February 1 2012
Lecture:
We had a look at last weeks reading from Jonathan Kalb and had to find 3 claims and 3 counter-claims.
3 CLAIMS:
1) 'Solo performance, is of course; a field rife with self-indulgent and incipient monumental egotism.' (Kalb 2001, 14)- solo performance is a selfish act.
2) 'Solo performance is a search for a freshness and unpredictability that carry the force of gossip.' (Kalb 2001, 16)- Sanford Meisner speaks about 'creating a truth in an imaginary circumstance.' Solo performance is the link through the imaginary.
3) 'We do seem willing to listen to people's individual stories as possible keys to our own individual development.' (Kalb 2001, 16)
3 Counter-Claims:
1) In Danny Hoch's work he explains/ looks at other peoples stories relating to their ethnicity, so it is not necessarily a selfish act because solo performance doesn't only involve one person by many people's stories. 'The spirit of acting is the travel from the self to the other.' (Kalb 2001, 18)
2) 'Works were based on the same technique: interviewing large numbers of people about the selected tumultuous events and then impersonating some of them onstage, using their exact words and mannerisms.' (Kalb 2001, 16) So it is not gossip because research was carried out on many people within the same situation, so in a way it is more like sharing experiences from those interviewed with the audience to give them some kind of history or understanding of that situation.
3) Yes some people are able to relate to the stories told from other people but also as Eric Bogosian in his play 'Pounding nails in the floor with my forehead,' he talks about how people come to watch shows in order to judge. I think that that also shows that everyday people deal with difficult situations within their lives and when they go out to watch a show the last thing they want to watch is something that relates to them, they go to watch a show to get away from reality.
Other Claims and Counter-Claims:
Claim: Danny Hoch doesn't call his work documentary because he says he doesn't do interviews and his work is more from his own life. Some performance artists don't do research.
Counter-Claim: Even though he says he doesn't do research, people tend to observe others without even knowing it. It is also observation because Hoch is observing himself and his actions, so in a way it can be seen as research because he 'documents his own memories.' Danny Hoch also creates a marginalized view on stage because he shows things from his own persoective.
Claim: Kalb claims that the way we look at solo performances and the self is from a 'reality show' view. Forms of identity due to globalization are still dominant.
ARCHIVE: Is text based, written work e.g. journals.
REPERTOIRE: Embodied practices (passed onto us, actions)
Diana Taylor speaks about using repertoires within performances.
Anna Deveare Smith - Body holding knowledge in the ways she watches other people's actions, because she watches them so intensely and observes everything they do she is able to embody and impersonate them within her plays.
Vaginal Davis:
'Vaginal Davis is an originator of the homo-core punk movement and a gender-queer art-music icon. Vaginal Davis is the key proponent of the disruptive performance aesthetic known as terrorist drag. Disrupting the cultural assimilation of gay-oriented and corporate-friendly drag, she positions herself at an uncomfortable tangent to the conservative politics of gay culture, mining its contradictory impulses to interrupt the entrenchment of its assimilatory strategies. A self-labeled "sexual repulsive," Ms Davis consistently refuses to ease conservative tactics within gay and black politics, employing punk music, invented biography, insults, self-mockery, and repeated incitements to group sexual revolt -- all to hilarious and devastating effect. Her body a car-crash of excessive significations, Vaginal Davis stages a clash of identifications within and against both heterosexual and queer cultures, and Black and Hispanic identities. From bubblegum songstress Graziela Grejalva to aging deviant John Dean Egg III, Davis's personas reject the internal counter-cultural mandate to refuse self-criticism, instead problematising the functions and assumptions of normative trends within the margins. By renewing uncertainties within alternative cultures and identities, Vaginal Davis opens up spaces for their continual struggle towards renewed and greater challenges, over and against these practices' timid appeasement and appropriation by the mainstream.' (Dominic Johnson, 2001)
http://www.vaginaldavis.com/bio.shtml
Vaginal Davis' work resolves around playing with gender, race, sexuality. a lot of her work is subversive.
http://www.vaginaldavis.com/
Within her blog, she speaks about some of the plays she performs.
http://www.vaginaldavis.com/blog/
Podcast: Anna Deavere Smith: 'Grace In The Dark:
Anna Deavere Smith always performs barefoot, she says 'he better to walk in the words of the people she’s impersonating.'
The theme of her piece is 'Is there any grace?' but also to define grace at the same time. During her research she started with religion because that is where she expected to find grace. To do this she spoke to 5 clergy, a Buddhist monk and an Imam. What she found was that grace was more of a Christian idea but not really in the other religions.
'A theme of this show and our conversation is “grace.” Her subtitle is “Grace in the Dark.” We push and pull some on this subject, this word. Grace to me is divine magic, not a secular virtue; it’s a theological idea, inseparable from the formulations in St. Paul’s Letters. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,” in Ephesians, for example. “It is the gift of God…” I think of grace as the catalyst of transformed vision. Anna Deavere Smith looks for grace and finds it in the suffering of this world.
I’m looking through the lens of: Is there any grace here? Is there any grace in a tough situation? And trying to define grace at the same time. And finding people who are the exemplars of grace even in places you’d least expect to find it. For example in Rwanda. Who would think that you could go to Rwanda, the site of a genocide, and find grace? And I did in the form of the way people are dealing with the idea of forgiveness. One of the characters talked about giving grace — actually differentiating that from forgiveness, because she said that forgiveness is something you give when someone asked for it; and her awful predicament is that the killers of her family have not come and asked. She says: I’m giving them grace. She’s saying: I’m not holding onto you in my heart anymore…
I think the definition of grace is broader than the religious definition of it. We find it in the world. I visit a garden to find it. We find it in other kindnesses. In a way I’m thinking about it almost like kindness. The other exemplar to me of grace — and I don’t know what her religious background is — is a woman in Johannesburg, South Africa who has an orphanage for children who are dying of AIDS. And she sits with every child who’s dying and talks to them about what’s happening.' (Anna Deavere Smith, 2008)
When listening to this podcast it show's how Anna Deavere Smith really portrays her character or the person she is impersonating. It is a strong sense of how when she is in character you can really feel the story she is telling. There is one part in the podcast in which she is speaking about a lady who sits with children born with AIDS and how she tries to comfort them and making them come to terms and understand that they are going to die. In this sense, the work she does not only tells a story but also shows that there are people out there that are suffering and how some people are willing to help. Her story gives inspiration to many.
http://www.radioopensource.org/what-were-going-through-anna-deavere-smith/
Anna Deavere Smith: Let Me Down Easy:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/anna-deavere-smiths-let-me-down-easy/production-announcement/1087/
Interview with Anna Deavere Smith:
'Anna Deavere Smith talks about the process by which her play Let Me Down Easy was created. Called “the most exciting individual in American theater” by Newsweek magazine, Smith turns her theatrical exploration to matters of the human body.' (2012)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/let-me-down-easy/interview-with-anna-deavere-smith/1230/
Danny Hoch:
Danny Hoch says that he knows the characters but only able to put them in a sequence or how to present them in a show once he is on stage and see's what works and what doesn't work.
His characters come from people in his neighborhood and community.
This is a youtube video of Danny Hoch's work 'Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop.'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE71FhYhMo0
'Actor/writer Danny Hoch offers advice on crafting a solo show. Hoch draws from his own experience as a soloist when he discusses getting a show started, developing and honing characters, and making a career in solo theatre. Hoch's latest one-man show is 'Taking Over.'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG5c5OWE0jo
This is an interview with Danny Hoch talking about how he forms his characters and performs his shows.
From looking at the different ways these performers prepare their shows you can see that many of them first do a lot of research and interviews with people to make sure they are able to impersonate them and get every detail of their character right.
Creative Exercise: Free Writing:
As a class task we did an exercise on 'free writing' in which we just write for ten minutes anything that comes into your head. Basically when you start out you don't have to think of something to write, you just relax and let the thoughts and words flow. It is weird how it works because at the end of the ten minutes when reading back you work you will be amazed at what you wrote. It is a good way of getting your personal thoughts and most private thoughts on paper without even knowing it. It is like 'cleaning out your closet' and getting rid of worries or anxieties one might have and not even know it.
When some read out what they wrote they had a flow to the way they read it and sometimes the rhythm changed, or it sounded like a diary entry. When I read mine to myself it felt weird because I felt as though I was reading my own thoughts.
We were told to set up like a 'ritual' of writing everyday at a specific time and to carry on writing till three pages were filled up. Then we had to edit out pieces that we didn't want and keep others. This is one way of getting information for a solo performance. At the end of the module we should have a list of words or phrases that we got from our writing that we might want to use in our performance.
'The Artists Way: A way of Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self' by Julia Cameron is a book on free-writing.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Artists-Way-Discovering-Recovering-Creative/dp/0330343580
'Julia Cameron has had a remarkable career, which in turn has given remarkable help to others. Herself an award-winning poet, playwright, and filmmaker, she has written thirty books, ranging from her widely-praised, hard-hitting crime novel The Dark Room to her volumes of children’s poems and prayers.' Julia Cameron Live 2012). Julia Cameron has a 12 week online course on discovery your creative self looking at:
1) Safety
2) Identity
3) Power
4) Integrity
5) Possibility
6) Abundance
7) Connection
8) Strength
9) Compassion
10)Self-Protection
11)Anatomy
12)Faith
She discusses the tools for unblocking your creativity.
http://juliacameronlive.com/
Afternoon Workshop:
In the afternoon we had a work shop which related back to our free writing task. We started off by warming up and doing some 'yoga/Pilates' exercise. We were then divided into two groups. Within the groups we had to listen to the same four songs that were played and let our bodies move according to the music. Afterwards we had to find four distinctive moves or actions from the four songs that we had to rehearse and remember. Once we had those four moves we had to look at the work we wrote in the morning session and put them together. Moving as we read our piece.
This task was like 'free-writing' but using out bodies to write. I found this difficult because unlike the 'free-writing' on paper here we were given music in which we had to work to, where as with the writing it was just you, your thoughts and the paper. I understand that this task is preparing us for our solo performance but I don't understand how actions with our bodies that have nothing to do with what we wrote is going to work well with the writing. Surely the words written is going to have different meanings and actions than to the songs.
I personally liked the free writing then the movement because not only were you in a room with other people and I couldn't relax but also instead of having (for example) a blank space you are already given the 'music' which in itself is a distraction. Within the writing you knew you could write anything and it was just yours, no-one else is going to share in it and also you started from a blank sheet, with nothing to stimulate your ideas, actions and so on.
Solo Performance 3: Documentary Solo Performance
Notes on Reading and Seminar‣ The documentary solo performer, such as Deavere Smith, appeals to the ‘prevailing ideology’ of
individualism, which allows her a space to then go on and deconstruct it. This is reflected in the
language she uses to talk about her work: ‘word-for-word,’ ‘people speak in organic poems’.
‣ ‘The conventional, naturalistic, “self-centred” American acting technique, she says, “has taken
the metaphor out of acting. It has made the heart smaller, the spirit less gregarious, and the
mind less apt to be able to hold on to contradictions or opposition.”’ (p. 18)
‣ What is the particular quality that solo performance is able to provide in documenting
urgent political issues? -- ‘In the end, what was most moving for me in her performances was
the risky and provocatively metaphorical spectacle of an artist imposing form on the agents of a
shapeless crisis, of her boldly self-conscious artistic sensibility giving cogent shape to a
painfully raw and chaotic reality’ (p. 18).
‣ How do we read ‘truth’ on stage?: ‘All arranged presentations of facts are inevitably
editorialised’ (p. 21).
‣ Kalb’s anecdotal example of The Laramie Project provides some useful insights. ‘...did the
presence of more than one actor actually make the texts seem weaker than it was by
defocusing — continually interrupting and restarting — the audience’s imaginary engagement
and identification with the many different characters?’ (p. 22). By using a ‘cast’ of characters,
the creators of the Laramie Project seek authenticity in their portrayal of a small town, however,
this use of naturalistic, fourth-wall style staging actually draws attention to the fact that the reallife horror the theatre is documenting can never be fully captured on stage.
‣ ‘Solo artists turn the mirror into a political tool (recall Smith’s Fires in the Mirror). They provide
the audience with opportunities to identify with the other through a transformed single individual
and thus bring the power of the mirror to the representation of otherness.’ (p. 23).
‣ ‘Ours is an era obsessed with witnessing, and an effective Verfremdung is nothing less
than a reason to consider one sort of witnessing more persuasive than another’ (p. 28). In
other words, documentary solo performance, in Kalb’s argument, provokes the audience into
questioning ‘who holds the truth?’ Or, more subtly, ‘who determines the basis by which we
consider something true?’ (Chow, B; PA3402 Session 3: Seminar Notes)
Reading One:
Kuhnheim, J (1998) 'The Economy of Performance: Gomez-Pena's New World Border - Modern Fiction Studies,' Modern Fiction Studies 44.1 pp. 24-35
Within this reading we look at the work of Guillermo Gomez-Pena and while doing this reading I noticed that a lot of Gomez-Pena's work is really subversive. Due to the nature of his work and the broadness of his topics and subjects such as gender-bending; crossing cultures and playing with issues that are sensitive, results in his work reaching larger audiences. He also looks at issues that are personal to him based on his ethnicity and how he is prejudiced for being Mexican. His work raises many questions and critics such as how do you draw a line between performance and text; what is too much? 'He is primarily known in the art community for his work on border cultural life; this work presently includes performance art, videos, CD's, books and sites on the internet, as well as theoretical articles and interviews. As a performer Gomez-Pena can occupy multiple sites and no particular site at the same time; this can be very a useful, tactical approach to the artist's aesthetic and political projects. A hybrid identity is also a slippery one; it allows a person to mutate, to slide between cultures, languages, and histories, assuming a marginal identity like the trickster, a complex emblem of cultural otherness,' (24).
Gomez-Pena's work crosses boundaries from the normal into a more of a reality that most people choose to ignore. Peggy Phelan puts it, 'identity is perceptible only through a relation to an other - it is a form of both resisting and claiming the other, declaring the boundary where the self diverges from and merges with the other,' (1993; 13). In a well-known essay from 1988, Gomez-Pena claims his own 'borderness' (opposing it to internationalism) and defines his art as a way to 'reveal and subvert' mechanisms of mythification of Chicano/Mexican/Anglo identities that generate semantic interference and obstruct the intercultural dialogue,' (Gomez-Pena; 132).
In New World Border, [Gomez-Pena] describes 'borderness' this way:
The presence of the hybrid denounces the faults, prejudices and fears manufactured by the self-proclaimed center, and threatens the very raison d'etre of any monoculture, official or not. It reminds us that we are not the product of just one (End 25) culture: that we have multiple and transitional identities: that we contain a multiplicity of voices and selves, some of which may even be contradictory. And it tells us that there is nothing wrong with contradiction.' (12)
Gomez-Pena's text tend to change from English to Spanish and vice Verse, this is to show kind of border-identity such as even though he is Mexican, he is also ingrained with English customs and language. He uses his own experiences and gets it to be acted out on stage as a performance. Ina similar way as in 'playback theater.' Part of his performance includes audience participation, however, what the audiences have to say or where they have to go is already scripted in the text, this way insures that Gomez-Pena always has a say of how the performance goes as his ideas are constantly used by all involved.Some of his performances involve very public displays from 'sitting on a toilet,' to reading poetry out loud. Gomez-Pena's work can be said to be a 'documentary solo performance' because he documents his work using pictures, video's and text. Even though he may get people to participate it can still be a solo because his ides and experiences are that being used within the performance. The whole performance is based around him. Gomez-Pena's 'New World,' looks at people as a more multicultural base because people have many cultures and identities to them based on their family genes, countries of origin, e.t.c. He speaks about people finding their identity no matter how contradictory they are. I think this refers back to stereotypes, that people try to act one way because they believe that society sees them like that.
Just like the 'free-writing' exercise we did, you can say Gomez-Pena's 'New World' is a similar exercise because in here he documents his thoughts, feelings and experiences (things he has seen). Therefore making his work universal as he complies and blends two or more things into one.I think his message within his performances is to show how people stereotype each other and through these stereotypes create assumptions of situations causing judgement of individuals based on their color, ethnicity, language. Within his performances he uses pictures to illustrate events and even goes as far as using the exact dates and names of an event within his performance from his own personal experiences. By doing this it adds to the truth of the performance allowing others to join in his memories and experience for themselves his struggles and the prejudices he had to endure.
Reading Two:
Guillermo Gomez-Pena (2000)‘Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century, ed. Jo Bonney, New York: Theatre Communications Group. pp.276-285.
This artist is likely to be found performing in community centers and marginally funded artistic centers,this could be in regard that most of his work is about the minority of cultures and those that are prejudiced against within societies and communities.
A lot of his work is politically charged. Some of his work is site-specific, adapted to speak to the particular concerns of the community in which the work is being presented.
Within this reading you went on a journey through the life of Gomez-Pena because he speaks about how he was targeted by the police because of the color of his skin.
Within 'The Self-Deportation Project,' he makes a point of how in the immediate future the majority of foreign cultures will take over America and he speaks about if they were ever to be deported to sent back to Mexico, America would fall apart because the Mexican's are hard working and do jobs that the normal American would not want to do.
He also looks at the possibility that anything that goes wrong within the country the people they always blame are the Mexican's.
Some of his work includes 'Pachanostra,' which in my first year we had a workshop on. Within his work we played with the idea of stereotypes and inverting meanings.
http://www.pochanostra.com/
Here is an interview with Guillermo Gomez-Pena a month after his performance of 'La Pacha Nostra. Within this interview you can also see some of his work based on gender-bending, playing with ideas of creating new meaning, e.t.c:
http://www.body-pixel.com/2010/06/16/interview-with-guillermo-gomez-pena-you-know-i-worship-the-imagination/
From the workshop I did in first year called the 'Zoo-oid workshop' we used ideas from Gomez -Pena's work regarding: negotiating boundaries, a composite collage of each person political, religious, social, sexual concerns.
Reading Three:
Rhodessa Jones (2000) ‘Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century, ed. Jo Bonney, New York: Theatre Communications Group. pp.145-154.
Within this reading of the play 'Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women,' we look at the life of female inmates. This is a one woman show that is 'seminal'
It is a lot about her experience with the ages of women in jail and what she saw as an aerobics teacher in a jail and how the lives of the inmates are, as she puts it: 'she saw babies having babies.'
Within her piece you see the different types of woman she comes across, the woman in the jail that is constantly giving out advice as to what to do, the younger woman that are having babies, the screaming woman that were addicted to heroin.
The piece begins with an African American child and how she goes from prostitution to being incarcerated. It looks at the lives of the woman in the jail and how the young are having babies that are having babies that they sell or use for prostitution in order to buy drugs.
Rhodessa Jones used this as a 'documentary solo piece' as she documented the way the woman in jail spoke and the way they did things.
Rhodessa Jones says of her work:
I'm not really interested in the kind of drama that appeals to folks who attend the Negro cotillions of the high society balls. I'm here to present community art as 'state of art.' I'm talking about using art as a tool of transformation; to provide a space for people whose voices haven't been heard. (Bonney 2000,145)
Rhodessa Jones work 'The Medea Project,' which she began in 1990 is to help incarcerated women by creating original theater with the women's personal histories.
The Medea Project: Rhodessa Jones on Incarcerated Women and Art as Healing
This video is an interview with Rhodessa Jones on 'The Medea Project:' It takes about how she went from working with a theater to teaching aerobics to inmates within jail. She was approached by an organization called 'CentreScene' asking her to teach aerobics to the woman in jail.
CenterScene is a wide-ranging series of public programs organized by the Center for Healthy Communities to raise awareness about the vital issues that affect the helath of California's communities. Admission and parking are free at all events. Use of public transportation is strongly encouraged.
http://www.calendow.org/chc/
She speaks about the struggle she has been through with African American men and how some of her family were involved in chain-gangs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6qH7g5k_9c
http://www.culturalodyssey.org/v2/aboutus/rhodessa_bio.html
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bonney, J. (2000) Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century, New York: Theatre Communications Group.
Cameron, J (2012) 'About Julia Cameron,' Julia Cameron Live: The Artists Way.
http://juliacameronlive.com/about-julia-cameron/
Chow, B, 'PA3402 - Session 3: Seminar Notes,' UELPLUS (Accessed 4 February 2012)
Gomez-Pena, G (1988) 'Documented/Undocumented' Multi-Cultural Literacy: Opening the American Mind, Saint Paul; Graywolf, pp. 127-134.
Gomez-Pena, G (1996) 'The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems and Loqueras for the End of the Century, San Francisco: City Lights
Hoch, D (2009) 'Crafting the One-Person Show,' Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG5c5OWE0jo (Accessed 4 February 2012)
Hoch, D (2010) 'Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop,' Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE71FhYhMo0
Johnson, D (2001) 'Vaginal Davis Biography,' Frieze Magazine.
http://www.vaginaldavis.com/bio.shtml (Accessed 4 February 2012)
Kuhnheim, J (1998) 'The Economy of Performance: Gomez-Pena's New World Border - Modern Fiction Studies,' Modern Fiction Studies 44.1 pp. 24-35
PBS (2012) 'Let Me Down Easy: Interview with Anna Deavere Smith' http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/let-me-down-easy/interview-with-anna-deavere-smith/1230/ (Accessed 4 February 2012)
Phelan, P (1993) 'Unmarked: The Politics of Performance,' New York: Routledge.
Smith, A.D (2008) 'Let Me Down Easy' in conversation with Chris Lydon, Radio Open Source
http://www.radioopensource.org/what-were-going-through-anna-deavere-smith/ (Accessed 4 February 2012)
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