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