Right Here, Right Now, It's Ted's Birthday (Entry #8)

     On any given night when one goes to the theatre, the play one sees falls anywhere from an hour and a half (if you're lucky) to two and a half hours, sometimes up to three if you're seeing August: Osage or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. In the second act of August, the family eats dinner for almost the entire act (which runs about an hour) which is really cool because usually when people eat meals on stage it only lasts for a few minutes. There are other plays, though, that fit months or years of moments into a brief hour and a half. Time is always flexible on stage.
     For the theatre we discussed last week, time is a powerful element in reinforcing the reality effect. In Single Tweet theatre, you have very little to work with time and almost nothing to work with pace. Since the entire play takes place in one tweet, there's no pacing involved. As far as time goes, you can play with extending time with an ellipsis ("I mean to tell you she's… dead"), but not much other than that. This reinforces the reality effect because it mirrors the come and go, constantly updating, read and forget style of Twitter. You tweet something out, it gets read with other tweets as the reader scrolls by, and then the reader moves on to something else. The play ends as it begins, so the time it takes one to read it mirrors how one interacts with other tweets.
     Multi-Tweet Twitter (MTT) dramas, then, reinforce the reality effect in a different way. Instead of mirroring the workings of Twitter, MTT plays aim to give a more life-like sense of time passing similarly to Act II of August. Tweets are tweeted over the course of a few weeks or months, allowing the play to play out in the actual time it would happen, not having to worry about being bound by the time limit of the physical theatre. If a twitter character is in love, they might tweet back immediately. If a twitter character is pissed off, they might tweet back a week later. In MTT drama, you can really explore time and pacing and mirror real life using the platform of Twitter, a very "real life" communication medium.
     For durationals, reality is looked at in a new way yet again. Durationals tend to focus more on the human spirit and the way the body and mind works, taking a more meta approach to theatre in general. The durational is less focused on plot, story, and giving the audience the typical evening of theatre, but rather experimenting in the human limits of presence and energy. The durationals we read about in class dealt with performers having to be present for hours on end, and how, over time, performers changed physically (looking physically worn out, exhausted, slumped over, weary-eyed) and mentally (losing their wit and ability to improv, not caring as much about the task at hand, losing their energy and presence on stage). The reality here is not concerned about telling a story in real time that mirrors real life, but aims to show the reality of working for 6 straight hours, or the reality of the toll it takes on someone after hours upon hours of truth. Someone in the article about Quizoola! mentioned how they felt like the whole show managed to fit an entire life in the length of the show, how every bit of human nature wound up in the performance. It's an entirely different angle on reality.
     The next step a performance artist could take to get closer to the "right here, right now" of theatre is to bring the audience along for the ride and make them part of the "real". In an Improv Everywhere sketch called Ted's Birthday, a bunch of actors pretend that it is the birthday of some random stranger they picked out in a bar. They bring the guy gifts and hug him and have school and work backstories, and totally believe it. The stranger, Ted, jokingly plays along for a while, trying to figure out what's going on, but as the night goes on he slowly starts to almost believe it, and almost takes on this persona of Ted. If you watch the video (do it, it's great), at the end he's still wearing the hat his "ex girlfriend" gave him. I think this was a successful step closer to the right here, right now, because a group of people were playing for an audience of two, and I think such a small audience was helpful in pulling them into the work. They became a part of it without even realizing it, and "Ted" was very much in the "right here, right now". Theatre is crazy, y'all, and makes you do crazy things, like almost believe it's your birthday and you're leading this double life.

Part of Your (Site-Specifc) World (Entry #7)

     We've all seen our share of good and bad productions of Disney's The Little Mermaid. I've heard of productions where actors wear roller skates to float around the stage. I was in a production where we blurred the lines between land and sea with huge amounts of blue fabric used in different ways. But imagine how awesome it would be to see a production of The Little Mermaid that actually takes place in the water. 

     If I was directing this, I would stage it at Sea World in the enormous whale tank where they stage the whale shows. The audience is positioned in a way that they can see what's happening above the water, but they can also see what's happening below with plexiglass windows on the sides of the tank. (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, but for reference…) The tank is large enough that you could fit a believable size boat in it for Prince Eric and crew, and the boat could also be used as a playing area for actors. I would use rain and wind machines to simulate weather and thunderstorms. The platforms built into the space, normally used by the Sea World performers, would be transformed into another playing area. The most important playing area for this show would be the actual water. Actors could float, swim, dive, splash, and jump through the water. The whole show is about being "Under the Sea", so I would adapt the show to focus more on water choreography and dance, a la Cirque du Soleil's O. It would maintain the storyline and musical elements of the Disney show, but in a totally reimagined way. I'm not sure if staging it in water would make the show more abstract or more literal, but I think either way would be incredibly exciting to see.

     The framework of site-specific theatre would both positively and negatively affect my production. From an audience perspective, I think people would fall in love with it. Water is such an interesting element in theatre because you have little to no control of it. You might float away from your scene and have to swim back to it. I think it would also be exciting to see how the production changes from the one you would normally see on stage. From an actor's standpoint, I think the show would be fun but grueling. You would have to be comfortable performing in water, in great physical shape to swim and dive and project lines, and have to deal with all the troubles that performing a show in a giant pool would bring about. It would be difficult for all involved - water-proof costumes, mics and sound vs water, floating props, water-proof set pieces, trying to decide if having real fish in the pool with actors is a good idea or not. It would challenge everyone artistically in a really interesting way.

     I disagree with Kantor's quote. I don't think the theater "has been completely sterilized and neutralized by centuries-old practices". Yes, most shows follow the standard creation process of a show, and are lit, sound designed, and set designed in similar ways, but I'm not convinced that staging or devising a production outside of a traditional theatre is the only way to lead to some new marvelous creation. I think a great example of that are productions that place in the Reilly. Look at August: Osage or Five Flights. Although the Reilly is technically a transformed place from the start, it is now an adapted thrust stage at heart. Time and time again, designers break "centuries-old practices" in this space and create new and interesting designs that you normally wouldn't see. While site-specific theatre is a wonderful way to materialize drama, the "traditional theatre" is just as capable of breaking tradition. 

The Life and Death of Journalism and Live Theatre (Entry #6)

     This week's prompt sounds very similar to another classic arguement that affects my other major in school, journalism. Just like everyone wonders what a student will do once they graduate with a theatre degree (we will work, obviously, idiots), people often smirk and think they have the upper hand, finding out I'm also a journalism major and snarkily replying, "You know, newspapers and magazines are dying out too. Then what are you gonna do?" I will adapt, idiots. You're telling me no one will ever want to read news in any form? People will always want tangible news in magazine or newspaper form, but even if those mediums slowly lose their importance in our world, I can still tweet the news, Facebook the news, do something to get it out there. I will work.
     I relate this example, then, to the first question in the prompt. I don't think theatre will ever be so diluted that it melts into other forms such as film, images, and technology. I'm not saying that these elements won't be heavily incorporated into works of theatre and performance art, but theatre will never cease to exist as an art form. It's ironic, actually, that we fear losing theatre to film, as theatre-to-film performance is a growing interest in the United States. National Theatre Live and Fathom Events are two increasingly popular ways to see theatre that would otherwise be unavailable to someone, especially someone in little old Louisiana. NTL and Fathom record live performances of plays, Shakespeare, ballet, opera, and concerts and screen them in movie theaters. I've seen Noël Coward's Private Lives, a show from London, from the comfort of Cinemark Perkins Rowe. The Manship seems to have a piece of streamed theatre or ballet happening every week. Instead of worrying if theatre is being diluted into other forms, embrace it! In a world with an increasingly staggering amount of technology, there's no use fighting it, so make it work to your advantage.
     These screenings, then, would ideally make people want to rush out to their local theatre and see what they just watched on screen right in front of their eyes in real life. It would hopefully make patrons even hungrier for a live performance. There's something about the sizzling energy of the shared space between audience and actor that you just can't beat. Actors can mess up, things can go wrong, an audience might be in stitches or silence, and all these if's make live theatre an invincible art form. We will never lose the only truly present artistic expression because it demands to be seen. The demand might be from a slightly smaller audience that a few years ago, but it still exists, and it is our job as artists and creators to pull them back in. Adapt, maybe, but never give up. Something stops living because we let it, not because someone else kills it.
     I think an interesting example of "imagined memory" that rings true for me is the media's presentation of Hurricane Katrina. Although I lived in Baton Rouge at the time, the media's presentation of New Orleans made it look foreign to me. I grew up there for a few years, but I suddenly did not recognize the images I was being shown day after day. I think the average American viewer could not fully realize the effects of the storm and how it devastated a city and state. You didn't really get it unless you were there. I knew what was happening, because I heard story after story from family members who had to evacuate and from my dad who was back and forth because of his work. Even then, it was hard to visualize literal feet of water inside of a home, a flooded city. The media showed these images daily, but it was too easy to separate yourself and just watch as a bystander. I think this relates to my first part of the answer between recorded theatre in movie theaters as opposed to live theatre in playhouses. There's a separation, a comfortable distance that changes the way you view and feel about art. The media serves as our recording of Private Lives, but having to evacuate your home, losing your house, living in that hell is seeing theatre live. There is a frantic energy that is simply not felt between audience and screen. It makes it safe. No amount of media sensationalism can give you what it's like to actually be somewhere witnessing and experiencing something.

Dark Matter, or When I Choose Film Over Theatre for Once (Entry #5)

     One of my favorite examples of dark matter in film is from the 2007 film Funny Games. The movie, a shot-for-shot remake of the 1997 film of the same name, is an experiment in the deconstruction of the "torture porn" sub-genre of horror. Two young guys decide to mentally and physically mess with a family and force them to play a series of twisted games. All of the violence, the juicy parts that made the Saw and Hostel franchises so popular, happens just outside of the frame. You can hear it and see everyone's reaction to it, but almost everything is right out of view of the audience. While violence here is the dark matter of the film, we discussed for a while in class about how the audience can sometimes be categorized into dark matter. Throughout the film, the fourth wall is repeatedly broken when the two guys wink at the camera (to let the audience know they're in on a joke) or even asks the viewer a question at one point. Funny Games is a wonderful exploration into the dark matter of violence and the audience as these are two things the horror genre almost depends on. The movie fully acknowledges that the viewer is present, but then refuses to give it want it wants. It's a brilliant movie and makes me feel sick in the best ways. 

     I struggled with this second part for a while, and when I first read the prompt it just made me mad that I even had to face this question. It's like asking me to shoot a dog with rabies - inevitable and unwilling. I decided that theatre, the stage, is just not the vehicle for representing the Holocaust. I've been thinking all week of plays that deal with particularly sensitive real moments from history. Theatre never shows events and grand pictures. Theatre zooms in, and focuses on how an event/war/movement affects a group of people. Hair focuses on WWII but only shows how it affects a group of hippies. Often, theatre uses an event as a backdrop and chooses to focus on how the event affects someone. It doesn't strive to accurately depict a whole event. Clybourne Park, 1776, Spill, Aftermath… all of these shows deal with an event, but don't actually show the event. You could almost call the event the dark matter. Theatre is just not the place to represent the Holocaust. I feel like film could depict it on a larger scale than theatre could. You would get a better image, a clearer idea of the big picture. Imaging a set designer designing an internment camp for a show is horrifying. Casting actors for SS officers and Jewish people is even more uncomfortable. It's just not the medium an event of that magnitude belongs in. If not handled with care, it could even come off as a parody, or just generally unfaithful to history. You can show people dying in a movie and it can be incredibly powerful and seem "real". It holds weight. Deaths are never particularly believable or strong on stage. It's very difficult to represent accurately. You can't show believable death on stage. It just seems too mocking and playful. An accurate, complete, faithful representation of the Holocaust belongs on the screen, not the stage.  

We Will Feed Them Technology (Entry #4)

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
     -Albert Einstein

     A disturbance that I often think about is Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar's installation entitled "A Logo for America". Now before you roll your eyes, thinking, "Michael, the prompt said the theatre world," I would like to bend the lines for a second between theatre and art. Couldn't we argue that theatre is art and a type of art is theatre? Great. Now that we're on the same page, back to Jaar's installation. Every night in August of this year, for three minutes from 11:57 PM to 12:00 AM, all the digital billboards in Times Square, NYC, were replaced with stark black and white images stating "THIS IS NOT AMERICA" and "THIS IS NOT AMERICA'S FLAG". Talk about a disturbance, right!? Can you imagine being a tourist in Times Square at that time, loving life, and then all of a sudden those images came up? I'd be terrified that a terrorist attack was happening. It definitely brought a change about in how, or where, we see art. That would be typical inside of a museum, but towering over you in an iconic American attraction? Nuts.

     It took me a while to figure out what Jarr was trying to say, but the point of his art **SPOILER ALERT!** was that we often think of America as just the good ole USA, but America actually comprises both North and South America. We rarely think of Canada and Mexico as America. I think this artistic protest of sorts was very effective. It would definitely catch anyone's attention who was in Times Square. It made me personally look up Jaar and his mission, and I think while some might have been initially frightened if they didn't know what was happening, some might welcome the break, albeit short, from the monotonous onslaught of ads. (Read more about Jaar's work here, if you want.)

     I think there are three major things the modern theatre artist can do to bring theatre into the 21st century, and reinvigorate community attendance. Tweet Seats, Immersive Theatre, and Fringe Theatre.

Tweet Seats
Sarah Stevens and I were talking about this after class today, and it's something that Karli Henderson has continuously brought up in Swine Palace meetings. Today's 20somethings, the crowd most able to return to the theatre, have phones glued in the hands. It's just a fact. So don't tell them to turn them off! Encourage phone use! Take pictures and videos, Instagram it, Facebook it, Tweet it, Tweet about the show, share the show on as much social media as you can handle. Text your friends how good the show is! Phone screens can be distracting to an audience, so designate some "Tweet Seats" in the mezzanine and chop a few bucks off the general ticket price, and bam - your show now lives a second life online.

Immersive Theatre
What better way to get people wanting to go the theatre than putting them in it? Stage a performance of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest inside of an old insane asylum. Put a production of A Midsummer's Night Dream in the Enchanted Forest behind the MDA. Build the set around the audience and have them sit alongside the actors. Involve people! Push them around, get them on their feet, change venues, don't have seats. Or like NOLA Project just did with Adventures in Wonderland, have three versions of the same show going at the same time. Or if you really wanna blow them out of the water, check out Sleep No More. So. Cool.

Fringe Festivals and Fringe Theatre
Sometimes we don't need lavish sets. Sometimes we don't want things to make sense. Sometimes quick and rough and messy is the way to go. I went to the New Orleans Fringe Festival for the first time last year and it was a whirlwind. Theatre in bars, in backyards, in churches turned opera houses. Most of the shows were less than an hour, and if you planned your night right, you could see 4-5 performances in one night. And then, poof, you'll never hear of most of these shows ever again. Rouge theatre has some real possibilities to bring theatre into the 21st century, and with a huge all-consuming culture, where news comes and goes and social media is all the rage, quick theatre might be the way to go.

Show Me the Gun, or Shoot Me With It (Entry #3)

     "When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality."
                    -Julie Taymor

     I went to the New Orleans Fringe Fest for the first time a year ago. It was a doozy. I saw a show called Nightmares that a troupe from NY did in an old church (it was nightmarish, in a bad way). I saw a show at a lounge called Murder Ballad Murder Mystery done by a group from Austin, Texas, which was wacky and fun and also needed some major script rewrites. But the show that I truly loved and had laughter tears over was The NOLA Project's Oregon Trail: The Play. It was exactly what it sounds like. For those unfamiliar with Oregon Trail, it was an old PC game that looked like this. The show was the best 60 minutes of theatre I have seen in a while. Rapid fire comedy, creative ways to handle dying of dysentery and crossing a river on stage, and even included a part of the play for the audience to go hunting, complete with nerf guns that you fired at actors on stage while they were trying to, you know, act and stuff. What made it so awesome though was that even though the entire show was based on one specific computer game, it was written in a way that made it appeal to anyone, even an audience member who had never heard of the game before. It was incredible.
     It was also almost the anthesis of "true" theatre. It was a play written about a computer game. Nothing in the play ever made me go, oh my god, that's so relatable. I left repeating some of the jokes, but I didn't walk out with a new outlook on life.
     The show that convinced me of something true was Sojourn Theatre's How to End Poverty in 60 Minutes. The show ended and I walked out of the room overwhelmed, stressed, enlightened, deeply troubled, impressed, and totally blown away. It was part of last year's Dept. of Communication Studies' HopKins Black Box season. The production was described as

"This is not a play; it is not a lecture; it is not an interactive workshop; it is not a physical theatre piece; it is not a public conversation. "How to End Poverty in 60 Minutes" is all of these things. Most significantly, it’s an opportunity to challenge a different audience every show with the question: how do you attack the problem of poverty in America?"

     It was heavy stuff. There was a script that a group of actors used as a jumping off point. They would present an idea through dialogue and performance, and then they would all break off and lead a small discussion with broken off chunks of the audience. You as a small group and actor/guide would have to come up with a decision to whatever the question was, and then that actor would bring it into the performance and suddenly your ideas and thoughts were in the performance. Everyone paid $7 to get in, and at the end of the night, all of the groups had to decide what the biggest problem in Baton Rouge was. Was it the education system, the city infrastructure, homelessness, etc. Each topic represented a real business or organization in Baton Rouge related to that topic. The topic that had the most votes was rewarded with the show's profits from that night. It was quite literally jaw-dropping. There was an urgency from the moment I walked into the room that I needed to do something NOW, and I left hot and ready to discuss these ideas with people. It took very real situations that affected me and people I knew personally and with the aid of theatre and performance, presented the facts and brought up questions in a way that forced me to think about them collaboratively with people I never knew in ways I never thought. Truth was bleeding from that production at an alarming rate.
     I do think there is a difference between performances that offer some kind of truth versus performances that strive for documentary "verbatim" reality. It's a subtle one, but I do think it's notable. Performances that offer a kind of truth often hint at the truth, or nudge it in your direction in hopes that you'll want to pick it up and examine it. It's often masked inside of a story or placed in a metaphor. My second show example isn't the case here, but I find that this is usually how it goes. A performance that strives for "verbatim" reality, however, seems to bash it over my head. It's often angry and looking to make a statement. It's loud and has a call to action and is thrashing around violently in hopes of getting you to feel a certain way.
     Martin says on page 5, "Is documentary theatre just another form of propaganda, its own system of constructed half-truths for the sake of specific arguments? Typically its texts and performances are presented not just as a version of what happened but the version of what happened." That's the problem I have with documentary theatre. It almost insists that it is right, that "this is what happened." It presents itself as the truth. Like a rare occasion to watch history come to life on stage. It doesn't give me a chance to think, it tells me how I should feel. It's in your face.
     Performances that offer some kind of truth and performances that strive for naturalistic reality differ in their approach of telling the story and of influencing the audience. One places the information there and allows you to examine it, while the other presents itself as fact that you should accept. The trouble then lies in the accuracy of the "fact", the gathering and compiling of the "fact", and what the person with the "facts" wants me to know (or not know).

Performativity and Butts (Entry #2)

     "My Anaconda don't… My Anaconda don't… My Anaconda don't want none unless you got buns hun." -"Anaconda", Nicki Minaj, 2014

     Warning: This post and its related links might be "shocking" or "inappropriate" for some and contain images and language not meant for some readers. The attached video, although found on YouTube, may not be suitable to view in a classroom setting. You have been warned. Thank you. 

     The somewhat controversial performative act that I chose to explore is the music video for Nicki Minaj's latest single, "Anaconda". Before diving in, I suggest you watch the video below. (If you'd like to follow along, lyrics can be found here.)

     
     Wasn't that lovely? At first viewing, you might find this to be your standard, run of the mill, sex filled, foul language everywhere, don't let the kids see this music video that has become pretty commonplace in our media crazed world. And for those Nicki fans out there, this loud and colorful performance is nothing new. Thanks to fellow classmate Genna Guidry, Nicki's "Anaconda" has been bouncing around my head for the last few days. It samples directly from Sir Mix-a-Lot's 1992 magnum opus, "Baby Got Back", and feeds my narcissistic side because she even mentions my name! Sweet!

     All of this aside, I think Minaj's performative act (I'm going to call the entire music video here the "act") is intentionally performed to mean something totally different to what the video implies. For the first two thirds of the video, I thought the video went with the lyrics. Lots of butts, lots of butt shaking (I hear "twerking" is what the youths are calling it), lots of sex, and phallic imagery abundant. However, things take an almost (I'm going to say it) feministic turn during the "cooking show" portion of the video. Minaj, disgusted with the banana (male anatomy/man/all Men?) thinks about eating it, looks disinterested, decides to chop up the banana, then finally throws it out. Awesome. If this wasn't clear enough, Minaj then proclaims how she feels quite clearly with the lyrics:

"Yeah, he love this fat ass
Yeah! This one is for my bitches with a fat ass in the fucking club
I said, 'Where my fat ass big bitches in the club?'
Fuck the skinny bitches,
Fuck the skinny bitches in the club
I wanna see all the big fat ass bitches in the motherfucking club, fuck you if you skinny bitches. What? Yeah!"

     This article from TIME Magazine puts what Minaj is doing quite eloquently: "You may enjoy what I do, but make no mistake - this isn't for you." I think Minaj is furious, done, over men controlling her own lifestyle as well as that of other women in the entertainment industry. It's such a bold way to say it, but she does it proudly and with gusto. You can hear it in her almost crazed but powerful cackle towards the end of the song. She's done. She's not going to stand for it. I think that with this video, she's in control and almost threatening those naysayers and potential controlling influences, all under the guise of a sexy, outlandish video. It starts out vague, but by the end, she's hitting you over the head with it. 

     Minaj's performative act of shoving sex in your face is intentionally performed to mean that she's in control of herself and what she chooses to put out there. Personally, I think it's such a badass way to show that you aren't going to take anything from anyone, and it's misleading in the best of ways. Leave it to Nicki Minaj to challenge your way of thinking about dance and sexual content in music videos.