Performance Theory Musings.

Today marks the break we've had from meeting in class for performance theory since the semester began, and it occurred to me during our last full class together that this course has been my favorite in the MFA training. I find myself bring up the articles we've read during casual conversation and formulating arguments for banal subjects based on theoreticians that have written particularly persuasive passages. But there is a question that keeps tickling the base of my brain- what does this have to do with theatre? How do these articles, that impact me as an empathetic human, become part of the fodder for conversation and influence the work I do as an artist, creator, educator? Is awareness enough?

I want to think that being more aware of the privilege I've been raised into, as a lower-middle class white woman from Kansas who identifies as straight on the Kinsey scale, allows for a more open conversation about what it means to be a minority in this generation and how we represent/ignore/glorify race, color/gender-blind casting, and write or analyze characters in traditional theatrical works, but my inner cynic says "you're one person, how can you make a difference?"

I don't know what I would do. I keep going back to education. How does theatre in schools make a change? I've been an advocate for arts education for years, promoting opportunities for collaboration, encouraging the cultivation of life skills like communication, kindness and giving, presence, but even more by bringing the arts to underserved communities and offering performance opportunities to young people with physical and cognitive disabilities. But is this enough? And what difference does it make? Are our younger generations learning empathy, understanding, and communication rather than turning a blind eye and pretending everything is okay while we continue to have riots and injustice? Are we as bad as this?

Maybe the problem for me, as I'm trying to identify what I would do if I were to teach this class, is that I still haven't broadened my idea of what "performance" means. It is everywhere, everyday, in all our news reports, interactions with friends and colleagues, in our social media presentation of self and others, but does change come with this understanding? Progress is slow, and my fear is that we won't make much of a change in my lifetime.

So like, what is this post about? My lingering questions post-semester. But I suppose having these questions and striving to answer them now is better than the blissful ignorance I had before we began, so perhaps change can start here.

Rocky Horror Picture Show and Tiny Orphans

I know I'm not the only person in this class who is a fan of cult classics, and one of my first obsessions as a young theatrical practitioner (read: music theatre obsessed teenager) was Rocky Horror. Everyone in their late teen years looks for an excuse to wear too much makeup and fishnets, right? ...Right? 

I digress. So. My best friend from high school, who has been working nationally and on Broadway for the last few years, and incidentally who introduced me to Rocky Horror, made a pit stop this year in our incredibly progressive (read: conservative and controlled by the Koch Brothers and Sam Brownback) city of Wichita, KS to do the live production of Rocky Horror as the choreographer and to play the role of Rocky. Generally speaking, this wasn't a big deal, and the population was actually really excited for the show to be staged in Wichita for the first time in years, and Mo has a pretty big presence in town for his influence as a choreographer and the work he did before he moved, so there was a pretty supportive vibe from the locals for the production. The thing is, is that Maurice is black. Again, this shouldn't be an issue, because there's nothing in the script that notes Rocky having a specific race, and when the show is about transvestite aliens and has like, no plot line, who is to say that casting a black actor in that role is revolutionary, right? 

Well, the Wichita Eagle (local newpaper) thought otherwise. Their promotion of the show put emphasis on Maurice playing Rocky by saying "Actor-choreographer Sims says that being the first black Rocky Horror – certainly locally and likely nationally – won’t change the dynamic of the plot."

When I talked to Mo about it, I asked him what he thought of the interview with the paper. He said something along the lines of "he was trying to make a big deal out of it and get me to say things about the role like I was so proud to be given the opportunity to play Rocky and I was like...It's not a big deal, I'm sure I'm not the first black guy to do it. I mean, it's about sex and aliens, how weird does it have to be?" In the article, he's quoted much more eloquently, responding to the question with "it will actually add depth to the show by supporting the idea that Rocky is different from everybody else,” Sims said. “He has a man’s body, but he is a new creature, so he has the mind of a baby. He is experiencing the world for the first time.” That is all to say that while I don't necessarily agree that this was a brave choice for color-blind casting, the overall success of the show was not altered or affected negatively in any way by this choice. I thought the show was a delight, he did a fantastic job, and nothing about casting a black actor took me out of the experience. 

On the other hand, there are a lot of issues I have with the adaptation of Annie 2014 to film. First of all, modernizing the script- um, what?- and trying to update it so it isn't deadly theatre and inaccessible to a modern audience- nice try, it sucks regardless- but with a show that is arguably "iconic" in the music theatre community, with a signature cartoon and red wig, an old, bald white guy, and a crippled president to be forced into the 21st century and race swapped for a black orphan and black tycoon have already raised a lot of eyebrows from fans. I will eat crow if it does work, but thus far, I'm having a hard time buying into the swap in this instance. 

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article2494421.html#storylink=cpy

Theatre of the Oppressed Grad Student

The question about the role theatre plays in major world events reminds me of the one Tim posed in his prompt about the Holocaust, and I feel pretty strongly about my response to that question. By that I mean: I rarely think theatre is the venue to take on a magnanimous issue as a whole under the constraints that typical theatre operates from. We, as artists and audiences, can only suspend disbelief so far, and in tackling an issue of that gravity, the cynic in me says that we would only be so successful. If I’m being honest with myself about taking on the circumstances under which a mass genocide, entire war or an event of crippling oppression, I don’t personally believe I would be able to fathom how much impact an event of that depth could make me feel. If we are using theatre as the vehicle to address something like the Holocaust, a particularly gruesome war, genocide, and social or racial oppression, the best way in is through one person or small group of people’s experience. It may be a bastardized form of the event on the entire scale, but if someone is to take on something of that nature, it is too grand to be accessible, and we’ve failed before it’s begun. So in some ways, yeah, I do think there are some issues where theatre stops being the answer.

That being said, I don’t disagree with Boal’s method of work on Theatre of the Oppressed, which doesn’t come at us in the same passive audience observing kind of way. As a presentation, I’m weary to say yes, and… but as a tool to use as an efficient educational method to self-awareness, being more socially aware and empathetic, and learning skills in which to combat the future impact of such events- even going so far back to the Rehearsing Warrior Ethos article as a reason to consider theatre in this way- is something to consider. Maybe we use the skills Boal talks about in service to searching for the answer to a problem and through that knowledge and dialogue there are steps to be taken in attempt to make change, but a presentation on a proscenium stage about oppression isn’t the way to incite it.

This brings me back around to the first question Maggie posed: what is the next step? Call me an optimist, but I feel like the best case scenario for making change is starting with an honest account of our history and implementing some of these activities that Boal has used for years into our school systems to teach empathy and understanding. I am a huge advocate for teaching life skills through theatre, and starting young with people from all different walks of life is a way in with the upcoming generation who are going to make a difference. For our own theatrical dialogue? I don’t know. But I hope we don’t give up on the ways in which we have a say just because things get a little too hard in the face of technology and ADD.

Motherhood? Ain't Nobody Got Time for That.

At the risk of sounding like a raging feminist (in the negative connotation of the word), I have to take a stand on the maternity leave policies in a University setting, and most specifically LSU. There are several issues I have with the policy- for one, it doesn’t include Paternity Leave as an option for new parents, so we’re already gender discriminating. Two, the section titled “Maternity Leave” in the LSU employee handbook directs readers to Family Medical Leave and Sick Leave, therefore grouping childbirth in with illness or emergencies, therefore all other illnesses and family traumas have to be forgotten, ignored, or a risk of termination if they are used for maternity leave. And three, the amount of time allowed for family medical and/or sick leave (paid) is contingent on the years of service at the institution and what is saved up from appointment date to the day the leave begins, which is roughly one paid day per month, so approximately 4.5 days each semester. But don’t worry, with prior approval from the University, leave without pay is an option if sick leave is exhausted before the time that maternity leave might come into play.

This is an issue because across the board in academic institutions, and really in many professions, with the pay gap for women on the national level, we’re already only earning 77 cents to every male dollar, and one of the reasons the Society for Human Resource Management credits for the gap is what they call “motherhood penalty”, where women in the job market who are unmarried and without children rise to the top of the hiring pool because they are arguably a lower risk for family emergency without dependents, therefore creating a bias against and stereotyping working mothers. As Dr. Walsh mentioned to me in a meeting about job hunting in an academic institution, (I’m summarizing) “the best thing to do in an interview is to smile and assure the search committee that a family and children aren’t something that you’re interested in pursuing” because while it may not be the best circumstances to take a so called maternity leave later on, your job will be protected. The inequality has yet to be addressed because as Dr. Walsh also pointed out to me, women are relatively new on the scene in professorship positions, so the attitude is generally “you should just be happy to be here”.

The act of protest here requires a few things to be successful, and I think the most important one is male support. This isn’t a gender specific issue, it’s a family issue. If I were to take action as a planning party, I think a parade beginning at the State Capitol building and ending outside the LSU Student Union at 3:00 pm on November 4^th for a peaceful picketing protest at the next LSU Senate meeting is the best first step to change. Considering the LSU Board of Supervisors has been under a “no confidence” vote for almost two years, this is a good time to bring up issues that need to be addressed within the system. Direct Action is the best course in this situation, because passive resistance doesn’t make enough waves. Standing idly by won’t draw attention to a policy that is on the back burner.

In our current state, women and gender discrepancies are a hot button for media coverage, and while they can be spun negatively, I think a media presence is something that would shed light in a good way on the issue that needs to be addressed, and might put necessary pressure on the board to consider changes in a policy that hasn’t been revised since 2004. Louisiana passed the equal pay law in 2013 by a 23-13 vote, which was a step in the right direction, so perhaps LSU will join the wave of change and acknowledge that the rights of new mothers should be a separate policy from one that implies crisis or sickness.

This specific protest would close after the LSU Senate wrapped their meeting on election day, but I don’t think there is a concrete ending until the University acknowledges that the policy needs to be addressed now.

Harry Potter + Twitter

Here's the thing- I'm obsessed with Harry Potter. If we start there, the rest of this post is going to make a lot more sense, so if you have a problem with my intense love of all things related to that world, read someone else's post. So here's how this relates to our prompt on time: JK Rowling wrapped up her series on Harry's life when the 7th book was released on July 21st. Five years later a character popped up on Twitter named @mugglehustle. This is a guy who had the brilliant idea to begin reading the series for the first time at age 25 and live tweet, chapter by chapter, his thoughts and reactions to the world that Rowling created years ago. In May of 2012, Muggle Hustle launched a durational play via twitter with the first tweet:

"@mugglehustle: Okay, so yeah. I’m going to read Harry Potter 1-7 for the first time and share my thoughts and reactions here.

@mugglehustle: If you want you can join me and relive your first experiences with the series.

@mugglehustle: Okay, got my set of books from Amazon. Here we go.

@mugglehustle: CHAPTER ONE: THE BOY WHO LIVED

@mugglehustle: Well as it stands now, this book should be called “Mr. Dursley and the Dursley’s Dursley.”

And with his first tweet on the book, I was hooked. This was clearly an extension of this guy's real personality, because it came from an honest place (or so it read to me) but was a somewhat heightened characterization of who he probably is in real life. With each chapter (some taking an hour or more to read and comment on), he took time to have asides to the audience and engage with readers: "I hope I was wearing a dope sweater. RT '@MereLaura Last night I had a dream I met @MuggleHustle and @jk_rowling at a Christmas party.'", commented when he couldn't check in for awhile: " SEND SOME RED SPARKS UP, THUGGLES. I'M TRYING TO FIND MY WAY BACK TO THE HUSTLE."; and made comparisons from pop culture to the books: "What's your March Madness bracket looking like? I have Slytherin making it to the Elite 8 and Gryffindor going all the way."

I followed this journey for a little over a year, chapter by chapter, book by book, with a stranger who I grew to love as much as I love the characters he was writing about, and although I knew the source material so well, it was still engaging, surprising and delightful to read this man’s reactions to each event in the books that I am so fond of. Through his experience, I got to relive them again for the first time.

How does this relate to pace and time? Well, I’d say that the responses @Mugglehustle had to each book was happening as it happened in real time; he set many chapters with a line about the passage of time, or what he was doing prior to starting, or a quip about whiskey going well with books before settling in, which was a constant reminder that the hour or so during which he was tweeting was actually the time passed while he read the book. The time between tweets wasn’t ignored but addressed, and the duration of that time made the hour or so of his interactions with the twitter world go by more quickly than the audience would like. An hour doesn’t feel so long when anticipation for that hour is built up over a span of a few weeks. The reality of the event is never forgotten, because everything he did reinforced that this hour was the only hour he had to be present with us doing this thing he said he would do.

That brings me to question two: If these plays bring us closer to right here, right now, what’s the next step? I don’t know. Maybe more neo-futurist plays but done from an improvisational stand-point and without any scripts. Maybe the audience gets to be a more active participant in having a say about the duration of the piece. Maybe we, as observers, could be drawn into a play as a character or scene partner at any time, so we have to be fully engaged and ready for a turn or we might miss our chance to be present. I’m not sure what the next step is, but I’m also not disheartened by turns theatre has taken in the last few years, so I think the best thing to do is keep asking the hard questions, trying new things, and assessing the effectiveness of each theatrical event as it happens.

P.S. You can read all of @mugglehustle's tweets for each book on his website mugglehustle.com.

Found Space

This question is really exciting to me because I’m always looking to choose pieces that push conventions into a realm of accessibility for audience members who wouldn’t typically want to go to the theatre. As a director, I often search for site-specific and found spaces because I love the challenge of repurposing something into a venue where magic can happen and where the setting has a role of its own without needing to be created for the production it holds. A few plays come to mind when I first read Amar’s question, but one that I’ve been interested in exploring most is adapting Dante’s Inferno into a staged production but placing it in an underground parking garage that has nine levels.

The audience would enter from the ground floor through the “gates of hell” as Dante does in the novel, and pass under the inscription that translates to “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” before the play begins. Once entering through the passage on the first floor, Virgil and Cheron would introduce the audience, who take on the role of Dante, to the levels of hell, each movement coinciding with a deeper floor of the underground parking garage. There are actors who are employed on particular levels that tie to the descending circles of hell, and a new guide in each circle tells his/her story through the journey down to the next ring below, until getting to the River Lethe at the 9^th circle and back up to earth and the light of day. (I’m banking on there being an elevator that can hold a small audience and a couple actors back to the ground floor)

The most interesting quality that feels like it could potentially be affective with this production is the physical descent with the actors through each circle, one because of the spiral journey down each level the audience physically has to go on with the actors, but also because it takes the group further and further down below the ground and comfort of the outside world. It would work during the day for this reason, and the return to the world above might be more rewarding if it were produced on a sunny afternoon rather than a dark and scary evening just for the juxtaposition of light and dark.

However, this is a grandiose idea that has a lot of good intentions and not a lot of thought into the problems, and while I think it has the potential to bea really exciting use of space, it would most likely be a fucking nightmare. Without taking into consideration the issues of permits, outside interference (because we probably couldn’t shut down the parking garage for art, I mean COME ON) and the sounds and safety hazards cars and inattentive humans create, a parking garage isn’t the most acoustically pleasing space to work in, so it would be incredibly difficult to work against that challenge for an actor. There’s also the issue of lighting- to use the space as it is, I wouldn’t want to bring in outside sources because it isn’t the safest environment for expensive equipment, but the dull green fluorescents don’t particularly highlight an actor. It could potentially work in favor of the hellish quality Dante is going for in his novel and the hollow echo plus the awful lighting are some of the reasons a parking garage appeals to me, but by and large I think the challenges at this phase of brainstorming far outweigh the cool use of space with such a classic.

I don’t definitively agree with Kantor’s opinion, because I think there is a lot of opportunity to do good work in a theater. Do we sometimes need to think outside of the box and embrace using the space in an innovative way? Absolutely. But has our exploration of the art form up to this point lead us to a sterilized approach to the work? I don’t think so. It arguably has to adapt to the world since things are constantly changing, but the fact that even bad theatre creates a dialogue proves that we can’t always know what to expect.

Highlights Post

I’m so encouraged by the thoughtful responses these questions prompted, there seems to be common thread of optimism in our theatrical future and the ability to embrace the growing technological elements with grace. Here are some of the standouts.

Ashley Adams writes from a personal experience on her own solo show that one person productions have to compel the artist and somewhat abandon form for what they want to do. She makes a point that many successful solo performance artists fall into the “masturbatory” category because they do what pleases them and abandon form, which in some ways, is the most affective approach because it keeps the artist present through personal commitment to the work.

http://suecoatesthtr4130.blogspot.com/ argues that Frankenstein is a great example of using technology to support a show that is a “theatre” piece and not in danger of being performance art, and goes on to say that the use of advancement doesn’t have to take over live performance just as television didn’t end the movie experience.

Inhttp://thegingyboosha.blogspot.com/, he says “Cinema may move us but live performance, compelling works, literally change us because we experience it with the performers…there is a give and take during live performance.” He links us to a performance to a clip of a Wooster Group performance that impacted him, but that he didn’t quite understand. It incorporated the use of media and technology, but it was the juxtaposition between the technical aspects and the physical presence of the actors that made the piece land the way that it did, and goes even further to remind us that while we can see the clip of the performance, it will in no way have the same impact that it did live.

Maggie and http://powerpackedpunch.blogspot.com/have a similar take on the issue: Maggie mentions that theatre is dialectic, continuing on a wheel where everything comes back around, so change is just around the corner even if we’re bogged down by the inundation of technology now. She finishes with a lovely statement that “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.” Scott says that while he isn’t concerned about technology overtaking live performance, he makes the point that if it does, we might again experience the simulacrum effect of technology being the established norm, it becoming its own copy, and by identifying the body as the antithesis of technology, the cycle will come back around to live performance. In opposition to these opinions, SanChavis takes a very different point of view saying that yes, theatre is in danger of being diluted by film and technology, but if it becomes the only form of present expression, then we might as well embrace it.

In my opinion, Andie says simply what we all seem to intuit but haven’t said yet- cinema is an individual experience, theatre breeds a culture of community and human connection. There is constant interaction between everyone in the room, therefore it has a pull that film can’t ever accomplish. So while it might be in danger of evolving, there is a reason it has stayed around for as long as it has, and that reason is a need for basic human connection.

Tastefully and respectfully, Tim abandons the prompt for a deeper investigation of the relationship between theatre and technology and muses that the issue isn’t an available access to technology, but a growing “abstraction of embodiment”. The rest of his post draws on his background on philosophy, which is really interesting and poignant, so I recommend reading his post because my attempt to summarize it would be insulting and ineffective.

Garrett speaks to the increasing difficulty for our generation to connect without the use our smart phones and this desire to record events rather than live them in the present and sums this feeling up by noting that “in order to enjoy the moment we are experiencing we now have to satiate the need to record in order to remember first and foremost”.

In response to the prompt about Imagined Memory, Yvette made a very interesting statement that brought up other questions for me- “Art is carefully crafted like this as well to convey a specific message that the audience will perceive and to shape the audiences thoughts on any given issue.  The media's tactics are mirror images of artist's tactics.” – does this make us manipulative and cheapen what we do by being really selective of what and how we show our work?

Maggie shares that imagined memory can have a huge impact on the theatre because the preconceived ideas we have from our access to media coverage become ingrained in our system, but she isn’t certain if this is a bigger obstacle or asset in out work. If the theatre strives to break conventions, general conceptions, and unsubstantial judgments”, they have to exist in the first place.

Alexandria links us to Highland Coffees and Teas closing, which hits close to home to many of us, explaining that while she is a patron, her experience of reading about it through many filters and lenses through the use of social media and online news sources, she found herself being affected by the words of others rather than honoring her own pleasant memories.

Lauren Graham makes an interesting connection to home videos and memories, noting that her experience of events in her past are actually memories of a video, which made her a third party observer of her own experience.

Several of you spoke about experiences with 9/11, but for Joe mentions that as a young man who observed the early stages of the event through media coverage, his reaction to the tragic event gained meaning when he moved to NYC years later and visited ground zero. He feels that his sensitivity to the event was much more in tune because he felt connected to it because of the live feed. He follows up his personal experience by noting that technology has the ability to be incredibly moving, especially in live performance if it is used wisely, but if it isn’t treated with finesse has the potential to become white noise.

As a native of Colorado who moved to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, Amanda talks about her fears of moving to the South because of the events shown on television and the significant focus on derelict and impoverished areas rife with crisis. Relocating to this area, she learned how much the media skewed reality by only showing a portion of the aftermath of this natural disaster. She comments that the media has a “large hold” on our opinions and reactions, and by showing just one part of the story, the partial truth becomes a developed reality.

Michael also talks about Katrina, but from a native’s perspective. Even though he was familiar with the city, the devastation, and the effects the storm took on the lives of many habitants of the city, he says the constant coverage and repeated imagery made it too easy to separate from the issue and watch as a bystander. He ties this back to his response of to the first question, which you should read here, and reflects that with the media “there's a separation, a comfortable distance that changes the way you view and feel about art…No amount of media sensationalism can give you what it's like to actually be somewhere witnessing and experiencing something.”

Dark Matter

MFA class of 2015, I'm going to talk about Pool (No Water) AGAIN. This is a delicious play by Mark Ravenhill that follows a friend group through artist jealousy of a former colleague who has made it big and successful by exploiting the death of one of their other friends to AIDS. Here's a link to the NYTimes article about a production in New York in 2012, but it experiences with the audience an event, told through these five friends, about this woman who has made it big. “It’s that quality in her work that sells. The pieces that first began when we lost Ray to the whole AIDS thing. And she used Ray’s blood and bandages and catheter and condoms. Pieces that sold to every major collector in the world.” (Ravenhill) By way of another death in the group (to cancer), this successful friend invites the others to her home in California as a way to reconnect and share with them. 

"ʻYouʼre all wiped out,ʼ she says. ʻYouʼre all exhausted,ʼ she says. ʻPhysically and spiritually and emotion. Please come out to the pool. Please. Please. Come on. Itʼs the least I can do.ʼ" (Ravenhill)

In a quick turn of events, during their first night of camaraderie since before she acquired fame, they all decide to go skinny dipping in her pool. This protagonist character with lack of sober judgment, strips naked, and dives head first into it which (spoiler) has no water. It had been drained by her pool boy earlier that day. They begin to care for her in the hospital while she's in a coma, staying in her home and enjoying her success while she lies unaware in a hospital bed and without thinking, they begin to document the recovery every day through a camera lens, all secretly thinking "this is it, this is our break." It doesn't end up the way that had all planned, however. When she comes out of the coma and sees the images, it is HER body, so it is HER show. They delete the pictures before she is healed and this leads to some really interesting dialogue to wrap up the play. 

The coolest part of this script, though, is that it is written without any distinction between characters. None of them have names or specific words, it's a giant monologue that the artists involved have to take ownership of. The protagonist isn't represented on stage. She isn't a character. She's the dark matter. They give a voice to her through their recollection of the events, but she doesn't speak ever as herself, which lends to a very cynical representation of this woman, who seems like a villain at first, but an audience can't help but identify with because even though she is filtered through the lens of these jaded people, is still a victim of a terrible situation and is a smart business woman. The separation from seeing the event of her diving head first into a pool and hearing the crack (which would NEVER work on stage) Ravenhill has written a beautifully poetic story that lives in an abstracted version that is significantly more believable and relatable in this iteration because we aren't taken out of the play in saying "that didn't look real, I don't believe it". Her character is the focus of the play, but it takes away the obligation to see her as the poor human being who is the victim and really turns the attention to these adults who can say they love someone so much and still do horrible things to one another. It reflects more coming from their voices to have to say the words that they were selfish and wrong to act the way they do because the events they relive on the stage aren't being told from a photo-realistic approach, which is really interesting since their work is centered around photographed images of a healing process in a hospital. This isn't a producer choice, but a playwright's choice, which ultimately I feel is stronger than a producer saying "we don't have the funding, don't try to make this work." It is meant for a stage, so he wrote for the stage. 

Michaeland I had a conversation with his mom yesterday about the second question in this prompt, and if you haven't read Michael's blog yet, here's a link to his response. We discussed the Holocaust and the depiction of it in film and on stage, but ultimately, the events of this magnitude can't be accurately represented on stage because we don't have the cinematic scale, funds, or access that film makers do to really give a voice to the events of the Holocaust on the whole. It won't ever be a successful endeavor at that grand scale because we have to filter it through the lens of certain voices such as a family a la The Diary of Anne Frank or a small group of students in an internment camp such as I Never Saw Another Butterfly. We can't show the horrific events of the showers, or the brutality, the lives of the officers etc. because we don't have the means for it to be done tactfully. There's a layer of disconnect in film that an audience seems to need to see the Holocaust in this way, because you aren't actually in the same room as the people playing the roles of the Jews experiencing such a horrifying event or the actors playing the Nazis carrying out these orders. If we were to fully engage during a live performance, I don't think the actors would leave the theater with much respect. The separation is needed to be able to examine it. Mel Brooks has some real commentary on the audacity of a stage show trying to portray the Holocaust in The Producers. Although his characters are looking for a bomb, there may be some truth to the fact that if we're going to show the history of something that awful, it has to be re-imagined in a way that is so offensive it isn't offensive anymore. It's too big for our world, so we have to isolate it, compartmentalize it, and redefine it to be able to discuss it.

The Disgruntled Actor/For the Women

My friend Bryan can be a real jackass. I say this completely out of love and admiration; he is one of my mentors and was the first director I worked with in my undergraduate experience as an actor, but he's a jackass in his relationships. The last 4 years have been really good to B, he has been the artistic director of The Living Room Theatre in Kansas City, directs usually 5-7 of their productions each year, lived in the theatre space, and has started a playwright series that does readings a few times each year at local bars and restaurants to bring revenue to both the theatre and the community.

 Which brings me to his behavior: Bryan isn't always very good with breakups. Last year, he dated an actress with whom he would be doing one of these readings, and though things didn't end badly, they didn't end very well, and he was the source of a lot of gossip in the circles where they both socialized. They were cast by their mutual friend, the playwright, in this piece for the end of July called For the Women. It was to be read at one of the more popular venues in town and although there was some tension, both agreed to do it. 

The marketing for this particular script was pretty wide-spread on social media, word of mouth and printed advertisements because the playwright, Alli Jordan, is a pretty well known artist in the KC community and Bryan is a relatively well-known actor/director/playwright there, as well. The playwright gave a brief synopsis of the play, but made it very clear to the audience and the actors that they wouldn't read it prior to the first public appearance of the script at the end of July so it generated some hype. They did a few public statements saying that their former relationship wasn't in the way, that as artists the respected each other and were happy to work together, and were looking forward to this project.

As the closing piece to the evening, Bryan, Alli (who would read stage directions), and his co-star had plenty of time to have couple of drinks, relax, and prepare for their slot. They set up on the stage and opened the scripts. Bryan, who is 1. hot tempered when he wants to be and 2. incredibly perceptive, realized very quickly that this play was written about his relationship with his co-star and they were playing themselves, although the playwright had changed their names. She took information she knew from his past relationships and inserted it in the play as well. He felt unsettled, victimized, and slandered by the way she wrote his character and was visibly unraveling during the reading, but held it together until nearly the end of the play when a section of dialogue was verbatim drawn from one of the fights he and his ex-girlfriend/co-star had before splitting up. At this point, he stood, turned the table, had a shouting match with the playwright and his co-star for how poorly he was being treated, how unprofessional it was to put him in that position, how he needed to take a stand for himself, unlike his literary alter-ego, and walked off stage. Both women were stunned, the audience was stunned, and the place was silent and unmovable until Bryan walked back in from outside, up on to the stage, and all three took a bow. 

It turns out, this was written with all three of them involved in the creation process, and they were in on the play from the beginning. The playwright wanted a piece of theatre that examines how rumor, relationships, and behaviors can have an impact on perceptions of people who know you and to encourage the audience to examine their experiences of instances where they may have been part of the problem for someone's reputation or the victim of seemingly harmless but hurtful talk. Luckily, Bryan and his co-star had ended things on good terms and this was more of a ploy to market the play, but much like I set up at the beginning of this post, people have a perception of his behaviors due to an exploitation of privacy, over-sharing of personal details, and meddling. The play was a wild success because it was so unexpected, the actors played their truthful point of view, and it disrupted what this audience came in perceiving how evening would turn out. It became a dialogue between the artists and the observers, who were unknown cast members and gave them all more to work off of. 

This story now brings me to the second part of the prompt: How do we bring theatre into the 21st century? In ways such as this. Our attention span as a generation is so succinct and we're made for instant gratification due to the technology at our fingertips, so given an opportunity to do a piece of theatre in a restaurant/bar/art gallery where you wouldn't typically find theatre opens up worlds of possibilities, accesses patrons who might not feel comfortable in a stuffy theatre, but are totally at ease at a table with a beer in hand, and forces the creative team to be innovative, minimalistic, and ready to use anything that comes their way. It sets up a rapport with the audience that they don't have to be trapped, and because this isn't a traditional theatrical space, they feel comfortable leaving if it isn't their aesthetic, but because of this freedom, most people are more comfortable staying to enjoy the art. The creation of new work, re-imagined work, and collaborating with other venues/locally owned businesses to build relationships and earn revenue on nights/months/seasons where the numbers are low is both smart and exciting, but forces us as patrons to experience something we may not previously have thought to put together. I'll leave you with this ted talk by Amanda Palmer if you feel inclined to watch 14 minutes on the art of asking, which I think is a way our 21st century theatre can go. 

I begin.

In 2012 I was living in Los Angeles and working as a struggling actor (read: waitress and broken miserable soul) who went from doing tons of work in the theatre industry to living in a city where there wasn't much opportunity in the medium I had spent years training in. Because the work I saw on stage was generally ghastly, I stopped seeing local theatre about two months after I re-located to the city. 

Three weeks before I left L.A. to eventually come to LA, I saw a friend in a new production at a small theatre company in North Hollywood. I don't remember the name of the play, the actors, most of the characters or even much of the story itself because on the whole it was horrific, but I do remember this one moment. The last scene of the play had three actors on stage. Two engaged in a dialogue about something trivial and poorly written, but there was an actor downstage right building a house out of cards on the floor. He was in a pair of boxers and spent the entire scene trying to construct a house out of a deck of cards. The struggle, frustration, and panic that he felt as he tried again and again to build the fucking house was so captivating that I almost stopped caring that I paid $15 to see this piece of shit. The honesty of truly doing something, being completely invested in this action, standing onstage in his underwear and pursuing the goal of constructing this paper house, fighting through the frustration of continual defeat was so powerful and simple, so present, so affective for me as an audience member that it truly made the experience worth it. This moment was enough of a glimpse of an honest pursuit of goals where I saw true frustration, shame, anger, embarrassment and failure that was completely juxtaposed by the rest of the event and its presentation of lives worth living for a wasted two hours of my existence. 

Another production that stands out to me as one with elements of Truth was a production at the High School Institute housed at Northwestern University in Evanston. The play, Hotel Cassiopeia, is a Charles Mee play based on the life of artist Joseph Cornell. To accommodate for the number of students involved, several actors played the role of Joseph (both male and female) and all the female roles were played by different women rather than one actor. The production choices, casting, age range of the actors weren't meant to be naturalistic or realistic, and the script, although a derivative of events from Cornell's life and memoirs, was an adaptation with inferences made and not meant to be a documentary-style Truth-telling play. So why do I bring it up?  This again comes back to the acting. Toward the end of the play, there is a monologue that Cornell has to a girl that says: 

JOSEPH
Still,
if I were to say anything to you 
it would be:
do what you love
not what you think you should do
or what you think is all you can do
what you think is possible for you
no
do what you love
and let the rest follow along behind it
or not
or not
because
even if it doesn't follow along behind
you will have done what you've loved
and you know what that is
you know better than anyone what you love
and a life centered around your love
cannot be wrong
cannot finally be disappointing

THE GIRL
Easy for you to say.

JOSEPH
No. No, it isn't.

This exchange broke my heart. It spoke a truth to me as an artist both because the words themselves are so powerful to me as an actor, but also because this young man in the brink of starting his career said them with so much earnest love, compassion and truth. It is a monologue that speaks from a place of understanding struggle, but a 17 year old boy believed in what he loved in that moment, that the simple truth of speaking the words was enough. 

So, question two: Yes, I think there is a difference. Because in my opinion, the truth of the play heavily relies on the truth of the actor in the play. Documentary theatre doesn't work for truth if the actors involved don't come from a place of truth and reality which can only be possible up to a certain point. There can be truths in pieces that are written and there can be truths from the actor, but ultimately I think the truth that we see is different for every individual because we're coming to them with different perspectives/opinions/views as Joe mentioned in response to Spill. Theatre is art, art is subjective, and because of that we can argue for the definition of true without ever determining what that means. 

I end. 

Performative Acts, or The Big Gay Wedding

Here's what occurred to me when this prompt was sent-

1. Panic. 
2. Weddings
3. Don't use weddings, that's unimaginative.
4. *radio silence*

So in honor of following my impulses, I did decide to bring in my experience at two of my dear friends' wedding in April of 2013. You can watch the highlights video here (but it won't work on a mobile device) to see what I'm talking about.

The video will take you through some of the rehearsal, behind the scenes and a few clips of the wedding as it was performed. I could talk about the video as a performative act, but I'm focusing on the actual wedding, so stay with me!

If you watched further than the first 30 seconds, you may notice that this isn't a traditional wedding that most religious institutions honor, but a wedding between two women. These women, my friends Chelsea and Whitney, live in Springfield, Missouri. They have been a couple since 2008 and like many couples in love, decided they wanted to celebrate their union with friends and family. Here's the first issue with the performative act of their wedding, however: In Missouri, same-sex unions aren't recognized by the state. The wedding was in Springfield, they had an ordained minister performing the ceremony, they sign a marriage certificate, I can vouch for both parties saying "I do" and I can guarantee they both meant it, so is this performative act infelicitous? I would vehemently argue that everyone involved with the utterances and actions believed in their words and deeds, and all the elements were in place and had licensed professionals in their proper roles to make everything official, so this event would have been deemed a success with one substitution: Chelsea would have to be a different gender. 

That makes me wonder, though, if because Chelsea seems to identify in some way with a more masculine version of self in her gender role, and chose a dress that is indicative of a tuxedo, she could argue that she was the "groom" in this wedding. If her sense of identity is that she identified, based on Butler's standards, as something other than inherently female, if she queered her gender identity and embraced a "traditional male" identity, would that skew the performative act enough to be arguable grounds for this union between two women to be recognized by the state of Missouri?

I'm not saying that is something that either of these women are actually interested in doing. They are both perfectly happy with their ceremony and use hyphenated last names and call one another wife, so this is all hypothetical. But to examine the ceremony a little more clinically in terms of society's expectations of relationships, I do think there's another case for this performative act going against what is "supposed" to be done.

I invite a disagreement here, but my experience observing the general public and reactions to gay relationships is that more frequently than not, same sex couples are expected to have one person who serves to fill the role of "the Man" and one who fills the role of "the Woman". Masculine/feminine, butch/femme, top/bottom, however we want to classify it, there's a classification that same-sex couples seem expected to fill. This is more of a problem of trying to force a norm of something identifiable onto a relationship that should be able to establish its own norm, but I digress- in Chels and Whitney's wedding, Chelsea took on the role of the groom; she walked down the aisle first and she wore black. But she also wore a dress and makeup, she has long hair, she isn't afraid of heels. She doesn't play the role of "the Man" in her relationship because she is a woman, and that is her sense of identity. Which makes me think that her expression of self changes what is expected of her relationship and shows this performative act in another different way. 

What IS performance?

I glean from Carlson's introduction is that the very act of avoiding a concrete definition of performance gives freedom to the art of exploring it. Because the arts are so subjective in nature and we all see beauty in different forms of expressions and mediums, my personal definition of "performance" is probably going to be very different than someone else's, which brings me to think that the issue of importance here seems to be more that we discuss it and can come at the conversation with a mutual understanding. So, is the definition that it will always evade a true definition?

As our definition of "good theatre" is constantly evolving, why wouldn't the perimeters the define performance also evolve? Does performance mean, in some ways, that we are putting on behaviors rather than investing in living within the world of imagined circumstances? Something that stood out to me from reading the States article, The Phenomenology of Theatre, actually came from a connection to the Fuchs' article, EF's Visit to a Small Planet which I'm sure we've all read- but I started thinking about the idea that each piece of theatre written has its own standards of the World, it functions and experiences differently than we do in our own, and to superimpose our knowledge and definitions on the experiences that occur within that realm doesn't work, because it has its own sense of self. When actors lend themselves to these circumstances and live in the World defined by the play, is that a performance if it is lived truthfully, or is exercising the skill required to live truthfully in the world precisely what makes the act a performance (as referenced page 3 paragraph 2)?

To bring in another section of States' article, I want to discuss how the mimetic theory- or the imitation or expression of something rather than the action of truly doing or experiencing it- is indicative of what we are taught to believe is "good acting", and that if, as actors, we are truly experiencing and doing, an audience is more likely to go on the journey with us than if we're faking it. On some level, it has to always be mimetic in nature, or are we truly going to kill Polonius through the curtain, drown ourselves, and drink poison in a production of Hamlet? This duality, that Schechner labels "restored behavior," points out that we have to have a certain awareness of self while living in the world of the play, but where is the line between performing the action and endowing it with meaning?

I haven't discovered the answers to these questions yet, but as this article has encouraged more questions than it answers, I feel like the definition of performance can't be put into a neat little box and should be something that inspires dialogue rather than offer an easy solution.