Theatre of the Oppressed!

I think that the next step in creating new dialogue that creates change would be do to continue to produce theatre that reaches new audiences. Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed does a good of this, but workshop-type performances such as image theatre seems to only be successful on a micro level. Similarly, invisible theatre seems to be more of a social experiment. In an example from our reading entitled Sexual Harassment, a group of performers engage in a “scene” (if you would call it that) that calls out gender discrimination as it relates to sexual harassment. Because of the way it is structured there is no moment where the actors say “ok that was a performance, how does that make you feel?” While this may be useful in starting a dialogue amongst theatre scholars and those who were a part of the performance, Im not sure that much conversation would be taking place from the bystanders/audience members, except maybe “wow, that was a crazy thing that happened on the subway today!” Anyway...all that to say I feel like we need to take the building blocks that are provided by Theatre of the Oppressed and expand upon them so that they reach a wider audience.

Im not sure I agree that theatre was ever necessarily the answer to any social problem such as genocide or war, but rather a reaction to them. Personally I feel that we can (and have in the past) used theatre as a tool for creating change by telling the stories of those who are oppressed and suggesting to our audiences that they become more openminded about certain issues. I think that theatre, or art in general, will always have a place in voicing concerns and bringing up problems in our society no matter the circumstance.

Protest Theatre

I grew up in central Texas and was fortunate enough to attend a high
school that had a wide array of art, theatre, choir, band etc.
programs. When I moved to Baton Rouge in 2011, I came to realize just
how fortunate I was to have these. I have learned that such programs,
in public schools especially, are not nearly as common as I had
expected. With the focus being placed on improving state standardized
test scores, there is usually very little money left in a school’s
budget to be used for the salaries of teachers in artistic
disciplines. Art programs are among the first to be put on the
chopping block when it comes it comes to allocating funding. The
consensus being that we just don’t need these programs.

I would organize a protest in front of the capitol building in
downtown Baton Rouge. I would ideally have a group of one hundred or
so people including teachers, school administrators, and students all
spreading the message of emphasizing the importance of arts education
in public schools. By citing statistics such as how utilizing the arts
in education have been proven to increase standardized test scores, we
would be raising awareness of this issue with the hopes of changing
legislation.

I think that having media coverage could only improve the cause. This
would facilitate in the spreading the message of our cause and would
get more people listening and thinking about how this issue affects
them

Multimedia and Imagined Memory

1. There has certainly been a giant shift to the incorporation of technical elements such as projections and other multimedia displays within theatrical performances, but I’m not convinced that this will lead to the dilution of the art form. I think that by adapting performances so that they include these technical elements serves to enhance the audience’s experience, especially audience members whom are not avid theatre-goers. Admittedly not all plays lend themselves to this sort of adaptation, but I wouldn’t imagine that the future of theatre involves having every single play being produced to include these multimedia elements. I also wonder if the blurring of the line between artistic disciplines really has such negative implications. Does that necessarily mean that the quality of that art is lessened because we have a more difficult time defining it? Either way theatre is bound to change and adapt with the advances in technology that will take place in the future, just as it has currently. As we discussed in class even elements such as sound and lighting design are relatively new conventions used in theatre that have had a profound impact on the way we view a performance. In fact I would argue that these elements have the ability to completely transform a show. So then I wonder in what ways will the theatre of the future be transformed. 
2. In regards to Andreas Huyssen’s concept of “imagined memory,” I feel like I experience this phenomenon ALL the time. One example that sticks out for me is Disney World. Every couple of years growing up (and recently last summer), my family and I would go on vacation to Disney World. Even though I have/had distinct mental images of being there and all of the things that we did, I still had this weirdly altered memory of my experiences there. For example, last summer when I went with my family it rained every single day that we were there. And when I commented on that my mom pointed out that it almost always rains every time that we go. I found that odd because I had no memory of there ever being rain when we went growing up. Just this happy generic sort of memory that resembles a commercial (see below). I suppose that would mean that the people marketing and advertising the Disney Corporation are doing a hell of a job. When it comes to theatre I think that an audiences imagined memory of a performance they have seen in the past, whether good or bad, will color their perception of the art form as a whole. Im speaking more about audience members that don’t go to the theatre very often if at all. I think that if people have had negative experiences viewing a particular art form it can manifest itself into becoming a very powerful barrier to entry to that art as a whole. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPYUo0awFOc

Disruption (Brecht & Artaud)

When I read this prompt, I couldn’t stop thinking about the work of The Living Theatre that we discussed in class. The play Not in My Name, was such an abrupt and in your face piece of theatre that I had trouble imagining it being successfully performed. It reminds me of when I’m in New Orleans and there are street performances popping up here and there, and honestly I always try my best to avoid them. Although street performers have, in a way, become a part of the culture of big cities such as New Orleans and New York, I feel that most people walking on the street have some place to be, and it would take a lot for them to stop and watch a play in its entirety. We also discussed in class how this style of theatre often has very polarizing effects. Basically if someone if going on about something that I am passionate about and I agree with his/her stance on the issue, my response is likely to get fired up or at the very least acknowledge that what they are saying is something I agree with. Oppositely however, if someone is performing a street theatre piece and taking a stand on an issue that I vehemently disagree with then I am likely to only get angry at the performance and leave the experience with my thoughts confirmed on the issue that was discussed. So I suppose to answer the prompt question, I think it is difficult for street theatre to be successful. Having the power to stop people in their tracks and then also getting them to really hear what they have to say and form an opinion on the issue is a lot to ask of an audience of unexpecting bystanders. 

I feel like theatre is always trying to innovate and change itself to keep up with the times. The biggest challenge that theatre faces as an art are competing forms of entertainment. So that pushes theatre artists and producers to find new and inventive ways to make theatre more appealing to the large group of people who are not necessarily avid theatre goers. Unfortunately I think that this push towards innovation sometimes leaves the final product looking very obviously affected. There does not have to be all of these crazy changes to the theatrical conventions that have already been established. If we can simply continue to produce compelling pieces of theatre then people will continue to be interested. Often when I hear someone say they don’t really enjoy seeing plays, my response is that they just haven’t seen the right play yet. 

Seeking Truth

When I was a sophomore at LSU I was apart of the production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. This was an experience that I thoroughly enjoyed as I was able to play a goofy villain character who also happened to be a child (Barfee). This show was so much fun to do every night and always got a big response from the audience. Despite all the fun times I had working on that show, of which there were many, I would not say that my involvement in the production changed anything about the way I viewed the world. While there were certainly things that I learned from my experience doing the show, there was in no way anything intellectually profound that sticks out in my memory as being a takeaway. 

On the other hand when I was in high school I saw a production of The Laramie Project that did stick with me for a long time. I was pretty new to theatre at this point and had not ever heard of the play before. Although it sounds naive now, I didn’t know that there was theatre like that. The idea of documentary theatre was not something that I had ever thought about. After seeing this production I felt this powerful sense that I needed to do something. Not that I actually went out and did anything, but there was this weird energy that I got that made me feel like “Yea! There’s some messed up things in this world and we need to fix them!” 

Personally I feel like documentary or “verbatim” theatre offers a newly clarified truth as a byproduct of the production - that should be the goal at least. When a piece of theatre uses interviews and personal statements as the dialogue there is this illusion that is created by the actors on stage that they are recreating this actual event that happened in real life. Although there are times the actors make purposeful choices to distinguish themselves as separate from the actual people they are portraying. In these cases I would argue that there is a stronger element of “truth” present. By acknowledging that they are not in fact these people but actors reading their words, the audience is able to accept that and focus on the actual events of the story that are being told. The audience is able to bypass the process of accepting the convention that the actors “are” these people and in doing so they become less of “characters” and more real in a way. 

Challenging Performativity!

When I read the prompt for this blog post I remembered an article I recently read from the Huffington Post  (link below) that dealt with the idea of gender performativity. Last March at a  South Carolina DMV, 16 year-old Chase Culpepper was told to remove his makeup before taking his driver’s license picture. By choosing to wear non-gender conforming make up and clothing, the DMV argued that Culpepper may have been attempting to “purposely alter his appearance so that the photo would misrepresent his identity.” Culpepper and his family filed charges against the DMV earlier this month claiming they violated his first amendment right of free speech while also committing sex discrimination. 

I felt that this story tied in very well to our discussion in class about the behavior we associate with gender. Like Dr. Fletcher pointed out in the blog prompt, certain phrases such as “sit like a lady” or “be a man,” are very much apart of our society. They outline the invisible “rules of being a man/woman” Even though Chris Culpepper identifies as being male, his decision to wear makeup and clothing that would be considered feminine goes in opposition to the gender norms associated with being a male. By going against these previously established norms, Culpepper has himself created a sort of performance. The question then becomes what are the implications of this performance? 

On a broader scale I find it interesting that usually when I hear discussion of gender norms and the performativity of gender, it is viewed as a bad thing. So then my question becomes, what good can come out of our established gender norms? Do they aid as a model in the development of children, or are they societal rules that are meant to be tested and at times broken? 

Link to article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/chase-culpepper-drivers-license-_n_5758750.html

Carlson's What is Performance?

When reading Carlson’s article I found the idea of performance being an “essentially contested concept,” a bit overwhelming (Carlson 1). Understanding that there is this grey area of interpretation, opened my eyes a bit to the way we as undergraduate students think of theatre/performance. One of the functions of performance as described by Carlson, that stuck with me as being especially true was that “the task of judging the success of the performance...is in these cases not the responsibility of the performer but of the observer” (Carlson 5). I think that the actual judging of performance is something that we are all familiar with. Whether or not we consider ourselves theatre practitioners, anyone and everyone can act as observers. This is crucial when thinking about whether or not a performance is to be considered “successful.” I think that there is  this assumption that our opinion of a performance is somehow more important because we are theatre majors, but if we are all given the same task of judging the performance, what makes our opinion more significant than anyone else’s? 

An event that I feel challenges the idea of performance occurred in 1964 with Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece. In this demonstration, (I put a link below to a video) Yoko Ono sat on a bare stage next to a pair of scissors. She invited her audience to cut off a piece of her clothing one by one. With no other instructions and without saying anything, she sat still throughout the entire performance while the audience cut away at her clothing. It starts out quite tame as members of the audience cut away small pieces from places like her sleeves. The end result is rather disturbing as members of the audience start cutting away at her bra and underwear. This piece of feminist performance art challenges our conventions of theatre and performance as there was no script, nothing was rehearsed, there was no display of skills (as offered by Carlson). There was simply one women putting herself at the mercy of her audience. Despite these things we must consider this a performance because of the setting and context in which it took place. It was a planned event that was set in front of a participatory audience. There is then the question of who exactly was/were the observer(s) and who was/were the performer(s)?

Link to Cut Piece (1964):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sc47KfJjcI