Yeah, Heidi, you make some terrific points and pose the problem in new ways for me. I had always sort of thought of the rigor as needing to move from one place to another - mostly from the execution or performance to the conception. But your observation that greater imaginative power is needed for more relational work is I think true and your travelogue/trip analogy is a good one. So rigor is still demanded for the execution.
I like the way you've identified the problem with these two sentences:
The artist's job isn't to conjure the totality of the experience, but to set up sign posts, assist the timing of the passage, figure out the means of transport. But this type of performance also puts the social and political concerns of the artists and audience in play.
I think, in many ways, it's all about event design with the range of ingredients now opening up well beyond those used in classical theatre (by classical, I mean any work that sticks pretty close to Aristotelian poetics, which would still include folks like Beckett and MacIvor) . The most fundamental new ingredient being social dynamics. And, of course, all choices will reveal - whether the artist likes it or not - the artist's concerns, biases and imagination in a way that is, I think, more concentrated, stark and undeniable than in classical work. The classical dramaturgical imperative "show don't tell" must now deepen to read something like "Don't tell, don't show but BE or MANIFEST or ACTUALIZE." And yes, it's sort of like the traditional writer's role but mixed with the role of the director as well as the impresario. The term I like is 'social impresario' because it mixes that dry and discredited term 'social' with that garish and discredited term 'impresario'.
To get back to the concerns of your first paragraph, I agree that there's a lack of critical context for talking about, evaluating and creating new kinds of theater. I'm looking for a way to make work - in theater and otherwise - that is directly engaged with civil society, finding new ways to collaborate in new fields to create new ways of being. Below is a list of criteria that i think is helpful to evaluate beauty and success in this realm.
Criteria to Determine Beautiful Civic Engagement
1. Gluing the Grease and Greasing the Glue: conflating the imperative to grease the wheels of commerce with the imperative to glue the social fabric; in other words, hauling the community into the commercial and the commercial into the community to spread, or equalize, power.
2. Diversity: age, race, sexual orientation, religion, occupation, etc.
3. Atypical Encounter: people doing things they wouldn’t ordinarily do, or would ordinarily do but in an unordinary context with people they wouldn’t ordinarily do it with.
4. Inversion of Hierarchies: those who normally have the power give it up, or participate in service to other less powerful participants.
5. Offering Agency: creating a context that provides agency to those who would not ordinarily have it.
6. Questioning Social Assumptions, Imperatives: creating a context where taboos are challenged by actions that reveal the taboo to be based in social control.
7. Atypical use of public and public/private space: playing where we’re supposed to work and working where we’re supposed to play.
8. Fruitful Antagonisms: triggering friction, tension, and examining the ensuing dynamic in a performative arena where all is easily forgiven.
9. Volunteer Ownership: providing opportunities for volunteers to participate to foster a wider sense of ownership.
10. Blurring of Roles: passersby become observers; observers become participants; participants become collaborators and volunteers become creators.
11. Generating Buzz: where the media is on par with other aspects of the project; the media as collaborators—slippery collaborators—but collaborators, nonetheless.
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Seems to me that we're trying to shift the focus from a linear visual event, where the spectator has internalized the code (I watch, they do), to a non-linear multi-sensual event where the spectator functions as a witness with opportunities to act. Still a game even though the code has changed. Isn't the code the 'pretend' part?
that's a nice way to think of it. just looking at the word pretend and how it breaks down into pre (before) and tend (to take care of) so it's those decisions that are made before the event that take care of how things - to a degree - unfold.
i also prefer a slipperiness when it comes the audience's role where 'witness with opportunities to act' can give way to 'participate with opportunities to initiate.'
ps. welcome to the discussion, neil. happy new year etc.
There are some very popular models of participatory theatre that have been around for years including in our membership Headlines Theatre (forum theatre addressing social issues), TheatreSports, and Tony 'N Tina's Wedding. Each of these examples has a ritualistic format so that the audience knows to some degree the type of things that will unfold but not exactly how it will unfold. The performance art model also wants to give audience members the thrill of participation but in unfamiliar formats and settings, and I find it even more interesting that it wants to engage beyond the two senses of sight and sound that we are limited to in the theatre. For example, some of Darren's work moves into the tactile realm such as Hair Cuts by Children. Apparently, adults being touched by children they don't know was an unusual experience, which made the experiment a memorable and meaningful one for the participants. I'd be interested in hearing about the work that other artists might be doing that is multi-sensory? (Susan Stevenson)
I try to introduce the audience to an environment in which there is no clear 'correct' form of behaviour. I suspect T 'N T's wedding depends on culturally correct response mechanisms....even though they may be daring for some they won't be in any way transformative. I've never seen Headlines but I'm familiar with Boal based interactive theatre. I respect the work but I have some questions about authority and activism. In any case not often where I want to be as a spectator. The didactic realm is too close. I haven't seen Haircuts by CHildren but I can imagine that the touching was disarming - sensuality divorced from anyone's moral jurisdiction.
That can be transformative in a real sense I think - you enter into unfamiliar territory and consequently behave in an unfamiliar way. Transformation has never meant to me that the individual loses anything, we are dilated slightly, more inclusive - our adaptive responses are exercised.
I've experienced this kind of work most often in contemporary dance contexts and performance art events. Lots of people doing it. HIVE was an example.
there’s the china shop.
here’s the bull.
The Use of Theatre in These (end)Times
- a Call for Depth
I’ve been contemplating this idea, What’s the Use of Theatre, for a couple of years now. I've also been contemplating, very practically, Death and Grief…and not necessarily in that order. An interesting co-incidence.
Why do I make Theatre (when people are dying on my doorstep)? And is the ‘conventional’ theatre I make still relevant, given the Lie we (here in North America) live within.
Is it still use-full given what I now know of Life on this Planet; what kind of checkers do Chinese people play? (what kind of Chinese people?)
Where do we place the exotic when the exotic lives next door? When the exotic sleeps in my bed? When one is “the exotic”?
And Equity still questions whether a conversation on Diversity is valid! And they won’t even let us digitally record our own work even though binary code is the language of the New World Order!
We in the Theatre are so far behind the other disciplines in our investigations. So excruciatingly corseted by waspish conventions. I think our arrogance has kept us from realizing that there is a great big world outside our stuffy little box. Some of us are only just waking up to the fact of the boxcoffinbox.
What IS that banging?
I stopped hanging out in the Theatre world about 6 years ago. Because it was too damn boring and nobody drank at parties anymore. Not like the ‘good old days’ when things were dangerous.
When Tennessee Williams fell dead drunk down the stairs at Celebrities; and I don’t blame him, his show was shit – but my point is, he risked.
He Risked.
And he had a fair bit to loose.
When Morris Panych, way angrier than he is now, was aided in his acts of theatrical mischief by a wonderfully wonky German director - “Just put a green spot light on it, you can do anyzing under ze green spotlight!” – a director who didn’t care if people left the theatre offended. wow.
When actors were rangy and wicked and not very Nice some of them. But brilliantly witty and dangerous on stage. And they cared about the Work in the larger sense of things. The same could be said of some of the Theatre round here too. How I long for Larry.
Now I find our Theatre so boring so often.
Resort Entertainment.
And I’m not jaded.
I’m not bitter.
I’m just consistently disappointed!
(Last year I saw almost 50 plays – Jessie Hell)
And even though I don’t believe in it right now, I still show up, every time, ready to be moved. Wanting to be scared, just a little bit. Hoping to be engaged; be presented with things that require me to frown. Not because there’s a bored child screaming inside my head, but because I have to wrestle with my current world view in order to understand the new mode of being unfolding onstage; one that fiercely challenges my sense of Existence, what it is to be Human or my unconscious moral code.
I want Jimmy Hendrix not Chad Kroeger!
And if Theatre artists want two hours of my Life time, I want them to think a lot harder before I give it to them! I want them to dig deeper into themselves. I want them to be more interesting onstage than the blond leaving the theatre to take a piss.
But I think we're are too safe here. Too scared, conventional and lazy in an intellectual and experiential way. I’ve seen it in the rehearsal rooms. I hear it in conversations.
A trapeze does not the avant-garde make.
What if we were to make theatre that deeply challenged our Selves and our audiences? Ya might not get to work at the Arts Club or Touchstone. But if one actually growled and spit and looked directly into the eyes of our acting partner or the audience, from the pit of one’s desperate soul…well sweat might bead on the brow.
Not nice. Not cool. But fabulously gripping!
“Sweat made from Art is Holy Water,
far as I’m concerned”
As I mentioned, I’ve been hanging out in the Art world, observing. What makes them tick? Why aren’t they afraid to just make shit? Why is that Art? Why are they so supportive and inclusive of each other? What is Performance? What are the edges of Theatre? How do I, myself, restrict myself? Why are their parties so much better?
1.Parties
Artists in other disciplines aren’t waiting for someone to pick them; they don’t need to behave in an appropriate way so they’ll be noticed and cast.
To a great extent, they don’t need to be selected in order to make their work. As a result there’s a freedom to Be; room for quirky ontological views and behaviour. This spiky individuality is fertile turf for creations that contravene the status quo without fear of social and economic retribution.
And it’s not a lifestyle choice or a grant proposal; it’s a way of Being.
It’s starting to happen here.
Yeah!!! and Thank You for your courage.
Conversation and exchange of ideas is a prime component of most art functions. And the cat can look at the king; Art openings, unlike Theatre openings, are free, so vast portions of the community aren’t barred from the Conversation due to poverty or not being on the guest list.
*Hive’s format was inspired by **Swarm.
But!
At Swarm Everybody’s welcome
FREE OF CHARGE.
Everybody’s there. Diversity of view, discipline, experience, culture and ethnicity.
Perhaps we need to shift our economic structure.
Perhaps we need to dis/re-mantle not only why we make theatre but for whom.
Perhaps we need to make it up from scratch and not copy them.
…or join them.
It’s just fences in a pool, after all.
(*I didn’t see much of Hive, got kicked out, so I went next door to drink with a Bask friend who’d spent the last 7 years cycling around the earth.
** I saw almost all of Swarm.)
2. Vancouver’s theatre community is pretty white and straight.
Still.
Nuff said.
3.The Art world allows questioning. For months I was posing the question “What/where are the edges of Theatre?”, trying to engage colleagues in the discussion, to almost no avail. So sad. And yet I had such satisfying success with my artworld pals from a variety of disciplines and countries.
Vancouver’s theatre community seems to fear those who question – our European comrades attending the Push Fest have whispered this in my ear on numerous occasions. ‘Round here, those that dissent, those that value a critical analysis of the medium that supports advancing the medium, those that don’t wear Gap, can’t play. Or they go to Toronto.
4. A foreign artist, in her travels, gathered a collection of thoughts from other artists throughout North America, about Vancouver’s Theatre community. Her conclusion (not mine); the theatre here is in the hands of the shallow and the shallow don’t want the deep and dangerous in the house. Dishes may be broken. Milk may be spilled.
Our Theatre has little depth.
Span, but little depth (as per Ken Wilber)
Pretty tricks, but no Soul.
Her conclusion.
5. Schools. UBC and Studio 58 annually download whole villages of new actors into our theatre community; all these newbies chanting the mantra “Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.” as per their respective gurus.
Peter Brook despairs. Howard Barker is puking as I write.
Thank God for SFU.
These schools seem to require homogeneity of thought and an enforced lack of awareness of the Crazy Possibilities. Question and you’re kicked to the curb. Please see point #3
6. We Theatre practioners are so attached to our accoutrements that we can’t see that Theatre can happen ANYWHERE without ANYTHING but you and me. Sometimes, even without either of us.
Too much um, no.
Not enough Fuck Ya!
During my work abroad, I contemplated “The Use of Theatre”. I considered becoming a Performance Artist. I considered Live Art (google it).
After traipsing through Czech, Spain and England I finished my sojourn in London at Lepage’s 5 hour “Dragon’s Trilogy” at The Barbican. The play examines the nature of personal and national identity within a global context.
And other stuff.
How perfect.
In our conversation during and after the show, Robert helped me to see that Theatre doesn’t need a new shape, necessarily. But, to be useful, it does need to do what it does from a deep place. Instead of changing the shape, change with what makes the shape. New shapes will arise. Organically.
A human “onstage” (where ever that may be)
Truly vulnerable.
That’s what we go to see.
The Clown, the Holy Fool, exquisitely exposed.
Gripping!
Fabulous!
sacred
Think of the reviews.
This is what we can offer that few other media or disciplines can. And this is what is desperately needed right now.
But for the Theatre to regain its Natural Sacred Humanity, it requires something of its practioners that few are willing to offer or even know exists.
As Darren said, “Don’t tell, don’t show, but BE or MANIFEST or ACTUALIZE”
It’s a Dark Magik Art. But people are forgetting how.
I’ve come to realize that I will just continue to make what I make and not name it. It will be spaces and times where people are and stuff happens.
Call it what you will.
If you even see it.
I’m turning the box into a paper airplane and I’m going to hit you in the head or tickle your asshole with it. Feel free to refold it and send it back. I'm not so tied to the shape, more the inter-action.
It’s a game. Our game. We can make it up as we go along.
And here’s a secret I learned out there…
…there ARE no rules!
And nobody really gives a shit about what happens here,
he said.
Pass it on.
As I was told by someone now dead,
“Be Free, my Babies. Be Free”.
welcome lesley, you freakin windbag!! you make some good points.
the economics of theatre are tough. in the visual arts you can make some objects to sell - not so easy in theatre. nobody can buy a play and take it home with them. so we have to charge admission. that's why i think that theatre artists need to diversify and use the theatre as a place to display work that can be - somehow - purchased elsewhere. Sara Bynoe's Teen Angst Poetry sounds like an interessting event where there's the more theatre part with the reading and then there's also a book you can buy. But my point is there needs to be a diversification and that theatre might have to be thought of as a loss leader.
I would be careful about coming down on vancouver. I think theatre blows pretty much everywhere you go. And i think LePage, as you quote him, is wrong. Theatre does necessarily need a new shape which is not to say the old shape can't speak to a few people but theatre does need to do some catching up.
yeah, it's a white field, alright. but the visual arts are not much - if at all - better. in fact, in toronto, i would say that since Carmen Arguirre took on the Factory, theatre has actually started to show some leadership on diversity. it seems to be moving much more quickly than the visual arts, in any case.
your vision of a gripping performance sounds like my idea of 90 mintues of tedium. I don't want growling and spitting from the pit of someone's desperate soul. I want to explore new ways of being together that might induce a little discomfort but won't create the scenes of drama you describe.
Thanks, Lesley and Neil, for jumping into the fray.
First, regarding Neil's comment on non-linear event: I think we can learn a lot from new media creation processes - we are increasingly navigating the world the way we do digital culture. Taking the concept of databases from the new media world, we can look at the non-linear event as a site for the audience's navigation of a database created by the artist. That database might include the selection of neighbourhood, time of day, and activity (e.g. Darren's Home Tours), or in a confined space and time, might include media (photos, video, sound), performative elements (does audience get to perform? how are they selected? how long do they get to stay on stage?) - a way of deciding and understanding the ramificaitons of our choices in the creation of performative events that can include a wide range of matrixed and non-matrixed activities. (Matrixed activities involve a high degree of imaginative structure, non-matrixed less so, i.e. Michael Kirby's Happenings.)
Lesley's comments for me expose some assumptions that I just don't agree with, especially about the visual art world. Having worked in artist run culture for 3 years, and being somewhat tangentially involved with the performance and live art community since then, my experience of that community is that it is every bit as political, stratified, and full of economic conundrums as the theatre world. The competition for grant momey is far more extreme, the costs for creating work are high, and borne by individuals, rather than companies, and there are definite trends and theoretical shifts that make sustaining a mid-career artists a challenge in that context, too. I agree that looking at other forms can help us to break out of our assumptions, and I think the aspect of social convivality is something we need to reinvest in our performance practice.
With regard to the place of catharsis in contemporary practice - the Holy Fool section of Lesley's post being most relevant here - I think Darren's keynote address at Making a Scene pointed to the real conundrum, that what's satisfying to perform is not necessarily what moves the form forward. Our investment in psychologically or mythically based performance practice is so tied up in the old forms - I am constantly pulled in conflicting directions when I consider what's formally satisfying and what's emotionally satisfying. I continue to train in a performance practice that demands virtuosity, and I invest a lot of time and emotional commitment in scripts that demand a high level of imaginative involvement from the performers and audience - but I agree with Darren that this is the dying aspect of the form. I feel like I've transferred some of my spiritual connection to theatrical practice into the rehearsal hall, rather than the performance space; I am not as adverse to the passionate imaginative experience as Darren is, but I am deeply suspicious of it, even when I'm participating in it.
To add to the discussion. I make no excuses for being white and straight (and male). I'm just an artist. I started my own theatre company to promote the art of theatre through writing. Anybody can do that and it doesn't matter what colour you are (obviously). I try to promote writers I like. I like writing that is accessible and has depth. Our scriptwriting competition (we have one every year) receives scripts from across Canada and we choose five winners every year; it's a blind competition and we don't know anything about the physical appearance of any of the writers -- and this year two of our previous winners received productions (both were white; although one was bi-polar). As far as good theatre versus bad theatre goes...well there's bad theatre everywhere but I keep going because often even the bad ones teach me something. And the good ones change my life a little. Anyway, this seems to be an argument about "expanding the imagination" and I'm not sure I want my imagination expanded all that much...I prefer my humanity to be focussed more (there's so little humanity going around these days).
aaron bushkowsky
Welcome to the discussion, Aaron.
I think it's important to acknowledge the social tendencies that push people toward particular paths. We live in a society that privileges whiteness - there's no denying that so in order to even maintain an equilibrium (let alone correct the systemic imbalance) I think much more is required than blind competitions. Outreach and community building is much more important. You just can't sit back and say that no people of colour applied to a particular competition or submitted work to a particular call. There are systemic barriers which get in people's way. I think as white people we have a responsibility to actively dismantle these rather than passively note that we, ourselves, are simply colour-blind.
Interesting that you would, in some ways, draw a parallel between a bi-polar white person and a person of colour. It says a lot about what people of colour have to contend with.
For me, I'm looking for an expansion in the imaginations of theatre practitioners so that there can be a better expression or manifestation of humanity. It seems to me that expansion of imagination IS a focusing of humanity.
wondering, aaron, if the jury in your competition is reflective of the diversity of canada? a blind jury is fine but i think it also needs to be a blind multicult jury.
Darren:
I'm not sure where you're going with your argument...if anywhere. My bi-polar comment doesn't reflect any prejudice whatsoever. It does reflect the theme of the night -- which was Crazy Talk -- a show of three one-person shows about mental illness. As far as our jury is concerned -- it is made up of only three people: myself, as one of the Artistic Directors, our resident dramaturge and a previous winner from last year. By co-incidence, we are a straight guy, a gay guy and a lesbian -- but not by co-incidence, we are all very qualified to be on the jury because of our jobs and background (and because we love theatre). As far as imagination goes...not everything that has imagination expands my humanity. But then, just WHAT IS imagination?
And/or humanity?
Aaron has raised two points that are of interest to me personally. One that he can learn something even from so-called "bad" theatre. I agree - why not adopt a West Coast lay buddhist approach - as in "it's all good."
The other point re humanity was the theme of a novel I just read by Coetzee called "Elizabeth Costello" (not his best book). The story raised the point about an artist going to dark and evil places (e.g. Nazi torture scenario) and taking his audience along with them to those place. At what cost to the artist and the audience and for what benefit? How do artists serve humanity and is that a higher purpose than serving your own creativity or imagination? I think this is a compelling ethical question.
(Susan Stevenson)
oh, i misunderstoon, aaron. I thought you were saying that no person of colour was selected but a bipolar person was as if the two types of people could be equated. like being of colour was a handicap.
I just think that the cultural makeup of a jury is important. It's not enough to say an unbiased decision was made simply because the jury was blind.
yes, what is imagination and humanity? Can you explain what you mean?
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