The Final Blog

I think that something all of us still struggle with is "what is performance?"  We've questioned it from day one. I was too into my head about performance being theatrical. I like to see performances on a stage and a stage only. Yeah, I knew that performance art existed. This was more along the lines of Marina Abromovic. Then I doubted performance when we started talking about things like twitter plays. I don’t think that is performance at all. And then talking about things like durationals, which are the complete opposite of twitter plays, seemed a little bit more like theatre but it still took me away from it.

Performance is stepping away from the self. We are constantly doing this (performativity)! It’s usually an attempt to make a point. Hopefully it’s to influence or entertain or both. But in every single type of performance that we’ve discussed, we’ve brought it back to being on display somehow. Being vulnerable in front of someone else. Yes, actors do this on stage all the time. We saw this in almost every instance

·      Naturalism: this is typically found in plays. You would be doing everything as it happens on stage but you are not yourself.

·      Disruptions: in the Act Up example, people were dealing with issues that meant something to them. They became vulnerable to get their message across. It wasn’t for them. It was for a cause.

·      Dark Matter: Getting invested in something that isn’t there. Relying on something that isn’t there.

·      Performance Art: Marina Abromovic. Yes she was herself. In a way. She was on display for an audience. As vulnerable as could be.

·      Environmental Theatre: this is a type of theatre. It’s obviously performance.

·      Twitter Plays: To put this in the performance category… (which I hate), we are more vulnerable on the internet than in the real life. You are not always your self.

I could go on and on. I have a more well rounded grasp of what performance entails and the various “approaches to the ‘stage’”

Blog 11

So if you know me well, you’ll all know my love of the show 30 Rock. When we were talking about the uncanny it reminded me of a bit of wisdom that Frank said. Tracy Jordan wants to create a pornographic video game. Frank explains that it’s been done before. “Many perverts have tried.” However, the uncanny valley comes into effect and he explains it in terms of star wars (see below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6HNh-NeFv8

Video games are a clear way of using the uncanny. From Grand Theft Auto to the Sims, video games are trying to make humans look as real as possible but keep them at a level where we know they aren’t actually real. Seriously, you can adjust every detail of a person on The Sims when you create them from cheekbones to bra size.

The uncanny allows an audience to know what is real. You can’t see light without dark to know what light is, right? That disconnect that the uncanny brings makes one appreciate what is real that much more.

Blog 10

Theatre is more than just a forum for us to air our differences to those willing to hear them. Theatre is an opportunity to get people who normally wouldn’t hear about these things to hear them.  My example here would be commercial theatre. Big theatres in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are kind of known for doing fluff pieces. Most musicals that actually last are going to be your Cinderellas and Mary Poppins and Wickeds. These aren’t bad things at all. I love all of these shows, however why not pepper in some of these classics with a bit of issues? Let’s create a new dialogue from shows that make money. If you do a proper mix of them both, a message will be heard. I know this is much easier said than done, I totally get that. The world of Broadway will never change overnight nevertheless in a decade, but we could be the generation that tries.  If we bring in issues of oppression then maybe voices will be heard.

Theatre isn’t the answer to help stop these big issues. Nothing will be able to stop genocide and war, but we can certainly be an agent. I believe that theatre creates a voice that can and will be heard. If we allow theatre to be the voice of many civilians, then maybe a change could spark. Ultimately, theatre cannot save the world. I wish it could, but unfortunately not enough people care.  I don’t think that half of the politicians in office at the white house would take the time out of their day to go see a play that features oppression.  But if enough people see it and are inspired by it, the more it becomes an issue that is actually cared about and then something can be done.

Blog 9

Hmmm. A cause that I care about. There are so many. Right now, I guess I’ll talk about feminism.  This is something that probably a lot of people will choose but that’s because it’s important.  This is something that I’ve been aware of for quite some time and it really impacted me at a leadership seminar this past summer. I was a counselor for a group of 120 high school juniors and we did a program called Rachel’s Challenge. After this heart wrenching 2 hours, we did a game called “Cross the Line.” It’s when a moderator will say a statement and if that statement applies to you, then you cross the line. One of the statements posed was “I identify as a feminist” and in my small group of about 25-30 students, I was one of the four people that crossed the line. And of those 4, only 3 were women.

Feminism, in all simplicity, means that women should have equal opportunity and rights to men. That’s it. Yet it has a negative connotation, so people do not want to identify with the term. This is slowly changing thanks to iconic figures like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and even Benedict Cumberbatch.

I recently saw this photo of Benedict Cumberbatch and when I think of this cause I think of something similar to this.

 I mostly want to raise awareness of what feminism is. Because once someone knows what the term actually means, the equality will follow suite.  I don’t like protests. I don’t think they’re very effective. However, if I had to do one, I would do a small, noninvasive type of rally. I would gather people that are also passionate about this cause and maybe have them wear similar t-shirts to the one pictured above. I would have signs that just explain what the definition is. I wouldn’t get my team to approach anyone unless they were approached. Just sparking that light in someone’s head about what the word really means can go a long way. You can ask anyone if they believe women should have equal rights to men and a majority of the time they will say “of course” and that’s what feminism is.  

The media could absolutely help this protest. It would help spread the definition and reach a larger audience.

I don’t know when the protest would be complete. That is actually a really good question. I honestly think it would just fizzle out. For example, if this were to take place in Free Speech Alley, there’s a moment in the day where people just aren’t in the area anymore. Fewer people approach you so you just kind of call it a day. That’s probably not the answer that Colt was looking for, but I think that’s how it would pan out. 

Blog 8

I think that twitter plays take away the reality effect. I think I should start off by saying that I don’t really think that twitter plays are theatre. They may be scripts, but they aren’t plays nor are they really closet dramas either.  With something so short and through a medium like twitter, it takes away the reality because you don’t know who the person on the other end of the tweet is. They could completely be lying to you and say they’re doing something. Someone in class used a real life example of her friend live tweeting a conversation that she heard in the quad and we have no idea if it was a real conversation or not.  Durationals on the other hand, I think, dig more into the reality effect. I think if you sit in on a piece like Quizoola or Speak Bitterness, it is clearly unmediated. They just keep going or mediate themselves. Quizoola would keep going on until someone said “Do you want to stop?” “Yes.” 

I don’t really think that twitter plays and durationals are the right here right now of theatre. Nothing like this happens in Baton Rouge. It’s probably different in New York, but the things that are popular are going to be the commercial things and that’s what keeps theatre going. Because that’s what makes money.  Maybe going into the future and looking back, we’ll notice that these types of plays had more of an impact but to me, right now, 

Blog 7

Since my life is currently being consumed with Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, I will talk about this show. In our lab show, space is all we have. Our budget hasn’t allowed us to take on this crazy and elaborate set. The play doesn’t even really call for anything like that anyway. So we have a blank stage with some periaktoi and some branches where we can create a string room.  Being a minimal show, I think this is effective and can speak to the six axioms. It allows transactions between actors and the audience, actors and actors and actors and technical elements. Each space of the stage has it’s own meeting. We have the string room, a designated spot for stones and one side is the underworld while the other side acts as the real world with a globe connecting the two worlds. The worlds intermingle. Focus really is flexible from both the actors and audience’s perspective. 

            Environmental and site-specific theatre enhance the production in my opinion. It would be cool to do this in a more found space other than the Studio, but that’s not the point.  I think the transaction between audience and performer is the most important thing, and creating an environment that allows that is very strong.

            I don’t necessarily agree with Kantor’s view. I don’t think that theatre has been sterilized and neutralized for one thing.  Theatre grows but those words make it sound like it’s stale and boring now. Playwrights work for years to create something wonderful. Not all theatre is site-specific or experimental.  Something made up as the production goes on could turn out just as bad, if not worse, than something that was planned thoroughly.

Blog 6

I don’t necessarily think that theatre is becoming so diluted that it melts into other mediums of art. I think that theatre can incorporate all of these aspects without losing its artistic presence.  For instance, I’ve seen countless bootlegs and live on Broadway videos of some of my favorite shows.  It will never be the same though. I would much rather go see Memphis live than watch the recording on Netflix. However, I do feel as though I have to resort to watching film and bootlegs of theatre because I don’t have instant access to these shows. I would’ve killed to go see Heathers when it was off Broadway, but it closed before I had the opportunity to go to New York. Despite all of this, I do have more of a gratification of seeing a show live. I remember going to shows Theatre Baton Rouge (Back when it was BRLT) and sitting in the front row and getting pointed at by an actor or having eye contact with them while they share these emotions with me was spectacular. I felt so present in that moment and nothing, especially technology, could take away that personal moment.

A lot of violent things have happened in the Louisiana State Capitol’s senate chamber. Every year when I was little, I would go with my mom after session had ended and we would sort the bills numerically for a few hours every day for a week.  I remember her taking me around the capitol and she showed me a painting in the back hallway of Huey Long’s assassination. It terrified me because, as a 7 year old kid, that I would get shot if I went into the senate chamber.  Then there is the pencil. For those of you who don’t know, there is a pencil stuck in the ceiling of the Senate Chamber from a bombing in 1970. I’ve gone back, since, when I worked as a page and thought about all of the violence that has happened there and I imagined what happened. Who was there? What were the reactions? Would it happen again? 

Blog 5

The show that I have seen that struck me with an example of dark matter was Elephant’s Graveyard written by George Brant in 2008.  The play centers around a group of circus performers versus a group of townspeople. The circus performers loved their elephant, Mary. However, when someone rode Mary who wasn’t her trainer, she threw him off of her back and ended up killing the boy.  The play then goes as far as to explain how the elephant was executed in gruesome detail. 

Obviously, we cannot kill an elephant on stage. You can barely have an elephant on stage. Mary was the dark matter. Whenever they explained the death of Mary, the director decided to utilize red fabric to show her blood.  This paired with the details of her death lead to a really upsetting image.  This was very effective because you had no choice but to picture it. The script broke your heart because the words were so powerful and then the image that the director gave us just added to that effect. We created our own image of Mary.  And each character on stage had their version of Mary. To the townspeople, she was seen as a monster but to the ballerina, the strong man, and her trainer, she was family. 

This part of the prompt has had me thinking for days, which explains why I’m writing this so late.  I think the way to represent something so horrible is to keep it as true as possible.  There is not a single person on Earth who could understand how horrible these events were unless they were there.  Is it up to those who went through these horrors to portray them in art? Would that be too difficult? Would it be too real? Dr. Fletcher gave us an example of a man who did a documentary about living with bears and the bears ate him alive. His death was recorded and you could hear this man and his girlfriend dying. The guy who put the documentary together said that no one should ever be allowed to hear something so awful. It was at the filmmaker’s discretion at that point.   I believe Dr. Fletcher said that guy who put the documentary together gave it to his family and then it was destroyed.

Obviously there have been telling recollections of the holocaust. Books and films have given us a bit of an insight and, although entertaining, help us understand. I think it is possible to be entertained but still recognize that it’s a horrible event.  Maybe entertained isn’t the best word because when I think of entertained I think of pleased.  The word has a positive connotation to it and in this case it isn’t necessarily positive.

How do the possibilities of abstraction help us approach this question? I’m not sure. Does the Holocaust count as dark matter for us? It happened. It is a moment in history but we didn’t live through it and we surely didn’t experience it.  We have to picture it. Sure you can visit the sites of the horrific events but the events are abstract to us. The experience is abstract to us. 

Blog 4

In class today, we were talked about hate speech and protests and my first reaction was to link some of our in class examples to The Westboro Baptist Church.  As most of you know, they protest funerals of a lot of different groups, including homosexuals, soldiers, and even celebrities who just support those causes.  They really publicize their protests and make people talk which I think makes it theatre. It’s a performance that gains a nation wide audience through the media.  However, what I think is even more incredible is the response.  Through media outlets like facebook and especially tumblr, we hear about students and other people that are against what the Westboro church that make walls to keep the church away from these private events. 

A recent example of this is from this past Feburary after Michael Sam came out as an openly gay professional football player. The Westboro Church headed to Missouri once Sam came home. They tweeted “Yes! Westboro made it to @mizzou & we got just the light to shine on this dark @mikesamfootball fag mess, @espn!” (@WBCsays Feb 15, 2014).  They linked a photo, but since then, twitter has taken it down. Immediately, fans and supports created a human wall to block out the protest and keep Michael Sam safe from the hate speech that was about to take place.

I think the best way to change theatre and bring it into the 21^st century is to add technology into the mix.  We will never be able to prevent people from using their phones in the middle of the show.  One of my favorite things from the NBC show Smash, is when they used real time tweets into the fictional show Hitlist. In the show, the show was in previews on Broadway and didn’t quite click with the audience. But adding in the technology really enticed the audience.  This song, I’m Not Sorry, uses a rockstar-esque stage to really grab the attention of the audience (lights, rock music, reference to the VMA’s) and then adds the twitter bit at the end.

The twitter bit takes place at 2:35-end

Blog 3

I thought about a lot of shows for this blog post.  I tried to pick out shows that had a sense of “truth” in them and that was pretty hard.  I haven’t taken a lot of time to really think about truth in them.  So I picked one documentary-esque show that was done here at LSU and one show that is just oodles of fun.

The first show that came to mind was my favorite show that has been done here at LSU, Elephant’s Graveyard. I read the play for one of my classes but it didn’t really come to life until I saw it. It has been the only show here to make me actually cry and bring out real emotion.  I really felt for this fictional elephant that was murdered, ya know? But I think it was the emotions that I felt that made it something true.  It was a show that convinced you that people in tight knit groups really take care of each other, whether it is animals or humans.  If an outsider comes in and messes up that balance, it really throws you for a loop.

The other show that I was thinking of is How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. This is a fun show. The choreography, the lights and the singing just makes for a fun afternoon at the theatre. Nick Jonas helped with that jazzy aspect as well.  However, I wouldn’t actually follow the advice that Anderson Cooper’s voice gave J. Pierrepont Finch. It’s horrible advice. And it’s very unrealistic.  You can’t succeed without trying. That’s the truth.

Here's the first bit of advice you'd be given if you were J. Pierrepont.

*For the record, I don't support bootlegging shows but I am grateful in this instance. 

This is with Darren Criss as J. Pierrepont.

I think that there is a difference between performances that offer some kind of truth versus performances that strive for documentary or naturalistic theatre.  There will always be some sort of truth or attempt at truth when it comes to theatre or a performance. However, when I’ve looked at documentary theatre, it is super biased. In the Bodies of Evidence article that we read, Martin poses the question, “What is the basis for the selection, order and manner or presentation of materials from the archive?”  I don’t remember if Elephant’s Graveyard was based on a true story or not, but for examples sake, let’s say it was. We got the perspective of the elephant’s caretaker, the townspeople, the carnies, etc, which makes for a well-rounded bit of information. However, that’s not always the case.  With Aftermath, we sort of got a one sided bit of the story from the Iraqi people.  In documentary theatre you choose how you want the story to be told which can eliminate some of the truth from the matter.

Post 2

I’ve been trying to think about this post all weekend. I know the answer could be fairly simple but I still struggled to really grasp the idea. However, I was reading the blog post over and over again and for some reason when Dr. Fletcher pointed out gingers, it made me think of the episode in South Park when Cartman is on video talking about how gingers do in fact have souls despite what other youtubers out there have said.  See below:

Well, is that only for natural redheads? What if I decided to change that about myself? What if I decided to perform the act of dying my hair red? Would that take my soul away from me? I wasn’t always a ginger before this. Cartman identifies with being a ginger and he’s sticking up for his “people.” On the other hand, what if Cartman decided to dye his hair brown or blonde? Does his soul jump back into his body? Is this a whole “You can take the ginger out of the person but you can’t take the person out of the ginger?” type scenario?  

Cartman then makes a point to identify as Christian and that he goes to church. This obviously means that he has a soul, right? (Oh Cartman) You can be Christian and not always go to church. But because you step into a chapel or any place of worship, you identify (most of the time) with that religion. It alters the reality from when you were say, at school or work, to being in the moment of worship and God. 

I don’t know if this is exactly on the money or not, but hopefully I’m heading in the right direction with this idea of felicitous and infelicitous performance acts. If not, please let me know so I can get on the right page! 

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Blog One

In Carlson’s article, the term that stuck out to me the most (that we did not discuss in class) was the idea of restored behavior. Schechner defines it as a “quality of performance not involved with the display of skills, but rather with a certain distance between ‘self’ and behavior” (4). So I take it that when you are portraying a restored behavior, then you are not necessarily showing off but you are just doing something unlike yourself.  On the second day of class, we talked a lot about how you must be conscious that you are performing in order for it to be a performance. This separation of self and behavior kind of blurs that line a bit as I’ll talk about soon.

I work in a restaurant.  I don’t display any special talent or skills, but I do feel like I’m performing when I talk to our guests/customers.  I have to act a certain way and put on a front in order to make tips. I feel like a lot of the stuff I have to say is scripted.  I sort of think this is a restored behavior.  I’m not acting necessarily like my self but I have to behave a certain way for my audience (the customers). However, I’m not displaying skills. I work as a take-out server and all I do is bag their food, show them that we didn’t forget anything, and do all of this with a smile praying on the inside that they leave at least a couple bucks. This however, is not theatre, but it is a performance.