story. For example, Victor’s mother, Caroline, dies in childbirth. She becomes dark matter as her death and subsequent absence seems to drive Victor to his obsession with controlling life and death. Mary’s presence onstage layers the dark matter surrounding Caroline, because her own mother died in childbirth. So, is she driven in a frenzy with Victor to find the solution to losing a loved one, to harness nature’s power in order to cheat mortality? What is her relationship to Victor? To the Creature? Do they mirror her relationships with her father and her husband? Which parts of these characters represent her? Her motives are dark matter, and she, in the context of creating the story, has the power of life and death over her characters. She is an omnipotent force for her characters; she knows their fate before they do. Like the smile of the Mona Lisa, she paints the basics for us, but the story sizzles invisibly with her own story that she is not telling. Even if the audience doesn’t know much about Mary Shelley’s life, it should be clear that something unseen and unspoken is haunting the stage with her as she visibly haunts her fictional story. “Such invisible presences matter very much indeed, even if spectators, characters, and performers cannot put their hands on them (3).”

            In regards to representing the Holocaust, I agree with Adorno’s statement: “the abundance of real suffering tolerates no forgetting”. This particular section of the article was the most interesting to me. It is an important thing to consider: when do we represent something so as not to forget, so as not to have the past repeated, and when does that which is being represented simply turn severe suffering into a form of entertainment? This is where abstraction can become the knight in shinning armor. Adorno talks about Beckett, and in our class discussion we talked a bit about Waiting for Godot (another great example of dark matter that Sofer mentions).  Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot, who never actually shows up. They don’t intellectualize the experience of waiting; they show rather than tell the relatable human experience of waiting, being stuck, feeling stagnant, hoping, holding on to the idea that something is coming that will change everything. There are numerous ways to look at Waiting for Godot, because it is abstract, because it is absurdist. It is not literal, it is not naturalistic, but it speaks to something we, as humans, can all understand. Perhaps this is the best way to justifiably represent the Holocaust without risking it becoming Hollywoodized, for lack of a better term. Take the horrific nature of the Holocaust and break it down to the skeleton of human experiences that it embodies and show those human experiences. Through abstraction, all those very real, intense human feelings and experiences can be presented and explored in a way that takes them out of the realm of the literal Holocaust while still paying homage to those that suffered without exploiting their suffering. This could be more powerful and impacting than a literal representation, because it says everything that should be said and remembered about the horrific event without commercializing the event itself.

YouTube

I think the sudden emergence and skyrocketing popularity of YouTube has greatly affected not only the theatre world, but also the film world to a certain degree. Not only does it allow people to “perform” anywhere, doing pretty much anything, and then, with very little difficulty, post the video themselves for anyone to see. It has become a huge perpetuator of the short attention span that audiences have now-a-days, thanks to the constantly changing and continually revamped technological world we live in. American life has become centered on instant gratification and a quick fix to all problems. So what better than a website where you can practically instantly post your own video and instantly see the number of views you get from it? And how many short videos are there on YouTube that show you how to do any number of things?

            This ability YouTube provides the public of creating and posting videos of themselves for the masses also plays into the narcissistic mindset that seems prevalent today. That often the greatest connection people have is to the devices that record these videos for them. Communication has almost become a three-way street, with technology acting as the mediator.

            YouTube may be spreading the narcissistic, instant gratification-seeking attitude of the 21^st Century, but this is not to say that it doesn’t also have plenty of positive affects. YouTube has become a fantastic and cheap way for artists to share their work and receive feedback from other artists and a wide-ranging audience from around the country and around the world. It allows for young or inexperienced filmmakers to try their hand at getting their work out to the masses in an affordable way. It has also become a great teaching asset. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video worth?

            The answer to the second question is a bit more elusive and something that I have been thinking quite a bit about lately.  I feel as though a new form of guerrilla theatre is needed, but not in the style that Davis talks about. Let’s call it “infiltrating” theatre. Getting the 21^st Century audiences’ attention is a tall order. Collectively, we are obsessed with spectacle and technology, but I also think nothing has changed in the fact that what everyone responds to the strongest is a sense of truth. So perhaps, the 21^st Century theatre must start with finding a way in, a crack in the defenses of the audience, because once you’ve captured the audience’s attention, it is so much easier for them to accept your truth.  The idea that came to my head is an example (more of a skeleton) of what I mean by “infiltrating” theatre. I would be interested to see the response to a show that at its core had a particular truth prevalent to audiences today; it would start with an episodic form that appeals to the short attention span, and these bursts of action would be propelled by technology, a spectacle of some sort, whether it be through lighting, projection, sound, etc. However, as the show goes on, these exciting, spectacular episodes would slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, get longer and less technologically driven. So that by the end of the show (let’s say a 90 minute show at tops), everything has been stripped away except the truth that was there all along.  This could be represented in any number of ways, perhaps a single actor standing on a bare stage under minimal lights.

            That is just a bare-bone structure that I think would be interesting to explore, and it would be exciting to mix mediums so that it was not simply a text-driven show with spectacle around it, but that the mediums of text, movement, dance, music, spectacle, etc. were all inter-woven, leaving the still moment at the end more powerful.

Hamlet in Prison

A show I really enjoyed was one of those rare productions that made me forget that I studied theatre, therefore the pesky little critic in my head was shut off, and for the duration of the performance I remained completely enthralled. I apologize to the other MFAs who have repeatedly heard me talk about this performance. I saw it in Chicago in a tiny black box theatre with no set, hardly any lighting effects, and very basic costumes that made me wonder if the actors were simply performing in their street clothes. The show was Mojo Mickybo; it had only two actors who played numerous roles, but mainly focused on two boys growing up during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. One was Catholic and the other Protestant. Through the show, the turmoil around the boys began to change their relationship, and a friendship so innocently and passionately based on their mutual love for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid started being torn apart. The connection the two actors had with each other, and their ability to transform themselves so truthfully and seamlessly into other characters while at the same time building this compelling friendship, was profound. The fact that they couldn’t and didn’t need to hide behind any design elements was even more impressive; actually, I think having anything more than the bare-bone structure would have taken something away from the performance. It struck me too how beautifully it was all staged. There were absolutely no arbitrary movements, I was never confused about where I was even though there was no set, and there was a stunning cinematic quality to it.  I was completely wrapped up in the lives of these characters in a way that I had never experienced in the theatre before and really haven’t experienced since.

            I had a much more difficult time thinking of a performance that informed or convinced me of something true, and I find it upsetting that I don’t know that I have been involved with or seen a show that has made me feel this. And since the question is dealing with finding truth, it seems profane to try and fudge the answer. However, this question did make me think of a particular episode of the podcast, This American Life, that I listened to a few years ago. So I listened to it again to refresh my memory. This episode talks specifically about a performance of Hamlet, even more specifically about the performance of Act V, the violent climax. The unusual thing about this production of Hamlet is that it was performed in a prison, the Missouri East Correctional Center. So, this bloody play of Shakespeare’s that follows the indecisive Hamlet as he hems and haws over whether or not to commit murder was acted out by men who actually have committed murder and are living out the consequence of it. Agnes, the director, whose theatre company is now solely focused on these prison performances, talks about the inmate actors: “These guys call it like they see it, and it’s true. Dead true.”

            As the podcast goes on, Jack Hitt, who leads us through the story, talks to some of the men involved. He comments that these men “have an intimacy with the material that doesn’t exist anywhere else.” His interviews with them are incredibly interesting and, often, incredibly poignant. Danny Waller, playing the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, says that this character really spoke to him, because he felt like the man he killed was speaking through him in this role. In some ways, the role helped him deal with and understand his past. The man playing Claudio talks about his soliloquy of regret and shame, and how he hoped that when his wife saw him perform it, that she would see his own regret and shame at what his actions had done to their lives. The fight in the graveyard between Laertes and Hamlet was staged not as a sword fight, but as a knife fight, which many of the men were very familiar with. Laertes’ death was an extremely somber moment, taken very seriously by all the inmates who came to watch the show.

            Sometimes we hear actors say that they like acting because it gives them a chance to wear someone else’s shoes for a while, to express emotions we don’t usually get to express so overtly, and to forget about their own life for a while. I’m sure that this is also something these prisoners experienced. However, it struck me while listening to these men talk about doing the show and dealing with their characters’ actions, that sometimes the most powerful thing about acting isn’t getting the opportunity to escape from yourself. It is finding the opportunity to discover something new about yourself, or to deal with and let go of something you are holding on to that you cannot seem to find a way to let go of or deal with in everyday life. Sometimes, it is only through living in another person’s skin for a while that allows you to see things from another angle. It is easy sometimes to forget how powerful theatre can be and the affect it can have not only on the audience, but also on the actors themselves. It truly has the ability to transform the way you view the world and yourself, if you let it. This podcast was a healthy and much needed reminder of that, of why we do what we do.

Here is a link to the episode. It’s long, but definitely worth it:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/218/act-v

To answer the second question as briefly as possible, I think there are more similarities than differences between performances offering some kind of truth and performances that strive for documentary “verbatim” or naturalistic reality. In a sense, every performance is endeavoring to present a truth of some kind. Some truths may be more profound than others or may reach further to reshape a truth. Often times a truth can surface or be reshaped just as effectively, in not more so, in a fictional, unrealistic show. Would the prisoners at the Missouri East Correctional Center have gotten more out of just sharing their personal stories in a verbatim documentary style than they did out of performing Hamlet? I don’t know, but in listening to them talk about the process, it seemed to me, that the distinct similarities between the script and their own actions combined with the distance that the Shakespearean text allowed, provided them with even more freedom to express everything they had in them to express. On the other hand, would I have come to the same realization of truth about their performance had I just seen their Hamlet and not listened to a documentary style podcast about it? Who knows, perhaps it was the combination of the two that made the truth effective for both the prisoners and me. Martin brings up a good point in “Bodies of Evidence” in regards to documentary theatre: “Governments ‘spin’ the facts in order to tell stories. Theatre spins them right back in order to tell different stories . . . There is no ‘really real’ anywhere in the world of representation.”

Gender-Bending

Judith Butler does not ignore the fact that we categorize people in numerous different ways whether it is by gender, sexual preference, etc. She does make the argument that the categories we shove ourselves and others into become a performance, whether conscious or not. There are certain qualities that have been deemed indicative of manliness, femininity, etc.  We have a place and a box for pretty much everything in life. It is in our nature to examine, classify, and label; we like to know where things belong. When we don’t know where to put something, because it doesn’t seem to fit in any one particular box, it can have a jarring effect, especially in a world that demands us to be so politically correct. For me, the concept of androgyny came to mind while reading the Butler article. It is something that fascinates and befuddles most of the population, because of our intense desire to be able to classify someone as male or female.

This example may be a stretch on the prompt, but on the topic of androgyny, the performance act that came to mind was our production of Romeo and Juliet this summer. I was cast as Benvolio, a role originally meant for a man. As we know, gender-bending is not unusual in theatre, especially when doing Shakespeare. However, I found playing a gender-bent role to be a very interesting experience. I chose to play the role as a woman; she was a tom-boy, much like Anybodys in West Side Story, and my Benvolio was completely in love with Mercutio. Since we set our production in Renaissance Italy, all the women wore long, renaissance-like dresses, except for me. I was dressed more like the men. Androgynous for the time period we had set, but by any other standards, definitely dressed as a girl, with leggings, boots, a boat neck dress top, and a fitted vest, though I wore a rapier and dagger. To me, my performance was clearly a woman. I didn’t attempt to make any indications that I was a boy, because that was not my intent for the character. I didn’t even do a whole lot to play up being a tom-boy; I let the situation of my character do that for me. However, it was interesting how many people asked me, after seeing the show, whether I was supposed to be a man or a woman. This made me wonder if the preconception of Benvolio being a boy, and the fact that it is a “manly” name, is harder to overcome than actually just seeing what you see: a woman playing a woman who just happened to be originally written as a boy. If Benvolio was originally written as Benvolia, and was meant to be a girl, would there have been any question? Most likely not, because the idea of her being a tom-boy would have been pre-established. It made me realize that people have a difficult time re-categorizing things they have already put a label on, even if what they are seeing right in front of them contradicts their original categorization. It makes me wonder what people in the audience who had no prior concept of Benvolio thought of my gender in the show.

What if we were to take this concept even further (and let’s face it, it’s probably already been done) and gender-bent all the roles in Romeo and Juliet? Gender-bent in the sense that the women were playing all the men’s roles and the men were playing all the women’s roles, but they were all still playing their own personal gender identities. That is to say, like my Benvolio, we would all be performing our particular role as the gender we identify as in everyday life, even though that role would have been originally written for a different gender. Therefore, the only thing we are really changing is the perception of gender through established gender roles. The women would be sword fighting and heads of the household, and the men would be taking care of Juliet and planning the party. The costumes would indicate the actual gender of the actor. Juliet would still be “Juliet” but also referred to as “he”, and Romeo likewise referred to as “she”. I wonder then, what the audience would take away from the production. Would there still be a confusion of who was supposed to be a woman and who was supposed to be a man? It brings up Butler’s idea that gender is not simply something you are born as; it is also something you perform. In the context of this gender-bent production of R&J, If we just purely be our gender in the sense of what we were born as, but then take on performative qualities and duties of another gender as they relate to the show, we are, in a sense, playing both genders, and allowing the audience to see both of those genders in us at the same time.

Thoughts on Carlson: What is Performance?

Something that particularly struck me in Carlson’s introduction is the idea that “a consciousness of ‘performance’ can move from the stage, from ritual, or from other special and clearly defined cultural situations, into everyday life. Everyone at some point or another is conscious of ‘playing a role’ socially” (4). This leads to the thought that the difference between “doing” and “performing” is simply attitude, a consciousness of action. But is simply being aware in everyday life that you are “playing a role” in order to achieve something specific (to be accepted, to take charge, to receive help from someone, etc) enough to be considered a performance? Or is it also necessary to have a conscious audience to consider something a performance? This whole concept is fascinating to me, because I think the relationship between psychology, sociology, and acting is so interesting and closely woven, and this idea of Carlson’s blurs the lines even further between performance and what is just basic human activity. 

So, when we look at performance in this blurred state, when the traditional conventions are somewhat thrown to the wind and the lens of performance is focused more on real life than a staged environment, I am curious about the role of the audience. In the traditional conventions, we place a distinction between rehearsal and performance; it is the addition of an audience that transforms a rehearsal into a performance. Does this remain true when the concept of performance is moved into everyday life?

Reality TV is an example of an event that represents this challenge for me.  Here is a clip from Real Housewives of New Jersey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4TLvIWlqCY

These are people who are completely conscious of the fact that their lives are being filmed whether or not they are completely conscious of all their actions. Does taking real life, filming it, framing it and editing it in a particular way, and then broadcasting it on TV make it a performance? It has an audience; it shows people seemingly conscious of “playing a role” in society. In that sense, according to one of Carlson’s theories, it could be considered a performance.

What if the cameras were stripped away, and none of these people’s lives were aired on TV, would it then cease to be a performance? Stripping this idea down even further, can something still be a performance if it is for only one person and that one person is the performer? For example, singing in the shower; it is a display of skill (or lack there of, depending), but if it is only for yourself, does it then became something other than performance?

To ponder at an answer to my own question; I think performance is, in essence, for someone outside of yourself. Considering that Carlson’s other theories on performance all include an audience or spectator of some kind, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he may feel the same way.  Performance is a chance to change, shape, or focus another’s perception of something, to affect someone else. Bert States, in his article “Great Reckonings” talks about “theater as a process of meditation between artist and culture, speaker and listener; theater becomes a passageway for a cargo of meanings being carried back to society” (6). To cut out an audience is to cut out half of that process.

States also mentions in his article that theatre is like an organism, which receives its nourishment from the world, adapts to cultural climate and conditions, eventually exhausting itself and dying, like generations replacing one another (13). With this in mind, it makes sense that our way of defining performance is forever in flux; the moment that we nail it down to mean one particular thing and cling to that definition, that is the moment that Peter Brook might suggest that theatre moves from being deadly to plain old dead.