So mostly because of the directness; here’s a response per Lightsey piece by piece:

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Mr./Ms. Lynch, why don’t you lay off the scorn and speak more directly. If you’ll look again at the other comments, you’ll see they come from educated art viewers, not philistines.

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I don’t understand why you thought my comments were scornful; they were not written in a negative light at all. I was just trying to investigate and bring up as many simple differences and similarities as I could come up with between the Kitchen and the McGuire performances (without being at the Kitchen).

I don’t think anyone in Minnesota is (or that I am? are you saying?) a philistine or is to be treated as such. However now that you bring the notion up, the piece itself was very simple; even Philistine’ian in form. Aside from the elaborate frame including the technology (the Walker [the McGuire, the front of house staff], the technical objects 10 audio lines, somekind of video playback device, a substantial video projector, all the time in the space that the piece needed) I felt like I was watching MTV, the extras on a DVD, or an internet video segment. Never a performance. And that simple form of ‘prerecorded something’ was only odd, because of the ELABORATE technological and theatrical frame. I am still very surprised at all the hubbub over “what happened” for the simple reason that the event itself was incredibly familiar, usual, and widely accepted faire.

(let us continue)

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I take it that part of your point is that the difference in audience and venue affected the performance negatively.

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No, again, I never said anything about negativity, you’re wearing arrogance colored glasses.

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Okay, I can buy that. The McGuire is not a big theater, but it did feel cavernous for Wampler’s piece.

****** I said that the McGuire is much bigger than the Kitchen.

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Also, I can see that if everyone had known what to expect, we might have responded to it all differently.

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Well of course. All I said was that questioning liveness and media culture as live work tends to pop up more in the Kitchen (because they program and conduct workshops on the matter ) more often. The Walker doesn’t conduct larger artist rearing processing; if we’re talking shows that have been here in similar vane, two years ago “Superamas” had a similar vibe, the Big Art Group’s work some years ago as well, and of course who can forget the behemoth of Builders Association/dbox.

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But I can’t see how this is the fault of the audience. This is a bit like saying the revival would have gone over better if the audience had already been believers.

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Any revival goes over better if you’re believers, just ask Elvis.

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Again, I think you looked my writing as if I was flaming at you all; I was in fact trying to be as un-critical and stilted as possible. Sounds like I failed. I apologize.

Sorry Minnesota; I love you very much (sincerely).

The show I was at did get what might have been the de rigueur standing ovation (complete with stomping, shouting and rhythmic clapping — planted and otherwise), but it was a little different than others that I’ve seen. For one thing the average age of the audience was under the city speed limit.

I actually did enjoy the show, fucking catchy, but what I enjoyed even more and what I am still enjoying is the discussion and the outrage (is that really real or is it planted?). I like MN 2.0 – there is just one thing that any visiting artist will have to remember:

You can fuck with us as an audience as long as you want, even if we don’t quite understand what all this is about, that’s ok, but don’t you dare fuck with our heartland sensibilities. Simply amazing. Ok, so maybe we are at MN 1.9.98

JM

I also find the argument that “a performance raises questions rather than answering them” to be too often plain old cheating. But my point, however poorly expressed, was that the piece was about performance and audience realities in a way that was conscious of them and made the audience conscious of them — and did not (instead) take the conventions as given and leave them unquestioned.

This is, as Mr Klemz suggests, an old approach that maybe we should be more used to at this point. But when I suggested that the performance was meant to “bring up questions,” perhaps I was not specific enough. I do not mean that I could come up with a list of questions Ms Wampler raised. I meant that the subject/issue of audience and performance realities was raised — was part of what the show was “about.” Whether any of us found this interesting is a question that we can ask only because these issues of representation were included in the mix. I felt that this whole audience manipulation technique was a little self-righteous as mentioned above, but I also found it to be a suggestive part of the whole — which to me included “questions” about levels of reality and art/formality that I have been seeing in many places (from Emily Johnson’s Choreographer’s Evening to Oleg Soulimenko at 9×22 and his “New Hypnotism” to Jerome Bel) and that I find interesting.

I am not unhappy to see a variety of answers. Au contraire mon frere. My hope was that my impertinence above suggesting that we must take responsibility for the part we play was not meant to suggest that only appreciation is responsible. That would be cruel and pointless. And stupid. And I make no presumptions of knowing more than anyone else — I am not sure who Mr Klemz is quoting as saying “obviously you didn’t get it”. I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid.

I do hope that with my late-night blather I am able respectfully to suggest that there are other ingredients of the work to take into account. Criticism of theater and performance is so often a repetition in words of what happened on stage and a mere value judgment cloaked in experience and vocabulary. This piece is the first one I’ve seen for a while (and at all so far in this series) that comes from an awareness of its mode of representation. My point is that critique of this show must attempt to take this into account and that not to do so is unfair and inaccurate.

And I stand by my statement that performance is not done to accompany our dinners. Although of course it is, just as painting is also done to decorate apartments. This does not suggest that critique is not possible nor that satisfaction is the only legitimate response. Engaging the performance requires effort on our part. That is something that I have been neglectful of in the past. What I said:

Engage our feelings of anger, resentment, boredom and guilt — as well as pleasure, generosity, excitement and freedom — trust that there is something to this, and make our efforts to take on what we experience here and now.

was meant to be inclusive of all responses. But I’m so tired of apartment decoration even if it’s well done that I am happier seeing something that is not apartment decoration even if I feel it failed on some other planes.

The statement that the piece “wants to raise questions, not provide answers” is a facile move, but doesn’t really do much for me. What questions are raised about representation? What productive and new avenues are opened by the piece via these questions. I don’t think I’m asking for a straight-forward modernist narrative here, but rather looking for the value of the questions. And honestly, I don’t see anything here that takes these questions anywhere interesting or productive.

One last thing: any time you have a piece like this one that is designed to frustrate and doesn’t provide easy answers, there will be a wide variety of audience responses. I think we ought to honor that, rather than engage in the demeaning rhetoric of “obviously you didn’t get it,” and “maybe it’s not _after-dinner entertainment_,” as if critique of the show can only be done from a position of lazy ignorance. That’s just arrogance.

In hindsight, I really enjoyed Wampler’s piece. Taking it in, I was annoyed, bored, tense (I was moved three times by the house management on Thursday).

I felt very punk’d, play’d, tease’d and generally smeared… like watching the band rehearse… as though I was just there waiting for a ride home (though I rode my bike an could’ve left at anytime).

I was moved to the balcony, so any sense of their being plants was lost on me. I wish I had thrown myself into this one… nothing to be polite about.

I’ve gotten pretty into the blogging thing… check it out… as though this show was important and all things responding to it are upholding its validity (that’s blogging sarcasm).