Because this space is a space where we pretend we are pretending
But really we are telling the truth
Our subjective truths
Image:
Sound:
Chad Dembski performs ok/ok/ok which plays with Cathy Gordon’s HAMMER for 2 SHOWS ONLY Friday May 3 & Sunday May 8PM @hub14.
These are shows built for studio audiences.
Intimate. Simple. A bit messy. Not quite casual enough for a bar. Not quite big enough for a stage. Good for the studio, a place where we can work things through…
Hospitality 3: Individualism Was A Mistake by PME-ART, Photo by David Jacques
by Jacob Wren
Authenticity is a feeling. There is no such thing as ‘real’ authenticity. Something is authentic when we feel it to be so.
I have been making performances for almost twenty-five years. If I think back to the beginning, I recall I started because I was searching for an experience that was considerably less mediated, less passive, less alienating than watching television, movies or listening to the radio. (Experiences that, for the most part, made me feel I was living in a world I could barely relate to.) At the time I believed, or at least hoped, that performances might be an art form that provided a more immediate experience; more live, more communal, less distancing. All of these youthful desires were also tangled up with questions of authenticity.
Twenty-five years is a long time to struggle with a single question, and my feelings about performance today are considerably more complex – a complexity that, at times, verges on bitterness. My work took place in a culture that clearly preferred the experience of watching movies to that of watching performance. This may simply be because movies have considerably more resources at their disposal, the stakes are higher, and these (plus other) factors attract a more skilled/brilliant set of artists. It might also be that the most recent art form wins. Or that movies are better. (Cinema is like a dream, and in a dream nothing can hurt you.)
However, I have also come to believe that the inherent fragility, the awkwardness, the vulnerability of a live performance is an uncomfortable space in a world filled with images. In most performances I see, the artists do everything possible to armor themselves, to protect themselves from the discomfort and judgment of the audience. This is more than understandable, and is often referred to as quality or professionalism. Nonetheless, for me, trying to make a performance perfect only makes matters worse.
In my work I have instead tried to engage with performance’s inherent weakness, to embrace the always-present fragility of doing something in front of other people who are watching you, the very quality that is, in fact, what makes something ‘live’ most different from the mediated world that surrounds us.
In his book Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, Philip Auslander historically demonstrates that the term ‘live’ was never used, in the sense we understand it today, before the invention of cinema. A performance is only ‘live’ in relation to a movie. In the theatre, rehearsal is simply an earlier form of reproduction. Making a performance exactly the same every time is a trick the movies can do so much better.
Where are the artists, working on stage and off, who are willing to take the risk of leaving things open, of allowing the performance to be as different as possible each and every time we come to it anew? Of allowing themselves to be vulnerable in the face of an experience they have no absolute way of knowing will work out for the best? (These questions are directed primarily at contemporary theatre, but it also seems to me that, more and more, performance art needs to engage in a similar struggle.)
Photo by David Jacques
Of course, like everyone, I often prefer to watch something that ‘works’, whatever that might mean to you at different points of your life and artistic understanding. However, for me, a performance can only work if there is also some possibility that it might (at least partially) fail, if it is open to this possibility, if this is one of the ontological reasons that interests it in being a performance in the first place.
I now suspect the intimacy I was originally searching for in watching and making performances is the very intimacy I had already found in reading literature. (These days, I am also very much addicted to the internet.) Yet reading was my way of avoiding people, performance a way of bringing myself closer to others.
A performance is live when it feels live. For me, this feeling has something to do with taking an artistic risk, with avoiding the safety of over-rehearsal, avoiding a safety that often expresses itself as a desire for perfection, of asking oneself what is possible in a live-space that is simply impossible in a movie theatre (or on the internet, etc.), of not being too afraid when things go wrong, of seeing that when things go wrong it is actually only the beginning.
Photo of Jacob by Brancolina
Jacob Wren is a writer and maker of eccentric performances. His books include: Unrehearsed Beauty, Families Are Formed Through Copulation and Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created the performances: En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize (1998), the HOSPITALITÉ / HOSPITALITY series including Individualism Was A Mistake (2008) and The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information (2011) and Every Song I’ve Ever Written (2012). He blogs here.
He will be participating as a Team Leader in Volcano Theatre’s inFORMING CONTENT, a three-day creation lab combining an exploration of experimental approaches to theatre-making. With inspiration provided by a group of scholars giving short presentations from their various expert viewpoints, inFORMING CONTENT aims to expose young theatre-makers to forms of creation that are outside the scope of most traditional training in Canada. Click here for more information. May 3-5, 2013.
So, this makes it 3/3 – with the date of each of our first three debates being rescheduled due to issues with participants and availability.
Sorry. Thanks for playing along with us while we discover how running a community debate series works. One of the things we’re learning is that we can’t announce a debate until the participants are all confirmed. This gets a bit tricky when we are trying to have discussions about things that are A) Timely and B) Led by people who are very knowledgable on the topic.
The closest model we have for this as theatre companies is The Wrecking Ball – which announces a date three to four weeks in advance before writers, cast and directors are added to create the event. To secure expert speakers, often going outside the theatre community, this model has essentially proven to be challenging. We’re adjusting.
Stay tuned for more info on what we plan for this debate in the future. We ‘re really excited by the enthusiasm for the first two sold out debates, and committed to rigorous discourse led by compelling speakers on a host of topics in the future.
Sunny needs to talk about what’s happening, but he has to do it where no one will find him. Because Sunny, aka rihannaboi95, made some videos and while yeah, they’re getting lots of hits, some people at school found them too and now the eggshell world he so carefully treads is threatening to collapse beneath him.
Cloistered within the bedroom of his friend Keira, a Shopper’s makeup queen, Sunny records a video for his loyal viewers, invoking his YouTube namesake when he needs her most.
Dealing candidly with bullying, queer identity, and the pain of self-invention, Jordan Tannahill’srihannaboi95 invites viewers to watch a live performance from the privacy of their own computers. Directed by Zack Russell and featuring Owais Lightwala as Sunny, rihannaboi95 will be dispatched nightly from a Toronto bedroom at 8pm from April 23rd – April 28th 2013.
What do Ingrid Bergman, Italian statues and Occupy Wall Street zombie walks have in common? They all problematize the relationship between ‘performance’ and the ‘live’ according to performance theorist Rebecca Schneider, Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University.
Academic conversations about the performing arts can seem dry at best, and completely detached from any practical relevance at the worst of times (particularly in a Canadian context where critical recognition of the arts isn’t easy to come by). Enter the Performance Studies (Canada) Project, a SSHRC-funded research project headed by York University Professor Laura Levin to chart the development of performance studies in Canada. As part of the project’s 2013 speaker series, Schneider was at Massey College last week delivering a talk entitled “Acting in Ruins: the Interval and the Loop.”
Performance theorists have long been interested in questions of what constitutes a ‘live’ performance. As Schneider pointed out, “live performance” is a little like saying “feline cat”—it’s redundant. Whereas, “recorded performance” is an oxymoron. Performance has always been predicated on the now. But in an era of re-enactments and re-performances, “live art” has become increasingly interested in rendering live what was once dead and in the past. It is the interim space between performance and reenactment (the interval as she calls it), and the loop between them that Schneider’s most interested in.
Ingrid Bergman considers Italian statues. Which one is more ‘live’: Bergman or the statues?
“Acting in Ruins” could justifiably be divided into two parts; the first, a call to question our strict division between what is live/not live and animate/non-animate in performance; and the second, an analysis of these binaries in relation to the neoliberal economy. To make the first point she showed a clip of Ingrid Bergman in Journey to Italy in which Bergman is wandering through a statue-filled museum in Naples, making wonderfully dramatic gasps every time she gazed into their painted eyes. The question, of course, was “who was live?” We’d never hesitate to say, “Bergman gave a great performance,” but was her recorded image any more live than that of the statues? Furthermore, as Schneider notes, theatre has always had a close relationship to statuary—from the Greek and Roman statues of players surrounding classical stages to Tino Sehgal’s recent performance at the Guggenheim embodying images from visual art and turning himself into “living sculpture.”
The academic discourse on ‘liveness’ has gone through various iterations—from thinking of performance as resistant to material documentation (completely ephemeral), to thinking of documentation as reiterative (as re-performing the performance in another context or medium). Schneider now wants us to think about performance as remaining, as an event that inevitably leaves traces affecting each subsequent performance as well as the previous document on which it was based. In her most recent book, “Performing Remains: art and war in times of theatrical reenactment,” she explains this using the example of Hamlet’s play-within-a-play. Hamlet worries about speaking the words “set down” in a manner of which he can approve. He realizes, in his concern for speaking the words “trippingly on the tongue” (Hamlet, 3.2) that the transition from text to performance creates instability. Schneider makes clear that it’s not just performance that is shifty and mobile, but that any text or document is subject to alteration in the “volatile” temporal space between an ‘original’ and its re-performance.
This scene from Portlandia illustrates a contemporary example of a digital loop.
Schneider is concerned with this interim space between performances for political reasons. She asks “how we might approach intervals between performances as important sites of analysis, or, conversely, how we might think about the “loop” in many (re)current performance-based works?” She answers this by looking at the links between ‘performance’ and its increasingly prevalent connotations in a neo-liberal economy in which “high-performance” refers to high-productivity and efficiency.
If performance is taken to mean live and happening now in the current moment, it enforces a progress-driven linearity, but if we follow Schneider in troubling the relationship between past and present performances, and if we take her suggestion that a performance always leaves remains that can alter both preceding and proceeding performances, we end up with the complicated temporality that theatre is based on. Thanks to theatre’s reliance on a fictional reality, Schneider suggests we can refer to the temporality of theatre as a “live non-now”. In this way, theatre cannot be productive (in the economic sense of the word), and if something is “not productively performative than in it must be theatrical”. The point here is that theatre can be used to challenge the progress/performance driven neo-liberal economy.
Schneider brings all of this—theatre’s ability to complicate the relationship between past and present, and what is live/not live—together in the image the zombie. In a recent article in TDR entitled, “It Seems As If…I Am Dead: Zombie Capitalism and Theatrical Labor” Schneider looks at the Occupy Wall Street zombie walks, and examines how they function on multiple levels of metaphor. She says that if we agree the zombies may represent consumers then:
“more than 99% of Americans have succumbed to a zombie apocalypse. Suffering without infrastructure to support their deaths, they disastrously walk, which is to say they respect no distinction between public and private. But for OWS, the zombies are reflection machines, flexible theatres of the crowd, aimed to catch the visages of those who worship corporate wealth. The multitude of money-munching zombies marching on Wall Street, then, represent the few global hoarders themselves.”
The OWS protesters embrace the theatricality of a zombie walk with its props, costumes, makeup and all to highlight their resistance to the neo-liberal economy. By showing themselves as dead, they resist the call to act as live, productive labourers. The major question implied throughout Schneider’s talk is how theatre, more generally, can act in this same way. How can we embrace the instability between one performance and the next, the living and the dead, and use this loop to challenge ideas of necessary progress and productivity?
Kallee is a graduate student in theatre and performance studies at York University. She’s most interested in the intersection between contemporary choreography and neo-liberal politics, and has a cat named Lucy.
Co-ED Note: This post is the first in a series by Kallee Lins that seeks to bridge the intellectual divide between academic and online discourse on theatre by presenting her interpretation of research of note. Enthused to have her on board with a new approach to ideas and discussion in this space. mw
Last night The Theatre Centre and Praxis Theatre held #CivilDebates 2: Arts Boards, examining the relationship between Arts Boards and Artistic Directors through debate of the resolution:
Be it resolved that Boards of Directors have the right and responsibility to overrule the Artistic Direction of a theatre company.
Arguing for the resolution was Theatre Centre Artistic Director Franco Boni and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Artistic Director Brendan Healy.
Jini Stolk Creative Trust Research Fellow at the Toronto Arts Foundation, and Gideon Arthurs, General Manager of the Tarragon Theatre, argued against.
Here’s some of the arguments that were put forth as summarized on twitter:
After the debate, there was a lot of continued discussion, as debaters and attendees hung out and continued conversations that could not be accommodated by the strict one minute, timed question-and-answer format that shaped the final section of the event.
We changed our voting format for #CivilDebates 2 Arts Boards:
Attendees were polled upon entering the debate as to their position on the resolution. The initial result was:
36 Yea – 10 Nay
After the debate, attendees also registered their position on the resolution as they left. The post-debate result was:
56 Yea – 9 Nay
What does this mean? First of all that some people don’t want to register an opinion if they are uncertain about a proposition. Also, there were more than 65 attendees, so some people don’t want to vote at all. Finally, it indicates that after hearing the debate and the discussion that followed afterwards, more people were swayed to vote in favour of the resolution.
Thanks to all who participated. It was a very *civil* event on what has been a contentious issue.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE: Be sure to pick up your poker chips on the way in. You’ll be asked to vote on your position as you enter with one chip, the 2nd chip will buy you 60 seconds of speaking time to either make a statement or ask a question, and the 3rd chip will be used as you vote on your position as you leave. Check back here later for the results of the two votes.
*NOTE: We’ve moved into a larger space right next door to the Pop-Up to make sure everyone can get in.
PWYC at the door. No RSVP required.
This evening Gideon Arthurs, Franco Boni, Brendan Healy & Jini Stolk will debate the resolution:
Be it resolved that Boards of Directors have the right and responsibility to overrule the Artistic Direction of a theatre company.
How does the debate work?
Hosted by Theatre Centre Managing Director Roxanne Duncan
Moderated by Praxis Theatre Artistic Producer Aislinn Rose
The event will be live-tweeted via @praxistheatre & @theatrecentre. The Debate Hashtag is: #CivilDebates.
Not on Twitter/Don’t want to be? Below is a livestream of the tweets and pictures using the #CivilDebates hashtag, feel free to follow along live from this post.
Click here for a backgrounder on the topic, or here for more information about the debaters. CLICK PIRATE & NINJA for more info on the series and structure.
It’s Sunday afternoon, March 24th, and I’m sitting in the lounge at Billy Bishop Airport about to catch a flight to Montreal on Porter. I’m going to direct something in the city and I’m happy to have the chance to get away. The airport is always less crowded and chaotic than Pearson and Porter is so convenient it’s crazy! Everyone is dressing in his or her Porter best, the cappuccino is free and the lounge is comfortable.
I read a sign as I walked through: The Toronto Island Airport was the largest airport in Canada in the 1920s.
Just earlier as I had approached Porter pulling my two suitcases behind me, I noticed ahead of me a number of police officers in their day glow cop coats and a group of people gathered at the entrance where the cars and the taxis park. Then I saw they were holding pickets. It was a picket line.
Local 343 at Porter is on strike.
Now I have never crossed a picket line in my life (as far as I know). I remember at SFU when CUPE was on strike my best friend and I worried we would miss final exams if the strike continued. It didn’t. I have joined strikes before. I have supported many causes intent on protecting workers rights. I fully understand that labour is under attack in this present climate and that the rights and benefits workers have fought for years to gain are in jeopardy. And like I said I’ve never crossed a picket line. That was just the way it was when I was growing up. That was the golden rule.
Sunday I crossed a picket line.
Why? There are so many excuses. Does it matter?
I crossed a picket line.
I wasn’t brave about it. I snuck through the schoolyard so I wouldn’t be seen. I kept my head down. My suitcases dragged in the mud. On approaching the terminal I noticed the Porter bus from Union Station was parked just on the edge of the field with passengers getting on and off far away from the crowd of workers and their placards. People adapted easily and went about their business. The police smiled politely as if to let us know we were safe and not to be afraid of the striking workers.
As I scooted by two young men were handing out pamphlets. They were Porter workers. I took the pamphlet and said ‘Good luck you guys’. They smiled brightly ‘Thanks!’ I wanted to say ‘I’m so sorry I’m crossing the line here, really I am’. But I just put my head down and kept going.
Porter has hired replacement workers to do the work of those who are on strike. As I made my way though the terminal I kept wondering ‘Are you replacing someone? Are you?’ As I made my way through the terminal hundreds of other passengers made their way to flights or returned home. People helped themselves to the complimentary snacks. And I wondered ‘Did anyone else cross a picket line for the first time today?’
ACTRA has asked its members to support the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union, Local 343 by boycotting Porter. I haven’t seen anything from CAEA. I’m not on Facebook, don’t really follow twitter and there is very little about this strike in the media. So who knows about it? And how do we get the information out there?
This little dude thinks Porter workers deserve a living wage and safe working conditions.
Those of us in the theatre love Porter. It’s so convenient. We fly to Montreal and Ottawa and New York. Will this strike change that? Will we as a community boycott Porter? I plan to look into a train ticket for my trip home (a VIA Rail ticket can be as low as $39 one way if you book in advance and online).
I just wish I hadn’t crossed that picket line.
Fuellers at Porter have been on strike since January 10th. These workers get paid on average $13.00 an hour. Workers at Pearson doing the same job get $17.00 an hour. Numerous health and safety violations and poverty wages have forced the workers to walk off the job. In a letter to Porter President Robert J. Deluce, Sid Ryan president of the Ontario Federation of Labour states:
“A living wage that enables a household with two working parents and two children to live adequately in Toronto was estimated to be $16.60 in 2008. Workers at Porter, along with all working people in Ontario, deserve a living wage.”
If you want to support these workers you can call Porter at 1-888-619-8622 and ask them to return to the bargaining table or visit www.dontflyporter.com. And if you want some travel options check out Via Rail or Air Canada .
“But if we want to make it possible for more people to stay together forever—and I’m a fan of long-term relationships, and toughing out the rough patches, etc.—we need to change our expectations…If we’re not good at monogamy and we’re not wired for it… doesn’t it seem a bit nuts to make it the foundation upon which we build our relationships? So long as we insist on doing that, well, we’re asking for it.”
~ Dan Savage, “Divorced From Reality”
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Sound:
Carly Chamberlain is Artistic Producer of Neoteny Theatre and director of the company’s debut production: Overruled by George Bernard Shaw & Romance by Neil Labute.
This rare pairing of two very different plays about love, lust, and infidelity runs March 28 – April 6, Wednesdays through Saturdays at Red Sandcastle Theatre (previews Wednesday, March 27). Tickets are available for $10-$15 and tickets can be purchased here.
In celebration of World Theatre Day, the first twenty audience members to arrive for the Wednesday March 27th preview will gain free admittance.
“After the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations, we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.”
Chad Dembski performs ok/ok/ok which plays with Cathy Gordon’s HAMMER for 2 SHOWS ONLY Friday May 3 & Sunday May 8PM @ hub14.
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