This has been brewing for a while after watching this video and the responses to it. What's been disheartening about all this is what this reveals about the position of the Black artist. It seems that we can't win for losing. Everybody, it seems, wants a piece of what we create. Everyone, it seems, believes we should create for purposes other than our own. Everyone, it seems, has something to say about what we create. Ironically, these clamoring voices push us from the center of our own process, a process that requires us to be centered and in touch with our own voices.
Granted, many Black artists have decided that it's a sucker's game to pay too much attention to that. I'm one of them. But it still bothers me when I come across this attitude that because I am a Black artist, that I need to represent myself a certain way, represent my people a certain way, or represent my experience a certain way if I want my work to be seen as authentic, valuable, or meaningful. In effect, what is valued about an artist who is Black is not authentic self-expression or the capacity to imagine and create new things, but to put what is created to a specific purpose. It is the mindset that says that the reason why we should learn about Black history, Black culture, Black literature, Black art, Black music, and so on is not because Black people are human beings who have history and culture and create literature and art and music, but because the history, culture, art, and music of Black people are useful to others.
So, as much as I dislike what Tyler Perry does, I can understand him saying that Spike Lee needs to go to hell. As much as I don't like how The Help tells a story about Black women, I can understand why Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer pushed back against Tavis Smiley trying to hold them to a standard that no White artist is asked to uphold.
Don't get it twisted. If you thought I was only talking about Black folks doing this, I wasn't. White folks do it too. I have a post in me somewhere about the 5 types of stories Black folks are allowed to bring to mainstream audiences, but that's for another time.
Are you getting what I'm saying here?
A blog by a playwright who wrote a play about a famous actress coming out of a TV, with a few thoughts on diversity, social justice, and indie theatre.
Showing posts with label aesthetics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aesthetics. Show all posts
March 9, 2012
October 21, 2011
Emptiness and the living playwright
It may seem strange for me to say this, but the biggest influence on my work as a playwright is Peter Brook's The Empty Space and The Open Door. The Empty Space is one of the first books about theatre I ever picked up. At the time, I only plucked them off the shelf because they were short and easy for me to understand. Little did I know how fortuitous it was for this piece to appeal to me. From the first sentence, I was immediately made aware of the sheer possibility of theatre:
If I can be said to have anything approaching a philosophy of theatre-making, that would be it. This idea of emptiness as a core component of theatre-making fascinates me as an artist. What a liberating, empowering concept! To make vital theatre that engages audiences at every moment, you don't need a building, or sets, or a light/sound board. All you need are people and space. Imagine that!"I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged." -- Peter Brook, The Empty Space
The Open Door is the book that made me realize that making theatre that captivates and touches an audience depends not on a complex intellectual edifice, but the freedom to explore and discover. This helped free me from feeling obligated to explain so much about my plays, whether in the script itself or when collaborating with others.
Of course, Peter Brook was working with playwrights who are either dead or not present during the production.
As a living playwright, this puts me in a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, I want to help collaborators in whatever way I can. On the other hand, I want to give people the space to discover their own meanings for the play. Sure, I want to be involved, and I want the intentions I have to be honored, but at the end of the day, I wrote a play, not a manifesto.
In my own writing, I deliberately create empty spaces, and I am often reluctant to make any definitive statements about my work's meaning or intent. For one thing, those things are not static. Who I am when I initially write a script is often not the same person as who I am six months after the final draft. Another thing is that I enjoy making room for a variety of perspectives and approaches. Giving my scripts this free space, I find, does much to keep the work fresh and allows for more powerful collaborations with fellow artists and audiences.
What about you? How do you create empty spaces in your own work as a theatre maker?
October 19, 2011
Follow-up "Moneyball" post at TCG Circle!
At TCG Circle, I ask, "What if . . . theatres played Moneyball?"
Then I dig deeper by asking, “What if, instead of relying on gut reactions and chemistry, we figured out a way to describe, observe, and measure what we are looking for?”
Check it out and drop a few of your ideas!
Then I dig deeper by asking, “What if, instead of relying on gut reactions and chemistry, we figured out a way to describe, observe, and measure what we are looking for?”
Check it out and drop a few of your ideas!
October 13, 2011
What if . . . Indie theatre played Moneyball?
There's rich teams, and there's poor teams. Then there's 50 feet of crap, and then there's us."
I'm not much of a sports fan, so Moneyball was a real departure for me in terms of my normal film viewing habits. That said, I was glad I went to see it because what I saw got me thinking about the way we approach making theatre.
In the film, the Oakland A's is a major league baseball team that doesn't have the money to attract and maintain star players. When they get someone really good, they're quickly snapped up by teams that can offer a lot more money. In effect, the A's were constantly hemorrhaging talent to rich teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox.
The story starts when the A's have just lost their top three players, which they have to replace on the same limited budget they've always been operating with. Having had enough of this, General Manager Billy Beane starts to question the conventional wisdom of finding and recruiting talent. Help comes in the form of Peter Brand, a Yale economics graduate who has adapted a system for determining just how much a player can contribute to winning games. It completely goes against the old way of thinking about what matters when it comes to how baseball games are won. The system leads to the A's uncovering rare gems in major league baseball who were previously overlooked because they looked and performed differently from the square-jawed All-American ideal of what makes a great baseball player. The result was what Peter Brand called the major league baseball version of the Island of Misfit Toys. Once they were able to maximize and synergize the unique talents of these players, the A's had a 20-game winning streak.
I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.
What if . . . we applied Moneyball thinking to off-off-Broadway theatre?
How would we take out the guesswork and bias of conventional wisdom to find what truly works for the theatre we want to make? How can we transform the way we relate to and organize with other people in the trenches with us? How can we maximize the strengths of off-off-Broadway theatre to uncover the hidden gems that get overlooked by the current way of doing things?
The way things look now, a lot of us are doing what Broadway does but on a smaller scale (in other words, cheaper). From our selection process to putting together a cast and crew to securing a venue for rehearsal and performance, there's nothing about the way we go about doing these things that separates us from the big guys. We even look for the same things when we do this, with a few cosmetic differences here and there.
We're all on the lookout for this vague thing called quality and striving for this thing we call excellence. Although this can lead to some amazing results, I sometimes wonder if this is despite the system rather than because of it.
What would happen if we took the search for quality out of the equation? What if, instead of relying on what we call talent or chemistry, we figured out a way to describe, observe, and measure what we are looking for? How would that change the way we talk about what we're trying to do? How would that change who could be involved in that process? How would that change where we worked? How we worked? Why we worked? What we worked with/on?
What I see happening is a move away from credentials and connections toward model where individuals come together to create theatre for a specific purpose in a distinctive way. Imagine more things like FUREE in Pins and Needles, things that could not happen in any other environment but one that made room for experimentation, encouraged the participation of non-specialists, and facilitated direct collaboration within communities.
At least, that's what I hope would happen.
-- Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, Moneyball
I'm not much of a sports fan, so Moneyball was a real departure for me in terms of my normal film viewing habits. That said, I was glad I went to see it because what I saw got me thinking about the way we approach making theatre.
In the film, the Oakland A's is a major league baseball team that doesn't have the money to attract and maintain star players. When they get someone really good, they're quickly snapped up by teams that can offer a lot more money. In effect, the A's were constantly hemorrhaging talent to rich teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox.
The story starts when the A's have just lost their top three players, which they have to replace on the same limited budget they've always been operating with. Having had enough of this, General Manager Billy Beane starts to question the conventional wisdom of finding and recruiting talent. Help comes in the form of Peter Brand, a Yale economics graduate who has adapted a system for determining just how much a player can contribute to winning games. It completely goes against the old way of thinking about what matters when it comes to how baseball games are won. The system leads to the A's uncovering rare gems in major league baseball who were previously overlooked because they looked and performed differently from the square-jawed All-American ideal of what makes a great baseball player. The result was what Peter Brand called the major league baseball version of the Island of Misfit Toys. Once they were able to maximize and synergize the unique talents of these players, the A's had a 20-game winning streak.
I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.
What if . . . we applied Moneyball thinking to off-off-Broadway theatre?
How would we take out the guesswork and bias of conventional wisdom to find what truly works for the theatre we want to make? How can we transform the way we relate to and organize with other people in the trenches with us? How can we maximize the strengths of off-off-Broadway theatre to uncover the hidden gems that get overlooked by the current way of doing things?
The way things look now, a lot of us are doing what Broadway does but on a smaller scale (in other words, cheaper). From our selection process to putting together a cast and crew to securing a venue for rehearsal and performance, there's nothing about the way we go about doing these things that separates us from the big guys. We even look for the same things when we do this, with a few cosmetic differences here and there.
We're all on the lookout for this vague thing called quality and striving for this thing we call excellence. Although this can lead to some amazing results, I sometimes wonder if this is despite the system rather than because of it.
What would happen if we took the search for quality out of the equation? What if, instead of relying on what we call talent or chemistry, we figured out a way to describe, observe, and measure what we are looking for? How would that change the way we talk about what we're trying to do? How would that change who could be involved in that process? How would that change where we worked? How we worked? Why we worked? What we worked with/on?
What I see happening is a move away from credentials and connections toward model where individuals come together to create theatre for a specific purpose in a distinctive way. Imagine more things like FUREE in Pins and Needles, things that could not happen in any other environment but one that made room for experimentation, encouraged the participation of non-specialists, and facilitated direct collaboration within communities.
At least, that's what I hope would happen.
October 5, 2011
Present-day African theatre forms
I came across this article about present-day African theatrical forms while doing research on a few things. It's an intriguing read, especially in comparison and contrast to discussions about devised theatre that crop up from time to time.
I'm not yet sure how I'll relate this to the poiesis as a whole, but I do know that I am reluctant to do what's always been done with African culture and limit analysis and engagement to specific forms as opposed to digging a bit deeper. For instance, I wouldn't want to end up focusing overmuch on masks and dance -- the predictably "exotic" elements -- while ignoring the different ways African cultures conceive and construct reality. I'm far more fascinated by, say, the impact of a diunital worldview upon the ways people of African descent construct and interpret story.
I'm not yet sure how I'll relate this to the poiesis as a whole, but I do know that I am reluctant to do what's always been done with African culture and limit analysis and engagement to specific forms as opposed to digging a bit deeper. For instance, I wouldn't want to end up focusing overmuch on masks and dance -- the predictably "exotic" elements -- while ignoring the different ways African cultures conceive and construct reality. I'm far more fascinated by, say, the impact of a diunital worldview upon the ways people of African descent construct and interpret story.
October 3, 2011
QBWL poiesis: go figure
Somebody beat me to it. It's worth a read, especially as a way of putting a lot of what I say in context. While the linked article described what womanist theatre is about, my poiesis seeks to be more about how to make it work.
September 10, 2011
QBWL poiesis: creating space
In my previous post about a queer Black womanist liberation poiesis, I talked about queer space and Black space and what I imagine that being like. Now that I'm thinking about how the next phases of Tulpa's journey will take shape, I am starting to believe that I was not far-reaching enough in my analysis. Rather than define queerness, Blackness, and womanhood as abstract concepts and attempting to create aesthetics from it, what I should have been doing is assuming queer Black womanhood from the start and working on the ramifications for allowing that to express itself. I should have known better than to try to force that reality into a format that was not meant to contain it.
I believe that, instead of trying to fit my selfhood into these neatly defined ideas, I instead need to start by affirming that . . .
I am Black. I am woman. I am queer.
And then asking . . .
Now what?
This shift in perspective is due in part to some soul-searching I had to do about what I wanted for Tulpa, or Anne&Me and the role that each potential collaborator will play. For a while now, I've been reflecting on some of the patterns I enabled in the development and performance of Tulpa, and I come at it from a few conflicting places. At the root of these conflicts was a question: How do I create a space where the queer Black woman voice can be heard as free of distortion as possible? Who is permitted in that space? What are the mandates of that space?
You have to understand why these questions are so essential to creating a praxis that allows me to exist in the fullness of myself.
Oftentimes, in order for the world at large to recognize my humanity, I must excise my queerness, my Blackness, my womanhood. I have to effectively erase the parts of my identity and the experiences I've had - those things that signify my uniqueness as a living, breathing human being - in order to even be allowed entrance into the human family. In a weird sort of cognitive jujitsu, I must mutilate my humanity in order to affirm it.
Given that the world is hostile to my full self - especially to my woman self, my queer self, my Black self - art becomes a sanctuary in which I can feel free to be myself for myself. Ironically, theatre allows full self-expression by giving us permission to fully be other selves. Just as a physical location creates a space that can be filled by the world of a play, the masks we wear create a space that our selves can fill. Through the dynamic interplay of these spaces and selves, a voice* can emerge.
*Here I should probably update my definition of voice as the relationship between the spaces created in the play. Plot, character, theme, and spectacle are aspects of the voice, but they do not define it as I suggested earlier.
But there must first be the space.
And, again, I must return to the question of how I will construct space. As you may have guessed, the creation of space has more far-reaching ramifications than the particulars of, say, blocking or design. It influences the relationships that artists have with each other, perhaps even the relationships that audience members have with one another and/or with the artists.
While it's tempting to simply say, "It all depends" and leave it at that, the fact of the matter is that I am creating a queer Black womanist liberation poiesis, so defining how to create such a space is part and parcel of this effort. If pressed for a concise definition, I would define a liberated queer Black womanist space as one where womanhood, Blackness, and queerness - all these symbols of Otherness - may be fully integrated into that space. It is a space that embraces Otherness as an essential component of selfhood and one that makes room for fully engaging that Otherness without stating or implying a reduction of the self to Otherness.
In more concrete terms, a liberated queer Black womanist space expresses its Blackness through diunital cognition (both-and thinking), is queerness through embracing difference and fluidity, its womanhood through birthing spaces via the self. Such a space is liberated because it frees those of us who dwell in these spaces to (finally!) express the fullness of who we are.
Of course, when creating these spaces, it is not simply a matter of stating, "This is what I want." Again, it must go back to praxis. What must be in place for this space to exist? What are the demands this space would place upon those who would step into it?
I honestly haven't thought about it too much, but the main thing that comes up is that it must serve the needs and interests of queer Black women by placing queer Black women at the center of knowledge and authority. This does not allow, say, a Skeeter to swoop in, take our stories, and use them primarily for her own gain. It does not allow someone who is not a queer Black woman to set the agenda, determine the terms of engagement, or control the process. Yet, it encourages self-examination. It encourages intimacy. It encourages solidarity. But it must be free of the taint of domination in order for us to find our own voices and realize our own potential for freedom.
I hope that explains it. Does it make sense?
I believe that, instead of trying to fit my selfhood into these neatly defined ideas, I instead need to start by affirming that . . .
I am Black. I am woman. I am queer.
And then asking . . .
Now what?
This shift in perspective is due in part to some soul-searching I had to do about what I wanted for Tulpa, or Anne&Me and the role that each potential collaborator will play. For a while now, I've been reflecting on some of the patterns I enabled in the development and performance of Tulpa, and I come at it from a few conflicting places. At the root of these conflicts was a question: How do I create a space where the queer Black woman voice can be heard as free of distortion as possible? Who is permitted in that space? What are the mandates of that space?
You have to understand why these questions are so essential to creating a praxis that allows me to exist in the fullness of myself.
Oftentimes, in order for the world at large to recognize my humanity, I must excise my queerness, my Blackness, my womanhood. I have to effectively erase the parts of my identity and the experiences I've had - those things that signify my uniqueness as a living, breathing human being - in order to even be allowed entrance into the human family. In a weird sort of cognitive jujitsu, I must mutilate my humanity in order to affirm it.
Given that the world is hostile to my full self - especially to my woman self, my queer self, my Black self - art becomes a sanctuary in which I can feel free to be myself for myself. Ironically, theatre allows full self-expression by giving us permission to fully be other selves. Just as a physical location creates a space that can be filled by the world of a play, the masks we wear create a space that our selves can fill. Through the dynamic interplay of these spaces and selves, a voice* can emerge.
*Here I should probably update my definition of voice as the relationship between the spaces created in the play. Plot, character, theme, and spectacle are aspects of the voice, but they do not define it as I suggested earlier.
But there must first be the space.
And, again, I must return to the question of how I will construct space. As you may have guessed, the creation of space has more far-reaching ramifications than the particulars of, say, blocking or design. It influences the relationships that artists have with each other, perhaps even the relationships that audience members have with one another and/or with the artists.
While it's tempting to simply say, "It all depends" and leave it at that, the fact of the matter is that I am creating a queer Black womanist liberation poiesis, so defining how to create such a space is part and parcel of this effort. If pressed for a concise definition, I would define a liberated queer Black womanist space as one where womanhood, Blackness, and queerness - all these symbols of Otherness - may be fully integrated into that space. It is a space that embraces Otherness as an essential component of selfhood and one that makes room for fully engaging that Otherness without stating or implying a reduction of the self to Otherness.
In more concrete terms, a liberated queer Black womanist space expresses its Blackness through diunital cognition (both-and thinking), is queerness through embracing difference and fluidity, its womanhood through birthing spaces via the self. Such a space is liberated because it frees those of us who dwell in these spaces to (finally!) express the fullness of who we are.
Of course, when creating these spaces, it is not simply a matter of stating, "This is what I want." Again, it must go back to praxis. What must be in place for this space to exist? What are the demands this space would place upon those who would step into it?
I honestly haven't thought about it too much, but the main thing that comes up is that it must serve the needs and interests of queer Black women by placing queer Black women at the center of knowledge and authority. This does not allow, say, a Skeeter to swoop in, take our stories, and use them primarily for her own gain. It does not allow someone who is not a queer Black woman to set the agenda, determine the terms of engagement, or control the process. Yet, it encourages self-examination. It encourages intimacy. It encourages solidarity. But it must be free of the taint of domination in order for us to find our own voices and realize our own potential for freedom.
I hope that explains it. Does it make sense?
September 3, 2011
healing and transformation: a brief introduction to my artistic self
On my LiveJournal, there is a post entitled, Why I'm Doing This. It is a collection of quotes from people who reached out to me to tell me how Tulpa, or Anne&Me has helped heal them or has transformed how they think about the issues the play raises. When I reflect upon this, I see that as a playwright, I act more as a shaman than as an author. Through my plays, I lead the audience into an alternate reality where they can find healing and transformation. This parallel grows stronger with each piece that I write, making it an essential part of my process and purpose as an artist.
Shamanism reveals itself most clearly in the structure of my plays. In each script, I take people to a different world where they encounter essences – spirits, if you will – of forces we confront everyday yet do not always recognize. This experience helps change thought patterns and start conversations that are so important to us, yet are so frightening to have. Stripped of everyday dross, this gives people the opportunity to face and name these things in order to overcome them.
This may seem strange considering my commitment to advocating social justice. Talking about spirits and other worlds seems ephemeral in comparison to the daily realities of systemic oppression. As someone who lives at the intersections of several oppressions, when I run into racism, sexism, and/or homophobia, it hits me like concrete. At the same time, what is racism but a ghost that lingers and haunts our lives? What is sexism but a spirit that seizes control whenever given the opportunity? What is homophobia but a demon that feeds on the hate and fear of those in its grip, and devours the pain and suffering that fear and hate cause?
Aesthetically, this mystical approach to current realities means that my plays are steeped in mythology, religion, fairy tales, folklore and even astrology. These have been the wells of inspiration I have drawn from since childhood. I have yet to outgrow this inclination to “play” with reality, to make literal and concrete what is often abstract and allegorical. So my works lend themselves to a stylized approach to staging. They have much in common with non-Western theatrical forms such as Noh drama and Butoh, religious rituals based in Vodou and indigenous traditions, and role-playing games that take place in fantastic or science fiction settings.
In thematic terms, there is a strong current of Otherness in my work - other worlds, other beings, other times - due in no small part to my own experience with Otherness. Living as a queer Black Jewish woman makes Otherness an ever-present reality. No matter where I go, I am some form of Other. Please do not misunderstand; I have no desire to be "normal." Yet life as a perpetual Other does come with a certain amount of internal and external strife. By laying this bare from the perspective of the Other, my work transforms Otherness from a source of powerlessness and isolation to a source of knowledge and freedom. Through this process, I hope to heal and transform the world by showing how I heal and transform myself.
Shamanism reveals itself most clearly in the structure of my plays. In each script, I take people to a different world where they encounter essences – spirits, if you will – of forces we confront everyday yet do not always recognize. This experience helps change thought patterns and start conversations that are so important to us, yet are so frightening to have. Stripped of everyday dross, this gives people the opportunity to face and name these things in order to overcome them.
This may seem strange considering my commitment to advocating social justice. Talking about spirits and other worlds seems ephemeral in comparison to the daily realities of systemic oppression. As someone who lives at the intersections of several oppressions, when I run into racism, sexism, and/or homophobia, it hits me like concrete. At the same time, what is racism but a ghost that lingers and haunts our lives? What is sexism but a spirit that seizes control whenever given the opportunity? What is homophobia but a demon that feeds on the hate and fear of those in its grip, and devours the pain and suffering that fear and hate cause?
Aesthetically, this mystical approach to current realities means that my plays are steeped in mythology, religion, fairy tales, folklore and even astrology. These have been the wells of inspiration I have drawn from since childhood. I have yet to outgrow this inclination to “play” with reality, to make literal and concrete what is often abstract and allegorical. So my works lend themselves to a stylized approach to staging. They have much in common with non-Western theatrical forms such as Noh drama and Butoh, religious rituals based in Vodou and indigenous traditions, and role-playing games that take place in fantastic or science fiction settings.
In thematic terms, there is a strong current of Otherness in my work - other worlds, other beings, other times - due in no small part to my own experience with Otherness. Living as a queer Black Jewish woman makes Otherness an ever-present reality. No matter where I go, I am some form of Other. Please do not misunderstand; I have no desire to be "normal." Yet life as a perpetual Other does come with a certain amount of internal and external strife. By laying this bare from the perspective of the Other, my work transforms Otherness from a source of powerlessness and isolation to a source of knowledge and freedom. Through this process, I hope to heal and transform the world by showing how I heal and transform myself.
May 3, 2011
reflections on narrative
(SCENE: Cyberspace. Electricity flashes like many strobelights, as do many electronic images.)
Enter SELF #1. Devo's "Smart Patrol" starts playing. SELF #1 lip-synchs while playing air guitar and dancing like a jerk.
Enter SELF #2 pushing a baby doll in a stroller. She tries to feed it baby food.
SELF #2: C'mon, sweetheart, eat your spinach.
SELF #1: (singing) Understands my potato . . .
Enter SELF #3 wearing a trench coat. She squats on the stage and relieves herself.
SELF #2 keeps trying to feed the doll and gets baby food all over the doll's face.
SELF #2: What's wrong, honey? Why won't you eat your spinach?
SELF #3: I hate you all!
SELF #1: (singing) Looking for the real tomato . . .
SELF #3 pulls out a really big gun and shoots the audience.
SELF #2 forcefully shoves spoonfuls of baby food onto the doll's face.
SELF #2: I said eat it, damnit! Stupid fucking thing! I should've left you where I found you!
She rips the baby doll from the stroller and hurls it into the audience.
SELF #1: (singing) We shot the balls in the hole . . .
Enter SELF #4.
SELF #4: What were you expecting? A story? A narrative? A plot line? Such primitive tools are crutches for the feeble. Cast yourself into the sea of non-sequitur. Liberate yourself from all desire to make any sense. (singing to Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime") You may ask yourself well how did I get here?
SELF #1 plays the hell out of that guitar solo with her air guitar.
SELF #4: (singing) You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house? You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to? You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong? You may ask yourself, my God what have I done?
SELF #1 hits SELF #4 in the head with the guitar.
SELF #4: (singing) Same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was. Same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was.
SELF #4 dies.
SELF #1: What is my motivation?
SELF #1 takes a bow. Exit SELF #1.
Enter SELF #1. Devo's "Smart Patrol" starts playing. SELF #1 lip-synchs while playing air guitar and dancing like a jerk.
Enter SELF #2 pushing a baby doll in a stroller. She tries to feed it baby food.
SELF #2: C'mon, sweetheart, eat your spinach.
SELF #1: (singing) Understands my potato . . .
Enter SELF #3 wearing a trench coat. She squats on the stage and relieves herself.
SELF #2 keeps trying to feed the doll and gets baby food all over the doll's face.
SELF #2: What's wrong, honey? Why won't you eat your spinach?
SELF #3: I hate you all!
SELF #1: (singing) Looking for the real tomato . . .
SELF #3 pulls out a really big gun and shoots the audience.
SELF #2 forcefully shoves spoonfuls of baby food onto the doll's face.
SELF #2: I said eat it, damnit! Stupid fucking thing! I should've left you where I found you!
She rips the baby doll from the stroller and hurls it into the audience.
SELF #1: (singing) We shot the balls in the hole . . .
Enter SELF #4.
SELF #4: What were you expecting? A story? A narrative? A plot line? Such primitive tools are crutches for the feeble. Cast yourself into the sea of non-sequitur. Liberate yourself from all desire to make any sense. (singing to Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime") You may ask yourself well how did I get here?
SELF #1 plays the hell out of that guitar solo with her air guitar.
SELF #4: (singing) You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house? You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to? You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong? You may ask yourself, my God what have I done?
SELF #1 hits SELF #4 in the head with the guitar.
SELF #4: (singing) Same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was. Same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was.
SELF #4 dies.
SELF #1: What is my motivation?
SELF #1 takes a bow. Exit SELF #1.
March 10, 2011
Why do you have to bring [oppression] into it?
CultureBot's Jeremy M. Barker has this to say about politics and playwriting (h/t Parabasis):
I'm getting the weirdest sense of deja vu.
I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what is meant by political. I can't really separate politics from aesthetics because politics has a huge influence on aesthetics. How we define good, beautiful, and true has a lot to do with who holds systemic power.
I can agree that sometimes what we call political theatre can be simplistic and preachy, but that has more to do with the fact that it's simplistic and preachy and not that it's overtly political. It's one reason why I can no longer stomach Tyler Perry's work.
I can understand the limitations of constructing a fictional reality around a specific point of view. But what I'm finding it hard to understand is why it's a problem for artists to claim their own subjectivity, such as Josh does for MilkMilkLemonade or what I do for Tulpa, or Anne&Me.
But Joshua Conkel makes a good point when he responds:
What I see happening in the Barker quote seems to minimize and devalue such work as being "merely" about issues. It's a very insidious form of erasure. Like Josh, I do find it a tad insulting because it positions the struggles that affect our lives as something inconsequential (or rather, inconsequential compared to its entertainment or aesthetic value). Just as the personal is political, the political is also personal. And since art is, at least initially, very personal, I cannot separate my personal self from my political self from my artistic self. I simply don't have the luxury.
The irony of this sentiment, of course, is that the very people who see themselves as separate from and immune to certain kinds of narratives (and political ones at that - ie, who deserves to be in power) are the ones who consume, benefit from, and perpetuate limited narratives themselves. When a story comes from one's experiences as a woman, a person of color, and/or a queer person (to name but a few things), it's pushing an agenda; it's too political; it's not something people can relate to. Yet somehow, I'm supposed to understand the trials and struggles of the King of England or the founder of Facebook as a universal human experience.
Um, OK. If you say so.
ETA: Barker responded while I was posting this.
Most contemporary plays are very essayistic like this; given the homogeneity of the typical theater artist and audience, we know that a play that starts off about war will have something bad to say about it, that a play that engages with gay issues will be pro-gay. (Someone please name me the last big pro-war or anti-gay play you saw professionally produced.) In this typology, the “narrative,” which is essentially the entire play being produced, exists to narrate a series of points that makes the predictable ending impactful, which we charitably still refer to as catharsis.
I'm getting the weirdest sense of deja vu.
I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what is meant by political. I can't really separate politics from aesthetics because politics has a huge influence on aesthetics. How we define good, beautiful, and true has a lot to do with who holds systemic power.
I can agree that sometimes what we call political theatre can be simplistic and preachy, but that has more to do with the fact that it's simplistic and preachy and not that it's overtly political. It's one reason why I can no longer stomach Tyler Perry's work.
I can understand the limitations of constructing a fictional reality around a specific point of view. But what I'm finding it hard to understand is why it's a problem for artists to claim their own subjectivity, such as Josh does for MilkMilkLemonade or what I do for Tulpa, or Anne&Me.
But Joshua Conkel makes a good point when he responds:
I see his point, but I also resent it a little. I might have written a pro-gay play in MilkMilkLemonade, for example, and I'm sure people know straight away that it's a pro-gay play. That said, I don't think anybody knows from the start of the play exactly WHAT I'm going to say about gayness or HOW exactly I'm going to get there. Just because you know a play will be pro gay before you watch it, doesn't mean that it's pro gayness is a spoiler alert. You still have no idea specifically what the playwright is going to say on the subject or how he/she will take you there.
What I see happening in the Barker quote seems to minimize and devalue such work as being "merely" about issues. It's a very insidious form of erasure. Like Josh, I do find it a tad insulting because it positions the struggles that affect our lives as something inconsequential (or rather, inconsequential compared to its entertainment or aesthetic value). Just as the personal is political, the political is also personal. And since art is, at least initially, very personal, I cannot separate my personal self from my political self from my artistic self. I simply don't have the luxury.
The irony of this sentiment, of course, is that the very people who see themselves as separate from and immune to certain kinds of narratives (and political ones at that - ie, who deserves to be in power) are the ones who consume, benefit from, and perpetuate limited narratives themselves. When a story comes from one's experiences as a woman, a person of color, and/or a queer person (to name but a few things), it's pushing an agenda; it's too political; it's not something people can relate to. Yet somehow, I'm supposed to understand the trials and struggles of the King of England or the founder of Facebook as a universal human experience.
Um, OK. If you say so.
ETA: Barker responded while I was posting this.
February 17, 2011
Voice, critique, and QBWL poiesis
A couple of days ago, I gave this response to my viewing of Flux Theatre Ensemble's production of Dog Act, and through that I placed voice as the central element of this paradigm. Gus, being the generous, thoughtful guy he is, responded with this post at the Flux blog. Here's a snippet that I found particularly interesting:
It's interesting that he found that most noticeable about what I wrote. Honestly, it comes naturally to me. I've never really understood the need to come into a theatrical experience carrying a sort of Platonic Ideal Of Great Art that all individuals works must measure up against in order to ascertain their worthiness. I pretty much do my best to experience a piece on its own terms (or at least admit my own warped sensibilities - such as finding most horror movies hilarious). As a result, I tend to enjoy most of what I see on some level, even if that means I get more out of it by what I bring to it than what's actually there.
For instance, one of the things my mom and I like to do together is go see a movie every Sunday. Yes, every Sunday. When there was still a video store nearby, we'd also rent videos to watch on a weeknight. Mom and I are not what you would call passive consumers. Part of the fun is responding to what we're seeing.
* We'd be great to have on DVD commentaries. Imagine watching a horror film, where the virginal female lead is going back into the house to look for the monster/killer/alien/ghost, and then hear someone say, "Look at this ignorant motherfucker."
To be honest, we've had more fun talking about movies with no redeeming aesthetic value than by watching critically acclaimed films with Academy Award Winner already plastered on the Special Edition DVD packaging. I think it has something to do with being broke. When you can't afford to waste money, you're going to do whatever you can to make your entertainment worthwhile, even if you have to add it yourself.
Which brings us back to the star/thumb/grade model of reviewing. Very often, they read more like consumer reports than the reactions of a real human being communicating their experience of a film or theatrical performance. In and of itself there's nothing wrong with it, but we need more than one way to engage with the work that's out there. But how can we go about doing that in a way that does more than say something like, "I enjoyed the costumes"?
Allow me to take a detour. It'll seem out of nowhere, but it's actually closely related to what I'm getting at here.
If you pay attention to business and marketing trends, there are a couple of themes that keep cropping up lately. The first is authenticity. The second is distinction. The struggle for businesses these days is not to be the biggest and baddest mofos on the market, but to be the little guys everyone roots for because what they do is different and interesting and important. With so much out there bombarding you day in and day out, what's going to grab and hold your attention? The things that have something of substance to communicate in an interesting way.
It has nothing to do with technical proficiency or special effects. Flux Theatre Ensemble will never do a straight-up production of Spiderman, Turn Off the Dark. Just as Nosedive Productions is unlikely to do slice-of-life naturalistic stuff that takes itself way too seriously. There's more to distinction than simply, say, everyone dying their hair purple or speaking Klingon. Those are simply gimmicks. It might work for a time, but if what's beneath it is the same thing that's beneath more conventional fare, it'll be treated just like any other distraction.
In the same vein, voice is not simply style, although style is (or at least should be) directly linked to it. The ways people speak in Dog Act and Finding Harlem Dawn differ from the ways we speak in everyday life. There's more to voice than words, though. It includes every aspect of a performance. And that means something about the worlds these plays invite us to inhabit, which, simply in the act of contrast, says something about the world we live in today.
But there's more to voice than what we put out there. It's also what we bring to it. In today's market, the difference between success and failure is not quality and/or price, but what a product or service or company says about who buys it. People don't buy your stuff because of what you say about it, but because of what buying from you says about themselves. Where have we seen a point like this before? Oh yeah, in theatre!
So the thing I'm interested in exploring with you is: what are the questions we need to ask when responding to a work from a position of making voice primary rather than something tacked on after plot, character, and spectacle?
Often, the critical response focuses on the form and execution of the play, and rarely on what the play is actually about. Shawn's post is a nice reminder (Sean Williams' response to Lesser Seductions is another example) of how satisfying that difference can be.
It's interesting that he found that most noticeable about what I wrote. Honestly, it comes naturally to me. I've never really understood the need to come into a theatrical experience carrying a sort of Platonic Ideal Of Great Art that all individuals works must measure up against in order to ascertain their worthiness. I pretty much do my best to experience a piece on its own terms (or at least admit my own warped sensibilities - such as finding most horror movies hilarious). As a result, I tend to enjoy most of what I see on some level, even if that means I get more out of it by what I bring to it than what's actually there.
For instance, one of the things my mom and I like to do together is go see a movie every Sunday. Yes, every Sunday. When there was still a video store nearby, we'd also rent videos to watch on a weeknight. Mom and I are not what you would call passive consumers. Part of the fun is responding to what we're seeing.
* We'd be great to have on DVD commentaries. Imagine watching a horror film, where the virginal female lead is going back into the house to look for the monster/killer/alien/ghost, and then hear someone say, "Look at this ignorant motherfucker."
To be honest, we've had more fun talking about movies with no redeeming aesthetic value than by watching critically acclaimed films with Academy Award Winner already plastered on the Special Edition DVD packaging. I think it has something to do with being broke. When you can't afford to waste money, you're going to do whatever you can to make your entertainment worthwhile, even if you have to add it yourself.
Which brings us back to the star/thumb/grade model of reviewing. Very often, they read more like consumer reports than the reactions of a real human being communicating their experience of a film or theatrical performance. In and of itself there's nothing wrong with it, but we need more than one way to engage with the work that's out there. But how can we go about doing that in a way that does more than say something like, "I enjoyed the costumes"?
Allow me to take a detour. It'll seem out of nowhere, but it's actually closely related to what I'm getting at here.
If you pay attention to business and marketing trends, there are a couple of themes that keep cropping up lately. The first is authenticity. The second is distinction. The struggle for businesses these days is not to be the biggest and baddest mofos on the market, but to be the little guys everyone roots for because what they do is different and interesting and important. With so much out there bombarding you day in and day out, what's going to grab and hold your attention? The things that have something of substance to communicate in an interesting way.
It has nothing to do with technical proficiency or special effects. Flux Theatre Ensemble will never do a straight-up production of Spiderman, Turn Off the Dark. Just as Nosedive Productions is unlikely to do slice-of-life naturalistic stuff that takes itself way too seriously. There's more to distinction than simply, say, everyone dying their hair purple or speaking Klingon. Those are simply gimmicks. It might work for a time, but if what's beneath it is the same thing that's beneath more conventional fare, it'll be treated just like any other distraction.
In the same vein, voice is not simply style, although style is (or at least should be) directly linked to it. The ways people speak in Dog Act and Finding Harlem Dawn differ from the ways we speak in everyday life. There's more to voice than words, though. It includes every aspect of a performance. And that means something about the worlds these plays invite us to inhabit, which, simply in the act of contrast, says something about the world we live in today.
But there's more to voice than what we put out there. It's also what we bring to it. In today's market, the difference between success and failure is not quality and/or price, but what a product or service or company says about who buys it. People don't buy your stuff because of what you say about it, but because of what buying from you says about themselves. Where have we seen a point like this before? Oh yeah, in theatre!
The audience doesn't come to see you. They come to see themselves.
--somebody important
So the thing I'm interested in exploring with you is: what are the questions we need to ask when responding to a work from a position of making voice primary rather than something tacked on after plot, character, and spectacle?
February 15, 2011
Dog Act and the power of naming
I recently had the chance to see Flux Theatre's production of Dog Act. Long story short, you should go see it while it's still playing (until Sunday, I believe).
There are plenty of people giving great reviews for Dog Act. I don't believe I can add much that hasn't already been said, so I encourage you to read those for a good idea of what works in the play and why.
Instead, I'd like to connect Dog Act to my ongoing project: a queer Black womanist liberation poiesis.
I think it took actually seeing theatre to solidify some of the more nebulous ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while. It's already been established why it's necessary to have a queer Black womanist liberation poiesis (yes, even for straightwhitedudes). What has been fuzzy thus far is what such a poiesis would look like.
The comments in this thread touch what I think is something that will (hopefully) become a major breakthrough somewhere down the line. Ursula K. Le Guin hints at possibilities in her essay, A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be. From an aesthetic point of view, I can see the poiesis I'm trying to create veering towards yin.
Speaking of circular, back to Dog Act.
In Dog Act, the voices at the end of the world sound like the voices at the beginning (at least, the beginning according to how Americans reckon it, during that once upon a time in the Old West when there was a guy named Shakespeare and everybody talked funny).
As such, the dominant aesthetic element of a queer Black womanist liberation theatre is neither plot nor character, but voice. Of course, voice is not merely what is said out loud (or rendered into words via ink or pixels). It's the unique expressions of those experiences, memories, dreams, fears, and hopes that root individuals to the source(s) of themselves. Plot, character, theme, spectacle - all these are but aspects of the voice.
Even as all the characters in Dog Act share a similar situation on both a local and global scale, they each have very different voices, from the fuck-laden quasi-Shakespearean tongue of the scavengers, Zetta's straight-outta-movies Old West talk, the ambiguous veracity of Vera Similitude, Dog's plain English plus canine, to Jo-Jo's twitchy and manic storytelling style that's part doberman and part spark plug.
The most potent use of voice is the power of naming. Through naming, we not only identify but manifest what is possible. Naming, of course, is not a moral process. Its power can be used for good and/or ill, to oppress and/or to liberate. An oppressive use of naming acts as power over - especially as manifest as power over others. A liberating use of naming is more like power of - especially as manifest as power of oneself. In Dog Act, for instance, there is power over dogs but power of story. It's a subtle but crucial distinction. Both in the play and in life, power over brings ignorance, enslavement, and suffering, whereas power of leads to the potential for wisdom, freedom, and happiness.
Yet there is more to voice than naming. Or is there? Let's try this exercise. Take the word "spoon." Now imagine it from the point of view from each of the following:
Another exercise. This time let's use the word "dog" and examine it from the perspectives of:
Now what do you get?
So we come to another aspect of voice, something I'll call resonance. Resonance is linked to the associations people make to their named experiences. For example, a person who has nothing but contempt for canines would not say "dog" the same way as one who truly believes them to be man's best friend. And they certainly would mean something different when they called a person a dog. Say, "Men are dogs!" vs. "You're my dog, man!"
What makes voice really interesting, though, is when one act of naming creates two or more areas of resonance. People who've been attacked by dogs have also had them as beloved pets. People allergic to dogs may also admire them. Consider how often the love-hate relationship (romantic or otherwise) features in contemporary media.
But there's more to voice than either naming or resonance. It's something more internal, which I am too tired to name properly at the moment, but has something to do with the nature and temperament of the individual who shares similar frames of resonance. An impulsive, aggressive person who's been bitten by a dog would react differently to a strange dog wandering the street than one who is patient to the point of passivity.
Both resonance and this other thing I'm talking about are not limited to characters. It includes every person involved in the process of creating the performance - actors, directors, writers, designers, and even the audience.
So this is where it gets really tricky: How do we unify all these elements into a single voice? Is that even desirable?
There are plenty of people giving great reviews for Dog Act. I don't believe I can add much that hasn't already been said, so I encourage you to read those for a good idea of what works in the play and why.
Instead, I'd like to connect Dog Act to my ongoing project: a queer Black womanist liberation poiesis.
I think it took actually seeing theatre to solidify some of the more nebulous ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while. It's already been established why it's necessary to have a queer Black womanist liberation poiesis (yes, even for straightwhitedudes). What has been fuzzy thus far is what such a poiesis would look like.
The comments in this thread touch what I think is something that will (hopefully) become a major breakthrough somewhere down the line. Ursula K. Le Guin hints at possibilities in her essay, A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be. From an aesthetic point of view, I can see the poiesis I'm trying to create veering towards yin.
[...] we must return, go round, go inward, go yinward. What would a yin utopia be? It would be dark, wet, obscure, weak, yielding, passive, participatory, circular, cyclical, peaceful, nurturant, retreating, contracting, and cold.
--Ursula K. Le Guin, A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be
Speaking of circular, back to Dog Act.
In Dog Act, the voices at the end of the world sound like the voices at the beginning (at least, the beginning according to how Americans reckon it, during that once upon a time in the Old West when there was a guy named Shakespeare and everybody talked funny).
As such, the dominant aesthetic element of a queer Black womanist liberation theatre is neither plot nor character, but voice. Of course, voice is not merely what is said out loud (or rendered into words via ink or pixels). It's the unique expressions of those experiences, memories, dreams, fears, and hopes that root individuals to the source(s) of themselves. Plot, character, theme, spectacle - all these are but aspects of the voice.
Even as all the characters in Dog Act share a similar situation on both a local and global scale, they each have very different voices, from the fuck-laden quasi-Shakespearean tongue of the scavengers, Zetta's straight-outta-movies Old West talk, the ambiguous veracity of Vera Similitude, Dog's plain English plus canine, to Jo-Jo's twitchy and manic storytelling style that's part doberman and part spark plug.
The most potent use of voice is the power of naming. Through naming, we not only identify but manifest what is possible. Naming, of course, is not a moral process. Its power can be used for good and/or ill, to oppress and/or to liberate. An oppressive use of naming acts as power over - especially as manifest as power over others. A liberating use of naming is more like power of - especially as manifest as power of oneself. In Dog Act, for instance, there is power over dogs but power of story. It's a subtle but crucial distinction. Both in the play and in life, power over brings ignorance, enslavement, and suffering, whereas power of leads to the potential for wisdom, freedom, and happiness.
Yet there is more to voice than naming. Or is there? Let's try this exercise. Take the word "spoon." Now imagine it from the point of view from each of the following:
- Someone who collects rare antique spoons
- Someone who was regularly spanked with a spoon as a child
- Someone who has no spoons
- Someone who makes spoons
- Someone who eats with their hands
Another exercise. This time let's use the word "dog" and examine it from the perspectives of:
- Someone attacked by a police dog during a civil rights demonstration
- Someone who had many beloved canine pets
- Someone raised by wolves
- Someone allergic to dogs
- Someone who eats dogs
Now what do you get?
So we come to another aspect of voice, something I'll call resonance. Resonance is linked to the associations people make to their named experiences. For example, a person who has nothing but contempt for canines would not say "dog" the same way as one who truly believes them to be man's best friend. And they certainly would mean something different when they called a person a dog. Say, "Men are dogs!" vs. "You're my dog, man!"
What makes voice really interesting, though, is when one act of naming creates two or more areas of resonance. People who've been attacked by dogs have also had them as beloved pets. People allergic to dogs may also admire them. Consider how often the love-hate relationship (romantic or otherwise) features in contemporary media.
But there's more to voice than either naming or resonance. It's something more internal, which I am too tired to name properly at the moment, but has something to do with the nature and temperament of the individual who shares similar frames of resonance. An impulsive, aggressive person who's been bitten by a dog would react differently to a strange dog wandering the street than one who is patient to the point of passivity.
Both resonance and this other thing I'm talking about are not limited to characters. It includes every person involved in the process of creating the performance - actors, directors, writers, designers, and even the audience.
So this is where it gets really tricky: How do we unify all these elements into a single voice? Is that even desirable?
January 31, 2011
Why queer Black womanist liberation poiesis matters to straight White dudes doing theatre
Earlier I talked about why you should care what queer Black women have to say. Now I'm going to talk about why a queer Black womanist liberation poesis matters to the people who seem most diametrically opposed to it, at least in principle - (presumably straight - but in theatre it matters a bit less) White men.
But first, a slight detour to provide a little context. Isaac is asking who the greatest living playwright of the English language is. Coming right on the heels of That Coversation, this seems a particularly intriguing juxtaposition. How many of us would be surprised if most, if not all, people on that list were White and/or male? Are we then to assume that the reason why we don't come across more Great Works of Theatre by women and/or people of color is because they simply can't hack it? If not, then what is it about our criteria for determining quality that makes it highly unlikely that a woman or a person of color (or - gasp! - a woman of color!!!) would appear on anyone's top ten lists for The Greatest?
It would be easy to dismiss this as a matter of taste, and I've often done just that. The fact of the matter is that in the world we live in, theatre is dominated by the tastes of well-off White dudes. There are already so many stories about how wonderful, special, and unique White men are (and how lucky we are that they're in charge!). But we already knew that. In my more cynical and self-doubting moments (which are more frequent than this blog makes apparent), I can get pretty down on myself for not being eager and/or able to make works supporting that fact. I can feel guilty and ashamed of myself because my energies are not spent toward silencing and erasing myself from my own stories. Yet this seems to be the exact reason why simply throwing up our hands and saying it's a matter of taste is the wrong way to go about it. It leaves the current system the way it is and limits opportunities for finding new ways of knowing and expressing - of being in the world.
I understand the desire to understand "pure" art uncontaminated by messy, chaotic life and dirty, nasty politics. I'm afraid that's impossible. Art for art's sake is dead, if it ever existed in the first place. This is especially true of theatre because it is the art form most intimately connected to life as it is lived (internally as well as externally). So, for me, discussing quality without addressing liberation is not wrong so much as incomplete.
Art does not need to serve a political agenda to be art. However, politics is a part of the human condition. I don't mean politics in the terms of law and government and policy, but in the terms of the power dynamics between people. As the art form that is, at its core and without exception, about people, theatre is - from initial concept to final curtain - innately political, even if particular political concepts and buzzwords are never uttered in the piece.
Personally, I believe that liberation is the most important act an individual or society can participate in. With various systems of oppression still in place, ideals like justice and freedom remain much too far out of reach for way too many people. Without justice and freedom, much of what we do is ultimately arbitrary and meaningless. I'm not here to convert anyone or convince anybody to agree, but if you want to understand how I define quality, you need to know this about me.
When I talk about liberation, I'm talking about what Chimamanda Adichie mentions in "The Danger of a Single Story." I'm talking about the power of stories to shape lives. The stories we tell to and about one another define the possibilities and limitations we accept for ourselves. As such, stories are absolutely vital to the process of liberation - from exploring the things that imprison us to giving us visions of liberated selves.
That's not to say I don't appreciate craft, but there needs to be more than that. I'm remembering a visit I made to Miya Shoji a few months ago. Looking at the shoji screens and tables and other furnishings, I saw more than craftsmanship. There was more to what's going on than the smoothness of a table's surface or the way parts fit together without using a single nail or screw. I saw creations inhabited by the values of a people. I saw a process informed by history and language and culture. I saw simplicity, elegance, a reverence for natural harmony. Yet each piece was vastly different from the others, even those of the same type, not by surface distinctions such as color or shape, but by the approach to these ideas. This was a liberated space - a space where each piece could freely be itself for itself, a space where each piece is appreciated because of rather than despite itself.
Without liberation, we cannot even approach the discussion of quality without acting out oppressive frameworks. I'm not arguing over whether there is or is not such a thing as quality. If we want our theatre to do more than ego-stroke the privileged, we need to examine what we bring to our understanding of quality. We need to interrogate our assumptions, not to shoot holes into them, but to name them for what they are and explore the possibilities and limitations they put in place.
For instance, in Aristotelian drama, there is not much room for the kind of playing that validates and affirms anyone except those occupying dominant identities. In Aristotle's time, it was wealthy, land-owning Greek men (One wonders what Aristotle would have thought about Lorraine Hansberry or Suzan Lori-Parks). Today, it's affluent White guys. There's nothing bad or wrong with it, but let's be honest and say that this paradigm doesn't speak for or about everyone - including White men who participate in and benefit from it.
Of course, contemporary theatre has long since moved away from Aristotle as the ultimate authority on what defines quality. But there are still people everyone should "just know" if they want to participate in the dialogue without looking or feeling stupid. They are often male and/or White. This in itself is not a problem, yet there seems to be an implicit understanding that in order for it to matter, we have to put male and/or White ways of knowing at the center of our conversation - even if those ways of knowing are in direct conflict with who we are (which includes a whole lot of White men too!). This way of knowing tends to prioritize the abstract over the concrete, the impersonal over the personal, mind over body, objectivity (or the appearance of objectivity) over subjectivity, education over life experience, reason over feeling.
A liberation poetics frees us from the expectation to act, react, and interact from only half (or less!) of who we are.
But first, a slight detour to provide a little context. Isaac is asking who the greatest living playwright of the English language is. Coming right on the heels of That Coversation, this seems a particularly intriguing juxtaposition. How many of us would be surprised if most, if not all, people on that list were White and/or male? Are we then to assume that the reason why we don't come across more Great Works of Theatre by women and/or people of color is because they simply can't hack it? If not, then what is it about our criteria for determining quality that makes it highly unlikely that a woman or a person of color (or - gasp! - a woman of color!!!) would appear on anyone's top ten lists for The Greatest?
It would be easy to dismiss this as a matter of taste, and I've often done just that. The fact of the matter is that in the world we live in, theatre is dominated by the tastes of well-off White dudes. There are already so many stories about how wonderful, special, and unique White men are (and how lucky we are that they're in charge!). But we already knew that. In my more cynical and self-doubting moments (which are more frequent than this blog makes apparent), I can get pretty down on myself for not being eager and/or able to make works supporting that fact. I can feel guilty and ashamed of myself because my energies are not spent toward silencing and erasing myself from my own stories. Yet this seems to be the exact reason why simply throwing up our hands and saying it's a matter of taste is the wrong way to go about it. It leaves the current system the way it is and limits opportunities for finding new ways of knowing and expressing - of being in the world.
I understand the desire to understand "pure" art uncontaminated by messy, chaotic life and dirty, nasty politics. I'm afraid that's impossible. Art for art's sake is dead, if it ever existed in the first place. This is especially true of theatre because it is the art form most intimately connected to life as it is lived (internally as well as externally). So, for me, discussing quality without addressing liberation is not wrong so much as incomplete.
Art does not need to serve a political agenda to be art. However, politics is a part of the human condition. I don't mean politics in the terms of law and government and policy, but in the terms of the power dynamics between people. As the art form that is, at its core and without exception, about people, theatre is - from initial concept to final curtain - innately political, even if particular political concepts and buzzwords are never uttered in the piece.
Personally, I believe that liberation is the most important act an individual or society can participate in. With various systems of oppression still in place, ideals like justice and freedom remain much too far out of reach for way too many people. Without justice and freedom, much of what we do is ultimately arbitrary and meaningless. I'm not here to convert anyone or convince anybody to agree, but if you want to understand how I define quality, you need to know this about me.
When I talk about liberation, I'm talking about what Chimamanda Adichie mentions in "The Danger of a Single Story." I'm talking about the power of stories to shape lives. The stories we tell to and about one another define the possibilities and limitations we accept for ourselves. As such, stories are absolutely vital to the process of liberation - from exploring the things that imprison us to giving us visions of liberated selves.
That's not to say I don't appreciate craft, but there needs to be more than that. I'm remembering a visit I made to Miya Shoji a few months ago. Looking at the shoji screens and tables and other furnishings, I saw more than craftsmanship. There was more to what's going on than the smoothness of a table's surface or the way parts fit together without using a single nail or screw. I saw creations inhabited by the values of a people. I saw a process informed by history and language and culture. I saw simplicity, elegance, a reverence for natural harmony. Yet each piece was vastly different from the others, even those of the same type, not by surface distinctions such as color or shape, but by the approach to these ideas. This was a liberated space - a space where each piece could freely be itself for itself, a space where each piece is appreciated because of rather than despite itself.
Without liberation, we cannot even approach the discussion of quality without acting out oppressive frameworks. I'm not arguing over whether there is or is not such a thing as quality. If we want our theatre to do more than ego-stroke the privileged, we need to examine what we bring to our understanding of quality. We need to interrogate our assumptions, not to shoot holes into them, but to name them for what they are and explore the possibilities and limitations they put in place.
For instance, in Aristotelian drama, there is not much room for the kind of playing that validates and affirms anyone except those occupying dominant identities. In Aristotle's time, it was wealthy, land-owning Greek men (One wonders what Aristotle would have thought about Lorraine Hansberry or Suzan Lori-Parks). Today, it's affluent White guys. There's nothing bad or wrong with it, but let's be honest and say that this paradigm doesn't speak for or about everyone - including White men who participate in and benefit from it.
Of course, contemporary theatre has long since moved away from Aristotle as the ultimate authority on what defines quality. But there are still people everyone should "just know" if they want to participate in the dialogue without looking or feeling stupid. They are often male and/or White. This in itself is not a problem, yet there seems to be an implicit understanding that in order for it to matter, we have to put male and/or White ways of knowing at the center of our conversation - even if those ways of knowing are in direct conflict with who we are (which includes a whole lot of White men too!). This way of knowing tends to prioritize the abstract over the concrete, the impersonal over the personal, mind over body, objectivity (or the appearance of objectivity) over subjectivity, education over life experience, reason over feeling.
A liberation poetics frees us from the expectation to act, react, and interact from only half (or less!) of who we are.
January 15, 2011
Why should you give a shit about what queer black women have to say?
This is my first conscious effort and establishing a queer Black womanist liberation poesis (as I've described here). Like I mentioned before, this is probably a lifelong work, and one that will probably change over time, so don't hold me to dissertation-level consistency and rigor because it probably won't be there.
Naturally, when it comes to creating a queer Black womanist liberation poesis, the first thing that comes to mind is: Why?
It's a legitimate question. Why should anyone give a shit what queer Black women have to say? At the moment, queer Black women can offer neither the promise of prosperity nor the threat of destruction. If I can't kill you or make you rich, what difference does listening to me make?
I admit that this line of inquiry can veer existentialist. I may as well be asking what the value of human life is outside of what people can do to or for each other. However, I believe that the question itself deserves better than for us to render it pointless through abstraction. So let's not do that, OK?
While the answer I'm probably supposed to give will say something along the lines of "diversity is good for you" ("Read stuff by Black women and eat your spinach!"), that feels more like regurgitating a slogan than an actual engagement with the question of why our voices are not just beneficial, but critical, to our plays, films, TV shows, and so on?
I think Toni Morrison says it best (emphasis mine).
As a creator, that ability to play is vital. I mean that quite literally. We've all come across various works that have been watered down for popular consumption, and in catering to our assumed ignorance and egocentricity, it has sacrificed no small part of its vitality. Now, instead of being a doorway into new ways of expressing and knowing and being, we are constantly faced with mirrors of the same old bullshit. The same old values, the same old ways of interacting, the same old ways of understanding. This makes our collective understanding of our art and audience stagnant, inert, decaying, dead.
When "you can really play," you can imagine - and therefore create - new possibilities. But all those possibilities cannot come from only one source of experience. Seriously, how many ways can you talk about how unique, special, and wonderful straight White dudes are (and how fortunate we are that they rule the world)? Even when there is not a single straight White man present in a particular work, that is overwhelmingly the perspective through which people must experience and interpret it. Without that pressure, without that weight, our plays, films, TV shows, and so on are able to exist with greater breadth, depth, and richness.
But as I mentioned earlier, we cannot express the value of our voices solely in terms of what we, the marginalized and oppressed, can do for everyone else. It must first and foremost have value for us. We've already had the experience where our worth as human beings rested upon our ability to play the roles the dominant classes prescribe for us. Yet rare is the case where we are affirmed as we are in our fullest humanity - pure, rough, messy, and beautiful.
For those of us who are silenced every day because the world we live in devalues and dehumanizes us for our gender, our color, and/or sexuality, to speak for ourselves as ourselves is an act of reclaiming what is often taken from us. Asserting our truth is radical. It is a transformative act and therefore a revolutionary act. This is not the way society tells us we're supposed to be like. We're supposed to be silent and invisible, content in our silence and invisibility, and/or afraid of what would happen were we to see or be seen as we are. Putting ourselves at the center of our lives threatens the status quo because it exposes it for the lie that it is. That there is only one truth worth knowing, one beauty worth having, one goodness worth becoming.
It's incredibly liberating to realize that our goodness, truth, and beauty comes because of who we are rather than despite it.
What about you? Questions? Reflections?
Naturally, when it comes to creating a queer Black womanist liberation poesis, the first thing that comes to mind is: Why?
It's a legitimate question. Why should anyone give a shit what queer Black women have to say? At the moment, queer Black women can offer neither the promise of prosperity nor the threat of destruction. If I can't kill you or make you rich, what difference does listening to me make?
I admit that this line of inquiry can veer existentialist. I may as well be asking what the value of human life is outside of what people can do to or for each other. However, I believe that the question itself deserves better than for us to render it pointless through abstraction. So let's not do that, OK?
While the answer I'm probably supposed to give will say something along the lines of "diversity is good for you" ("Read stuff by Black women and eat your spinach!"), that feels more like regurgitating a slogan than an actual engagement with the question of why our voices are not just beneficial, but critical, to our plays, films, TV shows, and so on?
I think Toni Morrison says it best (emphasis mine).
Almost all of the African-American writers that I know were very much uninterested in one particular area of the world, which is white men. That frees up a lot. It frees up the imagination, because you don't have that gaze. And when I say white men, I don't mean just the character, I mean the establishment, the reviewers, the publishers, the people who are in control. So once you erase that from your canvas, you can really play.
As a creator, that ability to play is vital. I mean that quite literally. We've all come across various works that have been watered down for popular consumption, and in catering to our assumed ignorance and egocentricity, it has sacrificed no small part of its vitality. Now, instead of being a doorway into new ways of expressing and knowing and being, we are constantly faced with mirrors of the same old bullshit. The same old values, the same old ways of interacting, the same old ways of understanding. This makes our collective understanding of our art and audience stagnant, inert, decaying, dead.
When "you can really play," you can imagine - and therefore create - new possibilities. But all those possibilities cannot come from only one source of experience. Seriously, how many ways can you talk about how unique, special, and wonderful straight White dudes are (and how fortunate we are that they rule the world)? Even when there is not a single straight White man present in a particular work, that is overwhelmingly the perspective through which people must experience and interpret it. Without that pressure, without that weight, our plays, films, TV shows, and so on are able to exist with greater breadth, depth, and richness.
But as I mentioned earlier, we cannot express the value of our voices solely in terms of what we, the marginalized and oppressed, can do for everyone else. It must first and foremost have value for us. We've already had the experience where our worth as human beings rested upon our ability to play the roles the dominant classes prescribe for us. Yet rare is the case where we are affirmed as we are in our fullest humanity - pure, rough, messy, and beautiful.
For those of us who are silenced every day because the world we live in devalues and dehumanizes us for our gender, our color, and/or sexuality, to speak for ourselves as ourselves is an act of reclaiming what is often taken from us. Asserting our truth is radical. It is a transformative act and therefore a revolutionary act. This is not the way society tells us we're supposed to be like. We're supposed to be silent and invisible, content in our silence and invisibility, and/or afraid of what would happen were we to see or be seen as we are. Putting ourselves at the center of our lives threatens the status quo because it exposes it for the lie that it is. That there is only one truth worth knowing, one beauty worth having, one goodness worth becoming.
It's incredibly liberating to realize that our goodness, truth, and beauty comes because of who we are rather than despite it.
What about you? Questions? Reflections?
January 3, 2011
Big projects for 2011
One of my goals for this year is to put together a full production of Tulpa, or Anne&Me. I'm looking into a festival that seems right up Tulpa's alley. Also, I'm working with a director who really believes in it and wants to make it happen. Go me!
The second thing I'm working on is a Black womanist liberation poetics (or rather poiesis). If I'm honest with myself, this is more than likely a lifelong endeavor, but at the very least I'd like to make significant headway on the guiding principles. I haven't yet decided exactly what form I want it to take, but I'm thinking that I do not want to take an academic or journalistic style. Aside from my lack of interest in it, that approach would only serve to undermine one of the chief aims of this project: to help develop works that reclaim the subjectivity of marginalized people. Part of this is reconstructing ways of creating and interpreting dramatic media such as theatre, film, and television. The main idea is to start from one's own lived experience as the center then work outward from there.
I also want to avoid any dogmatic assertions about What Great Theatre Should Be and focus instead on what works and how.
Here's the preliminary reading list I'm working with:
The second thing I'm working on is a Black womanist liberation poetics (or rather poiesis). If I'm honest with myself, this is more than likely a lifelong endeavor, but at the very least I'd like to make significant headway on the guiding principles. I haven't yet decided exactly what form I want it to take, but I'm thinking that I do not want to take an academic or journalistic style. Aside from my lack of interest in it, that approach would only serve to undermine one of the chief aims of this project: to help develop works that reclaim the subjectivity of marginalized people. Part of this is reconstructing ways of creating and interpreting dramatic media such as theatre, film, and television. The main idea is to start from one's own lived experience as the center then work outward from there.
I also want to avoid any dogmatic assertions about What Great Theatre Should Be and focus instead on what works and how.
Here's the preliminary reading list I'm working with:
- James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation
- Linda E. Thomas, Womanist Theology, Epistemology, and a New Anthropological Paradigm
- bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation
- bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies
- August Wilson, The Ground on Which I Stand
August 2, 2010
Nice Guys and Heartless Bitches (that's sarcasm, btw)
A Rehearsal Room of One's Own spells out the plot of the Story That Needs to Die Like Yesterday:
I'm not the only one tired of the "manlier than thou"/"women have hurt me" plays. And within this niche, there's one storyline in particular that bugs me, and it goes like this: Nice Guy meets Hot/Quirky Girl. Nice Guy falls for Hot/Quirky Girl. Hot/Quirky Girl cheats on/leaves Nice Guy for Nice Guy's Incredibly Douchey Best Friend.Since that blog post sums up my feelings about it quite succinctly, I'd rather point some of you in another direction. This direction can be summed up as - Stop Fucking Making This Shit!!!
July 24, 2010
what is it about some villains . . . ?
When I think of truly great villains, it's not the Emperor Palpatine, the Joker, or the Hannibal Lecter who gives me the chills. It's Dolores Umbridge, HAL 9000, Grand Moff Tarkin, Nurse Ratched, Annie Wilkes and Noah Cross who make me feel like the world is a scary fucking place.
Why is that? Why is it that I can enjoy the Joker's theatricality but still go to sleep at night but hope to God that I never come across a Dolores Umbridge? Why does Hannibal Lecter delight me while HAL terrifies me? Why does a rich old man like Noah Cross scare me more than the Dark Lord of the Sith?
Even though iconic villains kill more people and spread more mayhem, why does it feel like these more unassuming characters do more damage? Is it because what they do seems more real somehow? Is it because these examples of ordinary evil are closer and more widespread than we often like to admit? I don't mean these questions rhetorically, either. I'm genuinely interested in figuring this out.
What do you think?
Why is that? Why is it that I can enjoy the Joker's theatricality but still go to sleep at night but hope to God that I never come across a Dolores Umbridge? Why does Hannibal Lecter delight me while HAL terrifies me? Why does a rich old man like Noah Cross scare me more than the Dark Lord of the Sith?
Even though iconic villains kill more people and spread more mayhem, why does it feel like these more unassuming characters do more damage? Is it because what they do seems more real somehow? Is it because these examples of ordinary evil are closer and more widespread than we often like to admit? I don't mean these questions rhetorically, either. I'm genuinely interested in figuring this out.
What do you think?
April 25, 2010
Gendered narrative and shifting(?) paradigms
Over at Parabasis, Ben Owen gives a few "Notes on Closure and Quality." Isaac posted a comment that contained a statement that I wanted to explore in more depth and coming from a different direction. It suggests the core of what I've been thinking about lately about the personal being politically radical. I'm responding to it directly here not because I have a personal thing against him or what he's saying, but because it's the clearest way for me to align the content of his comment with the larger point I want to make. It sucks that I have to say this, but since this is the Internet, I should state this as plainly as I can.
Isaac states that:
You might want to start with Helene Cixous (in the original French if you want to grasp the full richness of her ideas - which I cannot do yet). After getting a grounding in Cixous, I would suggest examining narratives that have traditionally been handed down by women. Namely, fairy tales. Try to focus on collections from the Italian, Germanic, and French traditions because those are closest to the original oral sources (aka women). I would avoid the ones created by Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Anderson. If you can get your hands on it, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is a must-read.
This is engagement, not debate.
Isaac states that:
I'm not sure i totally understand the idea that a desire for closure is (a) gendered and (b) specifically masculine. I get that the traditional narrative structure makes a rather nice metaphor for the male experience of sexual pleasure (and vice versa) but I'm not sure I really get it beyond that, particularly since I don't see much evidence that female artists or audiences are more willing to go for non-closure narratives (I'm not including Soap Operas here simply because I think there's a difference between Finite Narratives that end without closure and Endless Narratives like Soaps-- which traditionally appeal to a female audience-- or mainstream comix franchises-- which traditionally appeal to a male one) . If anything, I see a lot of art that frustrates the desire for closure as being full of masculine posturing, i.e. "Are you MAN enough to deal with my lack of wrapping things up for you, or are you a wuss?!"I recall reading on an anti-racist blog about someone describing a friend of theirs having a tough time of acclimating to university life, and that friend had talked about feeling as though as people were speaking in a secret code that allows them access to resources and opportunities. At the time, the narrator said that they didn't feel that was the case. The friend countered with the idea that perhaps the narrator spoke that code without realizing it.
It may be hard for you to fully understanding the distinction because, well, you're a cisgender man*, and your own style of communicating - at least in writing - is firmly within that masculine paradigm. In addition, from what I've seen, you engage most fully with a manner of communicating that also fits that style - even if you disagree with the content of what you're responding to. Not to mention, a lot of these ideas are very nuanced and can only be fully grasped through experience. As a result, it's not surprising that what you talk about as closure in general is actually a very specific type of closure**, one rooted in a paradigm dominated by men.
As I hinted at in "The Visibility of Whiteness," part of how dominance works - at least in cultural terms - is that it takes a subjective perspective and renders it neutral. It takes the visible and makes it invisible. So what you get is a very particular way of looking at things and making it simply "the way things are."
Is it really any wonder that you don't have the tools to recognize or analyze narratives that don't fit that model?
Of course, this naturally leads to a question I find incredibly interesting, if only for the fact that it increases possibilities instead of reduces them. That question being . . .
Where and how do you find these tools?
You might want to start with Helene Cixous (in the original French if you want to grasp the full richness of her ideas - which I cannot do yet). After getting a grounding in Cixous, I would suggest examining narratives that have traditionally been handed down by women. Namely, fairy tales. Try to focus on collections from the Italian, Germanic, and French traditions because those are closest to the original oral sources (aka women). I would avoid the ones created by Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Anderson. If you can get your hands on it, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is a must-read.
Outside of fairy tales, literature by Black women is a good place to go because that non-linear narrative is presented so clearly. Toni Morrison, naturally. Gayl Jones' Corregidora also. Octavia Butler's Kindred. Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuff. Toni Cade Bambara.
Manga is a very interesting place to look as well. The entire shoujo-ai genre (not the same as yuri!) is heavily female-centric. Revolutionary Girl Utena (the series) is a great example of feminine narrative. You might also want to check out Strawberry Panic and Maria-sama ga Miteru. The Inuyasha manga is also a good source to explore.
Why do I focus on literature as opposed to other media? In collaborative arts like film and theatre, it's hard to get a sense of who's driving the process. I also majored in English at an HBCU, which meant that most of my teachers (and most of the works I studied) were by and about Black women. As a result, I can list things off the top of my head that most people have to dig around to find. Ditto my thing for anime.
* You sort of brushed this off as tangential when you probably should make it central. When you say, "I don't see much evidence that female artists or audiences are more willing to go for non-closure narratives," why do you think you don't see it? ** A circle has closure, but that shape carries clearly feminine connotations. So what do people really mean when they say "closure"?
March 5, 2010
Not-Scott keeps making sense. He needs to stop.
Scott says something at Guy's blog that I found particularly apt for my current script. (bold mine)
Funny that.
the point I was trying to make was not about telling people what to do as much as telling them to imagine work from the viewpoint of a non-specialist. Your Hamlet example is a good one -- you mention theatre people look at you like you're nuts if you do Hamlet without an experimental hook, but if they take of their specialist glasses they will remember that there are a LOT of people -- a LOT of people -- who have never seen Hamlet before. For them, it is a new story. And if we overlay some weird interp because we think just doing the play isn't enough, then they come away confused. It is one thing to do plays with artist-specialists in mind, and another to do plays for the regular audience. Theatre people have a tendency to try to wow their friends, rather than reach an audience of non-specialists, and I think that is a shame.Perhaps this is where my lack of a theatre gene is a blessing in disguise. So much as I'd enjoy having the respect of Important Theatre People, I don't write for them. So all this talk about holding the audience in contempt and all that? Not about me. In fact, it's often been non-specialists who've shared the most insightful opinions about my work. There is an openness to their approach that is too often lacking in Theatre People and other experts.
Funny that.
January 31, 2010
Helene Cixous, where have you been all my life?
Somebody just turned me on to Helene Cixous, and from there I "discovered" écriture féminine. All this time I've been searching for a way to describe what and how I write, and all I had to do all along was learn French.
Anyway, I'm working my way through the Laugh of the Medusa resource page and a couple of essays.
Something that I'm wondering, before delving into it, is how we can expand our aesthetic discourse to include écriture féminine. Clearly the Aristotelian approach (aka Dead White Guy method) doesn't work for the very reasons Cixous says: it's made by and for [White] men, [non-White] women's ways of experiencing and perceiving the world are by definition excluded. Liz Lerman's method opens up a new way of approaching and understanding theatre. Are there other methods out there? Can we create a method? Is attempting to explain or understand theatre from the perspective of écriture féminine doomed to failure by irony?
Anyway, I'm working my way through the Laugh of the Medusa resource page and a couple of essays.
Something that I'm wondering, before delving into it, is how we can expand our aesthetic discourse to include écriture féminine. Clearly the Aristotelian approach (aka Dead White Guy method) doesn't work for the very reasons Cixous says: it's made by and for [White] men, [non-White] women's ways of experiencing and perceiving the world are by definition excluded. Liz Lerman's method opens up a new way of approaching and understanding theatre. Are there other methods out there? Can we create a method? Is attempting to explain or understand theatre from the perspective of écriture féminine doomed to failure by irony?
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