I was trying to think of sorts of theatre groups, shows, or trends to talk about when my mind wandered to a conversation I had with my friend Matt. Now, it should be noted that Matt was not a regular theatre goer and I'm not sure he's ever seen a production outside of high school-- HOWEVER! We were discussing how one of our mutual friends lived above a sex dungeon and he said, "Yeah, I went to check it out a while ago. It's all a lot more Ren Faire then you'd imagine."
A) I knew exactly what he meant by that.
B) Clearly, he'd been to a Renaissance Faire.
C) Hahahahahaha!
Anyway, it got me thinking: how common is it for non-theatre goers to attend a renaissance faire? And is it unreasonable to think that the live performances might get a handful of them interested in seeing full scale productions outside a field in Lancaster County? Especially since, apart from being immersive, often times there are plays performed on stages on grounds.
Lower Income Groups and Statistics and Stuff
I found some interesting statistics on who attends the Ren Faire that might not be able to shell out the money for a Broadway show. Dedde Barber's master's thesis for Texas Tech states:
"Lower income respondents were more involved with the
Renaissance Festival/Faire atmosphere and culture than those at middle and high incomes... low-income respondents attached more importance to dress in
Renaissance/other attire than the other two income groups. In addition, low income respondents
gave higher importance rating to the motivation to laugh and feel better about oneself than the
other two income groups."
The evidence Barber collected suggests that this step around self-segregation works well not only in terms of enthusiasm but also in terms of it being a "family tradition" in some cases (great in terms of the business model aspect Austin referred to). That is to say, people have a tendency to interact and come back for more. This table from yet another master's thesis (this one from Justin A. Gross) surprised me with how into the Ren Faire the people surveyed seemed to get.
There is, however, a bit of a race barrier that is unaddressed here. Heather Dumas of Ohio University's master's thesis had a sample size of 800 and only 10 were people of color. There is also a sub-culture element that goes into the Renaissance Faire which should be acknowledged; some people flock not so much for the spectacle but more to let their freak flag fly... so to speak.
Doesn't This Point to What We Already Kinda Know?
People get pumped about immersive opportunities! I think the personalization of the experience here or, say, in Sleep No More (for example) is an excellent hook for people who might otherwise not be inclined toward the theatrical. Immersive theatre is a gateway drug... so to speak.
Always theatre responsibly.
I guess the question is how do we make that shift from immersive theatre to more traditional forms happen more frequently/smoothly? Or is traditional theatre a dinosaur that needs to be retired? I have zero answers for you, m8.
So Have Fun Out There and Don't Let Wizards Steal Your Girl!
What happens when humans are no longer the most advanced?
We've discussed the dangers of the singularity when it comes to AI: the idea that humanity would be eradicated by an advanced enough artificial intelligence. But what about aliens? How often do we see extraterrestrial contact and cooperation in science fiction? If they reach us first... would they be benevolent? After all, a type III civilization "would be godlike to us" for much of the foreseeable future (human civilization isn't even expected to fully crack type I for another few hundred years).
While many works of science fiction feature a rosy outlook of such encounters, I struggle to imagine contact with beings from another world going well. As the late Stephen Hawking once said: "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."
Awkward Moments with Aliens
One of the works that portrays this colonization/destruction well is Rick and Morty. Unlike films like Independence Day, where the reasoning behind the alien invasion isn't abundantly clear but has something to do with exploitation of resources, Rick and Morty features extraterrestrials verbalizing a superiority to humans to justify the various injustices they perform.
The best example I can think of is Morty's encounter with an alien that calls itself "Fart." Fart is a highly advanced interdimensional gaseous being that Morty rescues from assassination. In the clip below, we learn that Fart's intentions toward mankind are a bit... xenocidal. "After I return to the others with this location, we will be back for your cleansing... Carbon-based life is a threat to all higher life. To us, you are what you would call a disease. Wherever we discover you, we cure it. You said yourself that life must be protected even through sacrifice."
Even when they don't go in for the kill, we observe the more advanced species oppressing their less capable counterpart. Sometimes this is uncomfortable trivial and exploitative-- like when the Cromulons force planets to compete for their lives in a song competition.
Other times, we hear familiar colonizer rhetoric from the hive-mind Unity about how its complete control over its host planet is a vast improvement and for the greater good of the (completely controlled) people (episode here). There are even some mundane interactions on Rick and Morty that highlight how the future of humanity could well be that of a marginalized class. Ex: "Anything with less than 8 limbs is considered disabled here," "the e-arth relationships are simpler. It's a primitive planet"
"You guys are talking about my species! We understand genocide! We do it sometimes!"
It's nice to have a comedic take on something like this-- especially since it could well be our future to a certain extent. I'd love to think that extraterrestrials are above the way we treat one another, but how likely is that? Maybe the best we can hope for is an alien that sounds like Werner Herzog making fun of our species.
See what I did there? Okay, I'll jump right in by saying Hir had themes with which I believe most people in this day and age can identify: adapting to change, defining one's identity, etc. The two most striking elements for me both stemmed from the removal of the patriarch from his seat of power. Firstly, Paige's various decisions to reject essentially every single thing down to the usage of cupboards in order to decimate remnants of the old order really hit home. There were certainly points in my childhood that felt that extreme when I was I was going back and forth between parents who in many ways can be polar opposites (in this house I dress like a boy vs. in this house I dress like a girl, here all the politics are democratic vs. here all the politics are independent with a strong republican leaning, etc etc). That said, moving out of the personal anecdotal example/literal to the bigger picture: how much of the old system of power needs to be destroyed? When we say "down with the patriarchy," how far down are we talking? Can equality exist with any bit of our existing societal structure? There's no easy answer. Or if there is, I'm not smart enough to arrive there on my own. The second part that I found particularly resonant was all the ambivalence surrounding what should be done with Arnold. It reminded me a bit of the moments you see in films where someone has gained power over their former oppressor and a dialogue occurs between the new people in charge about whether to kill them or show mercy "because otherwise we are no different than they are." However, the confusion that comes with Arnold even from the very beginning of the play brought up memories of reading articles about male uncertainty regarding their role in our society with its troublesome, working, educated, not-staying-home ladies--- or, as my mother would occasionally sigh in jest, "What are men for, exactly?" While I wouldn't go so far as to say the play is universal (a bit more on that in a moment), I would say it is powerful and I believe most people would be moved by it.
SPOILER ALERT: "The future of men is women." (Yes, that's a bit binary but he makes some decent points.)
Universality
I'm a big believer in relativism, so it was hard for me to think of any story that people could all kinda get behind. My mind floated to things that most (if not all) cultures have in common. Dragons? Pyramids?
OR GHOSTS??!!?!
The closest I could get would be hero narratives (I love bringing up some Jospeh Campbell) but even then you run into a handful of difficulties-- the most relevant to this discussion would be that hero stories are generally masculine. The plot structure rings true in stories focused on women in a handful of examples, but there have been feminist scholars who put forward the heroine's journey as its own standalone structure-- separate from that Gilgamesh-Star-Wars-kinda-jim-jam. So far I've only had the chance to check out Frankel's From Girl to Goddess: The Heroine’s Journey through Myth and Legend but I gotta say it's persuasive and great craic. From the about section on the book's site:
"Campbell believed that while the hero represented the logical, assertive side of the personality, encountering the feminine blessed him with creativity, empathy, and intuition. However, neither side of this equation represents the heroine on her archetypal quest, descending into death and revitalizing as Mother Goddess. This active heroine dominates holy books from the Mahabharata to the Nihongi, as well as fairytales like the ubiquitous Cinderella. Even the great epics offer us Antigone, Medea, Pele and Hi’iaka, the Devi-māhātmyam, Hymn to Demeter and The Descent of Ishtar."
Campbell's response (below) to these critiques acknowledges the importance of the origin of the narrative (and there's what I find to be an amusing crack within the framework of old gender roles). That is, who is telling the story? Are we getting the perspective of Diana's power or her posterior?
"All of the great mythologies and much of the mythic story-telling of the world are from the male point of view. When I was writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces and wanted to bring female heroes in, I had to go to the fairy tales. These were told by women to children, you know, and you get a different perspective. It was the men who got involved in spinning most of the great myths. The women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories. [...] (Emily's note: I'm sure they thought about plenty of stories, they just didn't have their voices heard. But, I mean, what do I know. Admittedly, I do kind of find it to be a cute old man joke, if frightfully antiquated in perspective.) In the Odyssey, you'll see three journeys. One is that of Telemachus [...] The second is that of the father, Odysseus, becoming reconciled and related to the female principle in the sense of male-female relationship, rather than the male mastery of the female that was at the center of the Iliad. And the third is of Penelope herself, whose journey is [...] endurance. Out in Nantucket, you see all those cottages with the widow's walk up on the roof: when my husband comes back from the sea. Two journeys through space and one through time."
..... so... yeah... all this to say, I don't think any play or film could be universal when even gender alone is so sticky (then you add in sexuality, race, culture, etc and it gets even more difficult). That said, it is possible to get damn close and one should strive toward that ultimate goal of universality even if it might not be possible yet! I say this because I believe that universality could eventually be achieved but we need to a little further along with regard to cultural understanding that gender is merely a societal construct. We aren't there yet; there's still a bit too much Arnold in the cabinets for us. But we are getting closer and I won't knock that in the least! In the meantime, I'm encouraged by any and all moves toward equality. A big part of that is representation in theatre and film!
What sorts of work encourages you?
Obviously, Wonder Woman! Or anything that flips the script! I'm gonna kinda give you a spectrum in three examples because I love talking about movies. So this is a tangent on some female-centered works I've seen lately (and what is refreshing or a move forward).
The one that happens heavily within the patriarchal structure: Atomic Blonde. I was excited about seeing a movie where the main character was this woman being a badass spy in many of the ways we are used to from, say, 007 movies. Lorraine is clever, powerful, interesting, and she even has her own Bond-Girl-type romantic interest. It reminded me of the article we read about Wicked taking tropes from the genre and queering them. Just instead of a musical, it's the spy flick. And only a touch. Granted, it would have been so much better with more female involvement behind the camera; it is still deeply entrenched in design for the male gaze. Is it intended to make people think? No. Is it nuanced, unproblematically feminist, or the best example of a queer relationship in cinema? Not in the slightest. But! BUT! I'm encouraged that this is something that was designed for mass consumption-- the studio thought an action film with a queer female lead would do well! Baby steps, y'all! I mean, let's aim higher. But you know, silver linings.
Encouragement rating: low but existent, the feeling you get after eating a fast food hamburger because you're running late and that's what was readily available, your sexist cousin might be open to more female action heroes... but your feminist friends will be pretty cross that it falls so short of its hype It kept me amused enough to overcome my feminist frustrations and Evil Bisexual pet peeve.
BUT WE CAN HAVE A FEMINIST SPY FLICK FOR REAL!
The unexpected one: I make no secret of my love for the 2015 movie Spy. Women run the show in this movie and it's cool to see. Not only because it signals opportunity and representation, but also because it never felt forced. I never saw a neon sign blinking THIS IS A SPY FILM FOR LADIES or any other metaphor for contrived, shallow rigamarole you like. Allison Janney is in charge of the CIA, Rose Byrne is the villain for a good part of the movie (it's not black and white), Morena Baccarin is a rival spy, and Melissa McCarthy as a woman who comes into her own and saves the day despite (predominantly) men's attempts to keep her down. Admittedly, the way Susan (McCarthy) gains confidence, a sense of self, and a sense of context was inspiring to me on a personal level. That's a neon sign blinking GOOD STORYTELLING.
The slick, sexy images we see in Atomic Blonde or other spy movies are queered into moments like when McCarthy's character is given gadgets designed to look like various proctological medications, for example. The catering toward the male gaze is eschewed, and the storytelling is far more character driven. Plus, the movie is really funny. To quote Bitch Flicks:
"In a world where “satire” is used as a descriptor for works like Entourage, the word might not have much meaning, but Spy, in the tradition of the best satire, makes fun of conventions we might not have realized we were sick of–like the cat-lady typecasting. Also, while male action heroes like 007 and Jason Bourne never make a wrong move, no matter how extreme the situations they find themselves in and shoot and kill others with all the sensitivity of a giant swatting at flies, two of the women in Spy who kill react more like the rest of us might: neither plays it cool [...] I kept on waiting for the film to go wrong, for someone to humiliate Susan for her size, which miraculously never happens. Others doubt her skill and the villainess Rayna (Rose Byrne, having a ball as a spoiled, rich Daddy’s girl with a British accent) rips apart her fashion sense, even after Susan changes into flattering, chic evening wear, but no one ever comes close to making a fat “joke” or comment, which has to be some kind of milestone."
The writer and director, Paul Feig, is known for a commitment toward a push for greater representation of women in the industry (behind the camera as well as in front of it).
Encouragement rating: the feeling you get from drinking hot cocoa, plenty of jokes to keep your sexist cousin happy in between bouts of asking where Jude Law went while your feminist friends are generally pleasantly surprised with how women are represented
BUT CAN WE GET A FILM THAT IS BOTH FEMINIST AND FROM A WOMAN?
The one that set out to be feminist and thought provoking: I only recently saw The Love Witch, but I already was aware from reviews that it was something special. Auteur Anna Biller's 60s style examination of passion and gender roles has been a darling of feminist critics since its 2016 release. And yooooooooo! A few quotes from articles about the film:
Indiewire: "Biller said people initially approached her film as representing the past. “Like, ‘Gender roles in the past that are obsolete’ and, ‘This stuff doesn’t happen anymore’ and, ‘We don’t need feminism anymore because we’re post-feminist,’ to suddenly everybody realizing, ‘Holy shit, this is very real, it’s very current, and it’s happening right now.'"
Vice: "For men, they get this incredibly stunning woman to look at, but on the other hand there's nothing emotionally gratifying for them. It just makes them surly," she laughs. Many of these moments are discussions about love and female selfhood, with Trish, Elaine's new friend, doubling as her foil. When Elaine discloses her thoughts on how to get a man to fall in love with her, Trish tells her that she sounds as though she's been brainwashed by the patriarchy."
LA Weekly: the title alone of "The Love Witch Is a Feminist Sexploitation Jewel" is gold
Glenn Kenny for RogerEbert.com: "Biller is not like Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, the directors of such retro-homaging genre fare as “Amer.” Those directors are formalists. Biller is a little closer to Peter Strickland, the filmmaker behind “The Duke of Burgundy,” which shares some of the themes of this film, but I think Biller’s a more astute and provocative thinker. The redolence of schlockiness she attaches to “The Love Witch” seems like an organic factor in her actual way of seeing. The movie is relentless in the way it poses questions about our culture’s way of dealing with the power of female sexuality (and it wouldn’t work without Robinson, whose appearance and performance is impeccable for the job) and acknowledges that there’s not only unease in these questions and their answers but also mordant hilarity."
I'm a fan of kitsch and camp so I was sucked in super quickly. I'm glad because otherwise I might have missed out! Rather than story you too much on plot points or how much I adore the aesthetic, I'll just let two of the scenes speak for themselves. "They teach us that a normative human being is a hyper-rationalist, stoic male." "Brainwashed by the patriarchy"
Encouragement rating: Pretty dang feminist. Pretty dang inspiring creatively and with regard to future potential for non-male identifying film makers. This is a visually stunning, intellectually stimulating, and carefully crafted production by women, for women, about women. While there is a clear line with regard to the binary on this one, it is done thought provokingly and with intention.
This was a long one! I got excited! Thanks for sticking with me!
"Seth, you're white. You have a safe space. It's called America."
When Osi posed the question about culturally specific initiatives and companies, the first thing I thought of was Amber Ruffin's safe space. In class we had discussed how our narratives in theatre (also the United States in general culturally) fall under the gaze of white (and heterosexual and cisgender) men. Most films and plays exist under that umbrella. It is demanding enough to produce any work of theatrical art on its own, but the additional challenge of fighting against the many facets of this hegemony is exhausting. Institutions like Ma-Yi, National Black Theatre, and the Hispanic American Arts Center are necessary as a space where there is more artistic freedom (vs. staying in those "lanes"), safety, inspiration, and camaraderie among groups of people who are marginalized in American society. As Amber puts it: "Safe spaces give you the energy you need to deal with the world's bullshit. I look around at my heroes and the loves of my life and I know that I am not alone. And if they can do it, so can I."
I wanna know where she got those Chris Pine coasters. She's right: he is cute.
The Lanes
I found myself thinking about everything that we don't commonly see. I remember watching these buzzfeed videos and really having my eyes opened to how incredibly monochromatic casting often is (plus how actors of color are pigeonholed into narrow, specific categories-- like performing in "ethnic family dramas"). In the first of the three, the casting calls they are reading are just so profoundly troubling.
"If I hear one more time Latinas referred to as spicy, I'm gonna freak out! And then people will tell me I'm being hot blooded and spicy." "Whenever race is called out, it's to play out a stereotype." "Again with, like, skin darknessdetermining your worth."
"... Recreating movie posters where we are the heroes for once instead of the sidekick."
"Minorities make up nearly 40% of the U.S. population yet only represent 16.7% of roles in Hollywood... 81% of movies seen by black people do not feature a black cast..."
Everyone. It's everyone's responsibility. This is a mentality around what kind of stories we tell and how we tell them, and a change in mentality requires more than just, say, directors to be on board. It is important for allies to be conscious of their choices (for example, casting shouldn't follow a similar pattern to casting Emma Stone as an Asian American woman in "Aloha"-- there are fabulous actors who are actually of whichever background is needed for a character who are talented and available so cast them) but more important to give the microphone to people of color and listen. It is a vital part of this change to include a greater number of people of color as playwrights, directors, educators, etc. Even leaving the actors aside for a moment to talk about production-- if our entertainment is meant to reflect who we are, it is ridiculous that-- in a society in which about 40% of the population are people of color-- film directors of color are outnumbered 3 to 1 (12.6%) and screenwriters of color clock in at around 5 to 1 (8.1% for film, 7.1% for broadcast television) according to the UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report 2018 (PDF here). That is not how we disrupt and ultimately change the hegemony of the mayonnaisegaze! Alex Chester has brilliant points to make on this topic (stereotyping, underrepresentation, getting "behind the table" too) and I can't encourage you enough to check out her blog post, The White-List Cabaret is About to Flip the Script. Similarly, if you were as inspired by the Lew reading we had in class as I was, you might also enjoy How to Cast Actors of Color.
But seriously, guys. Let's work together to move the industry away from being all... well...
Just gonna state the obvious example here for the first part of Dharmik's prompt
I, Tonya was based on true events. If you recall, a surprising amount of the source material was recreated word-for-word (or triple-axel-by-triple-axel) in the film. Or, to quote sports writer Katie Baker: "Rogers combined both stories into a fast-moving meta-narrative “based on irony free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews with Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly,” as the I, Tonya title card puts it." This is an important point to consider: even within factual events there can be information that doesn't add up. Heck, the real Tonya Harding's interview about the film in New York Times alone is full of inconsistencies (my favorite would be her take on how often she is portrayed cursing). These antithetical points in reports of an event have to be combed out into a consistent narrative for a theatrical work. Similarly, some parts of the story need to be condensed, altered, etc. to move the plot along. That said, it isn't as if more exact tellings of an occurrence don't contend with the same issues. Even in accurate recounting of an event, you will have biases, a focus on a certain person or group of people over others, etc. You can read incredibly compelling histories of the American Revolution that laud it as a remarkable fight against tyranny but also find equally convincing narratives of it being an inevitable event for when a colonial power overreached itself. Both varieties will be impeccably sourced.
Or, you know, sometimes we make musicals about one particular founding father. Whatever works.
Wait wait wait but not like alternative facts or anything
No! But it is hard to wrestle with the issue that you will often run into with verbatim works/documentaries is what constitutes the ever elusive "capital T" truth. Honestly, sometimes I think it's better to lean into the fact that you are trying to be persuasive or expressive than to try to present something as a 100% precise recounting. The best way I can think of to get into this in a snappy blog format is to focus on Werner Herzog and his concept of "ecstatic truth."
His famous Minnesota Declaration makes some fascinating and insightful points about the limits of Cinema Verité and what truth is in cinema.
"Minnesota declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema 1. By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants. 2. One well-known representative of Cinema Verité declared publicly that truth can be easily found by taking a camera and trying to be honest. He resembles the night watchman at the Supreme Court who resents the amount of written law and legal procedures. "For me," he says, "there should be only one single law: the bad guys should go to jail."
Unfortunately, he is part right, for most of the many, much of the time.
3. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable. 4. Fact creates norms, and truth illumination. 5. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization. 6. Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts. 7. Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue. 8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crash through the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressure is mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, the former wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "You can´t legislate stupidity." 9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down. 10. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn't call, doesn't speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts. And don´t you listen to the Song of Life. 11. We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile. 12. Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue."
He has since provided six addendums to these points. These were predominantly inspired the recent discourse on post-truth/truthiness/fake news/what-have-you.
"I. With the arrival of the new term “alternative facts” in the political arena, the question of facts and the question of truth have acquired an unexpected urgency. II. Facts cannot be underestimated as they have normative power. But they do not give us insight into the truth, or the illumination of poetry. Yes, accepted, the phone directory of Manhattan contains four million entries, all of them factually verifiable. But do we know why Jonathan Smith, correctly listed, cries into his pillow every night? III. The argument of rearranging facts constituting a lie points only to shallow thinking and the fetish of self-reference. IV. Patron Saints of the Minnesota Declaration: William Shakespeare: “The most truthful poetry is the most feigning.” V. André Gide: “I modify facts in such a way that they resemble truth more than reality.” VI. Michelangelo: Taking a good look at his statue of the Pietà, we notice that Jesus taken from the cross is a man of 33, but his mother is only 17. Does Michelangelo lie to us? Does he mislead us? Does he defraud us? He just shows us the innermost truth about the Man of Sorrows, and his mother, the Virgin."
These points resonate with me to a certain extent because I struggle to imagine a documentary devoid of politics, immune to bias, and always in the habit of providing completely accurate context. To err is human. Also, I don't think anyone can every be truly objective.
But the longer I go down that rabbit hole, the closer I get to being a full-on participant in Philosophical Truth or Dare.
Mini play because eff it
"Queer Eye, Sex, and Taxes"
1: Oh my goddd I was supposed to leave for coffee twenty minutes ago but this awful comedian one has me glued! (A beat) I need to see his hair cut. (Pause) He's so awful.
2: Oh yeah that one is really something. I got a kick out of when they were testing the room to see if he could have sex (awkward giggle).
1: Oh yeah! The kicker was "mom just fast forward through this next part please"
(2 laughs.)
1: Their fucking redecorations and extra things are tens and tens of thousands-- I need a show that gives me thousands of free money in redecorations and makeover and photoshoot and website.
2: (A beat) I wonder if they have to claim any of it on their taxes.
[Curtain up to reveal a desolate wasteland. A heroic looking man in torn clothes emerges from the darkness.]
MAN: This war isn’t over yet! True-- everything may have been taken from us, but I vow it: friends, as long as I have these two hands and this fire in my heart we shall persevere!
[Hand falls off of MAN and speeds away offstage.]
MAN: Shit.
[Blackout]
I dunno, guys. Midterms are turning my ass even more nihilistic and absurdist than it normally is.
Sometimes Making Art Can Be a Long Shot
Get it? It's a pun! Yay!
First, I shared this with Dharmik in my week's digest but I think it bears repeating: the fight in Oldboy (2003) that lasts over three minutes in one, continuous take is mesmerizing and exhausting to watch. This usage of time has a profound effect emotional effect on me unlike anything I've felt before when watching a fight scene. This is brutal and unromantic. This is relentless. Something with more conventional methods (jump cuts, angle variation, etc) wouldn't have been so impactful. You may have seen an homage to the scene in the Netflix Daredevil and for good reason! Park Chan-wook's team devoted 3 days and 17 takes toward making something truly iconic. Hold on to your Schechner articles! Here it is:
I'm not the only one saying this is something special, by the way. It gets some solid attention in the Washington Post, from Rodger Ebert, and in the Guardian (from the latter: "He then takes on dozens of aggressors, and Park's camera tracks along the narrow corridor watching the pitched battle in profile, right-to-left, like a video-game graphic or a Bayeux Tapestry of urban warfare: another extraordinary coup du cinéma").
But Surely We Can Have Longer Takes Than Three and a Half Minutes!
Hell, let's get the whole damn movie in one shot. If you haven't heard of Russian Ark, I'll break it down like this: a ghost with a tragic history guides you through 300 years of Russian History, it's a single 96 minute long take, it made cinema history, and it's bloody gorgeous!
Here's the trailer:
Oh, and in case you're in Meisner-brain and think it still sounds too easy to do, guess what? They only had four hours on a single day to shoot this in the museum. No pressure, team! If nothing else, it is an impressive and gargantuan feat. That said, I can't reiterate enough how positively stunning it is! Here is the entire film if you want to watch it and want to watch it NOW (the audio isn't always the best on this upload, though, so I'd recommend streaming it instead if at all possible):
I'm in Grad School. I Need Something Short.
Fine. Then, it is important you know about the comedic genius of the 30-Second Bunny movies of Jennifer Shiman. Most of her re-enactments are of R-rated films of a certain brutality... which makes the juxtaposition of cartoon bunnies performing them... well, frankly, hilarious. And I doubt they would be as funny or interesting if they were, say, 30 minutes. Or feature films in their own right.
Here are some of my faves. Bask in the leporine glory:
When I think about interpretations of plays that use a "found" or "transformed space," my mind usually jumps to Shakespeare. For example, Edward Hall and Michael Boyd put on a production of the Henry VI cycle in an abattoir. This was used to ultimately highlight the butchery and brutality of the War of the Roses as the characters describe it.
For some moments of "wait... what is happening???" see below:
Talkback about the show:
But then I was all...
I remember Austin talking about an app that guides you through a murder mystery and I couldn't help thinking about alternate reality games like Cicada 3301. To the uninitiated, here's an adorable British man giving you the run-down:
I think it could be really fun to take some elements of this game (perhaps on a more surface level; I sure as hell don't want to download Tor) and use it for a show not unlike how The 15th Line used twitter. I'm just being more expansive than that. We can use the Internet itself as a found space where the space belongs to both the performer and the audience. Within this framework we could use elements of the text of The Changeling (you know-- the one our Voice 2 book is obsessed with) as our guide for a disjointed narrative about appearance, deceit, and... how nothing is secret forever once it's on the internet. The biggest reveals of the show (murder and deception) should be the secrets uncovered by our digital audience.
I know we graduate students have soooo much time so here's the Helen Mirren Changeling in its 3-hour-long glory:
Naturally, as we are using the text as not necessarily "the starting point nor the goal of the production," we have a lot of interpretive freedom. Beatrice could be a make-up tutorial blogger, for instance! Maybe you could find Alsemero's potions in real life by following a handful of clues! We could uncover the plot to murder Diaphanta by following certain twitter threads-- and Diaphanta herself can have a vlog that brings back memories of Lonelygirl15. Why stop there? We can have multiple vlogs or blog postings from the various characters. The romance in the madhouse can be expressed by coded cabalistic writings on reddit a la r/A858. The possibilities are endless, y'all!
That's all well and good but how do we get people hot on The Changeling trail?
You'll call me crazy (and maybe I am), but something like Chatroulette would be ideal. The audience is actively putting themselves out there to see something unusual (so you aren't forcing a show on them necessarily). They could be easily enticed by something with viral potential and then given the requisite information to fall down the rabbit hole we have concocted for them. We could take a top 40 hit (like "Bad at Love" or "Havana," for instance) and give it the Steve Kardynal treatment all within a vague context of our narrative:
What sorts of things would you say about the piece you want to create?
It's a love letter to the Internet's history of the mysterious and unexpected. Simultaneously, we have an examination of the isolation and artifice of the digital age-- how it corrupts us, maddens us, and entrances us.
Death. Of course, I want to talk about death. When people pass on, there inevitably is someone who considers their passing tragic-- whether it is because the decedent was too young, because so many people depended on that person and are now defenseless, or if the tragedy is that they died alone and were utterly unmourned. We all die just as surely as we are born... but death doesn't lose its sting despite being so commonplace.
So You're Going to Show Me Death Art
Yep. Enter Sarah Sudhoff's project "At the Hour of Our Death." The photographer snapped pictures of textiles that had been stained by someone's passing. Her thoughts on this work are moving and too eloquent not to quote: "Death, like birth, is part of a process. However, the processes of death are often shielded from view. Today in Western society most families leave to a complete stranger the responsibility of preparing a loved one’s body for its final resting place [...] Now the stain of death is quickly removed and the scene is cleaned and normalized [...] The images are my attempt to slow the moments before and after death into a single frame, to allow what is generally invisible to become visible, and to engage with a process from which we have become disconnected."
I'm not ignorant of the fact that we live in a culture that is uncomfortable talking about dying. Artwork that is "too real" in that regard can be jarring. That said, I think the reasoning behind this project is incredibly justified and beautiful. The work is presented tastefully and without a touch of exploitation. She is doing something that is motivated on a deep personal level and we as an audience benefit from taking a moment to pause-- to slow down time and interact with societal "dark matter." I would argue that "media-fication" of death is needed-- at least a little.
I should add Sudhoff's project is gorgeous and fits that bill. This is far from something like Logan Paul's infamous stroll through Aokigahara-- which would be the photo negative of her artwork (his video was tasteless, had no higher purpose beyond his own personal gain, etc). She approaches the topic with respect, sensitivity, and vision.
What Would a Manifesto Look Like for a Person Who Was Super Into This as a Kind of Artistic Ideal?
I'm going to rant like Marinetti because I can...
As a theatre artist I am stunned-- STUNNED! I am utterly aghast with how much of your "dark matter" there is to everything that might make us uncomfortable. The occultation and sanitization of death, decay, and (let's be honest) most things unpleasant is a crime! We rob ourselves of a truer understanding of our world, of nature, OF LIFE! Life is dirty. Life is that torn up bit of upholstery with the blood of a seizure victim permeating through the strands of thread. The fluids look like dendrites and LIKE DENDRITES they shoot information to our brains faster than the blink of an eye. That is power. It is amazing how much life there is in death!
Friends, do not mistake me. I do not mean to suggest that onstage death should be made to shock and frighten. Something exploitative and vulgar like a man being fed is own viscera until he dies is best left to lesser artists who are only interested in notoriety and a paycheck. Instead, we should look death in the face in a way that is candid-- and therefore beautiful. Not just death! Anything unpleasant! Any uncomfortable part of life should be viewed in stunning REALISTIC detail. We cannot continue to keep ourselves numb! It cannot be afforded!
Let us DARE to be ugly! Let us DARE to look at something that shakes us to the core! Art should be DARING! Art should make us feel ALIVE-- even as we stare Death in his eye sockets.
Now, I could go on about the book and its gazillion incarnations for days (and I probably will corner you and force that conversation at some point because I'm bored), but today we are focusing on the Universal film Dracula and 1922's Nosferatu. Even if you have never seen the 1931 Dracula, you probably will recognize images from the film. On a cultural level, the "classic" Dracula people think of is Bela Lugosi.
That ain't Count Count creeping in the shadows.
A Copy That Is Better Than the Original
Enter Drácula (or, as it is sometimes known, "Spanish Dracula"). See, back in 1931 the technology hadn't been perfected yet when it came to dubbing movies but Universal wanted to distribute in Latin America. The simplest way to resolve the issue was to have an entirely different production performed in Spanish but with the same sets, scripts, etc. In this particular instance, the English team shot during the day and the Spanish team kept literal vampire hours. They would watch the dailies and find ways to improve upon what had been done in the earlier shoot. It is an interesting watch and a darling of many critics. Some go so far as to say that it is superior to the original. Here's a little more detailed info plus an interview with one of the stars, Lupita Tovar.
Pardon how 90's fabulous this is.
Surely Someone Else Copied the 1931 Dracula
Oddly enough, another production that paid extraordinary attention to the Lugosi Dracula was Mel Brooks' Dracula: Dead and Loving It. It certainly pales in comparison to Young Frankenstein and is not favored among critics; however, there are many intricate details from the "original" film present. So I guess this is a not-as-good-as-the-original copy. I'll let Cinemassacre take you through the deets.
Not entirely without merit.
WAIT! EMILY! It Also Had Nods to Nosferatu!
When you're right, you're right. Lets take a ride on the the copy of a copy train. A decade before the Universal film premiered, the narrative of Dracula appeared in the silent film Nosferatu.
So, Nosferatu is... not Dracula right? He's called Count Orlock instead... and the whole thing takes place in Bremen instead of Whitby... so maybe it's a different story. The Stoker estate called shenanigans. The first legal action they took was Stoker's widow refusal to grant the approval for the film to be made. In the second legal action Prana Films was sued for copyright infringement and all copies were destroyed. Save just one. That one is why we can see the film today and now shot of the shadow creeping up the wall appears everywhere!
Then this unofficial copy of Dracula inspired a film by the same name under the direction of Werner Herzog in 1979 (4/4 by Ebert). The Herzog Nosferatu is not a remake by any stretch of the imagination but in the world of simulation as we've discussed it in class, the through-line is unmistakable.
BUT THEN!
For even more copies which get us farther away from Bram Stoker's Dracula, the 1922 Nosferatu was given the Noises Off treatment in Shadow of the Vampire. It's a film about the making of Murnau's film... with the added complication that the actor portraying Count Orlcok actually is a vampire!
By the time we get to the Nosferatu-style character in What We Do in the Shadows, we are so far from the original Dracula to the point that it is, as Andrea so aptly put the concept, "a version almost unrecognizable from its “authentic” origins."
I'm going a little less than theatrical but still performative (a la Dr. Fletcher's example with regard to the Onion) and discussing Ritual Pasta.
Ritual... Pasta. Like spaghetti?
Not in the least! Or, okay, this particular spaghetti is pretty creepy but that's not what I mean by creepypasta! Ritual Pasta is born out of Creepypasta, which is a website dedicated to creepy fiction stories, legends, and images from around the web. Some creepypastas have even become novels (my favorite is Penpal). Think of these as open source urban legends-- because plenty of people expand upon existing narratives. As I'm sure you can imagine, occasionally creepypastas can get out of hand and can be given too much credence from its audience. Today, we are getting into how this can be true with ritual creepypastas (or ritual pastas) which require a performative element to achieve something (usually) sinister...
Like Slenderman?
Wow!!! Good call! Yeah!
So to begin. If you are uninitiated, one of the most popular creepypastas is the legend of Slenderman. I've attached a video that summarizes his whole deal nicely:
WAIT WAIT WAIT did he say murder?!?
Yes, these girls were performing serving as "proxies" to Slenderman (that is, under his influence/possession or helping him). There are several rituals that can be found littered about the internet that are designed to assist one in attaining this status in some capacity, but the one that garners the most attention is that of two twelve-year-old girls in Wisconsin who murdered a mutual friend in order to demonstrate (or perform) loyalty to Slenderman (here is the BBC coverage of the event and subsequent trial-- which was so extensive I couldn't pick just one). If we want to talk about "realness" of a performative action being too much, this is Poe's Law in action (given that these girls accepted the legends of Slenderman to be genuine). I grant that this is darker than parody or satire, but it is still a strong example not only of the difference between illusion and reality being "too" blurred but also of there being serious consequences.
So... creepypasta needed a more obvious wink to its audience?
They have made it even more abundantly clear that creepypastas are not real. While I personally do not believe creepypasta failed to "wink" hard enough, it should be noted that the story became ever increasingly "too real" once it was a matter of worldwide interest (i.e. confusion in the public about whether or not Slenderman was indeed a real person). In the aftermath of the attack, creepypasta.com released a statement of condolences to the family of the victim, condemning the acts of the perpetrators, and emphasizing that the legend of Slenderman is completely fabricated:
"SLENDERMAN IS NOT A REAL PERSON/ENTITY. As far as I’m aware, most news outlets have done their due diligence and thus no media personality is claiming that Slenderman actually exists, so I’m not exactly sure where people are getting this misinformation. However, I’m still seeing quite a lot of comments from people who believe that A) he is a real person and B) he owns and is responsible for every single Creepypasta-related website, tumblr, YouTube channel, Facebook group, forum, and wiki. This is simply not true. Slenderman is not, nor has he ever been, anything more than a fictional character created by SomethingAwful user Victor Surge. As is the case with many other fictional characters, he has fans who indulge themselves by creating videos, games, and fanfictions about him, but this does not make him real any more than such fandom would make The Walking Dead or Batman real." To read more of their statement, go here: https://www.creepypasta.com/statement-wisconsin-stabbing/
Both girls were placed under psychiatric evaluation. One has already been sentenced to 25 years in an institution and the second will be sentenced shortly (her evaluation period was scheduled to be around November or December of 2017). While we are dealing with children who are clinically mentally ill, the fact remains that Slenderman inspired panic, confusion, and an intense debate about what sort of material we allow children to consume.
Oh there are. Cue the Elevator Game! (Rules and description in a fun video below.)
There are not only people who insist upon the game's authenticity, but also those who consider the performance of this ritual as component within the mysterious death of Elisa Lam. This belief is present enough that Elisa's picture is on the right hand side of the monitor when you google "elevator game."
We are going to talk about tweaking of the standard narrative for passion plays/films about Jesus Christ into Monty Python's The Life of Brian. First off, I want to emphasize that passion plays were born out of religious ritual and, while theatrical in nature, are performative acts given the intent toward inspiring worship and belief in facilitating a greater connection to the Christian God. While I think this fits neatly under Schechner's umbrella, for Butler we need to go into the socioreligious context of the Thatcher-era United Kingdom.
Britain has a long history of passion plays dating back to the middle ages. Now, by the time The Life of Brian premiered in 1979, the religious hegemony of Christianity was well established in the UK: all of the members of Monty Python had gone through some extent of religious education in their youth, the Anglican Church had been the state religion for centuries, and the majority of Britons identified as some denomination of Christian (I don't have a source for a statistic for the late seventies but according to the BBC 64% of the population identified themselves as Christians in 2010-- so one might imagine the percentage was greater 30 odd years prior given that it was about 80% in 1950). According to IMDb, there were at least ten films that were directly biographical tales of Jesus of Nazareth (many of which were a la passion play) by the time The Life of Brian came on the scene. I cover all this in attempt to say, that both the performance of Christianity and the performative act of a passion play are both being queered by the Pythons.
Statistics are boring! Get to the tweaking!
Right, right. Okay, so the film follows the unfortunate adventures of a neighbor of Jesus who gets mistaken for being the Messiah. We see a handful of parallels between the lives of the two men throughout the film that give way to the Pythonesque satire we know and love (some of us). Some examples (among many):
The three wise men mistaking the newborn Brian for the infant Jesus, only to realize their mistake shortly thereafter (and shoving poor Mandy, mother of Brian, to the floor)
Brian attending the Sermon on the Mount but being so far back that nobody can hear and the message gets garbled into being about dairy
The iconic, controversial, and musical crucifixion:
Furthermore, the production team re-used many of the technical leftovers from the Zeffirelli Jesus of Nazareth while they were shooting in Tunisia. It literally had the look of filmed biographical depictions of the life of Christ. For other behind-the-scenes tidbits, here is a mentalfloss article that covers all of that.
John Cleese described the intent behind the satire of The Life of Brian was to criticize "closed systems of thought, whether they are political or theological or religious or whatever: systems by which, whatever evidence is given to a person, he merely adapts it, fits it into his ideology." The film was intentionally made not only to be funny but to encourage freedom of thought and, to once again quote Cleese, to "[...] take a critical view. Find out about it, don't just believe because somebody tells you to. Someone in a pulpit says something, question it, work it out."
Did people interpret this tweaking in different ways?
Oh yes. People were tweaked.
Where to begin on this one? The Life of Brian premiered in the United States and was protested not only by Christians but also by some Jewish groups (New York Times article from 1979). That said, the film would also potentially face blasphemy laws in the UK. It was outright banned in some areas of the country. These bans and condemnations in the public discourse were spearheaded by conservative religious citizens (and organizations)-- most notably: Mary Whitehouse (to whom the script was leaked before its release) and Malcolm Muggeridge.
Muggeridge, in addition to the Bishop of Southwark, debated against Michael Palin and John Cleese of Monty Python on the program Friday Night, Saturday Morning. This episode was famously aggressive as the men argued interpretation (funny/satirical/having a good message vs. obscene/blasphemous/offensive/ridiculing a force of good in the world). The full debate is below for your viewing... pleasure... if you're into arguing... which I am sometimes.
I'm sure it will surprise nobody that the film still inspires controversy to this day (for example, two years ago when a vicar ruffled feathers by playing The Life of Brianas a part of fundraising for the church). Heck, the ban of the film in Aberystwyth was only just lifted in 2009.
Norway vs. Sweden
Here's a fun but telling little factoid that emphasizes the divisive nature of the film/its interpretation: Norway had outright banned The Life of Brian, so advertisers in Sweden had espoused the slogan, "So funny it was banned in Norway."
Excuse me! I was promised a turducken!
This is more bonus material for you all than anything, but... The sketch comedy show Not the Nine O'Clock News did a fun parody of the Friday Night, Saturday Morning debate (foliage on the set and all) in which a film about Jesus was upsetting the followers of Monty Python.
I want a performance theory discussion from the perspective of a theatre artist
So... performance... it's basically everything someone could do, right?
I mean. Yes.
In class I was slightly bewildered by the notion that essentially everything is performance. There was something vague about all of this "twice-done behavior," "not-me and not-not me," and Carlson's assertion on pages 6 and 7 that performance has brought a certain theatricality into all of the human sciences. It was handy to dig deep into my own thoughts on the matter. Upon reflection, I will maintain that performance is an all encompassing umbrella for human behavior after all! Indeed, I will further assert that, as Dr. Fletcher had suggested in his post, theatre is not different than performance but rather a specialized sub-category of performance.
Let's start with an ELI5 conceptualization of performative behavior. I know I need it.
I found it helpful to view performance as the action that is being examined, judged, or observed. For example, when Jerry has a performance review at his new job at the zoo, performance does not mean acting on the stage, how he performs traditional masculinity, or how he performs being American on a cultural level. Rather, the performance his superiors would be discussing would be things like the action of his behaving in an accomodating manner toward guests (which he doesn't) and his effectiveness (or lack thereof) in keeping the animals' enclosures sanitary.
I mean, come on, Jerry! The monkeys didn't get dysentery on their own.
So where does theatre come in?
Okay. Like all things in life, I'm starting this by putting it in terms of cats. If performance is saying something is a feline (felidae), then theatre is like specifying that the feline in question is a tiger. To expand on this idea for those of you who do not speak fluent cat lady, the two things that make theatre its own distinct category in my estimation are as follows:
As a work of art, there is an apparent significance beyond the literal in theatre. That is to say, we are to espouse States' binocular view of the world (page 8 from the reading) but take it a step further to include his idea of theatre as "predatory... not just mirror up to Nature but also consumes it." This implies a certain hunger or need for expression of what human life is like. If you want to get really extra about this point, I think Nietzsche described it well (if a touch histrionically) in The Birth of Tragedy: "his oneness with the primal nature of the universe is revealed to him in a symbolical dream-picture (5)."
Everyone involved is aware that what is being performed has fictitious elements. This goes beyond an acknowledgement of the mimetic or semiotic; it is also important to note that neither the performer nor the observer(s) believe the theatrical event itself has direct supernatural consequences (thereby excluding things like ritual, shamanism, etc). I realize that this would put Greek plays in a position of straddling the line as the plays were a part of a religious festival. However, these theatrical productions were not thought to individually bring about something in a straightforward fashion (in contrast to, say, a shamanistic gut releasing a spirit or sacrificing bulls in order to petition a god for a favor).
But you're dying to know how football isn't theatre
I appreciate your enthusiasm, you cheeky MFAs.
Okay, so football isn't theatre because it certainly doesn't meet both requirements. First of all, there are few (if any) performers or observers who believe any given sporting event is fictitious. The players are real. The game is real. The dislike I have for the Dallas Cowboys is real. Furthermore, football is fairly literal with regard to what the audience is meant to interpret. Compared to something like Death of a Salesman, you are going to have a substantially more difficult time finding deeper meanings and themes in a game of American football through the lens of being a work of theatrical expression. I'm not saying it can't be done, but you'd have a time of it.
Crossroads (2002) would be somewhere on the spectrum of deeper meaning about our humanity. I'll leave it to you to decide where.
Emily and Britney Spears, you did your best but I'm still feeling a bit unclear
(Side note) If you're hanging out with our poor extraterrestrial friend, it might be helpful to point out that theatre has a handful of frequently used conventions that are decent indicators that said alien is probably watching something under the performance sub-heading of theatre. A particular favorite of mine would be that if people are engaged in mimesis of a story that follows the Hero's Journey as outlined by Joseph Campbell, it's a pretty safe bet that it's some variety of work of theatrical art. Theatrical events don't always follow this pattern (and I'm sure there are exceptions within the heroic formula-- I'm looking at you, elaborate rites for monomyth-type deities), but bloody hell it sure happens a lot!
