Acting Exercise or Traumatic Experience?

Back when I was in undergrad, we had an Acting Concentration and there were fourteen of us in our cohort.  Tonya and Ryan were the couple of our group.  They had been since senior year of high school and they still were together after we graduated.  They were lovely people, and talented.  But, they were both incredibly insecure and sensitive, making them an often dysfunctional couple.   Tonya was usually in tears in the bathroom once a week over some quarrel they’d had, or Ryan was moping about because of something Tonya had said.  While it was clear they cared for each other, it was also a big case of young love/co-dependency.  Which is fine.  You see that a lot in young relationships, right? 

So how does this relate to theatre?

In undergrad, we were taking an “Actor/Director Collaboration” class, led by Marshall W. Mason. Actors were partnered with the seniors in the Directing Concentration.  Each week, one director had to have a scene work session with two actors while the rest of the class observed.  Ron was directing Tonya and Ryan.  I can’t remember exactly, but I think the scene was from Angels in America.  This particular week, the assignment was to do improvisations with the actors as their characters to help deepen the exploration of their scene work.  Marshall would observe the director/actors and make suggestions/side coach as needed.  Normally, the director came up with imaginary circumstances to create an improv. For example, with Joe and Harper in Angels, he could has set up the circumstances as being when they first met, their first date, or an argument they’d previously had (like maybe the first time he caught her taking valium).  The director would send one actor out of the room and give the other the improv parameters.  Such as, “Harper, you guys just moved to New York.  You’ve been feeling down, so you’ve been to see the doctor who prescribed you valium.  You’re only supposed to take one at a time, but in the past few weeks, you’ve started taking more.  Today, you’ve taken three.  You’re feeling really good, but you don’t want Joe to know.”  Then the actors would trade places and the director would say, “Joe, you had a terrible day at work.  You want to vent, but don’t want Harper to see you unhappy, because it will upset her.” Ok, go!

But Ron, who was (and still is) a very innovative director, opted to try something different.  He sent Tonya out of the room first.  And then he told Ryan the following:

“Ok, you’re going to be doing an improv where you play yourself.  You and Tonya were at a party last night.  You got in an argument and you left.  Today, you heard from a friend that she got drunk and slept with someone else.  Your objective is to confront her and get her to tell you the truth.”

Then he called Tonya into the room and told her the following:

“You and Ryan were at a party last night.  You got in a fight and Ryan left.  You had a few beers and started chatting with some guy.  He started to get handsy though, and he forced you into a bedroom and raped you.”

Yikes.  This was not our typical set-up for an improv exercise.   I was already uncomfortable before the improv began, knowing the somewhat volatile and vulnerable relationship Tonya and Ryan had. The director was breaking the (unwritten) rules of our “safe space”.  How could things not go badly?

Ryan began the improv by asking, “Did you sleep with someone else?” Tonya, sticking to her objective didn’t answer.  Ryan began to freak out and started to yell things like, “Did you fuck him?” and “How could you do this to us?” Tonya sat on the stacked wrestling mats that were serving as a bed, saying, “I’m sorry” over and over while Ryan proceeded to scream at her.  She began to cry, then sob, and Ryan followed suit.  Soon, both were near hysterical.  I sat frozen at first, but then started to raise my hand.  Others were looking around, shifting in their seats uncomfortably.  Oddly, our professor didn’t intervene.  I started waving my hand in the air, as some other students did. Finally, Ron called, “Hold!” and said, “How was that?” Ryan and Tonya seemed to nod approval.  I looked around the room and met eyes with a few other classmates, as if to say, “What the fuck?”  The energy in the room was so weird- I felt like I just witnessed something that was none of my business.  And though the circumstances were fabricated, my two classmates playing themselves was just too creepy and too weird.  It didn’t feel like they were acting.  As we continued to mumble and shift in our seats, Ryan and Tonya wiped their eyes and Ron told them to focus, and get ready to start the scene.  One of my classmates stood up at that point and said, “Hey, I feel really uncomfortable right now.”  To which there was a chorus of, “Yeah” and “Me, too”.  The director said to Ryan and Tonya, “Are you ok? Do you want to do the scene?”  Both of them were still mopping their tears and snot away and nodding vigorously.  They started the scene and did some really intense, weepy work- not to be confused with good work.  When the scene ended our professor finally asked the two of them what they felt.  And Ryan and Tonya both said, “This was great- exactly what I needed!”  Ron smiled and said, “I had a feeling this would work for you two.”  Was that his directorial “wink”?  Because his improv had messed with the minds of two vulnerable 20- year-old actors?  And they started to set up to do the scene again!  At that point, someone else said, “I’m not watching that again.”  Another student got up and left.  I sat, frozen, waiting for my professor to intervene again, or to scold Ron.  He did not.  Rather, he praised him for taking such as risk and getting his actors to “that place”.  We, as the observers, began to express our discomfort.  But we weren’t heard or vindicated. 

It's been years since I thought about this story, but as I tell it, the uneasiness settles back in. I feel like, while it was a bold move to try out a sort of “real life” improv, it went too far.  The director was friends with this couple and knew how sensitive they both were.  He exploited that information when he put them into a “reality improv” and took them away from the idea of living truthfully in imaginary circumstance.  Instead, he put them into an uncomfortable situation that was more like some fucked up therapy session.  Witnessing it was awful, at least for me and a few others. But I did have classmates and a professor who thought this was a genius move by a creative director.  Perhaps a dialogue could have been had with our professor discuss the "too real-ness" of performance.  Not being heard while being an undergraduate acting student made me question my security in the classroom.  But maybe for Ryan and Tonya, the exercise did truly help them. I just wonder at what cost.

What do you think? 

Gender Performativity- Now with Cats!

Ugh. Your gender performativity is ruining my day.

Political Statement or Artistic Embellishment? And how does it (mis) represent history?

I had to read an essay by Suzan Lori-Parks last semester, and I loved it.  She was discussing how in the writings of some of her plays (in particular The America Play) she, rather than rewriting history, tries to “re-member it.”  She has claimed to be “obsessed with resurrecting” things of the past and utilizes the self-created concept of “Rep and Rev”- that is repetition and revision- to tell her story.  Some criticized her for having a contorted perception of black experience. One critic, Jean Young wrote that, “Parks’ slippery interpretation of the historical record surrounding the tragedy of Venus is in and of itself a tragedy.” Parks elegantly responded, “It’s insulting when people say my plays are about what it’s about to be black—as if that’s all we think about, as if our life is not about race. It’s about being alive.”  Admittedly, when I read The America Play, I thought it was strange- but I really dug Parks’ unusual approach to writing a sort of poetic dialogue with weirdly wonderful musicality.  She sets The America Play in “a great hole in the middle of nowhere” and “the hole is an exact replica of The Great Hole of History”.  She aims to, rather than rewrite and dramatize the story of Lincoln’s assassination, repeat the act and revise it to help her audience figure it out the history, or more specifically the African-American history- that she feels is missing.

I for some reason, keep thinking about Parks' essay as I was reading over the Austin and Butler articles.  Her desire to “re-member history”, along with thinking about the tweaking of a performative act that could be interpreted as clever or controversial, led me to reflect on a story from a podcast called Revisionist History by the brilliant Malcolm Gladwell.  It’s called “The Foot Soldier of Birmingham.” It’s about a statue called “Foot Solider.”

Before I go on, I’d like to say what I hope is obvious if you know me as an artist/human being-  none of my narrative is commentary on the Civil Rights Movement itself. I am all too aware that there were and are way too many horrific stories of abuse of power and not enough stories of courageous nonviolent resistance. “The Foot Soldier of Birmingham” tells the story of what was happening all over the place in the South in the sixties.  Sadly, with our current President and a country in turmoil when it comes to race, its themes are still commonplace today. But here’s where it gets weird- it didn’t tell the truth of that particular moment. And by failing to tell the truth of that specific occasion, I think it lends itself to a verisimilitude about who we are as a society in precarity and why we tell stories in the way that we do.   

So, the picture below was taken by photographer Bill Hudson on the day of a protest in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963- a day when Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was scheduled to be speaking.  Pretty messed up, right? 

Fast forward to 1995- when an artist named Ronald McDowell (Mac) unveiled the statue, “Foot Soldier” which had been commissioned by the first black mayor of Birmingham.   Mac, while quirky, is no hack- he’s done artwork for many famous folks, including Michael Jackson.  This statue is powerful and the most popular in the park where it stands.  Steve Wonder was one of the first people to see (or touch in his case) the sculpture, and while controversial to some, the artwork was ultimately well-received.

So, what’s the problem?

Well, the research.  And the fact that Mac chose to ignore what actually happened. 

Interviews revealed that Dick Middleton a member of Birmingham’s K-9 unit in the sixties, the cop in the photograph, was actually trying to hold the German Shepard back- not “sic” him on the African American youth.  Furthermore, the young man in the photo, Walter Gasden, said many things in an interview that complicated the creation of the statue.  Gasden claims:

• "I wasn't a foot soldier"
• He just wanted to see Martin Luther King, Jr., because a friend suggested it to him·        
• “I wasn’t a foot soldier”
• In answer to the question, "What benefits did your family receive from the Civil Rights Movement?"  He answers, "None."
• He claims that the statue doesn't look like him, saying, "It looks like a totally different boy.  That looks like an African boy.  The features.  The lips, the size.  You take a look at the picture there, and the statue there, the boy's short: I was tall for my age."
• He claims that he took issue with the photo not in the fact that it made him famous, but that it got him in trouble for skipping school.

Weird, right?  You should listen to the interview.  You’ll feel for the interviewer, who thought she was interviewing a hero of the Civil Rights Movement, but, “instead, she’s getting a grumpy old man still wedded to some of the oldest and most awkward of Black prejudices.”

So, the story of the picture being reproduced into a piece of public art suddenly becomes way more complicated. When asked about not replicating the sculpture with historical accuracy, Mac commented that he, “did that on purpose.”  Malcolm Gladwell said to Mac, “There’s a little bit of mischief in that, in your recreation of that photo. You’re, you were using that opportunity to make a much broader, kind of subversive point.”  To which Mac responded, “I may be.”

By creating this sculpture, Mac was exercising his right to free speech- Arendt’s “right to have rights” being a performative exercise.  By creating art as he saw fit, he was utilizing his freedom and arguably, the ”potential that waits for its exercise.”  Was this a way of “making and changing the world in equal terms”? The creation of the sculpture has been made into a “yes, this happened” reality or even more so, the “this is how it happened reality.  Was this his intent? Is he trying, like Parks to “re-member” history?

Here’s what I can gather- the primary act of the performative power (or performativity) isn’t the initial taking of the photograph in Birmingham that day- but in the rather acts of recreation and circulation that took place after.  This photo was circulated in the Alabama paper, then in subsequent national publications.  It became iconic.  The duplication could, I suppose be considered a reproduction that represents the norms of the sixties.  As such, did Mac’s intentional recreation of the photo in his sculpture be considered a political act?

I think we also have to ask  why the historians of the civil rights adopted that image, reconfigured it from its original context (which, to be fair, was still about the violence convoying civil rights protesters) and reproducing it to their own communique.  For example, the mayor and a few others knew Mac was a bit of a character, they didn’t bother to examine his resume (to realize that he’d never sculpted before!), and gave him carte blanche to create the statue.  Did they know, on some level, that a re-imagining of history may occur?

I guess I’ll wrap up by saying, I agree with what Mac did- to a point.  I agree, because as I said earlier, we aren’t in a great place with race in our country right now.  We cannot- and should not- ever forget the atrocities committed against African Americans in our country.  Mac was demonstrating a time in history where people were experiencing appalling police brutality when exercising their freedom to peacefully assemble.  But his work isn’t historically accurate.  We already know (or should) how much of our American history has been told with inaccuracy.  Do we want to know exactly how things were?  Or is it easier to “re-member” instead?

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/14-the-foot-soldier-of-birmingham

Felicity Conditions (and Felicity)

First person to answer correctly gets a cookie!

Post 1- Theatre VS Performance What is the Difference and Why Should You Care? OR How to Keep a Grad Student Busy

I feel like if you had asked me a week ago what the differentiation between theatre and performance was, I’d have been able to give you a clearer response.  But, because I’m who I am and I tend to overthink everything (um, have you met me?), I feel like the more time I’ve had to process and think about this, the more muddy my thoughts have become.  As I was sitting with my friend Jackie the other evening (stroking her yellow lab, Penny), we began to chat about this.  We started “performing” different ways of drinking water.  We would differ how we picked up the glass, how long the duration of a sip was, whether or not we settled the glass perfectly on the coaster or not.  This grew in hilarity as we started watching Penny “perform” her sleeping- rolling from side to side, breathing deeply to outright snoring.  It was all entertaining, all unpredictable, and enjoyable to watch.  I never doubted that Penny was a sleeping dog, performing canine-like behavior.  I never doubted that that Jackie and I were human beings, proficient in our ability to utilize a glass of water.  But was it performance?  Did we make it into a performance by “performing” the action for each other?  Was Penny performing, or was she just a tired pup? I suppose our evening's activities kept in line with the observation of the Stine, Long, and Hopkins study that performance is "an essentially contested concept."

After reflecting on the readings and my own ruminations from my experiences as an artist, I kept coming back to a few things.  First, the idea of theatre versus performance is a matter of scripted versus unscripted activity.  Plays have a script, and if we read the play before we see the show, we already know who the characters are what the outcome will be.  Second, the idea of the suspension of disbelief, or as States mentions, "a different kind of here." I never questioned that Jackie and I were people or that Penny was a dog- we just were.  But what if Jackie were playing the role of Penny?  We, as spectators would have to willingly (or not) accept the fact that a human was playing a dog.  Finally, I thought about the difference of behavior norms expected by the audience, as well as the roles that our American culture feed into as far as who attends theatre.  Or, perhaps as Carlson says,  "a recognized and culturally coded pattern of behavior."  I’m a huge sports fan.  And I would posit that watching a game is watching a performance of sorts. When we go to see, let’s say, a football game, we know that we can have conversations through all four quarters and it won’t affect how the players are playing.  Moreover, we are expected and even encouraged to make noise throughout the game with chants, cheers, clapping, etc.  Simply be being in the stadium, you’re actively participating in the “performance” of the game.  Everyone is in the same reality of the place- aware that they are watching to teams compete for the win. Theatre is a usually a quieter affair.  While we, as audience, may laugh, have sharp intakes of breath, cry, clap- what have you- ultimately, we are quiet during the performance, actively listening and watching the action on the stage.  Also, our realities might be vastly different and I think more personal at the theatre.  If we’re watching Hamlet, the world of the play may feel different to an audience member who has just lost a parent versus the audience member who has never experienced that kind of loss. And as far as the people who attend sporting events versus those who attend theatre, I feel like there is a preconceived notion in our country that the theatre may be for more “fancy types” in contrast to sports which is more of an everyman’s affair.  I don’t agree with that stereotype, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Please know, I could play devil’s advocate on any of the three positions I am taking.  I suppose I don’t have to suspend my disbelief in the theatre, and I could never let myself get to the place where I believed that a human could realistically play a dog. Pro-wrestling, considered by most to be a sport, is scripted (from what I understand).    And sometimes, theatre audiences are encouraged to participate in the production (i.e. The Rocky Horror Show).  I also think that most people would either prefer the suspension of disbelief to the idea of competition, or vice versa.  Ultimately, I’m still not able to make a completely conclusive delineation between theatre and performance. Therefore, I'll aim toward "continuing dialogue to attain a sharper articulation of all positions" (Strine, Long, Hopkins).  Let's further the conversation.

#illshowthem #starvingartist