Surrealist Doodle
This was used as the cover of Karawane in 2006 and I have included it in on a number of bags and postcards over the years. Someone on the subway asked me if it was a Miro. I was very flattered!
Showing posts with label theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theatre. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
A HISTORY LESSON, OR GOLDIBOOKS & THE BANKING TEACHERS
I had to write this for my teaching class. It's based on Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I had fun writing it and I thought I'd share it and see if it works outside of the context of my class.
________________________________________
On stage are three classrooms. The first two classrooms are virtually identical. The have a blackboard at the front of stage and seats in rows, full of students. Students should have their back to the audience, facing the teacher, who will stand at the front. The first two classrooms should either have a student in every seat but one or be empty. Student responses are done with voiceovers unless otherwise indicated. The students in these classrooms always speak in unison, whether live or in voiceover.
The third classroom is arranged in a circle and should have a student in every seat but one. The teacher is also seated.
The teachers may be male or female and need not be the same in each classroom. However, three should be a teacher present in each room regardless of whether live students are used or not.
GOLDIBOOKS is the only person who moves between scenes. GOLDIBOOKS can be male or female.
All the lights are down in all three classrooms.
The lights come up on the first classroom. U.S. HISTORY is written on the blackboard. GOLIDBOOKS comes wandering in and sits down in the empty seat (or randomly, if the seats are all empty).
TEACHER #1: There are the important dates you must know. They will be on the test. The United States became a beacon of democracy to the world on July 4, 1776.
STUDENTS: July 4, 1776. Beacon of democracy.
TEACHER #l: The constitution of the United States, which secured freedom for all Americans, was signed in 1787.
GOLDI BOOKS: Excuse me? The constitution didn’t really secure freedom for anyone but white males until much later.
STUDENTS: 1787. Secured our freedoms.
TEACHER #1: The United States has continued to be a shining example of democracy to this day. The United States liberated Europe from the Nazis on June 6th, 1945. June 6th is known at D-Day.
STUDENTS: D-Day. Nazis. June 6th.
GOLDIBOOKS: A lot of other countries were involved.
STUDENTS: Shining example.
TEACHER #1: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 represented America’s victory over communism. Capitalism, or democracy, won. The small wars we must fight now are against those who hate freedom and resent us for it. But we will prevail, just as we did over communism.
STUDENTS: 1989. Capitalism. Democracy.
GOLDIBOOKS: Capitalism isn’t the same as democracy. There were a lot of factors involved in the fall of communism. What about the complexity of issues in the middle east and the role of the West?
STUDENTS: Hate freedom. Communism. We will prevail.
GOLDIBOOKS leaves and the lights dim, but do not go fully out. The TEACHER continues quietly saying things (these can be nonsense or can be from a book) and the students continue quietly responding. Meanwhile the lights go up in classroom 2. SOVIET HISTORY is written on the board. GOLDIBOOKS comes in and sits down in an available seat.
TEACHER #2: The Russian Revolution was in 1917. This led to the formation of the first worker’s government in the world and was an inspiration to people struggling everywhere against capitalism.
GOLDIBOOKS: Actually there were several smaller revolutions before that one, including the Provisional Government.
STUDENTS: 1917. Capitalism. Workers. Inspiration.
TEACHER #2: In 1945, the Soviet Union helped to win World War II. America often takes credit for it, but without the Soviet Union, the other allies would not have been successful.
STUDENTS: 1945. America takes credit. Soviet Union.
TEACHER #2: After that, we established the Eastern Bloc. To ensure their protection from both Fascists and capitalists, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and part of Germany.
GOLDIBOOKS: But people in those countries weren’t necessarily better off. They were persecuted for disagreeing with the government,
STUDENTS: Poland. Germany. Saved from Fascism.
TEACHER #2: Other countries, like Cuba and China were so inspired that they, too, had Communist Revolutions . . .
GOLDIBOOKS gets frustrated and leaves this classroom too. The lights go up on CLASSROOMS 1 & 2 for a minute or two and the students responses are heard playing over another in a cacophony so that it is difficult to tell what they are saying.
The lights go down slightly, but not completely, in classrooms 1 & 2 and the teachers and students continue talking and reciting. This can be nonsense or can be read from a book.
Lights go up all the way on classroom 3 and GOLDIBOOKS goes in and takes a seat.
TEACHER #3: Ok, class. So let’s talk about what you read last week. What is democracy?
After a brief pause, a student raises his/her hand.
STUDENT: Government by the people.
TEACHER #3: Good. Now, what’s an example of a democracy?
GOLDIBOOKS: Well, that’s a pretty reductive view of democracy. Aren’t we going to discuss it further?
STUDENT #2: America.
TEACHER #3: Very good. Now . . .
GOLDIBOOKS: There are a lot of other examples of democracies. There’s England and . . .
STUDENT #2: Nuh-uh. England is a monarchy.
GOLDIBOOKS: Well, a constitutional monarchy, but it’s still . . .
TEACHER #3: (As if nothing happened) What is communism?
STUDENT #3: Where the government controls production.
TEACHER #3: Very good. Can you name a communist country . . .
GOLDIBOOKS: Technically the workers control the production, we just haven’t really had any examples . . .
(No one reacts. Instead there is an awkward pause as the other students don’t know what to say.)
GOLDIBOOKS: Well, Venezuela is sort of Marxist. And there’s Cuba, and . . .
TEACHER #3: Past or present. (Still no response) Can you think of a country that broke up into smaller countries . . . (Still no response) The S. . .
STUDENT #4: S . . .Soviet Union?
TEACHER #3: Right.
STUDENT #5: I thought they were a dictatorship.
TEACHER #3: Yes, well that’s the way communist countries were run.
GOLDIBOOKS goes running out of the room disgusted and exits. There is no response from students or TEACHER #3. For a minute, the lights go all the way up on all three classrooms and all 3 continue with their lessons at a regular to loud volume culminating in a cacophony so that it is difficult to tell what they are saying. When after a minute or two the cacophony hits a fever pitch, FADE TO BLACK.
In Theatre of the Oppressed, at this point, the lights would go up and there would be a discussion with the audience of the three classrooms and if there is an alternative..
________________________________________
On stage are three classrooms. The first two classrooms are virtually identical. The have a blackboard at the front of stage and seats in rows, full of students. Students should have their back to the audience, facing the teacher, who will stand at the front. The first two classrooms should either have a student in every seat but one or be empty. Student responses are done with voiceovers unless otherwise indicated. The students in these classrooms always speak in unison, whether live or in voiceover.
The third classroom is arranged in a circle and should have a student in every seat but one. The teacher is also seated.
The teachers may be male or female and need not be the same in each classroom. However, three should be a teacher present in each room regardless of whether live students are used or not.
GOLDIBOOKS is the only person who moves between scenes. GOLDIBOOKS can be male or female.
All the lights are down in all three classrooms.
The lights come up on the first classroom. U.S. HISTORY is written on the blackboard. GOLIDBOOKS comes wandering in and sits down in the empty seat (or randomly, if the seats are all empty).
TEACHER #1: There are the important dates you must know. They will be on the test. The United States became a beacon of democracy to the world on July 4, 1776.
STUDENTS: July 4, 1776. Beacon of democracy.
TEACHER #l: The constitution of the United States, which secured freedom for all Americans, was signed in 1787.
GOLDI BOOKS: Excuse me? The constitution didn’t really secure freedom for anyone but white males until much later.
STUDENTS: 1787. Secured our freedoms.
TEACHER #1: The United States has continued to be a shining example of democracy to this day. The United States liberated Europe from the Nazis on June 6th, 1945. June 6th is known at D-Day.
STUDENTS: D-Day. Nazis. June 6th.
GOLDIBOOKS: A lot of other countries were involved.
STUDENTS: Shining example.
TEACHER #1: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 represented America’s victory over communism. Capitalism, or democracy, won. The small wars we must fight now are against those who hate freedom and resent us for it. But we will prevail, just as we did over communism.
STUDENTS: 1989. Capitalism. Democracy.
GOLDIBOOKS: Capitalism isn’t the same as democracy. There were a lot of factors involved in the fall of communism. What about the complexity of issues in the middle east and the role of the West?
STUDENTS: Hate freedom. Communism. We will prevail.
GOLDIBOOKS leaves and the lights dim, but do not go fully out. The TEACHER continues quietly saying things (these can be nonsense or can be from a book) and the students continue quietly responding. Meanwhile the lights go up in classroom 2. SOVIET HISTORY is written on the board. GOLDIBOOKS comes in and sits down in an available seat.
TEACHER #2: The Russian Revolution was in 1917. This led to the formation of the first worker’s government in the world and was an inspiration to people struggling everywhere against capitalism.
GOLDIBOOKS: Actually there were several smaller revolutions before that one, including the Provisional Government.
STUDENTS: 1917. Capitalism. Workers. Inspiration.
TEACHER #2: In 1945, the Soviet Union helped to win World War II. America often takes credit for it, but without the Soviet Union, the other allies would not have been successful.
STUDENTS: 1945. America takes credit. Soviet Union.
TEACHER #2: After that, we established the Eastern Bloc. To ensure their protection from both Fascists and capitalists, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and part of Germany.
GOLDIBOOKS: But people in those countries weren’t necessarily better off. They were persecuted for disagreeing with the government,
STUDENTS: Poland. Germany. Saved from Fascism.
TEACHER #2: Other countries, like Cuba and China were so inspired that they, too, had Communist Revolutions . . .
GOLDIBOOKS gets frustrated and leaves this classroom too. The lights go up on CLASSROOMS 1 & 2 for a minute or two and the students responses are heard playing over another in a cacophony so that it is difficult to tell what they are saying.
The lights go down slightly, but not completely, in classrooms 1 & 2 and the teachers and students continue talking and reciting. This can be nonsense or can be read from a book.
Lights go up all the way on classroom 3 and GOLDIBOOKS goes in and takes a seat.
TEACHER #3: Ok, class. So let’s talk about what you read last week. What is democracy?
After a brief pause, a student raises his/her hand.
STUDENT: Government by the people.
TEACHER #3: Good. Now, what’s an example of a democracy?
GOLDIBOOKS: Well, that’s a pretty reductive view of democracy. Aren’t we going to discuss it further?
STUDENT #2: America.
TEACHER #3: Very good. Now . . .
GOLDIBOOKS: There are a lot of other examples of democracies. There’s England and . . .
STUDENT #2: Nuh-uh. England is a monarchy.
GOLDIBOOKS: Well, a constitutional monarchy, but it’s still . . .
TEACHER #3: (As if nothing happened) What is communism?
STUDENT #3: Where the government controls production.
TEACHER #3: Very good. Can you name a communist country . . .
GOLDIBOOKS: Technically the workers control the production, we just haven’t really had any examples . . .
(No one reacts. Instead there is an awkward pause as the other students don’t know what to say.)
GOLDIBOOKS: Well, Venezuela is sort of Marxist. And there’s Cuba, and . . .
TEACHER #3: Past or present. (Still no response) Can you think of a country that broke up into smaller countries . . . (Still no response) The S. . .
STUDENT #4: S . . .Soviet Union?
TEACHER #3: Right.
STUDENT #5: I thought they were a dictatorship.
TEACHER #3: Yes, well that’s the way communist countries were run.
GOLDIBOOKS goes running out of the room disgusted and exits. There is no response from students or TEACHER #3. For a minute, the lights go all the way up on all three classrooms and all 3 continue with their lessons at a regular to loud volume culminating in a cacophony so that it is difficult to tell what they are saying. When after a minute or two the cacophony hits a fever pitch, FADE TO BLACK.
In Theatre of the Oppressed, at this point, the lights would go up and there would be a discussion with the audience of the three classrooms and if there is an alternative..
Friday, January 04, 2008
Addicted to Liminality: The Ritual Year of the Mexicas
Performance, Peggy Phelan insists, is ephemeral, leaving us only traces of the original event, whether that trace is the documentation of the event, the recreation or repetition of it, or merely the memory of its occurrence. Consequently, that places performance as focused on the now, on the present moment,
When the mode of performance is ritual, or religious ceremony, its temporal intention can be different. Ritual and religious ceremony serve not only in the present moment, but also as commemoration as well as what Inga Clendinnen calls “primitive technology,” a desire to influence the future. In the case of pre-conquest cultures such as the Mexica, this technology was tied to a deep level of anxiety over their very existence, over fears of the extinguishment of the sun, of the cataclysmic end of cycles of life. Consequently, ritual held a central place in the life of the Mexica.
In his study of ritual across cultures, Victor Turner describes the process of social drama, in which breeches occur, followed by a period of suspension, and then reintegration. This period of suspension he calls liminality, and it is in the liminal period of time, the liminal space, that change and transformation occur. Ritual and ceremony, including sacrifices and divination, fall directly within liminal time. The Mexica, with an almost constant cycle of rituals, maintained a continual sense of liminality, that space of suspension and transformation and this, we can argue, may have been one of the strongest appeals, the most enduring trace of Mexica ritual—and addiction to the liminality of performance.
The Mexica maintained two separate calendars. The solar calendar, or calendar of the seasons, consisted of 365 days, just as the contemporary western calendar. The Tonalpoalli, or ritual calendar, made up 260 days, nearly 2/3 of the solar year. Everyone in the community, regardless of social position or wealth, had roles to play in these ritual celebrations, from the small to the elaborate. The months of the Mexica calendars were divided into 20 day segments, and many elements of Mexica ritual and preparation were encompassed periods of months or even a year. The feast of Hitzilopochtli, the sun god, lasted for 20 days. According to Clendinnen, fasting by both priests and laymen would occur for periods of 20, 60 or even 80 days—up to four months in the Mexica calendar, and “warriors who had pledged themselves by eating the flesh of Huitilopochtli, the austerities endured for a full year.” (256)
Communal preparations for rituals and feast days included creating objects such as ritual costuming and robes, creating images and likenesses of the gods, which the European consquistadors later mistook for idolatry, focusing on the final product rather than on the process of its creation, cooking, including the making of seed dough and of certain types of bread. In fact, Clendinnen suggests that the rituals created a “bridge between high ritual and domestic action,” (246). Thus for even the most ordinary Mexicas, their lives were permeated by ritual. “Access to ritual excitements was not,” she says, “an occasional grace note, but an enduring part of the rhythm of living . . . ritual generated experience and . . . knowlede[,] . . . opened zones of thought and feeling at once collective, cumulative and transformative.” (241) It is this sense of transformation that I want to linger on for a while, to remain, if you will, liminal, suspended.
Clennnendin describes the use of objects in rituals as dislocated from their ordinary contexts. In the same way, the very lives of the Mexica, when engaged in rituals, in fasting, in preparation, were also dislocated from their ordinariness. In this way, the rhythm of life offered a degree of pleasure that kept the Mexica engaged in these contstant performances. It may seem odd to talk about pleasure when we think of the nature of some of the rituals—human sacrifice, the flaying of the victims and the wearing of their skins, strict fasting and sexual abstinence, ritual piercing and bloodletting, and endurance performances, including all-night or multi-day dancing, storytelling, and other performances. To a modern culture such as ours, devoted to pleasure and to the avoidance of pain, it might seem absurd to talk about these forms of participation as pleasurable.
There is, however, what we consider to be a shamanistic element to these practices. We certainly know that there are physical effects of exhaustion and starvation, which can include visions and hallucinations as well as the changes in the way our bodies respond to stimulus and to the world around us. Thus even the most ascetic, difficult, and painful practices take us out of our own bodies, again, suspending us from ordinary life. Clendinnen describes the long isolation from routine in these periods as well as describing the rituals themselves as “a calculated assault on the senses.” In what has come to influence our current conception of ritual as merely proscribed, repeated behaviors, Freud hypothesized a connection between obsessive behavior and ritual practice. And so repeated performance of and immersion in these practices, combined with their psychological and physiological effects create an addiction of sorts to the rituals and an anticipation for those feast days and celebrations which provide temporal liminality, periods of life in transformative suspension.
In a more literal sense, Mexica practices of representation allowed participants to live the lives of others. In some cases, victims who were to be sacrificed were to assume the persona of the god being celebrated. In the celebrations of Tlaloques, those who were to be sacrificed y drowning would first impersonate the water deities. Often in cases of embodying the gods and goddesses of the feast, the “actor” would be revered, treated as the deity. The sacrificial victim then spends their final days in a suspended, liminal zone in which “the preparation of the body and the doing of appropriate regalia moved one away from one’s social being and for some [such as the Ixitplas who were to die] eclipsed it permanently and altogether.” (Clendinnen 258) In the same way others participating in the rituals were also able to transcend their very identities and existences. Sahagun describes in detail the ritual costumes that crossed the line between animal and human, man and god:
“[H]e went garbed in the costly cape of precious feathers. The quetzal feather device went places on him. He had bars painted upon his face, he had the star design painted upon his face . . . He had a turquoise nose rod. His was the hummingbird disguise.” (Sahagun Part II)
Similarly, those who had been sacrificed were flayed and their skins worn by members of the community—including the warriors who had captured their victims, and those to whom they loaned the skins (as in the case of beggars or the lowly within the community). And so for many participants in the rituals, from the sacrificial victim to the poorest in the community, to the revered priestly and warrior classes, there was a very literal suspension, even elevation, out of their ordinary lives and identities. For most, there was Turner’s eventual reintegration back into the community, but understanding the nature of liminality, along with theories of religious experiences, possessions, trances, etc., we can imagine that the reintegration came with a sense of change or transformation upon the individuals.
Finally, the very spatial relationships within Mexica cities created sites of liminality. The wealth of public space, including squares and temples, provided gathering places that anticipated the events to take place there. Joseph Roach describes “vortices of behavior” public, what he calls lucid, spaces, that allow for and encourage community participation. Their very presence within the city serves as a constant reminder of the rhythm of life, of the permeation of ritual in Mexica culture. They are designed specifically for the events that they contain, such as being designed for the ritual sacrifices, to allow for the flow of blood, the positioning of the victim, and visibility of the ritual to those who are present. They are not ordinary spaces, but spaces of perpetual liminality, spaces that have been set aside for specific functions and when stepping into those spaces, participants understand and anticipate what is to take place there.
There are, of course, a variety of other functions to the varied and extensive ritual performance practices of the Mexica culture, including Clendinnen’s “primitive technology,” as well as state-building functions and those of political power. But I don’t know that these rituals would have survived and enjoyed the level of participation from all members of the community, if there were not a “payoff” beyond alleviating the existential fears of the people. The idea of liminality, of suspension from ordinary time that celebration and ritual affords, combined with the promise of transformation, the idea that life will never quite be the same, offers one way to look at that “payoff” and to understand the devotion to these rituals and willingness to participate, despite their often difficult, painful, ascetic nature.
Bibliography
Appel, Willa, and Richard Schechner. By means of performance : intercultural studies of theatre and ritual. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Clendinnen, Inga. Aztecs : an interpretation. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
de Sahagún, Bernardino, Arthur J.O. Anderson, and Charles E. Dibble. General history of the things of New Spain : Florentine codex. Santa Fe, N.M.; Salt Lake City, Utah: School of American Research; University of Utah, 1950.
"Mexica/Aztec Calendar Systems." [cited 2004]. Available from http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/dpalfrey/dpaztec.html.
Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked : the politics of performance. London ; New York: Routledge, 1993.
Roach, Joseph R. Cities of the dead : circum-Atlantic performance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
When the mode of performance is ritual, or religious ceremony, its temporal intention can be different. Ritual and religious ceremony serve not only in the present moment, but also as commemoration as well as what Inga Clendinnen calls “primitive technology,” a desire to influence the future. In the case of pre-conquest cultures such as the Mexica, this technology was tied to a deep level of anxiety over their very existence, over fears of the extinguishment of the sun, of the cataclysmic end of cycles of life. Consequently, ritual held a central place in the life of the Mexica.
In his study of ritual across cultures, Victor Turner describes the process of social drama, in which breeches occur, followed by a period of suspension, and then reintegration. This period of suspension he calls liminality, and it is in the liminal period of time, the liminal space, that change and transformation occur. Ritual and ceremony, including sacrifices and divination, fall directly within liminal time. The Mexica, with an almost constant cycle of rituals, maintained a continual sense of liminality, that space of suspension and transformation and this, we can argue, may have been one of the strongest appeals, the most enduring trace of Mexica ritual—and addiction to the liminality of performance.
The Mexica maintained two separate calendars. The solar calendar, or calendar of the seasons, consisted of 365 days, just as the contemporary western calendar. The Tonalpoalli, or ritual calendar, made up 260 days, nearly 2/3 of the solar year. Everyone in the community, regardless of social position or wealth, had roles to play in these ritual celebrations, from the small to the elaborate. The months of the Mexica calendars were divided into 20 day segments, and many elements of Mexica ritual and preparation were encompassed periods of months or even a year. The feast of Hitzilopochtli, the sun god, lasted for 20 days. According to Clendinnen, fasting by both priests and laymen would occur for periods of 20, 60 or even 80 days—up to four months in the Mexica calendar, and “warriors who had pledged themselves by eating the flesh of Huitilopochtli, the austerities endured for a full year.” (256)
Communal preparations for rituals and feast days included creating objects such as ritual costuming and robes, creating images and likenesses of the gods, which the European consquistadors later mistook for idolatry, focusing on the final product rather than on the process of its creation, cooking, including the making of seed dough and of certain types of bread. In fact, Clendinnen suggests that the rituals created a “bridge between high ritual and domestic action,” (246). Thus for even the most ordinary Mexicas, their lives were permeated by ritual. “Access to ritual excitements was not,” she says, “an occasional grace note, but an enduring part of the rhythm of living . . . ritual generated experience and . . . knowlede[,] . . . opened zones of thought and feeling at once collective, cumulative and transformative.” (241) It is this sense of transformation that I want to linger on for a while, to remain, if you will, liminal, suspended.
Clennnendin describes the use of objects in rituals as dislocated from their ordinary contexts. In the same way, the very lives of the Mexica, when engaged in rituals, in fasting, in preparation, were also dislocated from their ordinariness. In this way, the rhythm of life offered a degree of pleasure that kept the Mexica engaged in these contstant performances. It may seem odd to talk about pleasure when we think of the nature of some of the rituals—human sacrifice, the flaying of the victims and the wearing of their skins, strict fasting and sexual abstinence, ritual piercing and bloodletting, and endurance performances, including all-night or multi-day dancing, storytelling, and other performances. To a modern culture such as ours, devoted to pleasure and to the avoidance of pain, it might seem absurd to talk about these forms of participation as pleasurable.
There is, however, what we consider to be a shamanistic element to these practices. We certainly know that there are physical effects of exhaustion and starvation, which can include visions and hallucinations as well as the changes in the way our bodies respond to stimulus and to the world around us. Thus even the most ascetic, difficult, and painful practices take us out of our own bodies, again, suspending us from ordinary life. Clendinnen describes the long isolation from routine in these periods as well as describing the rituals themselves as “a calculated assault on the senses.” In what has come to influence our current conception of ritual as merely proscribed, repeated behaviors, Freud hypothesized a connection between obsessive behavior and ritual practice. And so repeated performance of and immersion in these practices, combined with their psychological and physiological effects create an addiction of sorts to the rituals and an anticipation for those feast days and celebrations which provide temporal liminality, periods of life in transformative suspension.
In a more literal sense, Mexica practices of representation allowed participants to live the lives of others. In some cases, victims who were to be sacrificed were to assume the persona of the god being celebrated. In the celebrations of Tlaloques, those who were to be sacrificed y drowning would first impersonate the water deities. Often in cases of embodying the gods and goddesses of the feast, the “actor” would be revered, treated as the deity. The sacrificial victim then spends their final days in a suspended, liminal zone in which “the preparation of the body and the doing of appropriate regalia moved one away from one’s social being and for some [such as the Ixitplas who were to die] eclipsed it permanently and altogether.” (Clendinnen 258) In the same way others participating in the rituals were also able to transcend their very identities and existences. Sahagun describes in detail the ritual costumes that crossed the line between animal and human, man and god:
“[H]e went garbed in the costly cape of precious feathers. The quetzal feather device went places on him. He had bars painted upon his face, he had the star design painted upon his face . . . He had a turquoise nose rod. His was the hummingbird disguise.” (Sahagun Part II)
Similarly, those who had been sacrificed were flayed and their skins worn by members of the community—including the warriors who had captured their victims, and those to whom they loaned the skins (as in the case of beggars or the lowly within the community). And so for many participants in the rituals, from the sacrificial victim to the poorest in the community, to the revered priestly and warrior classes, there was a very literal suspension, even elevation, out of their ordinary lives and identities. For most, there was Turner’s eventual reintegration back into the community, but understanding the nature of liminality, along with theories of religious experiences, possessions, trances, etc., we can imagine that the reintegration came with a sense of change or transformation upon the individuals.
Finally, the very spatial relationships within Mexica cities created sites of liminality. The wealth of public space, including squares and temples, provided gathering places that anticipated the events to take place there. Joseph Roach describes “vortices of behavior” public, what he calls lucid, spaces, that allow for and encourage community participation. Their very presence within the city serves as a constant reminder of the rhythm of life, of the permeation of ritual in Mexica culture. They are designed specifically for the events that they contain, such as being designed for the ritual sacrifices, to allow for the flow of blood, the positioning of the victim, and visibility of the ritual to those who are present. They are not ordinary spaces, but spaces of perpetual liminality, spaces that have been set aside for specific functions and when stepping into those spaces, participants understand and anticipate what is to take place there.
There are, of course, a variety of other functions to the varied and extensive ritual performance practices of the Mexica culture, including Clendinnen’s “primitive technology,” as well as state-building functions and those of political power. But I don’t know that these rituals would have survived and enjoyed the level of participation from all members of the community, if there were not a “payoff” beyond alleviating the existential fears of the people. The idea of liminality, of suspension from ordinary time that celebration and ritual affords, combined with the promise of transformation, the idea that life will never quite be the same, offers one way to look at that “payoff” and to understand the devotion to these rituals and willingness to participate, despite their often difficult, painful, ascetic nature.
Bibliography
Appel, Willa, and Richard Schechner. By means of performance : intercultural studies of theatre and ritual. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Clendinnen, Inga. Aztecs : an interpretation. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
de Sahagún, Bernardino, Arthur J.O. Anderson, and Charles E. Dibble. General history of the things of New Spain : Florentine codex. Santa Fe, N.M.; Salt Lake City, Utah: School of American Research; University of Utah, 1950.
"Mexica/Aztec Calendar Systems." [cited 2004]. Available from http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/dpalfrey/dpaztec.html.
Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked : the politics of performance. London ; New York: Routledge, 1993.
Roach, Joseph R. Cities of the dead : circum-Atlantic performance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
The Temp Job: A Performance Piece
One of these days I'm going to do this performance. (Note to would-be performers: this has been on the net for two years -- long enough for me to establish copyright. So if you're interested in doing this, I ask only that you contact me and let me know and credit me somewhere regarding your show.) This piece is borne from my pain and suffering!
Cheers.
So on one of my previous temp jobs, in which I had absolutely nothing to do all day long and no computer access and in which, per usual, I was merely a placeholder sitting here, I had done two books of crossword puzzles in the past few days and thought I would go insane, I started writing down every time I looked at the clock. I then recorded how much more time I had until the end of the day. This will eventually become a performance piece. In the performance, I will place a desk in some public place and go there eight hours a day and every time I look at the clock I will say the time out loud and make some kind of repetitive action. Whenever anyone comes near the performance piece, I will ask "are you the new temp" and when some smart ass finally says yes, I will "train" him or her in on how to do the job and have them sit at my desk while I go and take a break.
For now, unperformed, it remains a piece of conceptual art in the lineage of Yoko Ono or Andy Warhol.
As Andy Warhol once said, "we figured out how much we thought the audience could take and went about 10 minutes beyond that. Leave them wanting less was always our motto."
A Random Wednesday on a Temp Job
This list is every time I looked at the clock and how much time was left in my day.
8:29
7:30
7:21
7:16
7:00
6:47
6:25
6:09
6:06
6:00
5:27
5:20
5:19
5:12
5:04
4:50
4:37
4:25
4:20
4:19
4:16
4:15
3:50
3:45
3:34
3:20
3:17
3:10
3:07
3:04
2:55
2:49
2:40
2:15
2:00
1:35
1:21
1:17 zzzz (fell asleep briefly)
1:08
:56
:47
:40
:30
:25
:22
:18
:16
:09
:08
:06
:03
:02
Thursday
These are the times I looked at the clock at work and how much time
was left in my day.
8:20
8:09
7:59
7:40
7:20
6:37
6:10
6:01
4:55
4:39
4:38
4:01
3:43
3;33
3:24
3:22
3:17
3:10
3:09
3:08
3:01
2:44
2:20
2:19
2:15
2:10
2:02
1:57
1:51
1:46
1:40
1:20
1:14
1:11
1:06
1:04
1:00
:55
:39
:37
:36
:33
:24
:21
:19
:15
:14
:10
:07
Friday with variation
These are the times I looked at the clock at work today and how much
time I had left. And when I remembered, I wrote down what I had been
doing in the intervening time. I left early today, so starting with
8:00 rather than 8:30.
8:04
7:56
7:45
7:44
7:39
7:33 Called to check my bank balance
7:20
7:04
6:54
6:37
6:34
6:33
6:26 Took a bathroom break
6:18 Made a phone call
6:13
6:08 Distributed mail
6:03
5:49 Went to the store to get money and buy a chocolate milk
5:23 Read Skyway News
4:58 Went to the 4th floor to visit old co-workers
4:52
4:43 Talked on the phone
4:35 Spilled water on the message book. Copied over 1 page of phone
messages
4:29
4:01 Did the daily crossword puzzles. Could not finish New York
Times Puzzle in the Strib. Finished LA Times Puzzle.
3:32
3:30
3:03 Lunch
2:53 Talked to Cheryl on the phone
2:48 Called Aramark about the beeping vending machine
2:43
2:41 Personal phone call
2:29
2:00 Read the Star Tribune Front section
1:44
1:40
1:32
1:02 Hung out with Ryan, former co-worker, in the breakroom. I ate
popcorn. He spilled ice on the table and on me.
:51
:39 Copied over my notes from a seminar in December
:38
:21 Had a coughing attack. Had to run to the bathroom. Hacked and
spit up a little. Hurt my throat for the rest of the day.
Ish.
:18
:15
:09
:08 Boss told me to go ahead and leave and thanks for covering this
week.
Cheers.
So on one of my previous temp jobs, in which I had absolutely nothing to do all day long and no computer access and in which, per usual, I was merely a placeholder sitting here, I had done two books of crossword puzzles in the past few days and thought I would go insane, I started writing down every time I looked at the clock. I then recorded how much more time I had until the end of the day. This will eventually become a performance piece. In the performance, I will place a desk in some public place and go there eight hours a day and every time I look at the clock I will say the time out loud and make some kind of repetitive action. Whenever anyone comes near the performance piece, I will ask "are you the new temp" and when some smart ass finally says yes, I will "train" him or her in on how to do the job and have them sit at my desk while I go and take a break.
For now, unperformed, it remains a piece of conceptual art in the lineage of Yoko Ono or Andy Warhol.
As Andy Warhol once said, "we figured out how much we thought the audience could take and went about 10 minutes beyond that. Leave them wanting less was always our motto."
A Random Wednesday on a Temp Job
This list is every time I looked at the clock and how much time was left in my day.
8:29
7:30
7:21
7:16
7:00
6:47
6:25
6:09
6:06
6:00
5:27
5:20
5:19
5:12
5:04
4:50
4:37
4:25
4:20
4:19
4:16
4:15
3:50
3:45
3:34
3:20
3:17
3:10
3:07
3:04
2:55
2:49
2:40
2:15
2:00
1:35
1:21
1:17 zzzz (fell asleep briefly)
1:08
:56
:47
:40
:30
:25
:22
:18
:16
:09
:08
:06
:03
:02
Thursday
These are the times I looked at the clock at work and how much time
was left in my day.
8:20
8:09
7:59
7:40
7:20
6:37
6:10
6:01
4:55
4:39
4:38
4:01
3:43
3;33
3:24
3:22
3:17
3:10
3:09
3:08
3:01
2:44
2:20
2:19
2:15
2:10
2:02
1:57
1:51
1:46
1:40
1:20
1:14
1:11
1:06
1:04
1:00
:55
:39
:37
:36
:33
:24
:21
:19
:15
:14
:10
:07
Friday with variation
These are the times I looked at the clock at work today and how much
time I had left. And when I remembered, I wrote down what I had been
doing in the intervening time. I left early today, so starting with
8:00 rather than 8:30.
8:04
7:56
7:45
7:44
7:39
7:33 Called to check my bank balance
7:20
7:04
6:54
6:37
6:34
6:33
6:26 Took a bathroom break
6:18 Made a phone call
6:13
6:08 Distributed mail
6:03
5:49 Went to the store to get money and buy a chocolate milk
5:23 Read Skyway News
4:58 Went to the 4th floor to visit old co-workers
4:52
4:43 Talked on the phone
4:35 Spilled water on the message book. Copied over 1 page of phone
messages
4:29
4:01 Did the daily crossword puzzles. Could not finish New York
Times Puzzle in the Strib. Finished LA Times Puzzle.
3:32
3:30
3:03 Lunch
2:53 Talked to Cheryl on the phone
2:48 Called Aramark about the beeping vending machine
2:43
2:41 Personal phone call
2:29
2:00 Read the Star Tribune Front section
1:44
1:40
1:32
1:02 Hung out with Ryan, former co-worker, in the breakroom. I ate
popcorn. He spilled ice on the table and on me.
:51
:39 Copied over my notes from a seminar in December
:38
:21 Had a coughing attack. Had to run to the bathroom. Hacked and
spit up a little. Hurt my throat for the rest of the day.
Ish.
:18
:15
:09
:08 Boss told me to go ahead and leave and thanks for covering this
week.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Why people think art is elitist
So a couple of months ago on MySpace (where I also have this blog . . .) I wrote this:
My Theatre History seminar this semester is focused on political modernity and there's a lot of talk about attitudes toward "modern" life and aesthetics, which I want to talk about with you, along with my thoughts on some Fringe Festival pieces I saw this summer and also my experiences at the ATHE conference in Chicago (Association for Theatre in Higher Education).
I now actually don't remember as much about political modernity and modern life that I meant to talk about it. I think it might have been about the alienated life of urban areas vs. the anonymity it offers to reinvent yourself. I might after the semester is over go over my notes, because I know that I really DO want to revisit some of these ideas.
But for now, while I'm avoid writing my paper--and I really don't know why, because I'm writing on Djuna Barnes & the refusal of sentimentality in a feminist/liberatory theatre in contrast to the political uses of melodrama (ha!)--so it's an interesting topic--but yet, here I am dinking on MySpace, and on several of My spaces no less, rather than writing the paper, and since I'm doing that, it seems an opportune moment to revisit the topic on why people think art is elitist and of course I can justify this by saying that I'm "warming up" to write and warming up my brain to think and maybe that's not entirely wrong because maybe I try too much to jump in and not enough to warm up like an athlete who always runs marathons without stretching and then wondering why they get charley horses and here I am all the time with these brain freeze mental charley horses so hmmmmm maybe it's not a rationalization at all or maybe I'm just rationalizing my rationalizations.
It's hard to unravel your motiviations sometimes.
But I digress.
But aren't digressions ocassionally fun? Isn't the climax often anti-climactic?
So over the summer two events within a week of each other. At the Minnesota Fringe Festival, a very popular local performer revived his impression of a blue collar worker who likes to do modern dance. Of course, the guy had on plaid and one of those hats with the flaps on it and stood all slouchy with a stupid look on his face and that dumb guy voice and his "hobbies" were wildcat strikes and marrying his sister and then something ultra conservative too, which was interesting because really, most union folks, people apt to go on strike, are very liberally-oriented. I come from Illinois which is, or rather was, a huge working class state with a lot of factories and is also one of the most liberal states out there, except for maybe New York. It went way more liberal than Minnesota in the last election. And I watched these people get screwed in the 1980s with the farm crisis, which threw International Harvester completely out of business and made places like Caterpillar tractor have to turn to more and more defense contracts to survive and watched people pack up and move across the country for jobs and break up communities and lose their medical benefits and struggle to support themselves. And even if I don't always agree with the life choices or the opinions or politics of everyone in these situations, they are certainly people who deserve a great deal more dignity than what this kind of portrayal offers. And then of course the big joke at the end is that this man likes to do modern dance -- and then does a ridiculous modern dance.
But how much more pathos AND humor could you get from the situation if he actually did have some dignity, was a decent honest person, perhaps a little afraid of what his friends would think if he admitted in the factory or the office or the garage that he liked modern dance and then gave them a demonstration that was not ridiculous, but possibly awkward, maybe with some good moves and some clumsiness.
When middle class, university educated artists get up and make fun of ordinary people, at the same time performing for a giant room full of other people who think exactly like they (the artists) think, and who share this kind of elitist attitude, is there any wonder that these folks (the ones being mocked) think that we are elitist and out of touch and don't care about them and is it any wonder that they are easily talked into not funding art and into believing that art is all degenerate and out to destroy them and their values, when in reality most of us PROFESS to wanting to have dialogues on society and culture and what should change and how to challenge normative values that constrain us, but the way we do it is by mocking individuals who work hard and do their best and who could and would benefit the most by access to art. I say that as an artist committed to the surrealist idea of the liberation of the imagination and who more needs their imaginations liberated than those stuck in jobs and situations that don't stimulate imaginations, that don't warm up their brains, that don't give them a chance to think outside of the everyday? I don't think it's because we do work they don't understand. I think it's because we either talk down to them or ignore them altogether as being unable to understand.
In that regard I applaud people like Mark Nowak who apparently does art and writing projects with and for people who work in factories. THAT is walking the walk in a way that most of us who like to perform for like-minded audiences who "get" what we do without having to explain it all to them, don't ever do. When Daniella Gioseffi, New York poet and editor of Women on War, complains that no one ever reads poetry, my response is that no one EVER read poetry, that it was always first and foremost an oral form that was transmitted through speech not through paper and that's only been in the past 100 or 200 years that it was more of a published written form and if you really want to "reach the masses" get your ass out of the bookstore and out of the coffee shop and into the park and into the street and go where people go and quit whining about how stupid they are.
The second experience . . . at long last . . . was at ATHE--the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. And once again, the boring old saw was presented about taking children to the theatre (for their own edification, but ostensibly for, as one of my friends pointed out, building an audience for the future of theatre, which really means for often deadly regional theatre and bourgeois theatre, let's face it) and how important it is to "educate" people--not just children, but all people--on how to be "good spectators" at the theatre. That is so classist I just want to throw up. Frankly, this is a culture built COMPLETELY on spectatorship and people in this society, if anything, need to be taught how NOT to be passive spectators--of media, of film, of drama. How much do we complain that our children are fat because they sit on their asses watching television? I will acknowledge that people talk too much at movies and maybe in general, and don't know how to stop listening to the sound of their own voices talking into cell phones and talking on the bus and whatever. But frankly, this argument has been around long long before the cell phone, for example, and people don't need to be educated any more on how to see theatre than they do on how to be considerate at the movies or sitting in class. The idea that somehow theatre itself is higher than all that and requires educating, or that someone going to theatre for the first time is too stupid and lowbrow to figure out how to be a spectator is absurd and ridiculous and insulting and it's time we put that phrase completely to rest.
I will acknowledge that if you are doing avant garde work that totally breaks convention and is confusing, you may want to bring your audience along with you and help them understand your method or expectations or how they should view this differently than everything else. But even then, I personally think there's something to be said for a healthy sense of confusion and befuddlement as well and allowing your audience to wrestle with your work. The story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, and even winning--taking on a semi-divine being, the gaining of consciousness through wrestling with something or someone alien, etc.--comes to mind, and while I believe in a sacredness to art to be sure, comparing the art piece to a semi-divine being itself even feels wrong to me, making it still too lofty and out of reach of the ordinary, so there's something subtle but important that I'm saying badly here. But I hope you all get the idea.
TTFN.
Fluffy
My Theatre History seminar this semester is focused on political modernity and there's a lot of talk about attitudes toward "modern" life and aesthetics, which I want to talk about with you, along with my thoughts on some Fringe Festival pieces I saw this summer and also my experiences at the ATHE conference in Chicago (Association for Theatre in Higher Education).
I now actually don't remember as much about political modernity and modern life that I meant to talk about it. I think it might have been about the alienated life of urban areas vs. the anonymity it offers to reinvent yourself. I might after the semester is over go over my notes, because I know that I really DO want to revisit some of these ideas.
But for now, while I'm avoid writing my paper--and I really don't know why, because I'm writing on Djuna Barnes & the refusal of sentimentality in a feminist/liberatory theatre in contrast to the political uses of melodrama (ha!)--so it's an interesting topic--but yet, here I am dinking on MySpace, and on several of My spaces no less, rather than writing the paper, and since I'm doing that, it seems an opportune moment to revisit the topic on why people think art is elitist and of course I can justify this by saying that I'm "warming up" to write and warming up my brain to think and maybe that's not entirely wrong because maybe I try too much to jump in and not enough to warm up like an athlete who always runs marathons without stretching and then wondering why they get charley horses and here I am all the time with these brain freeze mental charley horses so hmmmmm maybe it's not a rationalization at all or maybe I'm just rationalizing my rationalizations.
It's hard to unravel your motiviations sometimes.
But I digress.
But aren't digressions ocassionally fun? Isn't the climax often anti-climactic?
So over the summer two events within a week of each other. At the Minnesota Fringe Festival, a very popular local performer revived his impression of a blue collar worker who likes to do modern dance. Of course, the guy had on plaid and one of those hats with the flaps on it and stood all slouchy with a stupid look on his face and that dumb guy voice and his "hobbies" were wildcat strikes and marrying his sister and then something ultra conservative too, which was interesting because really, most union folks, people apt to go on strike, are very liberally-oriented. I come from Illinois which is, or rather was, a huge working class state with a lot of factories and is also one of the most liberal states out there, except for maybe New York. It went way more liberal than Minnesota in the last election. And I watched these people get screwed in the 1980s with the farm crisis, which threw International Harvester completely out of business and made places like Caterpillar tractor have to turn to more and more defense contracts to survive and watched people pack up and move across the country for jobs and break up communities and lose their medical benefits and struggle to support themselves. And even if I don't always agree with the life choices or the opinions or politics of everyone in these situations, they are certainly people who deserve a great deal more dignity than what this kind of portrayal offers. And then of course the big joke at the end is that this man likes to do modern dance -- and then does a ridiculous modern dance.
But how much more pathos AND humor could you get from the situation if he actually did have some dignity, was a decent honest person, perhaps a little afraid of what his friends would think if he admitted in the factory or the office or the garage that he liked modern dance and then gave them a demonstration that was not ridiculous, but possibly awkward, maybe with some good moves and some clumsiness.
When middle class, university educated artists get up and make fun of ordinary people, at the same time performing for a giant room full of other people who think exactly like they (the artists) think, and who share this kind of elitist attitude, is there any wonder that these folks (the ones being mocked) think that we are elitist and out of touch and don't care about them and is it any wonder that they are easily talked into not funding art and into believing that art is all degenerate and out to destroy them and their values, when in reality most of us PROFESS to wanting to have dialogues on society and culture and what should change and how to challenge normative values that constrain us, but the way we do it is by mocking individuals who work hard and do their best and who could and would benefit the most by access to art. I say that as an artist committed to the surrealist idea of the liberation of the imagination and who more needs their imaginations liberated than those stuck in jobs and situations that don't stimulate imaginations, that don't warm up their brains, that don't give them a chance to think outside of the everyday? I don't think it's because we do work they don't understand. I think it's because we either talk down to them or ignore them altogether as being unable to understand.
In that regard I applaud people like Mark Nowak who apparently does art and writing projects with and for people who work in factories. THAT is walking the walk in a way that most of us who like to perform for like-minded audiences who "get" what we do without having to explain it all to them, don't ever do. When Daniella Gioseffi, New York poet and editor of Women on War, complains that no one ever reads poetry, my response is that no one EVER read poetry, that it was always first and foremost an oral form that was transmitted through speech not through paper and that's only been in the past 100 or 200 years that it was more of a published written form and if you really want to "reach the masses" get your ass out of the bookstore and out of the coffee shop and into the park and into the street and go where people go and quit whining about how stupid they are.
The second experience . . . at long last . . . was at ATHE--the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. And once again, the boring old saw was presented about taking children to the theatre (for their own edification, but ostensibly for, as one of my friends pointed out, building an audience for the future of theatre, which really means for often deadly regional theatre and bourgeois theatre, let's face it) and how important it is to "educate" people--not just children, but all people--on how to be "good spectators" at the theatre. That is so classist I just want to throw up. Frankly, this is a culture built COMPLETELY on spectatorship and people in this society, if anything, need to be taught how NOT to be passive spectators--of media, of film, of drama. How much do we complain that our children are fat because they sit on their asses watching television? I will acknowledge that people talk too much at movies and maybe in general, and don't know how to stop listening to the sound of their own voices talking into cell phones and talking on the bus and whatever. But frankly, this argument has been around long long before the cell phone, for example, and people don't need to be educated any more on how to see theatre than they do on how to be considerate at the movies or sitting in class. The idea that somehow theatre itself is higher than all that and requires educating, or that someone going to theatre for the first time is too stupid and lowbrow to figure out how to be a spectator is absurd and ridiculous and insulting and it's time we put that phrase completely to rest.
I will acknowledge that if you are doing avant garde work that totally breaks convention and is confusing, you may want to bring your audience along with you and help them understand your method or expectations or how they should view this differently than everything else. But even then, I personally think there's something to be said for a healthy sense of confusion and befuddlement as well and allowing your audience to wrestle with your work. The story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, and even winning--taking on a semi-divine being, the gaining of consciousness through wrestling with something or someone alien, etc.--comes to mind, and while I believe in a sacredness to art to be sure, comparing the art piece to a semi-divine being itself even feels wrong to me, making it still too lofty and out of reach of the ordinary, so there's something subtle but important that I'm saying badly here. But I hope you all get the idea.
TTFN.
Fluffy
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