Tim Moriarty’s Post Prompt (Prompt #5)

A moment of theatrical abstraction that stood out to me as particularly effective was in the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof that I saw in 2005. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, the narrator/main character Tevye (played by Harvey Fierstein) has arranged a marriage with his daughter Tzeitel to the wealthy butcher Lazar Wolf. Tevye discovers that his daughter is in love with her childhood friend, the tailor Motel Kamzoil. Tzeitel wishes to be free of her arranged marriage and Tevye decides to break tradition and gives his blessing to the young couple. 

Tevye realizes that he will have to explain to his wife Golde why he has broken this very respected tradition, and does so in what is probably my favorite scene in the show. 

He explains to Golde that her grandmother came to him in a dream and scolded Tevye for arranging the marriage with Lazar Wolf instead of with Motel, who Tzeitel is meant to be with. He then continues to elaborate on his dream and how he was confronted by Fruma-Sarah, Lazar Wolf's late wife. Fruma-Sarah threatens to curse Tzeitel if she "steals" her husband. Tevye successfully convinces his wife to allow Motel and Tzeitel to marry by fabricating this story. 

The way that that this story is presented is the abstract part. Instead of just explaining this dream to his wife, Tevye's dream is acted out on stage, while he and Golde interact with their ancestors and ill-willed spirits in their pajamas. At the height of the madness in the production I saw, the entire stage was frantically raising and lowering into raked and flat position, while the entire cast was surrounding Tevye as he was plagued by the spirits they represented. 

Here's a link to the movie version of the show some context. 

I think that horrible tragedies like the Holocaust must be treated with respect for those who have suffered and are still suffering. The quote "the abundance of real suffering tolerates no forgetting" is absolutely correct. These events, as unthinkable as they are, actually did happen. If the feelings that people have about them are not expressed and the events are not talked about to future generations, how can we learn to prevent the same things from happening in our future? These subjects must not be disrespected or be used to inflict more pain and suffering to those harmed by denying their existence or by using the material for personal gain. Making beautiful or entertaining artwork about the Holocaust is not only acceptable, but necessary to keep the memory of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the ones affected alive. Art among other things is about translating the human experience to other humans. 

In the Heights and Let Me Down Easy

1. Recall two past productions, either you watched as an audience member or were involved in, that stand out in your memory.   Distinguish between the show that you just enjoyed (made you laugh, cry, upset, or was entertaining, etc..) from a production that really informed or convinced you of something True.

2. Is there a difference between performances that offer some kind of (new or newly clarified) truth versus performances that strive for documentary “verbatim” or naturalistic reality?

A recent (in fact, the most recent) theatre production that I've seen was a production of In the Heights produced by New Venture Theatre, a community theatre in Baton Rouge. The original Broadway production won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical. With music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda (who also originated the leading role on Broadway), and a book by Quiara Alegría Hudes (Pulitzer Prize winner for her play Water by the Spoonful), it is a story of a vibrant community in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood. It is a community on the brink of change, full of people with hopes and dreams, who deal with the pressures of supporting themselves and each other.  They struggle with what traditions they take with them, what they leave behind, and where their true home is.

This show is one of my favorites as well as one that I am absolutely not cast-able in.  Nevertheless, I’ve still read the script, watched various clips of performances online, and listened to the cast recording countless times. You could say that I’m familiar with it.

The production the New Venture offered was an enjoyable one, and had some great moments. The show was cast with New Venture’s usual group of community actor, who are mainly African American, so it was a little bit of a stretch for some of these actors to be playing Hispanic roles and speak with Hispanic accents. Any short comings in the show(missed harmonies, off-color singing) I was able to “filter” through my brain because I know the performance of the original cast so well. It’s an interesting phenomenon, being able to fill in the gaps of a particular production because in your brain you have memorized the version of the show that is “best” to you. It usually seems like the first time you hear or see a production it gets wedged in your memory for you to measure all subsequent productions you see of the same material. I find this more common to for me with musical theatre (likely because of cast albums). Of course, if the actor brings something new to the role or makes an appealing choice on stage, that is usually memorable.

For Theatre History 3, Dr. Walsh had us watch a “Great Performances” recording of Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy, a piece of verbatim theatre. Smith’s signature style of creating theatre is to interview an eclectic group of people (about 300 in this case), creating her show, and then performing as the interviewees in their own words. For this production, the interviews include Rodeo Bull Rider Brent Williams, New Orleans doctor Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, and more famous people such as Lance Armstrong, Joel Siegel, former Texas governor Ann Richards, as well as many others.

Smith performs not only in theses interviewees in their own words, but also performs in their accents and mannerisms. She tries to occupy or be occupied by their words. Let Me Down Easy, as well as most of Smith's other works, is about finding the character of America. It asks "Do we have the most caring society we could?" The piece largely concerns people's thoughts on the Healthcare system in the US. It really puts into perspective these interviewees' thoughts and ideas about these issues. When Kiersta Kurtz-Burke's story was performed, we learn that she was a doctor at Charity Hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Lance Armstrong talks about overcoming his cancer prognosis, and how he came back to cycling with the same approach that he did when he was fighting cancer. There are so many wonderful stories in this piece, and luckily for us, the performance is free online for us to watch! Please watch this performance if you have the time.

These performances are different because though I can laugh and cry when watching my favorite musical, I can still go home knowing that it was a great story that used fictitious characters to show the experiences of people in a particular community. In the case of Let Me Down Easy, I know that these stories are real accounts of people that really had these thoughts and feelings. Knowing that makes it different for me.

Performativity!

When I started to think about what example of a performative act/utterance that is intentionally performed to mean something else, I thought of sarcasm. I particularly thought of using sarcasm when you're unhappy with your friends, girlfriend, boyfriend, etc.
    Kevin Hart gives an example of a jealous girlfriend hearing her boyfriend having fun without her while on a boys night out, and instead of asking why they're not out together having fun, she essentially says "have fun!" without really meaning it. "Do you boo boo" is her way of communicating to her partner that she's unhappy and fed up with him. This situation obviously makes for a funny stand up bit, especially when Kevin Hart exaggerates the girlfriend's reaction, but it also is a reminder that often times the words we say are not always the words that we mean.

This summer I taught beginning acting classes to kids that attended the summer camp(s) that I was an instructor at. An early concept I taught them was the idea that words have the potential to mean more than their face value depending on the context. This was a particularly useful concept when we started to work on open scenes, or scenes that contain dialogue open to interpretation, with lines that are intentionally ambiguous so that no particular plot or intention is suggested. In an effort to encourage to kids to make up their own scene with the words I provided to them and not have the same story happen with each group of scene partners, I encouraged the kids to "raise the stakes" of the scene to make it something more pressing and important for their characters, and in turn the performances were much more interesting to watch.

For example:

A: Hi!

B: Hello.
A: How’s everything?
B: Fine, I guess.
A: Do you know what time it is?
B: No. Not exactly.
A: Don’t you have a watch?
B: Not on me.
A: Well!
B: Well what?
A: What did you do last night?
B: What do you mean?
A: What did you do last night?
B: Nothing!
A: Nothing?
B: I said nothing.
A: Sorry I asked
B: That’s alright.

I really enjoyed this particular open scene because the kids impressed me with how different each of their interpretations of the text were.

One scene showed two strangers at a bus stop, one asking what time it was, then continuing to ask personal questions to this person they had just met. This was a pretty common interpretation of the scene. 

 Another scene included two friends talking the day after a big party and one of the friends being upset that his more popular friend was invited to the festivities without him. 

Finally, one of the most successful scenes (read: higher stakes!) displayed a married couple. The wife had been waiting all night for her husband to come home and when he finally arrives the next morning, she interrogates him about his suspicious activities, infidelity implied, while the husband denies any accusations.

As soon as I got the message through to the kids about making their own choices on what the scene meant and making those situations more pressing and important to their characters, the scenes began to greatly diversify. 

Just as "What did you do last night?" can mean something different depending on context, so can "Do  You Boo Boo!".

"What is Performance?” Performance: A Critical Introduction by Carlson

Something that really intrigued me in this reading was the question of "What makes performing arts performative?" and the suggestion that they require "the physical presence of trained or skilled human beings whose demonstration of their skills is the performance"(3). While I can see that most of the general public could agree on this definition, I'm not sure that performance is always about "demonstration of skills". I don't think that performers always do what they do because they want to display their skills, but want to experience what they are doing with an audience, having a shared experience.

The example that particularly interested me was the idea of performance as a "public display of technical skill"(3).

Diane Spencer Pritchard and her husband practiced the activity of "living history"; dressing in period costumes and acting out scripted or improved scenes, in this case at a historical site for tourists. Diane at one time decided to play piano music of the era to further authenticate the atmosphere that she and her husband were presenting. She later abandoned this practice because she felt that this "display of technical skill" took their living history display into the realm of "performance".

It is interesting to me that that though this woman dressed and acted as if she "lived" in the 1830's, she never considered it a performance until the display of her piano skills was included in the display.  To me, everything that her living history presentation utilizes is a form of performance. She knows a great deal about the character she is playing, enough that she can improvise scenes and answer questions as this historical figure. Those are skills that I do no have, and if her definition has to do with that "public display of technical skill", then I would consider her "living history" a performance.

I am a table top gamer. I enjoy playing games in a social environment, and play both team-oriented and competitive games. A game that I have enjoyed for a long time is Magic: The Gathering. It has a strong casual following but also has a very large international competitive following. At higher levels of play, some of the social aspects of the game change into a more focused attitude, as the game is somewhat of a "mental sport". It is very much like chess in this way. I feel that the attitude and persona that is displayed in these environments is somewhat a performance. Still, there are many competitors that know each other and are good friends, but still at these high competitive levels, become more like streamlined machines, trying to figure out the best lines of play at any given moment. Because this game has an element of chance, sometimes crazy unexpected moments occur. Though you may not understand whats going on, try to see the tension in these moments. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8J5AQMZ8V0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vZv7ijdK2g