Mark Post Digest!

Dear friends,

Many thanks for all your ideas and imaginings.  Thanks to you all, we have a hell of a line up:

Old South Louisiana mint julep madame recognizes that “attention must be paid”

Outright rejection of Acute Pruney Ankle Syndrome in the Underworld.

Satisfying Polonius-sized Splashes and an onboard fog machine.

Strolling The Great Wall of China?  Too brief!  Let’s go for a real hike!

Blood Soaked Street Orgies in Dayton, Ohio!

Online choose your own adventure The Changeling with a side order of Gangnam Style, Iron Maiden, and a bearded, bikini clad Miley Cyrus lip sync.

A bubbling snorkel-full of aquatic puns in a pool full of mermaids.

Desperately needed: wrench to jam the gears of privatized incarceration human meat grinder…

Let’s go.

Mike takes us inside the Loman household with a “fully realized house in the style of the late 1940's.”  Step 5 of Schechner's list, that “all production elements speak their own language”, receives a vigorously musical treatment.  At first look, underscoring, accompanying, and outright performing the top radio hits of the 1940’s could seem at odds with a show like Death of a Salesman, but I’d say, not only serves to engage the audience but underlines an important thematic element: that of putting on a show.  The main characters in the play are engaged in the relentless pursuit of crafting and maintaining a carefully crafted image for themselves and those around them.  They constantly lie to themselves, and a certain “song and dance” is required for the upkeep of their fantasies.  I love the way that a printed guide can be handed out to audience members letting them choose whether to follow the scenes chronologically or as more of a random grab bag of life at the Lomans, “to allow the audience to partake of as much of the Loman's life as they want. Both the disjointed and the orderly speak to the needs of the story and each road would lead to a different but meaningful overall picture of our salesman and his family.  Mike rightly asserts that the play takes place mainly in the memory of the Loman family and that it is “centred mainly around the house and the members of that house.”  The Loman home’s setting accommodates all the to-ing and froing of Uncle Ben, the backyard scenes, the bar carousing, the bosses meeting, and, of course, all the scenes at home.  It’s a particularly meaningful punctuation at the end of the play when Linda quietly weeps to Willy’s grave: “LINDA: ...Willy I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there'll be nobody home. (A sob rises in her throat.) We’re free and clear. (Sobbing mournfully, released.) We’re free. (Biff comes slowly toward her.) We’re free...We’re free…”

Erica rightfully points out that certain scripts, like the one that she has reimagined (Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice)  “already contain a shimmering, other-worldly quality that almost makes them seem impossible to fully bring to life within the confines of a traditional theatre.”  Erica includes a description of the set as it appears in the script that casually mixes surreal elements with the mundane (a raining elevator, rusty pipes, an abstracted River of Forgetfulness): “If that’s not begging to be re-imagined in an unconventional theatre space, then I don’t know what is.”  Of course (now that I think of it) what we would consider conventional for staging is a definition that is not going to stay in one place. The staging she proposes, “an old, indoor swimming pavilion”, is unconventional by most current standards (definitely by my own pretty pedestrian sensibilities).  She does a bit of clever double dipping on Schechner’s third axiom (The Theatrical Event Can Take Place Either In A Totally Transformed Space Or In A ‘Found Space’”, arguing that her proposal includes both the found and the transformed; the existent pool is found as well as transformed into Sarah Ruhl’s underworld.  She closes her proposal floating the idea that as audience members interact with space that surrounds them (submerged legs not required at all times, “pruney ankles” not adding the experience) they themselves will become a major scenic element.  She argues that involving the audience on a more visceral, and indeed physically implicated, level speaks the play’s themes of love and loss.

All aboard and anchors aweigh as we set sail on Austin’s Maritime Promenade Hamlet!

The boat setting works on different levels.  It speaks to utilitarian aspects of the staging: the ashes of Hamlet’s father are to be scattered at sea, the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father’s foggy entrance on the boat’s stern (and his disappearance into the deep), the dumping of Polonius’ body overboard “complete with fake body and satisfying splash”, and the eventual mooring of the ship ashore on a small island for Ophelia’s burial and the graveyard scenes.  On another level, the conflicted setting (maritime leisure vs.funereal gathering) of a wake on the boat plays handily with the various themes at odds swirling about as the play starts: “With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole—.”  Hamlet’s father is scarcely buried in the ground (“A little month, or ere those shoes were old, With which she followed my poor father’s body…”).  They then set sail to dump his ashes and take part in a bit of general merrymaking at sea.   And on a symbolic level, the floating Hamlet plays to “ this idea of being moorless, for in many ways the characters either begin or descend into a moorless sense of self.”  I do like the relationship between Hamlet being bodily contained in the confines of a ship that is bound someplace irrespective of his will.  The inertia of circumstances that drives him contrary to his desires is reflected in his passage on the boat whose navigation is also out of his hands…”And enterprises of great pith and moment, With regard their currents turn awry,

Sarah invites us on a theatrical journey quite literally around the world with her extremely long-form promenade production of Mother Courage and her Children.  With a production whose time frame is so protracted, Sarah affords her cast and crew a very high level of flexibility in terms of how and when the play incorporates itself into this journey: perhaps no scripted dialogue is required, and the only essential component of the show is that one of her children “die” every six months?  Should the cast be limited to communicate using only the script for the first year of the trip?  Casting could be a fluid element as well...and maybe the real-life entrepreneurial component plays a major part: “... this is literally just a travelling troupe of actors selling their craft in exchange for food. Or perhaps they have “on” and “off” times, during which they set up shop and either perform a scene or sell their wares, then close up at a slated hour.”

But before she gets too lost in the itinerant modus operandi of her group, Sarah pauses to call into question the purpose of putting on a show like this. “Why?”  If, as she says, “...One thing is sure: the play is not the thing.” the question remains: what is?  Despite the longevity of this performance, maybe the aim here is to highlight an experience that, like our own on earth whatever its manifestation, is “fundamentally fleeting and immaterial.”  Using Marina Abramovic’s Great Wall of China Walk, Sarah considers how some of Schechner's axioms (“transformed space, divided focus invasion of the space by the audience through the media”) could be applied to performance as well.  There is a quick tutorial on the geographical logistics of how one goes about walking around the world, too.  I gotta admit, it sounds appealing in a romanticized kind of way, but, as Sarah points out: “cool, but ‘cool’ is the last thing on the mind 2 years into a 7-year long project.”

Andrea never thought she’d find herself in Dayton…” wandering around the dilapidated downtown area, you stumble upon the steps of an old building and inspiration strikes!  What a cool spot for someone to get stabbed 37 times!”  And so, her idea for a site-specific Julius Caesar was born.  Andrea paints us a picture of Dayton, Ohio: a curious blend of the run-down and the picturesque.  Empty buildings amongst an energetic buzz of students, working citizens, artists, and politicians.  Food trucks, weekend vendors, and beautiful architecture from days gone by.  Andrea muses over several approaches to bring Julius Caesar to Dayton.   She considers the logistics of a walking tour of downtown with “various scenes of the show...in different locations of the downtown area.”  This offers some interesting options, but, for her, this departure from convention would be “too easy”.  How about a scenario where the various scenes are played and replayed on a loop around the concentrated and very walkable downtown area?  This way certain scenes’ concurrent playing couldn’t help but resonate off each other (“Caesar could be getting murdered while 25 feet away, Antony is eulogizing.”)  Andrea ditches what’s left of convention and goes on to consider Dayton’s downtown statues spouting blood over bathing, dancing Romans and parts of the play’s action broadcast on CCTV monitors throughout the courthouse (“if the spectators like what they see on the CC they can wander the courthouse building and find the room”).  Anthony’s speech in the plaza might take a break to indulge in some “festive Lupercalia activities with dancing and music.”  This also might be a way to invite and turn on the casual passerby to the rest of the show unfolding elsewhere.  Andrea wonders: could this come to pass?  Will she end up back in Dayton?  Would Schechner be proud?  All will be revealed…

Emily starts us off with a tuneful case review of the weird and recontextualized in Cry, Trojans!, The Wooster group's take on Troilus and Cressida.  Oh yeah, baby.  Gangnam Style?  Iron Maiden?  There’s something for everyone here.  But more importantly, it’s a great example of the sixth axiom’s use, this notion of “a script as a jumping-off point rather than gospel”.  For her re-imagined production, she takes a match to convention with her elusive yet substantial iteration of The Changeling.  A glorious swirl of choose your own adventure/solve the mystery storytelling. Schechner’s “found space where the space belongs to both the performer and the audience” for this production: the internet itself.  The conceit recruits all sorts of virtual personnel and online venues: blogs, twitter threads that betray evidence of the murder plot, vlogs, and even “coded cabalistic writings on Reddit”.  Emily does ask though, “That's all well and good but how do we get people hot on The Changeling trail?”  Good question, and she’s got a good answer that is in line with the demographic that could potentially do The Changeling in this particular medium:  how about an avenue like that of Chatroulette?  She herself says it best: “The audience is actively putting themselves out there to see something unusual...They could be easily enticed by something with viral potential and then given the requisite information to fall down the rabbit hole we have concocted for them.”  Emily ties up her digitally expansive proposal like this: “It's a love letter to the Internet's history of the mysterious and unexpected. Simultaneously, we have an examination of the isolation and artifice of the digital age-- how it corrupts us, maddens us, and entrances us.”

As I connoisseur of puns, both cleverly wrought and dementedly bad, I appreciate Lisa’s vigorous punning on the aquatic theme in her post.  As for her take on pondering a re-staging in the environmentally immersive key, she the wisely avoid the pedant’s lure of trying to horn each and every production idea to fit a standard created by a theoretical outline.  Instead, she examines how her approach would - or wouldn’t - fit into Schechner’s criteria.  She takes a look at Hans-Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid and understandably finds herself gravitating towards the water or “near water, instead of having to construct a pool, or a found space being an already constructed pool for a different purpose.”  The issue of repurposing existing infrastructure and whether or not such a component would be a found space or not bobs up to the surface.  Is defining a “found space” as simple as adjusting the orientation the intent: Lisa wonders that if a space (in this case a pool) is constructed for the purpose of one production and is then used for another, couldn’t it be a little of both found and transformed?  This brings up an interesting question about what constitutes conventional.  As I mentioned in Erica’s response, this definition is always on the move.  Staging a show in and around a body of water is safely within the land of the unconventional, but it’s conceivable that at some time it wouldn’t.  With this talk of repurposing settings that fall outside the norm, I guess I’m wondering how many times or how often can an idea be used until it we begin to call it conventional?

Osi takes us home.  Back to the City of Brotherly Love.  But the love at the heart of the problem Osi is looking at is not quite brotherly.  It’s the love of money here that is poisoning the communities in focus.  Let me explain: Osi has imagined a site-specific performance of a play called V to X (reads: Five to Ten), set in Eastern State Penitentiary - a former prison in the heart of Philly that stands in ruins.   The play itself “unapologetically highlights privatized incarceration (industrial prison complex), the US justice system, and the implications on the communities that are disproportionately impacted by incarceration rates.”  A private jail provides the service of incarceration, but its reason for existence is to make money (isn’t what all businesses do?).  And so, there exists an irreconcilable conflict of interests between the pursuit of justice and the pursuit of profit.  The well-being of inmates (or potential inmates) and the financial well-being of the shareholders.  The play staged in the theatre, packed a punch, and the idea here is to notch it up even higher adding an immersive quality.  The idea would be to first let the audience freely explore the space, “allowing the audience to interact with the props, photos, clothes, personalizations or lack thereof, and space will give them a sense of who these characters may be.”  But wait: if the play has such an impact already, why the need to re-think its staging context?  Well, it’s simply too easy to enter the dark and anonymous house of a theatre, watch a show, and go on with life as if nothing happened.  She wants up the level of engagement to a more personal level, “ to challenge us to be different; challenged to grapple with the discomfort; challenged to reject the status quo.”

Well, does our dear Dr. Schechner approve?  Is he proud?  A picture really can say it all…