This week’s theme is Space...how an ongoing conversation with particular units of space
can interact with performance. Space can
be a medium of expression, the context of the same (for both performer and
audience), a character within the story, and a shapeshifter that bends the lines
of these definitions to play many roles at once. Peter Brook famously said of stage space,
that is “has two rules: anything can happen and something must happen.”
Well then. The Space is Fort Irwin...let’s see
what happens.
Rehearsal
Process
In “Rehearsing the Warrior Ethos,” we read
about how a totally immersive, environmental theatre engagement is used to
rehearse the pursuit of very specific, unfolding, real-life narratives. This
simulation is both a performance and rehearsal process for the eventual staging
of its showing in the theatre of war.
This production’s concept? “[T]he
major narratives...to foment democracy, to work with the Iraqi population, and
to take police action necessary to put down insurgents, all the while doing
everything possible to avoid making more enemies by generating bitterness and
mistrust. “
The text upon which this production is based
was an ongoing war and the changing agenda of its authors. Of course, changing the aspirational
narrative of a performance can’t help but alter the rehearsal process. Imagine a far less nuanced Fort Irwin
scenario when the simulation’s aim was something along the lines of: “to wipe
our insurgency whatever the cost.”
“Realism,
is not only selectively deployed, it is selectively desired”
The same way that an inflexible insistence on
realism can diminish the more general, truth-seeking value of the narrative in
play (e.g., Mike’s example of Judi Dench miming the mirror instead of slavishly
working with a real one, etc…) within the simulation at Fort Irwin, the
performance is “negotiated between striving for realism/authenticity and
finding a space where such qualities are compromised or made elastic for the
sake of the goals and protocols of the exercise.” The is goals are aligned to production’s
“concept” of winning hearts and minds on the ground in Iraq, and they are
reflected in the rehearsal/performance at Fort Irwin.
After all, that’s why we rehearse plays, isn’t
it? To explore the material and its
scenarios in a way that when the moment of truth arrives we deliver the goods
to the audience.
The
Readiness is All…
From wolf cubs exercising their capacity to
pin down quarry to the subtle trial and error social exchanges that form our
personal protocol, there is a constant element of rehearsal that attends life
itself. Whether we consciously spell it
out or whether it’s something more intuitive, it usually turns out that, when
the Moment of Truth arrives, we are likely to do not what we hoped for, nor
what we’ve decided is best, but rather that which we’ve rehearsed. The present tense is always connected to a
future that will become the present, and, whether it takes place in a system as
measured and carefully monitored as that of Fort Irwin, we’re always preparing
for it. Amanda Wingfield, take us home:
“...future becomes the present, the present becomes the past, and the past
turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!” (The Glass Menagerie,
Williams). If most of life is made up of
a series of one kind of a performance or another, aren’t we rehearsing just
about all the time too?
The performance metaphor only stretches so far
though. When Fort Irwin’s units reach
the real theatre, they will be performing in a context not so clearly defined:
the roles of spectator, performer, and every shade in between are fluid
according to the situation at best and probably undefinable.
Sleep
No More: A Certified Schechner Environmental Theatre Event.
The next two articles deal with theatre in the
environmentally immersive key. I haven’t
seen Sleep No More, but, from what
I’ve been able to learn from this week’s material, it would seem that the
Punchdrunk production could carry (if there were such a qualifying stamp of
approval) the aforementioned certification.
Schechner’s requisite elements are all there:
The multi-directional
transactions between the various elements of production, audience, and
space. The fluid delineation of spatial
boundaries given to performance and spectator space…Space that is found, negotiated with, and transformed: “in a
negotiated environment a more fluid situation leads sometimes to the
performance being controlled by the spectators.” (I think there are among us
those who have experienced Sleep No More.
I wonder, is the suggestion that your participation in the show created
your own particular “poetic, associative narrative” consistent with your
experience?) A shifting focus that is extended over a hundred rooms. “All production elements speak in their own
language”: It seems that Sleep No
More’s production elements translate their textual origins into their own
particular, expressive idiom. “The text need be neither the starting point
nor the goal of the production: there may be no text at all”. Of course, Sleep No More’s ancestry includes a very concrete text, but, as
integral as the script is to both the production’s conception and execution,
“every line of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is embedded in multiple languages—sound,
light, design, and dance,” the structure of this “immersive” event is not
dictated by the dramatic plot” (Stacey, 2009).
I think Schencher would approve. What do you think?
The many different characterized locations in
the Sleep No More space (the
cemetery, a parlour with various mementoes, a child’s room, an office, a
bedroom, a small library alcove, a nursery…) form some of this environmental
ensemble that Worthen called the “Space of Character.” Spatializing different aspect of Macbeth into the various places
dedicated to Sleep No More reminds me of how, back in the good ole’ real life,
we take part in little, immersive performance events all the time. The spatial qualities of any given place enact
a considerable role in how the scenes are played. Consider how social chemistry, norms of
behaviour, and a general mood might contrast between two places like a
kindergarten classroom and a graveyard...a circus tent and a prison cell. The space in each is both a defining variable
in the transaction between all acting entities and one of the players
itself.
Now, exiting The McKittrick Hotel’s parallel
universe, let’s hit the streets.
Walking
NYC
The French Impressionist painter Claude Monet
said of his painting style and the artistic movement he subscribed to that
“Impressionism is only direct sensation”.
The Impressionists rejected (and were rejected by) the established
venues of art exhibition and so went outside the usual arenas to show their
work. They sought the “momentary, sensory
effect of a scene - the impression” (Wolf, 2018). You can see where this is headed. I couldn’t help but see these walks through
New York from within this impressionistic lens.
Threading the series of moments that make up these walks within a trail
that purposely lacks a coherent narrative highlights the quality of constantly
relocating oneself in a present time and space.
After all, on these walks, you’re not hearing about it, but rather you
are actually there. I don’t want to
strain the whole Impressionist thing too far.
It might be a misguided errand of the mind to begin with, but for now,
I’ll stick with it...
“These
walks engage with the present space, the past, and the ever-potential future”
The three walks had in common direct engagement
from within the space, “to heighten the senses so that you can experience or be
part of the environment.” All the
senses were communicated with, but each walk favoured speaking to one in their
mother tongue. The Angel Project was all about looking and the visual. The participant was invited to
take part in a viewing of their environment that was intermittently broad and
deep, sweeping and penetrating, guarded and protective. Her
Long Black Hair was aural. The disconcerting hybrid of recorded and present
sound input was aimed at bringing the spectator closer into a place of
engagement with the present time and place.
The Ground Zero Memorial Soundwalk
painted with the medium that’s hardest to pin down: through memory and a sense of the nostalgic…”in
order to build new emotive contours based on layers of memory—lived memory,
imagined memory, postmemory.” This walk
traded in the currency of memory: walking the trail of the past through memory
and seeing the present moments fold into the same path as it too becomes
memory.
Prompt
Using Schechner’s somewhat pedantic sounding
(yet flexible enough) criteria, 6 Axioms For Environmental Theatre as a point
of departure, I’d like you to re-imagine a play or some part of a play that is
normally subject to a conventional staging and how it could be brought to life
in an “environmentally immersive key.”
Feel free to focus on one or more of Schechner's Axioms (no need to engage
with all six elements), deviate from them or expand upon them. Dealer’s choice. Go for a ride with it, and take us with you.
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