The Flying Monkey

Referral

2005-01-16T13:08:00.000-08:00

Things are trailing off over here...

Some of the dialog from this blog is going into The Flying Monkey (check outwww.rubyslippers.ca for more info)

For those interested in participating in a more active dialog about contemporary theatre practices and philosophies, head over to www.smallwoodenshoe.org and click on Think Tank.

To Tanya

2005-01-08T22:29:00.000-08:00

i heard details of your car accident... holy shit! here's to you and being alive! exciting way to start the new year.

Another Question

2005-01-02T22:20:00.000-08:00

We've had some discussion about who the audience is to each of us as creators.

I'm wondering if the concept of an "audience" is still as useful one. Is the "audience" as a concept too closely related to the "market" of the business world? By continuing to think of audience and performers -- them and us, in a way -- are we continuing to entrench the business paradigm into the process of art-making?

If we find a way of transforming the audience into something else, it seems to follow (especially after reading Darren's thoughts) that the form of theatre as we know it would be obsolete. Those well-made plays would become sinking ships, and us the rats heading for shore... But what are we swimming towards, and if we are squeaking, who will hear? If a rat squeaks in the ocean and there's no one there to hear it, does it still make a sound?

This is the thought that paralyzes me: if there is no receiver for my particular squeak, what is the point of making a peep?

FADO online discussion

2004-12-26T13:43:00.000-08:00

i have read the FADO discussion and it's worth checking out. they're dealing with some similar stuff and struggling with the effects of institutionalization on their practices. it doesn't really answer or address your concerns, john, but they do ask a similar question. this is what paul coulliard says:

" I remember asking John Dummett-- who had characterized himself as a "hobbyist" to avoid some of the expectations placed on "professional" artists -- what values he associated with "art" that made him want to characterize his activities as art. I think this is a tension that bears closer scrutiny in contemporary art, and especially performance art practices. Art practices have expanded exponentially to encompass all manner of human activity and research under the art rubric, leaving the "general public" trailing by the better part of a century in their acceptance or understanding of these practices as "art". So why continue to call it art? Why does understanding our activities as art remain a useful approach?"

Online Discussion about Performance/Live Art

2004-12-25T18:31:00.000-08:00

i'm on the board of FADO, an artist-run oranization dedicated to performance art. we're hosting an online discussion with a number of performance artists. haven't had a chance to look at it very closely but i'm sure there's some interesting and relevant stuff.

http://www.performanceart.ca/after/home.html

Its xmas eve

2004-12-24T23:33:00.000-08:00

Its christmas eve, the performances to end all
performances. This is a bigger production than a
wedding. Who is the audience in this case? The drunk
uncles? The gossiping mothers?

At any rate, wanted to send a merry ho ho.

Tanya

______________________________________________________________________
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca

Am I Allowed

2004-12-24T05:55:00.000-08:00

to comment on a post John has that's still in draft form? i didn't know you could make drafts of things. found it when i went to post the previous one.

briefly, relational work doesn't necessarily induce the kind of encounters with people you mention in your post. it can work for the reclusives types too. i'm pretty much that guy, as well. would rather sit at home with a book/internet than pretty much do anything else.

but i'll take this up more when you actually post it. not too sure on blogging etiquette for this situation.

Theater Blogging

2004-12-24T04:57:00.000-08:00

I was looking for an image yesterday with my friend, yvonne, so we were googling our first names to see who else shares them. i came across some guy named darren barefoot who i think may be involved with pr or marketing or something. not too sure as his 'about', 'cv', and 'portfolio' all seem to link to pages in latin. anyway, one of his posts was "where are the theater blogs?" so i told him about us. he was aware of theatre skam so i assume he's in the vancouver/victoria area. i though it was interesting since a few days before adrienne started this i was asking the same question. it's obviously in the air. in any case, i think there might be a need for this kind of thing. don't know if this discussion is what the other darren had in mind, he said he was curiouis about play selection process and getting through general auditions intact. there are also some theater blogs mentioned in the comments. btw, i have a blog from when i was presenting 'a suicide-site guide to the city' in scotland. it's no longer active, just an archive: www.darrenodonnell.blogspot.com

here's the link to the other darren's blog and the quesiton about theater blogs:
http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/001542.html

why this discussion

2004-12-22T15:57:00.000-08:00

Darren wrote: "i would like to know from adrienne why this question is relevant. why do you want to know these things. what are you trying to address? are you trying to figure out why there isn't much interest in theater these days, why, as a social force, it's fallen off the map? or what exactly?"

I'm asking these questions about the audience for purely selfish reasons. I find myself increasingly bored in theatre these days. Even the old bells and whistles of lighting effects and intricate choreography fail to thrill me. Since I've already committed a fair amount of time to thinking about live performance and practicing theatre, I don't feel ready to abandon it. Yet. So I'm looking for new strategies... for ways of engaging others that would be interesting to me were I the audience and, especially, as the creator. Its kind of like the rule my Mother taught me about choosing gifts: try to find something that you would sincerely like, then give that away.

The initial question of "who is the audience, what do they want and how can we give it to them?" came more from the business side of affairs -- audience development, if you will. But reading the postings and dialogue that has been developing has helped to focus things a little more for me. What I'm REALLY interested in are 1) the strategies that artists are using to address their personal dissatisfaction with live performance that takes place in theatres and 2) strategies to strip away the buffer of story or fiction to create environments where the participants (creators and audience) are engaging in an experience in real time.

I must admit that I'm not a big reader. I can hardly get through newspaper article these days, nevermind a book about performance theory or... whatever -- though I did manage to read your novel, Darren, and it was great. I liked the bite-sized chunks, I think that helped me a lot -- So a lot of this discussion about this or that theory/ist is going a bit over my head. I've been thinking about the projects I want to do in a personal way: what are the experiences that *I* would like to have? Surely if I'm interested in those experiences, there MUST be others out there who would be into them too? So that's my logic.

I'm not interested in making anyone feel uncomfortable or confused. I'd be happy if individuals walked out of an event I planned having spoken with a new person about a new thing. Or even just having had a good time. I'm interested in creating spaces where people can talk to each other about things other than the weather or gossip or what's on TV. Maybe they could talk about the event they have just or are about to experience.

That said, if there is a theatrical form that carries me away almost every time, its the musical. Why is that? Doesn't matter how cheesy it is, I get engaged. I think it has to do with the music... and any of you theoretical thinkers please help me sort this one out.

For some reason I think about the indie rock concert when I think about audiences. There are hundreds, thousands of people who will pay $20 or more to STAND and bob their heads to a band way far away. For one thing, there's drinks, there's freedom to wander wherever, to start and stop the experience of the music by heading outside for a smoke, to talk, to watch other people. There's no story.

So: what am I trying to address? I'm trying to give myself a reason to keep making things for other people to see. To figure out how to find like-minded people. To use the tools I've learnt to forge a new form of storytelling (because I can't give up on the story. yet. as much as I sometimes hate thinking about it.)

Some questions

2004-12-21T11:54:00.000-08:00

Ilena...

Can you talk a bit about the project you're working on right now? I saw an earlier version of the Bacchae, as produced by Screaming Weanie, at Sonar in Vancouver. I was interested in how you were using the contemporary night club as a setting for the play. Aren't many of SW's shows performed in night clubs? Is this out of economic necessity, or is there something you, as an artist, are trying to get at?

Tanya...

You have described a number of moving experiences in the theatre and other live performance venues. How do these experiences affect those you are trying to create for your audience. I like to think of creating interactive experiences, rather than observational ones. The difference between fly fishing and window shopping.

I have to go. I'm at the Library in Calgary and my time on this borrowed computer is running out!

Thanks to all of you for engaging in this dialogue.

adrienne

Ilena joining in!

2004-12-21T11:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a bit about me. I see Im already behind in responding to the first question... Oh dear!

Ilena is Managing Artistic Director of Screaming Weenie Productions. Direction/Creation Credits for the company include: The Bacchae – an electronic opera (to be remounted in January 2005), a series of three collaborative creations based on Hollywood musicals – Snowy, The Wizard of Glam, The Sound of Disco – and the Well of Horniness by Holly Hughes. Other work includes West End Stories for Theatre Positive, and Theodora, She Bitch of Byzantium for KDQ & Co.. She completed her BA in Theatre at the University of Alaska – Fairbanks, and studied in St. Petersburg, Russia. Other credits include Stage Management, Technical Direction, Production Managment and Administration for such companies as The Palace, Leakey Heaven Circus and Pink Ink and A Western Theatre Conspiracy. Ilena is currently Managing Producer for Rumble Productions.

Darren Responds to John

2004-12-20T07:09:00.000-08:00

i first wrote this as a comment in john's thread but wanted to edit and rewrite but couldn't access the comment. does anyone know if that's possible. anyway, here it is again with a few changes.
hey john,

thanks for your response.

i understand your point about insular audiences of strictly theater people and you're right - i sure as hell don't want that. but i don't agree that we know who we are and what we want. or, at least, i don't know who i am or what i want and the work i create is always trying to explore that as it relates to my social being. my role as a social actor and what constitutes my intelligence, consciousness, subjectivity etc are all questions that remain valid and at the center of my work - i trust that interested audience members will follow and the rest can go catch a flick. i can't second guess what the audience wants. the kind of indie theater that i make intentionally situates itself in a marginalized place because i want to explore things most of the population is reluctant to look at.(two mice screaming at each other about racism will never appeal to the majority of the population because, if it did, there would be no reason to write it) so that means the audience will always be modest. i mean, even some of the biggest names in contemporary theater: wooster group, elevator repair, daniel macivor, goat island, forced entertainment, pme, richard foreman, have relatively tiny followings. as artists committed to innovation and exploring the margins of form, thought, consciousness and perception that's just the way it has to be. i also believe that anyone who is not doing that in theater will be going head to head with forms that do it so much better. in taking my analogy to the next level by listing other forms of transportation such as skiing etc you're no longer talking about transportation, you're talking about leisure. no one would ski or snowshoe from toronto to vancouver. there is stuff that theater will always do better than other forms of entertainment but i don't believe it will ever have a mass popular appeal. rather than search for how to generate an audience, i'm more interested in how to create specific social effects.

but, to engage with that question for a bit, You ask: "most people seem to avoid (feeling uncomfortable) as much as they can. How the hell do we hook these people?"
I disagree with this approach. it occurs to me that the place to find new audience is among people in your category 6 who don't see theater at all because it's gotten too dorky for them. and it also occurs to me that your groups 2 and 6 overlap, in fact all members of group 2 who are not going to see theatre belong to group 6. all of my friends are interested in contemporary art, design, film, video and they are pretty much all very interested in feeling uncomfortable and challenging themselves - toronto is crawling with these people and they are creating vibrant and exciting work in thier own fields. the problem is they never feel uncomfortable or challenged in theater - just bored and embarrassed. they are people ready to part with dollars in exchange for some rigorous intellectual work but it just doesn't exist in theater. most theater, even the so-called challenging and innovative work, just doesn't stand up when compared to the work happening in film, video, visual and performance art. our work in theater needs to attract these types of people. trying to attract people who are not interested in being challenged is, for the most part, a waste of time. but trying to improve our work so we challenge the people who are actually interested in being challenged is doable. the onus, then, rests on raising our consciousness and awareness of the work in other media as opposed to the impossible task of raising the consciousness of people who would rather remain comfortable. we must change ourselves before we can hope to attract others.

the question of how to capitalise on theater's unique traits is a good one. and the secret, i think, is the fact that, unlike almost all other forms, the audience and the performers are at the same room at the same time. i think we can begin to think of how to address the growing desire for participation in the social sphere. it's in so many other media with all the reality stuff, notions of participatory democracy etc - how to bring actualy encounters with actual people into the theater is where i'm looking.

trampoline hall is an event organized by a couple of theater-related people and their friends. it's a hybrid event and one of the most popular things going in toronto. it's simply a lecture series by people not experts in whatever subject they're lecturing on. there's an element of theater in this amateurism and people bring an surprising amount of creativity to their lectures. it sells out everytime and there is no shortage of people willing to perform. it's events like these that really challenge how we conceive of theater and hold the key to this current impasse. they offer encounters between people in real time before our very eyes. and it's entertaining. and it's never going to attract your category 3, 4 or 5 but does interest 1, 2 and most importantly category 6, the people with cash who want some challenges and are managing to find it almost everywhere but theater.

but attracting a new audience willing to be challenged, an audience accustomed to more sophisticated forms and ideas, an audience that finds theater to be behind the times will require a pretty thorough rethink of how we train actors, actors being the ones now mostly responsible for creating, writing and directing work. they need to familiarize themselves with what has happened over the last 50 years in the visual arts, live art, experimental film, critical theory, various movements like the situationists, the neoists, and philosophy in general. otherwise theater will continue to approach questions of representation, engagment, event and entertainment from the same angle, will never attract an intelligent and socially engaged audience,.
what do you think?

Some responses to Darren

2004-12-19T13:04:00.000-08:00

Well Darren, you've brought up a lot of good points. Please don't take offence, but in order to get things going I'm going to disagree with you on a couple of them. First I'd like to respond to this comment:

" i care about the audience but only as they encounter what i really care about: my work. to try to answer "who they are, what they want and what we can give them" is to approach the question from the wrong angle. they're not homogenous, they want a bunch of different things, and we can only give them the fruits of our own interest and experimentation. it seems a bit obvious to say it but, as creators, we only have to answer who *we* are, what *we* want, and what do we feel like giving. "

We already know who we are and what we want. I feel we should constantly be thinking of who the audience is and what they want. When you stop considering the audience, you have stopped doing theatre. I feel that the all-important aspect of theatre is the interaction of two groups of people, one group having chosen to create an experience for the other. All too often, I see theatre where the only audience is other theatre professionals because the creators are only thinking of process or technique or an IDEA. Exploration and experimentation are essential to good work, but in the end it has to be drawn back in. Push the audience, draw them out of their element, teach them to see the world in a new way. But if you can't hook them, they'll miss the whole trip. You see, we can't force them to come to our shows or to think the way we want them to. We have to trick and entice them to follow us off the beaten track. To do this sucessfully, we MUST know who they are. to me, this is the true craft and art of theatre. They are much more diverse than we are, but that shouldn't scare us away from trying to figure them out.

As you can see from my bio, I don't come from a theatre background. Before I became involved in theatre at the age of 23, I had only seen two shows:

Annie at the NAC,
Les Miserables at the Royal Alex

Little as it may seem, it was more than anyone else I knew. My parents have had seasons tickets to the opera but will not see theatre unless I'm invloved and I threaten them. In fact, the vast majority of people I have met in my life will have absolutely nothing to do with theatre whatsoever. Why is that? Sometimes I think they are afraid of it. They tend to make comments about 'not understanding it', of it 'being corny' , but it really seems to make them nervous and uncomfortable. Now, I personally enjoy being uncomfortable, but most people seem to avoid it as much as they can. How the hell do we hook these people?

Because audiences are so diverse, it might help to split them up into categories. Here's one way of dividing the general public into 6 groups.

1) Theatre professionals

2) Enthusiastic risk taking audience members
- often non theatre artists
-supportive family members or friends

3) The Shakespeare and Shaw crowd
-The 'geyhairs'
-Generally will only watch what has stood the test of time
-Prefers traditional work, a narrative, no audience participation

4) The Andrew Lloyd Webber crowd
-a broad cross-section of the population who like the idea of theatre, but who don't like taking risks
-like polished linear work
-will go see what everyone else is seeing

5) The captive audience
-cruise ships and dawson city
-willing to try different things because they are bored and out of their element
6) No thanks!

Do these categories make any sense? What sort of triggers cause people to switch groups? I think group 2 is the one that we are most interested in having in our audiences. Can we seduce more people into this group?

The second point that I'd like to take issue with is this:

"...he said that people want to be entertained. and, while that may mostly be true, the obvious problem is that there is no competing with film, video, video games, tv etc on that front. they just do entertainment better - just like airplanes do transportation better than horse drawn buggies. "

To extend your analogy a little further, people still use skis, snoshoes, canoes, horse drawn buggies, bicycles, sailboats and varoious other absurdly slow and inefficient modes of transportation simply because they give you a very different experience. While I completely agree that theatre is finished as one of the principal forms of entertainment in our culture, it has many characteristics which make it truly distinct from everything else which is out there. How can we capitalise on that?

The word 'entertainment' is often used by people I know as a dirty word which refers to light fluffy unchallenging stuff. That implies the good work need not be entertaining, which I think is wrong. good work is inherently entertaining because it is engaging and it demands the attention of the audience.

Thats enough for today. Tell me what you think!

Memorable Moments plus another thing

2004-12-19T06:46:00.000-08:00

So i've thought about the question some more and have come up with a couple of moments that were really significant. a number of shows come to mind: godspell by theater three in edmonton, indulgence by augusta company in toronto, the panel and sick by dna theater in toronto, the noam chomsky lectures by brooks and verdecchia,. simone moir's video store make-out and gustavo artigas' rules of the game.

godspell - it was the moment at the beginning of the intermission when they sing some song that has the line: "let's have some wine" and they offer the audience wine out of some big barrell. i was about 11 or 12 at the time and was blown away that they were interacting with the audience in such a banal way - handing out little cups of kool-aid or something.

indulgence - it was my first encounter with full-on postmodernism in theater. it was a series of connected but disjointed scenes that all toyed with various established conventions but in such an unconventional way. what differed from other attempts at that kind of thing was that, as much as it was abstract, it wasn't actually indulgent unlike most of the experimental theater i had seen to that point. it was rigorous yet made no sense but was easy to understand because each section or image or whatever referenced some recognizable trope. inspired, i believe, by the wooster group.

noam chomsky - again more postmodernism but now with a dense weave of information and analysis. something i had never seen before nor, sadly, since.

the panel and sick - more pomo. hiller managed to mix a panel discussion with dance and live insanity, performance art etc. but again, as nutty as it all got, it still was very familiar. for ex: actor chris williamson was dressed kind of line a david lynchian bellhop and he would walk around with cart filled with liquour and mix the audience free drinks. daniel macivor lay in a bed and slowly died of aids for the whole show while sigrid johnson would come in and occasionally apply a defibrilator to his chest and give him some shocks.

video store make-out - moving into the realm of relational aesthetics (really important book with some really important insights for theater: relational aesthetics by nicolas bourriaud). simone put out a call for participants and anyone who was interested could come to a number of video stores at a predetermined time and in the Action film section could encounter other people who were there to potentially make out. participants had to navigate the whole thing really carefully because you never knew who was cruise for kissing and who was cruising for movies. it took performance into a whole other level.

rules of the game - a performance that i've only read about but which has been at the forefront of my thinking on new forms of performance. it was an event which took place in the Tijuana neighbourhood of La Libertad, a crossing point for many illegal immigrants entering the United States, as part of ‘InSite 2000’. Two football teams and two basketball teams from local US and Mexican high schools were invited to play simultaneously on the same court, so not only did each team encounter the usual adversary, but each game was pitched against the other, vying for space. Although this represented antagonistic conditions that could be analogous to many situations, the vicinity of a political and geographic boundary (tijuana and san diego essentially occupy the same space with only a border dividing them) steep the piece in immigration issues – essentially the accommodation of the other. they had four sets of cheerleaders and a trophy that depicted two atheletes clashing, a soccer ball and basketball between them. i love how this piece brings in "real" people doing their own thing, changes the terms so simply yet so drastically while making a full engaged social comment.

anyway, the unifying traits with this stuff was that they all convention busted, acknowledged the audience was in the same room, and rejected narrative, character and, for the most part tried to induce either an intellectual or visceral experience, not bothering with trying to induce an emotional response. the only exception was godspell which i included because it was the first time i saw such simple but strong contact with the audience.

ANOTHER THING - i'm willing to play along but after reading the description of the blog more carefully, i'm not so sure how useful this line of thinking is. i care about the audience but only as they encounter what i really care about: my work. to try to answer "who they are, what they want and what we can give them" is to approach the question from the wrong angle. they're not homogenous, they want a bunch of different things, and we can only give them the fruits of our own interest and experimentation. it seems a bit obvious to say it but, as creators, we only have to answer who *we* are, what *we* want, and what do we feel like giving. theater creators are a much more homogenous group, with common triats that can be identified and i think the "problems" with theater right now stem from this fact. briefly, we are mostly actors with limited life experience (most of us have been in rehearsal full-time since high school) and who are poorly educated (actor training is still not addressing the needs of creating, still too attached to a classical paradigm and not congnizant of developments in most of the other humanities since the 60s - but that's another discussion)

i would like to know from adrienne why this question is relevant. why do you want to know these things. what are you trying to address? are you trying to figure out why there isn't much interest in theater these days, why, as a social force, it's fallen off the map? or what exactly?

John's Bio

2004-12-18T21:24:00.000-08:00

Originally from a sheep farm in Quebec, I was a teenager in Toronto, and then a student in Waterloo where I studied science in a broad way, moving through physics, philosophy, ecology, genetics and human physiology. Following that I worked at a genetics lab where I modified bacteria to do unnatural things, a sleep clinic where I learned of the immense variety of human snores, and at the Dempster's bread factory where I was in charge of a crew of bread sqishers (we had a $1oo 000 machine with which to test the squishiness of the bread.) Having had enough of Ontario winters, I bolted to the west coast where I worked as a bartender, a pastry cook and a plastics mould maker. Seven years ago I was introduced to the world of theatre through a couple of friends and have been a technician and designer ever since. In September I returned to school to pursue an MFA lighting and set design, which seems to imply that I have finally settled into a carreer (obvoiusly for the fame and money), although I have always wanted to be a blacksmith...
Although I was in school this fall I did find time to do two designs, lighting for Tanya Marquardt's Liminal, and set for Adrienne Wong's The Secret Project. The fact that they are both involved in this email exchange is obviously an outrageous coincidence

RE: Response to Question #1: Memorable Audience Experiences

2004-12-17T19:08:00.000-08:00

Posted this as a comment, maybe it didn't get posted, so I am emailing...

Thanks.

Tanya

When I was a kid my mother took me to the circus, and I rode an elephant for the first time. I will never forget that because I'd never been so close to such a strange looking animal, and didn't realize how awful elephants smelled. They smell really bad, and if I think about it I can still recall the feeling of riding on the elephant's back and the rancid smell of dung, and me looking down to see this old morose woman pulling me along, behind her an incredibly long line of children waiting for what to me was a anti-climatic experience.

Is this the most memorable experience I have ever had as an audience member? Well, its a memory.

I don't think I have memorable experiences in the theatre. For one, thanks to theatre school, I am too busy scrutinizing everything to have an experience. But primarily, its because the vast majority of theatre I see is either aethetically unsatisfying, or it fails to transform me.

When I was a kid I became really obsessed with the movie Beaches. I loved that movie. I loved it because I really wanted to have a best friend, and looking back on it I think the movie helped me figure out what a friendship between two women might look like. Minus the Wind Beneath my Wings song.

I used to watch it over and over and over again, more than thirty times at least. At night in order to get to bed I would try and recall every single shot in the film, memorize all the lines, and sing all the songs as I lulled myself to sleep.

Well I'm not so proud of the example, for me that reaction is how I know I have been moved by something. I am desperate to retain every moment, every scene, every image, every breath. I retain it with a kind of desperation, because I equate the original experience with truth, and in my life I want to know truth.

Is that memorable?

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my bio and some audience thoughts.

2004-12-17T18:00:00.000-08:00

(i could change the pronoun to 'I' but, as insiders, you all already know i wrote my own bio)

Darren O’Donnell is a writer, director, social acupuncturist, designer and artistic director of Mammalian Diving Reflex. His shows include A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, Diplomatic Immunities, pppeeeaaaccceee, [boxhead], White Mice, Over, Who Shot Jacques Lacan?, Radio Rooster Says That’s Bad and Mercy!. He has organized The Toronto Strategy Meetings, a durational project focusing on self-responsibility as a social act, The Talking Creature, a continuing experiment in public discourse, You Wish, a public intervention concerning cocaine and the upcoming Haircuts by Children, an event offering free haircuts to the public by children aged 8-12 years. He was the 2000 winner of the Pauline McGibbon Award for directing, the 2000 Gabriel Award for broadcasting and has been nominated for a number of Dora Awards for his writing, directing, and acting, winning for his design of White Mice. His first novel, Your Secrets Sleep with Me was published on May 6, 2004 and has been called by The Chicago Reader "a bible for the dispossessed, a prophecy so full of hope it's crushing".

it's great that you're doing this adrienne, i've been complaining for the last two weeks that there are no online forums discussing theater with any rigor. what a coinkydink. the flying monkey is a health food store in toronto, fyi.

THE AUDIENCE - recently i decided to stop being an audience member. i haven't had a memorable moment in a theater for as long as i can remember. was having a talk with franco boni, the artistic director of the theater center this morning and we were talking about performance art vs. theater and he said that people want to be entertained. and, while that may mostly be true, the obvious problem is that there is no competing with film, video, video games, tv etc on that front. they just do entertainment better - just like airplanes do transportation better than horse drawn buggies. the horse drawn buggy can provide a sublime experience that can not be rivalled by the airplane, but when you've got a conference to attend in nyc nothing beats a one hour flight from t.o. but what theater does better than the other media is bring people together and that, it seems to me, leaves audience participation as the way through this current nobody-gives-a-shit-about-theater impass. problem with audience participation is that it generally lacks rigor and is usually only seen as a way to have a little fun: suggestions for improv topics and what have you. but i do think there are ways to create work that involves the audience and still has chops. the typical way of dealing with this has been to invoke notions of getting rid of the spectacle, getting rid of the audience and making everyone performers but, paradoxically, i actually think the way into a rigorous participatory theater is to get rid of the performer and make everyone the audience. in fact, if i was in the mood to make slogans and banners i would say: death to performers! death to pretending! death to performance!

here's a project i'm doing in february at Buddies in Bad Times to give you an idea of what i'm talking about:

Diplomatic Immunities
social acupuncture coordinated by Mammalian Diving Reflex

Fifteen members *of* the audience are randomly selected *by* the audience and forced to answer *to* the audience. Potential participation is mandatory: either you're in or you're out.

this is how it works: when entering the theater all audience members are asked for their name. anyone not willing to participate is not allowed in. then random audience members pull the names one-at-a-time from a hat. the selected person gets up onstage and answers whatever questions the audience wants to ask for a duration of 5 minutes. all questions are permitted, all can be refused. it would be ideal to have a live video projection of the subject directly behind. whole thing lasts 1 hr 15 minutes and 15 people are interview.

i've already done this as part of a 5 day workshop focusing on the interview as a form and it works really well. some schmoe off the street talking about what he had for breakfast is, in my experience, 100 times more interesting than a couple of idiots with memorized lines hanging around waiting for godot or whatever. i mean there is that immutable law of theater than reminds us that a cat onstage will always be more interesting than sean penn at his most brilliant.

that's it for now. can i invite some people? jennifer tarver and franco boni from the theater center might be interested. as would jacob zimmer and naomi campbell, i think.

Introduction to Tanya Marquardt

2004-12-17T17:04:00.000-08:00

Hello All,

Find below my bio and Adrienne, if you need a picture I can send one via email if you like.

An introduction.

I am Tanya Marquardt, theatre artist, female, living in Vancouver. I was born in Regina Sask., but moved every year or so because my father was a travelling vacumn cleaner salesman. I went to school at SFU, and graduated in 2002.

Personal things about me: I love chocolate, but hate chocolate icing. I refuse to eat cake, but I'll eat pie. I know how to ride horses and I'm left handed. I love the ocean, and particularily the feeling of the wind when I'm standing near the ocean.

Professional things about me: I create collective creations and also creations based on text that I have written. I've worked with companies such as The Leaky Heaven Circus and radix, as well as my own company Chrysalis Theatre, which recently closed my third play, Liminal.

What I think about Audience: Very excited to start dialoging, because in a lot of ways I am unclear about my feelings / identifications with audience.

I thought perhaps my companies mandate may articulate how I want to affect or effect my audience, and the techniques I am curious about, at least right now:

Chrysalis creates theatre through poetry, music and performance art. The artists gather according to the work, which is original, physical and collaborative.

We want your dreams to come to life before your eyes.

Chrysalis aims to put oddities onstage for us to decipher, creating spaces so out of joint that we have no choice but to question the living world around us. Attempts at constructing this world have led to the exploration of radical staging techniques, dance, rewriting of classical and modern text, clown, found set and costume materials, noise music, and gender bending.

Maybe this is too much information, or maybe it isn't enough. Looking forward to hearing from all you folks out there,

Tanya Marquardt
Creator & Performer

===================================================================

Tanya Marquardt
Creator, Performer & Artistic Director – Chrysalis Theatre

Tanya is the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre. Some acting credits include: SexMachine (radix Theatre), Genie (Theatre Replacement), and Ziggurat (The Leaky Heaven Circus). Her play Nocturne opened NextFest 2003 in Edmonton Alberta. Tanya assistant directed Boca del Lupo's Hold Your Head Tight with Sherry J. Yoon, Come & Go with Craig Hall, Liminal for Chrysalis Theatre and Birthday Boy: A Nativity with The Leaky Heaven Circus. She also assisted The Leaky Heaven with King Llyr, for which she shared a Jesse Richardson Award for Best Ensemble. Tanya is writing a site specific piece that takes place in a Beauty Parlor.

Question 1: memorable experiences

2004-12-17T15:10:00.000-08:00

Let's start with your experiences as an audience member...

Describe your most memorable experience as an audience member. What made it memorable?

Initial Thoughts from John

2004-12-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd throw these out there... some initial thoughts from John...

"Hello Adrienne.

I would love to take part!

It just so happens that I'm in the process of writing which includes a large section on Vancouver audiences forcing the Playhouse to do more conservative and foreign work. In the sixties, with a couple of notable exceptions, risky or local work was vilified by the press, the government funding
bodies, the theatre board, and most especially the bulk of the audience.

Here's a couple of quotes from Malcolm Page: 'Grass and Wild Strawberries, George Ryga's play about hippies, in April 1969 was much criticised, both for the loudness of the music and for attracting badly-dressed and dirty spectators.'

Alderman Earle Adams, about The Filthy Piranesi: 'To me, this type of play is completely disgusting... ...These are respectable people, a cross-section of the community who support the theatre.'

In fact, at Itai's party, I was speaking to his friend from film school who's name I forget. He told me that he really doesn't like theatre...he just can't seem to get used to the form...it all seems kind of corny to him. I think this is really common. Unfortunately I was feeling a little testy that night and I got on his case about his "anti-theatre Attitude".

Hmmmmm, your question about the audience as a single entity... ...makes me think about what sort of forces might make a bunch of individuals act as an entity. Some might talk about the 'collective unconscious,' but I think that concept is a bit of a cop-out (if you're curious, I can tell you why I think that). I think that one factor has a huge effect...the desire to get the social etiquette right. If I clap or laugh at the wrong place, are people going to think I am stupid or uncultured? Is it bad if I stick my
chopsticks into my food? Will I be overdressed if I wear a tie? I think these feelings cause people to observe and copy the people surrounding them. In untrained audiences, I would imagine that it manifests itself as a fear of seeming uncultured. Trained audiences are just that: they behave in a way consistent with what they've seen before...

Anyway, just some stream of consciousness thoughts. I should really finish this paper......"

Welcome!

2004-12-17T15:04:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone, and thank you for joining this discussion. Please take a moment to post your bio and introduce yourself to the rest of the group. I'll start:

I'm a freelance theatre artist and radio broadcaster currently working out of Vancouver. My company, Tangled Tongues Performance, recently produced The Secret Project -- a site specific, roaming play that took audiences through the Firehall Arts Centre. See thesecretproject.blogspot.com for more details.