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.
Comment by Anonymous — January 11, 2008 @ 12:59 am
Oh, I really didn’t like the text. But then I am a text person.
“Everyone” didn’t feel essential to me either, but I’m a sap and I tend to find essential the things that make me cry, and this just wasn’t in that neighborhood. Still, I liked it, I enjoyed it, it made me think. And I should say I reviewed it positively:
http://msp.blogs.com/themorningafter/2008/01/1908-miguel-gut.html#more
I want to suggest (and perhaps I should do this in my own post, but I’m lazy, so see my review) that the strivings of “Everyone” (intended subjects, that long speech at the end) perhaps aren’t as interesting as the methods. I found myself following not the gist of the thing but the smaller scale–the repetitions, the individuality vs. unison, etc. Overall, I like “Everyone” more as object than as statement.
Comment by Lightsey Darst — January 11, 2008 @ 8:25 am
You say “more as an object than as a statement” — I don’t know if I can separate the two. I recognized from the get-go that we were going to be part of an exchange, more than the normal exchange, that is. When each performer walked on and observed us viewers, I remembered seeing Ballet of the Dolls in the early 90’s (the late 1900’s!) doing the same thing in “Wish You Were Here.” It was a device we used in “4-Plus-One” (Judith Howard, Cathy Young, Erin Thompson, Jan Erkert, and myself). The thought was “look at the audience/let them look at you.” By then (2001) I felt already slightly redundant, so the other night it was hard to feel taken in by the same device.
I had not read the program notes until afterwards, a bit during the post-show discussion, which kind of soured my enjoyment of the performance actually. I just shouldn’t go to those, and yet I learn something when I do. It might have been better for me not to have heard Gutierrez speak so much, though. Illuminating one’s work can easily sound pretentious, especially if one goes on and on, which on thursday night one did.
Comment by Sally Rousse — January 13, 2008 @ 10:51 pm
Yes, there’s got to be some place where the object and the statement are the same thing, I suppose, but out at the petals, so the speak, I think one can separate them. How about method vs. content rather than object vs. statement? Is that a more palatable division?
The looking–I said this in another note somewhere–disturbed me because I felt it had to be fake. I mean, how many of us can they look at? And how seriously can they look, given that they have to keep their minds on the performance? But eye contact is truly bizarre anyway. Sustained eye contact always leaves me feeling like a hole has opened up in the usual fabric.
I avoid post-show discussions. . . thanks for taking the bullet there, Sally. What did you learn?
Comment by Lightsey Darst — January 14, 2008 @ 4:41 pm
Well, I guess I learned that a post-show discussion is sometimes still a performance. (My own experience post-showing below).
And I got a glimpse of what the hours of rehearsals might have been like, the inner workings and relationships.
I also came to appreciate Laurie Van Weiren’s post-performance question format at 9×22 Bryant Lake Bowl.. She gets the performers to ask the audience questions and it is a much livelier interaction because as an audience member I am mostly interested in experiencing how the artists pose questions. I can’t ever think of any questions as an audience member! I can always make-up my own answers, figure it out. That’s my own intellectual fun!
As a performer, I have participated in them quite a lot. More and more, I have been trying to be as honest and real as possible. IS that even possible and does anyone actually want that? I’m not sure. I take off my shoes, my make-up and undo my hair while I am out there. But even this effort is still a show, I admit. Someone actually commented once about me holding my hairpins and false eyelashes and pointe shoes. They could see my blistered feet and the circles under my eyes. I only meant to save time, mostly, and it helps to have a real task.
About method vs. content or object vs. statement: I think they go hand-in hand for me. IN MG’s case very much so. It was a bit like watching excercises. Luckily, everyone was so watchable and comfortable in their own skin/t-shirt the exercises din’t make me cringe too much.
Onward with OUT THERE– !
Comment by Sally Rousse — January 16, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=67022731&blogID=347444202
Scotty Reynolds blogs about Miguel Gutierrez’s “Everyone.”
Comment by Sally Rousse — January 16, 2008 @ 10:50 pm