Performing Arts

Just as an experiment, I am posting now — before I see the show — to see what kind of preconceptions I have about the performance and how my experience tonight will be different. Or similar.

I’ve seen the picture from the Walker brochure frequently over the past week because it is sitting on a table in my kitchen (not The Kitchen) and I remember a relative close-up of faces, hands and arms in what looks a little like a tussle. But I am also remembering this is dance or dance-based, so I’m guessing there won’t be actual fighting. Also there was something in the written material about sports and Merce Cunnigham. The sports reference did nothing to excite me, given my predilection for non-sport sedentary events. I think there was something about the name “David,” but that may be the name of the artist or group.

Sheesh. Okay. I have virtually no recall. Can’t even remember the name of the show.

Oh, and there are Rugby stripes on the shirts.

The sports thing sticks in my head because it is something that does not make me want to see the show. And I have nothing against sports in principle, just as a personal preference I find participating and watching them kind of boring. Questions about funding for a sports stadium will bring out a slightly different response, but let’s not go there.

So this thing is at the Walker, at the McGuire, both of which I am pretty familiar with. But given that I know I’m not seeing a dog fight or watching paint dry, this doesn’t say much.

Until tonight then…

I’m feeling very emperor’s new clothes here. Er. . . that was dull. Irritating. Condescending. Adolescent. I’m sorry, that’s not a terribly nice way to begin. But the gloves are off, aren’t they?
In my experience (Friday) the “plants” were not nearly so obvious as in that NY review Galen pointed us to (thanks, Galen). The people behind me chattered non-stop and sang along, causing me to move halfway through, and there was some more misbehavior, but it only reached the level of annoyance/confusion. Since I came in three minutes before the show began and lost my program in the move, I never read the text. Oops. Perhaps that invalidates my entire comment. . .
Let me start over. What did Wampler want from the audience? What did she want to happen to us? We were all stirred up by the plants around us–some to imitation of their energy, some to irritation. So then we find out they were plants and feel, I don’t know, like chumps? Justified? Manipulated? Alienated? It’s not too hard to confuse, manipulate, or alienate, so I can’t see that as an achievement.
Clearly I’m getting nowhere in this response. I just don’t understand what Wampler wanted. In the continuing saga of performer-audience relations, her apparent level of frustration with the audience is. . . well, unreasonable? People have a limited range of things they are willing to do in public. They have their self-respect, they have their manners. Are these such bad things?
Start over (again). Perhaps this was meant to be cathartic and judgment free. Something for everybody: hate for the haters and love for the lovers, something to feel, to get into. That’s the most generous interpretation I can come up with. But even so. . .
People just aren’t that simple. Even audience members.

I know I live under a log, but even so sometimes a tiny bit of the outside world filters in and I don’t remember any hype about this show. Which is fine with me because I have a tortured relationship with pre-show information.

I hate to hear anything about a movie before I go see it. I am regularly disappointed by the relationship between program/advertising material and performance, usually because the material colors my expectations in an unhelpful shade. To say nothing of the injustice of having to create a blurb and press release months before knowing what the performance will be. (Just some of my innumerable weaknesses.)

All of which is a way to begin with the front of the program for this puppy. Beginning with “1906 die bruke” there’s the list of art world monikers in lower case and chronological order, interspersed with the performance’s title (or maybe it was the preamble) in all capitals ending in 2006 with “PERFORMANCE“. (I had trouble getting the strikethrough into the title of this post.)

So this is what I was thinking: it’s nice to see something that appears to take into consideration the long work of people dealing with representation and its place in the world. As if art was something that didn’t need to be defended. As if art had its own history, culture, economy, social institutions, practices, discourses, etc. that are simultaneously as independent and as engaged with the world as the practices of medicine, economics, architecture, agriculture, etc. are. In other words, as if the way so many relate to art as external, peripheral, irrelevant, misguided, elitist, self-indulgent, or ignorant was just plain wrong.

I also thought, in my smalltown Minnesota way, “What chutzpah.” Or hubris, maybe. As if this performance was the culmination of a century-long process. But in a way it’s inevitably true, as it is for any contemporary work no matter how thoughtless or badly done. And this of course points out the weaknesses of the whole idea of historical progress. Which in turn is tied into the notion of “career” and any associated endpoint.

So with that as my preamble, I will mention that I liked the depiction of creative work among those of us whose personalities fluctuate between the petty dictator and the under-appreciated laborer. And the necessary interdependence of these perspectives — creation of pop songs and performance works aren’t all that different in abstract essentials from the daily of work of “real” jobs. (As those of us who work a “day” job to survive know from experience.)

Following the formal device of the creation of something and to its presentation was a comforting storyline, particularly so when its a pop song. (And it was catchy, although hearing any three notes over and over for an hour is bound to make them stick in your head — not until I went to Cub afterwards for some groceries (shopping without the kids! Freedom!) and had one of those 70s pop song pummeled in.)

I also liked the use of projection and material used so well by Shimon Attie and others. There’s something exciting that happens when you project images of material on the material itself. And of course the smoke/fog shifts from clarifying to dispersing to obscuring the image.

There was a lingering whiff of self-righteousness in the relationship between the creator and the audience (there she was, two rows in front of me with her headset, now she’s onstage adjusting the positions of the instruments, now the show is over and she moves downstage with a crew member, watching the audience). She was an advisor on Sarah Michelson’s Daylight (Minneapolis), and the two works seem to share an investigation of audience/performer power relations that assumes audiences know little to nothing about their expectations, role, power, etc. which ends up being condescending.

In general this was the most interesting thing I’ve seen there this year in part because it was aware of its own history and practices, in part because it didn’t hesitate to be entertaining as well as thoughtful, and despite a sometimes condescending or hubristic attitude.

There were also the writings inside the program which for me worked like parallel, or distinct, lines of thought with the performance — and were also something to read when things got dull. Thanks!

Interestingly I find myself agreeing with Claude’s strangle hold on information about this performance. The enigma of the experience was essential for me. The clarity and the music were also essential. It felt like a simple show. Not simple to execute but simply stated.

If you really need to know what happens, there are spoiler reviews out there:

www.brooklynrail.org/2006/12/dance/claude-wamplers-strike

I don’t recommend reading it. Maybe afterwards. Maybe not. I bet you’ll get it on the night and like it or not.

What you should read is this blog entry. For me, it is related to Claude’s piece last night (plus I’ve really been enjoying Tino Sehgal’s pieces):

blogs.walkerart.org/visualarts/2007/12/20/tino-sehgal-doesnt-sense/

Everything you’ve heard/read about Claude Wampler’s show at the Walker is true.

Or not.

You’ll have to see it to believe it.

Did the performance begin at the bar when a man told me he was wearing Brittany Spear’s perfume?

I am still smelling it.

The New York Times reports that, starting next month, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company will show Mondays With Merce, an online video program featuring weekly episodes of the choreographer’s Monday class, on its Web site. As theTimes reports:

The program has three major components. First, there will be 26 episodes online beginning in September. Each will include 30 to 40 minutes of technique class, edited and supplemented with interviews with Mr. Cunningham, collaborators like the artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and some of the original dancers from the pieces, and archival material. The episodes will show the inspiration for dances and reveal the threads that link one work to another.

"If the company is performing 'Ocean,' which is based on the circle," said Nancy Dalva, a dance historian who will be directing these edited episodes, "we can go get archival footage of 'Beach Birds,' which has the same circle in it, and show the same Matisse poster, which Merce saw in his dentist's office before he made the dance."

Cunningham and his entire troupe are performing Ocean Sept. 11-13 inside a granite quarry just outside of St. Cloud, Minn.

PRESS RELEASE

Belizean Musician Andy Palacio Passes Away After Heart Attack and Stroke

January 19, 2008 - Andy Palacio, an iconic musician and cultural activist in his native Belize and impassioned spokesperson for the Garifuna people of Central America, was declared dead tonight at 9pm Belize time due to a massive and extensive stroke to the brain, a heart attack and respiratory failure due to the previous two conditions.

Palacio, 47, started feeling poorly last week and eventually visited a doctor with complaints of dizziness and blurred vision. On the 16th of January, he began experiencing seizures and was rushed to a hospital in Belmopan, Belize and then on to another hospital in Belize City. At this point, most people were hopeful Palacio would recover.

On January 17th, Palacio's condition worsened and he began experiencing more seizures. He was placed on an air ambulance to Chicago where he was expected to get treatment at one of the premier neurological facilities in the country. En route to Chicago, the plane stopped in Mobile, Alabama to clear immigration. At that point, Palacio was unconscious and it was determined that he was too ill to continue on the flight to Chicago. He was rushed to a hospital in Mobile, and placed on life support. There, doctors determined that the damage to his brain function was severe, and that his chances of recovery were slim. On January 18th, his family requested that he be flown back to Belize so that he might die in his homeland.

A national hero in Belize for his popular music and advocacy of Garifuna language and culture, news of Palacio's condition sent shockwaves through the community. At 5pm today, a public service was held in Belize City for Palacio as people prayed for his recovery. Ceremonies were also held by Garifuna spiritual leaders in an effort to help with the situation. Belize is in the midst of a heated election, but the local news was entirely dominated by Palacio's health crisis.

The reaction has also been strong around the world. Until the recent turn of events, the past year had been one of tremendous accomplishment for Palacio as his album Wátina, which was released at the beginning of 2007, had become one of the most critically acclaimed recordings of the year in any genre. Perhaps the most unanimously revered world music album in recent memory, Wátina appeared on dozens of Best of the Year lists in major media outlets around the globe and was roundly praised in glowing terms.

In 2007, Palacio was named a UNESCO Artist for Peace and won the prestigious WOMEX Award. Wátina was also nominated for the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards. At home in Belize, the international success of Wátina has sparked a revival of Garifuna music, as young musicians have become inspired by Palacio's example. Even in the days since Palacio's health crisis began, the accolades have continued to pour in for his work.

That Palacio has been struck down at a moment of such international acclaim only increases the sense of shock and tragedy felt at his sudden and untimely death.

Andy Palacio will be honored with an official state funeral. A massive tribute concert is planned in Belize City on Friday, January 25th.

Friends and supporters are invited to post messages in memory of Andy Palacio to his MySpace page as well as to the blog of his international record label Cumbancha .

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ANDY PALACIO'S BIOGRAPHY

Andy Palacio was not only the most popular musician in Belize, he was also a serious music and cultural activist with a deep commitment to preserving his unique Garifuna culture. Long a leading proponent of Garifuna popular music and a tireless advocate for the maintenance of the Garifuna language and traditions, Palacio recently achieved international acclaim for his work as a recording and performing artist thanks to the critical success of his early 2007 album Wåtina.

Andy Vivien Palacio was born in the small coastal village of Barranco, Belize on December 2, 1960. Palacio grew up listening to traditional Garifuna music as well as imported sounds coming over the radio from neighboring Honduras, Guatemala, the Caribbean and the United States. "Music was always a part of daily life," said Palacio, "It was the soundtrack that we lived to." Along with some of his peers, he joined local bands even while in high school and began developing his own voice, performing covers of popular Caribbean and Top 40 songs.

However, it was while working with a literacy project on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast in 1980 and discovering that the Garifuna language and culture was steadily dying in that country, that a strong cultural awareness took hold and his approach to music became more defined. "I saw what had happened to my people in Nicaragua. The cultural erosion I saw there deeply affected my outlook," he said in late 2006, "and I definitely had to react to that reality." His reaction took the form of diving deeper into the language and rhythms of the Garifuna, a unique cultural blend of West African and Indigenous Carib and Arawak Indian language and heritage. "It was a conscious strategy. I felt that music was an excellent medium to preserve the culture. I saw it as a way of maintaining cultural pride and self esteem, especially in young people."

Palacio became a leading figure in a growing renaissance of young Garifuna intellectuals who were writing poetry and songs in their native language. He saw the emergence of an upbeat, popular dance form based on Garifuna rhythms that became known as punta rock and enthusiastically took part in developing the form. Andy began performing his own songs and gained stature as a musician and energetic Garifuna artist. In 1987, he was able to hone his skills after being invited to work in England with Cultural Partnerships Limited, a community arts organization. Returning home to Belize with new skills and a four track recording system, he helped found Sunrise, an organization dedicated to preserving, documenting and distributing Belizean music. While his academic background and self-scholarship allowed for his on-going documentation of Garifuna culture through lyrics and music, it is his exuberance as a performer that has helped earn him worldwide recognition.

Palacio also brought his passion for Garifuna culture into the public sector. In December 2004, Palacio was appointed Cultural Ambassador and Deputy Administrator of the National Institute of Culture and History of Belize.

About five years ago, Belizean producer Ivan Duran, Palacio's longtime collaborator and founder of the local label Stonetree Records, convinced Palacio that he should focus on less commercial forms of Garifuna music and look more deeply into its soul and roots. Duran and Palacio set out to create an all-star, multi-generational ensemble of some of the best Garifuna musicians from Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. The Garifuna Collective unites elder statesmen such as legendary Garifuna composer Paul Nabor, with up-and-coming voices of the new generation such as Aurelio Martinez from Honduras and Adrien Martinez from Belize. Rather then focusing solely on danceable styles like punta rock, the Collective explores the more soulful side of Garifuna music, such as the Latin-influenced paranda, and the sacred dügü, punta and gunjei rhythms.

Palacio and Duran embarked on the production of Wátina, an album that would come to redefine modern Garifuna music and become one of the most critically-acclaimed world music releases of 2007. The initial recording sessions for this exceptional album took place over a 4-month period in an improvised studio inside a thatch-roofed cabin by the sea in the small village of Hopkins, Belize. It was an informal environment, where the musicians spent many hours playing together late into the night, honing the arrangements of the songs that would eventually end up on this album. While the traditions provided the inspiration, the musicians also added contemporary elements that helped give the songs relevance to their modern context. After the sessions, Ivan Duran worked tirelessly back at his studio to craft what is surely the pinnacle of Garifuna music production to date.

Wátina, which was released at the beginning of 2007, became one of the most critically acclaimed recordings of the year in any genre. Perhaps the most unanimously revered world music album in recent memory, Wátina appeared on dozens of Best of the Year lists in major media outlets around the globe and was roundly praised in glowing terms. These best-of lists put an exclamation point on what had been an incredible year for Andy Palacio and the worldwide recognition of Garifuna music. In November, 2007, Palacio became the first Caribbean and Central American artist to be designated awas named a UNESCO Artist for Peace. He received the prestigious WOMEX Award in October, 2007 which was co-awarded to Ivan Duran. In September, 2007 Palacio was conferred the Order of Meritorious Service by the Prime Minister of Belize. Wátina was also nominated for the influential BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards. At home in Belize, the international success of Wátina has sparked a revival of Garifuna music, as young musicians have become inspired by Palacio's example.

Go TEAM! Hooray for a wonderful show and for not taking things so seriously, avoiding pretension. It’s probably going to be boring reading about mostly good things but I think there’s plenty to discuss or think about other than “Was it good?” and “Did you like it?” and you can go to Lightsey Darst’s review for the heated back-and-forth.

I definitely recommend seeing it (one more performance on Saturday).
Only just a bit unedited, perhaps, this play warmed me to the bones on a cold bitter night here in the heartland. Talented performers, very pleasing soundscore, sets that leave room for the imagination and movement, and, get this, a really good post show discussion. Director Rachel Chavkin was present.

Me liked the blood, of course, and the crazy, collaged accent (Scottish/Cockney/Australian/Ali G) by Todd (aka Frank Boyd) in the Christmas Carol section. I loved recalling the Twilight Zone snow globe episode and things I haven’t heard since I was a kid in Vermont: “Jesum Crow!” (see, Penny Freeh–I’m not making that up!); that Kennedy accent (even thought the actor looked more like Nixon); “I’ll punch you in the neck!”; “Have you been good?” and fundamental Christianity. One line I didn’t hear as a kid caught my ear: “‘The Rapture!’ In stores 06/06……..”

The Rapture. Not a common topic. I thought it was given a pretty interesting treatment, though you could spend your whole life contemplating whether you could ever be good enough to be part of “Jesus’s army” or even his “second best army” (the ones that might get taken up once they’ve tried a little harder). There are days when I still wish I would be abducted by aliens, I mean embraced by the rapture. Calgon, take me away.

Not much more to say except that mind did wander once or twice to a Twin Cities cast. I’ll write it out later so as not to put any ideas into Saturday night’s audience.

Enjoy the rapture.

I really enjoyed the moment where Sarah told us we could ask her a question. I didn’t ask one, but I have some now.

So, what would you ask Sarah and The Team? Seriously you can ask anything.

On the way out I told a friend that I just don’t think I have the gene to enjoy this kind of performance. That’s how it feels to me. Plenty of people in the audience loved the show, but I was left with the feeling I’d been watching an improv exercise–performed by a group of talented and enthusiastic people, no doubt, but still. . . I just didn’t see that anything happened here. The older sister did at last get to kiss a girl, but for a born-again that certainly wouldn’t be the end of it, and we didn’t see the end of it. All I could glean of overall shape is that the performance opened and closed with explosions.
I wonder about the “heartland” the TEAM presents here. Those kids weren’t recognizably Midwestern–at least, they didn’t exhibit any of the characteristics that I’ve come to know as Midwestern in the seven years I’ve been living here. Instead, they were just garden-variety hicks, the sort careless persons might imagine living anywhere in the US. In fact they rather reminded me of the stereotyped versions of Southerners that Midwesterners so love to put on. So at one level this performance read as a pretty easy skewering of some straw folks: the Midwestern born-agains, relentlessly ignorant, cloaking their own desires under religious or patriotic language, shopping at Walmart, etc.
Then again, the kids had their moments of nobility, and the Northeastern adults seemed pretty flawed themselves. I don’t know quite what the TEAM are up to here, or how it’s supposed to work on us. It didn’t work on me, at any rate.

Hello again. I came home and was looking out my window on the stairway, procrastinating, cause it’s cold out there and that’s what I do, and I see lots of old snow. And old snow is dirty, hard, and to me it always looks very old. (I feel a metaphor coming on…) And I feel old, not like not-young old but like worn-out old. And it’s dark out there. The street lights were doing that streetlight thing on the cars and streets, and it looked romantic. Like Hallmark-card-queasy romantic. And if this were a story I’d say, “My mind began wandering and from out of this beauty arose the question: Is theater dead?” But this is not a story, it’s off-the-cuff writing on an old portable computer done in a dark house while the rest of the family sleeps because they work or go to school in the morning, supporting me more-or-less — indirectly or directly, so what I say better count. So something more truthful would be: “My mind continued its wandering that it had done all day when not whipped into submission by the exigencies of schedules, obligations, duties, and commitments. And along this current of mindlessness that often accompanies washing the dishes and getting things ready for the kids’ breakfasts in the middle of the night came the thought: Should I write ‘Theater is dead’ in the blog? Didn’t someone already say that? Isn’t there some more clever way of writing it so that I will look like I know more about what I’m saying? A way that will be simultaneously uproariously funny and emotionally devastating while still giving all the outward signs of a demonstrable truth articulated with panache and consummate skill? A way that maybe I could teach a workshop with and pay some bills with the fee?”

But actually no. I’m just worn out. Or worn down.

Because (here comes my point) stories (and their narrative brethren: moral, subject, form vs content debates, subject/object relationships, theme, message, and those gazillions of other simplifications) are inherently evil, right, which is why so much art throws itself bodily in the face of such literal straightforwardness and splinters, become surface or facet, uglifies, deconstructs, masks, parodies, or otherwise subverts the habits of weakminded literalists who don’t feel like they’ve gotten their money’s worth unless they give a standing ovation at the end of every punchline. So that we can feel like we’re alive down here and not just screwing caps on toothpaste tubes.

I overstate my case, naturally. Let’s not get carried away. It is a blog after all.

Particularly in the Heartland was another TV-sketch-comedy-theater piece. Amusing in parts; topical certainly (although I missed any reference to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster). As their website says, “avant-garde meets MTV.” Inspired, apparently, by the work of the Wooster Group and its various progeny there is a reputable and honorable theatrical intent here (again from the TEAM website): “The work combines aggressive athleticism with delicate examinations of the social and political factors shaping our world today, keeping the brain, eyes, and heart of the audience constantly stimulated.”

Excellent, but the splintering “multi-tasking between hyper-intellectual commentaries and exuberant physicality” is no longer enough. If it is true that they “know of no other way to behave” I suggest looking elsewhere. One possibility is that same MTV, which is now a stronghold of Reality Television, while music videos are sold as products for your iPod. And Reality Television (however much we may adore, despise or ignore it) has a mode of representation that is more in tune with the way the world currently functions than television does. (I’m not saying that it’s real. Please.) Even email is dead now — texting and IMing are how communication happens. Is TV sketch comedy, no matter how versatile and athletic, a viable mode for such examinations and stimulations? I was not bored by the performance, the subject matter, or the event of Heartland. I was not bored any more than I was excited. I was entertained. But I’d seen it all before and it didn’t achieve any moments of imaginative flight. I particularly liked the egg toss, but audience participation in and of itself does not alter the fact that these boots have been on the ground for too many years already and people are losing limbs and lives in defense of a policy of political fundamentalism not entirely unrelated to rapturous americans from whatever state. Nor does it really deviate from the standard format.

(And here I’m going to say about Kansas and Rapture and the question of the Heartland’s value as a part of a nation…no. “Nation” is an outmoded term, to say nothing about the obscenities of the term “Heartland.” Enough already. Of course, yes, we’re all human and I turn my cheek all too frequently, but when a million people are whacked out on Religio-pharmaceuticals in the form of fundamentalist pill popping it doesn’t make it a viable alternative lifestyle. A million people can still be a million wrong people. And, no Virginia, we can’t all just get along. Maybe in the real world, but not in the theater. Am I the only one who wanted to see that connection made somewhere?)

But regardless. “Why watch TV when you can go to a live theater event?” I was once asked as a student. My reply should have been “Why go to a live theater event when you can watch TV?” because that reply reflected the state of theater then (in them olden moldin’ days). Now the question that comes to mind is “Why go out at all when you can order in Jan Svankmeyer and Werner Herzog via Netflix?” If theater is anything besides a mummified zombie (and I say this as a practitioner in the field for many years) it’s only hope resides somewhere outside of itself. Who’s going to stimulate my brain eyes and heart? I look to the elsewhere-mentioned Laurie Van Wieren’s 9×22 Dance Lab at the BLB and the vibrant network of performers (who often blur any disciplinary lines) that I’ve seen, met, spoken with, worked with, or missed and hated myself for over only the past year. And there are others, but this is not the place for that, my child.

Regardless of the fun bits and the dull bits of this most recent Out There performance, there is a more fundamental question at stake and it is one with which I wrestle daily (except when I’m too busy putting food on the table and wiping noses, fer cryin out loud it’s only art). It’s like the mid-fifties in New York (another small arts community holding an inferiority complex to external geographies) when the reasons for Abstract Expressionism were becoming obscured by its overwhelming presence. A dichotomy between figurative painting and abstract painting was being solidified. Taking sides was going nowhere, merely reinforcing habits. Old modes reduce even the most radical ideas to pablum.
So it will take another Jasper Johns moment — something that (combining both figuration and abstraction or ignoring them both) restructures the terms so that no longer is it a question of live theater vs television (For example, for example! I know there’s plenty of other things to do with all your free time and money…) but of a work that practices a different mode of representation. A painting-flag.

Now it’s bed time.

Participate in a stunning and powerful performance at Walker Art Center this February!

Acclaimed Italian theater director Romeo Castellucci is looking for male volunteers of any age to perform in a short section of Hey Girl!, which is being presented next month in the McGuire Theater. No experience is necessary, all are welcome. Click here to see the trailer

40 Male Extras Needed (Hurry, spaces are filling quickly)

• Where: Walker Art Center, McGuire Theater
• Please bring you own regular street cloths ( without logos or writing ) for the performance
• The volunteer performance time is no more than 15 minutes per show
• A great resume addition
• Small stipend given to cover parking/gas
• Must be available on all of the following dates:

o Rehearsal: Meet in McGuire theater lobby on the 3rd floor of the new building. Rehearsal times are: Wednesday, February 13 from 8pm-11pm
o Performances: February 14 - 17, 2008. Meet one hour before curtain each night. Performances begin at 8pm ( 7pm on Sunday) and last 90 mins.

For additional information or to volunteer contact Natalie Bowers at Natalie.bowers@walkerart.org or at 612.375.7695

Hypnotically beautiful [with] a visual resonance that you find all too rarely on stage. . . . Exquisite intensity flows through much of what Castellucci calls his drama of movement. - Financial Times, London

Become enveloped in a stunning tour-de-force by Italy's acclaimed director Romeo Castellucci. This unforgettable theater of the subconscious unfolds fascinating and frightening visual landscapes equally profound, enigmatic, and dreamlike that provoke the imagination and make the senses swirl. With raw architectural sets, surreal costuming, film projections, exploding glass, and riveting performances by two actresses (and 40 male performers), Hey Girl! constructs a world that alternates between the beautiful and the horrific. Note: Contains nudity and simulated violence. Copresented with the University of Minnesota Department of Theatre Arts.

Still can’t get past the spam filter, so here goes:

I, on the other hand, found the text exciting, moving and interesting. Couldn’t tell you if I am a text person or not, though.

I felt that one thing that putting the audience on the stage did achieve, and quite well, was to make the auditorium into an object. This wasn’t about audience roles vs performers, or mixing up the boundaries, or any version of inclusiveness — it was about objectifying the position of the audience, the seats themselves, and most highly and significantly, the space of the McGuire.

It’s even more apparent when you see the promo photo of that auditorium in New York with the gorgeous green seats. It makes the beauty of the house apparent (the prettiest part of the McGuire) and, to me at least, functions in part as commentary on who’s got the money.

Unintentionally perhaps it also shows up the inherently more interesting space in (this) theater: the place that does not try to erase itself.

For the past few years there have been a lot of performances that explore the state of the audience, the stage, the performer(s) and perception. It’s become a trend? But maybe, like cell phones, the norm. The current season at the Walker, beginning in the Fall, seems to invite this curiosity all the more, like a light getting brighter and brighter. So bright I’m not sure I can see it anymore.

In September we had Gob Squad: “Super Night Shot”, which I loved. There were 4 performers in-the-know out on the streets of Minneapolis with camera crews and a quest: find a suitable match for a dance/hug and a kiss with a man in a bunny suit. I don’t know why I adore this piece so, even the memory of it. Those performers were each so endearing and they withstood the mighty wind and rain. There was a lot of reality and amazing live or near-live film editing and improvisation, joy (in the cab ride back to the Walker for the end of the performance), and personal revelations.

Jerome Bel, of course, has devoted himself to the situation the theater stirs up. He is perhaps the most well-known of the performer/viewer-explorers I can think of. In “Pichet Klunchen and Myself” he delves fairly deeply into issues about dance, theater, the audience, the box office, funding, and the bargaining amongst all of those entities.Certainly

Pina Bausch has explored the audience’s role, she has challenged us, asked us to endure certain things she knows most people would not normally choose to watch. I know Pina Bausch hasn’t performed at the Walker but I can hope, can’t I?

And now Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People in “Everyone.” His interest seems to be more about identity — of performer and of audience member, but frankly, less about the audience member, I thought, despite the effort to bring us closer by placing us onstage with the performers. More on that later on.

The program notes talk about Gutierrez’s work being “born from basic questions about existence and the theatrical situation: Who are we and why are we here? What binds the performers and viewers in an attentive space of perception?” and more. If I stick to the fact that the work is merely “born” from these questions and not exploring them to their thorough end, I can be forgiving. The performers execute the tasks in a simple, real and present manner, unfettered by “technique” or idiom or style or editorializing. There is a sweetness to it.

When the singing happens, and especially the bad singing (this would be a part I would excel at) I was happiest. I think the words were “When you arise you must sing songs” which made me think we, the viewers in the attentive space, were going to finally engage with the Powerful People. We would stand, “arise,” and sing and maybe do the cool arm movement they were doing in the beginning. But no. We were never invited. I thought “Oh good! They’re being bad for us, so we can feel comfortable.” All for naught.

I don’t see how the many questions the work was born from could help be addressed by having us sit in bleachers onstage. It did nothing different to the viewing. It felt exactly as though I were sitting in a theater seat, the same distance and height away as I normally am. There are many other alternative seatings that could have taken place to alter how we experienced the work. Maybe the folks on the pillows up front have a different take.

Not too long after the singing they do impressive hopscotch yoga, jumping onto one foot and staying for about 30 seconds. And they kiss. Again, each other, not us.

The strongest moments for me were the text, the bad poetry (Gutierrez’s words, not mine). The last one, delivered by Michelle Boule, was funny, heartbreaking, childlike. It seemed like she was moved to tears. She was also the only performer that seemed real during the happy, silly, playful part earlier on.

Every performer was strong. Each performer has a very distinctive look, of certain generation, all wearing t-shirts and jeans and sneakers.

My last response to Galen got lost in the spam filter so I’m doing this directly.

The upshot was:

I agree. The Audience was The Audience and unless you do some higher level intervention like in Heiner Muller’s “Mauser” it’s not doing much for the relationship. Sometimes community is oppressive and you just want to get out.

And as far as the cliches go, I don’t know enough to judge if they’re cliches or not so I don’t know what they meant as cliches. But sometimes (and this is where my reference to children is applicable, sort of) it felt like it does when you’re the only sober one in a room full of drunks. This did seem to “examine…embodied presence” In MG’s words, but not what I’d call the “wonder” of it. Sometimes kids are as dull as they are fascinating.

Which is only to say that this piece, as in all good work, surpasses or escapes our ability to articulate a message, subject, or agenda. And although at the moment I am not able to articulate how it worked for me, I know it has something to do with the true nature of Real Kids(TM). I promise my brain will get to this somehow…