Working Social

This past week has been filled with reflection as I attempted to create a manifesto, a treatise on my understanding of art.  Sounds easy, no?  As I have been working on this assignment, I have recalled many moments from my life in the theatre, and one moment continually pops back into my consciousness.  As I have been reading Shannon Jackson's Social Works:  Performing Art, Supporting Publics this week, I came across this passage:  "the child is riveting because of her potential to destroy the aesthetic frame; in her phenomenological presence and her social unpredictability, she is a walking threat to the divide between art and life" (241).  Jackson's work attempts to expand the realm of theatre as she examines the impact and construction of performance studies and more experimental approaches.  She provides many examples of the work she is impacted by, the work she values, however the passage above has wiped all those out of my head in favor of this one memory:  I taught a Shakespeare camp in urban Kansas City for two summers in which the campers performed an abbreviated version of a show at the end of camp.  The summer that we taught Othello, I had a camper named Tarran.  Tarran was a scholarship camper, eight years old, and a poor reader, and yet he was there in my Shakespeare camp.  With his wonderful energy and humor--he used to do "The Tarran" for us when we played Freeze Dance--Tarran tackled language far beyond his experience.   Tarran played our Roderigo.  Now, when his big death scene came, Tarran was to be stabbed, and then crumble to the ground.  At the performance, on a professional stage, Tarran took his stabbing with conviction and proceeded to take an entire minute to die.  His death was tragic.  As he stumbled his way downstage, weaving through his bewildered and giggling cast mates, he found the stairs that lead to the audience, draping himself dramatically across them, he locked eyes on Iago, extended his pointed finger and proclaimed him an "inhuman dAWg!" and succumbed to his death.  The audience roared with laughter and applause as Tarran picked his head up, shot the audience a smile and wave, then let his head fall back into death.  None of it was planned, and it was wonderful.  This moment refers to exactly what Jackson is intimating, and yet stands beyond Jackson's words as a beautiful example of why I love the theatre and what it means to me.  The experience goes beyond theory. 

This past week I was also lucky enough to watch Bill Irwin's Regard of Flight.  In it Irwin fights against an immutable proscenium as he interacts with the reincarnations of the theatre.  In case you've never experience this piece, here is a brief link.  But these two experiences, born out of distinctly different levels of proficiency, speak to the same thought:  that the theatre can be so much more than just a framed picture with warm bodies moving about within instead of cold pixels.  What Tarran and Bill both achieved in these moments was beautifully pure interaction and play with the audience and for the audience.  As Jackson tries to take us into what she believes the future of the theatre will look like, I see Tarran and his spontaneous, joyful, living moment.  The theatre should be joyful, even when it makes you cry.  The theatre should be spontaneous if for no other reason than because it can be.  The theatre must live so that it will not die. 


Jackson, Shannon.  Social Works:  Performing Art, Supporting Publics.  New York:  Routledge, 2011. Print.

He Digged the Hole and the Whole Held Him

Of art, Plato once said, "the imitator is a long way off the truth, and can do all things because he lightly touches on a small part of them, and that part of an image" (316).  He rails against the imitation of truth that occurs in art because "a man is not to be reverenced more than the truth" (313).  Though many disagree with Plato's belief, his protege Aristotle for one, these types of comments and commentary persist even today.  There is indeed a great debate amongst theoretical aestheticians as to the nature and purpose of art, and whether imitation serves as a part of art's function.  Marxist theorists feel that art that is not designed to create revolution is frivolous and belonging to the out-of-touch Upper classes.  Black aesthetics also utilize the purpose and functionality of art.  But for all this, Plato fails to see the merit in utilizing imitation in art.

I've mentioned Alvin Ailey before and was lucky enough to watch his seminal work "Revelations" once more.  The piece tells the story of the African-American's struggle from slavery to freedom through faith and determination.  It was first produced in 1960 with a company and choreographer that did not experience slavery directly, however the political upheaval at the time represent for us the impact that slavery still had on them.  I bring this up again in the contemplation of Rebecca Schneider's Performing Remains.  In it, Schneider embarks upon an explanation of the vast political potential imitative art can have.  By imitative, I mean thoughtful, purposeful and considered art; "Revelations" uses spiritual song to guide its story and thought.  Schneider recounts many different uses of imitation such as Civil War reenactments and historical references in plays.  Plato would sigh heartily at such manipulative reuse of factual truth in order to create art.  But Schneider makes use of the reenactments she recounts.  Indeed, she notes that "'Reenactment' is a term that has entered into increased circulation in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century art, theatre, and performance circles.  The practice of re-playing or re-doing a precedent event, artwork, or act has exploded in performance-based art [...].  In many ways, reenactment has become the popular and practice-based wing of what has been called the twentieth-century academic 'memory industry'" (2).

There is of course the old adage that those who do not learn history and doomed to repeat it.  Schneider postulates an inversion of the saying, that who repeat history are doomed to learn from it.  This is where I find my own 'in' to this work.  I am young, most of my understanding of the world is through learned events and not lived ones.  The theatre has always been a space for me to access the rest of the world--the whole of history, if you will.  For me, when historical events are referenced, reenacted, reinterpreted, I am able to find the universality of humanity.  Watching The Scottsboro Boys and then learning of the murder of Trayvon Martin, I can understand the extent of racism in this country and how it is still a cause we must fight to rectify.  Watching a reinvisioning of a Shakespeare play like Hamlet applies those same themes and thoughts to a contemporary world, giving them weight and constancy.  Listening to Trent Reznor's adaptation of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" shows me the possibility of the classics and how they can be opened up for new audiences and new meaning without damaging the integrity of the original.  This is where Plato got caught.  He believed that imitation and the arts compromised the integrity of the truth, that the truth is king and anything that clouds it is an abomination.  But Plato never tapped into the potential of mimesis that Schneider has found, that Suzan-Lori Parks has found, that Alvin Ailey found.

I have always been drawn to the contemporary.  Art, music, culture, I have always preferred the new and innovative over the dated and classic.  And yet, without an established classic, there is no innovation.  Perhaps I am a product of these times, as Schneider thinks this craze of reenactment is indicative of, however I believe that I am a more so a person who seeks desperately to understand myself.  This understanding seems to be a mix of past and present, and the lens through which I look to the future from the past is the one that determines what path I shall follow.  It is funny, I gravitate strongly towards theatre instead of film because I so very much thrive on the 'live-ness' of theatre, and yet, many of the experiences that have deeply impacted me are remnants of history.  Do I enjoy the questioning of the placedness that Schneider finds key or do I simply like learning history in this manner?  What is it that makes me a thespian and not an artist?  Why do I want work--both my own and other's--to be presented in the moment and in the living space?  Is it the hole or the whole that I seek?  Do I want to be totally immersed in an event or do I want that event to weave its way through my life intricately and delicately?

Plato.   The Republic.  Ed. G. R. F. Ferrari.  Trans. Tom Griffith.  New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Schneider, Rebecca.  Performing Remains:  Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment.  New York:  Routledge, 2011.