6/13 Reactions to The Accidental Activitist

OK, so I just watched this dvd, The Accidental Activist, an expertly produced video of a one-woman show by one of the woman who conceived "The Lysistrata Project". My reactions are mostly negative but I want to analyze them a bit. As a solo theatre piece, the form was predictable and mostly boring, the usually "this is the story of me" business; as acting, it seemed to me to be utterly false (except occassionally when she was playing someone other than herself, which is interesting), a real example of "look at me, I'm acting, oh, look at me now, I'm feeling really deeply" (only it was all indicated); as a political statement, it seemed difficult to argue with, strong, and, in the end, sentimental--which undercuts most of the good stuff, to my mind. I'm probably being more critical and negative than the piece deserves, but it makes me made and makes me cringe, all at the same time, because it wasn't about the war and the victims of war, it was about her.

Of course, what have I done?

On the positive side, I guess you could say that the piece was actually completely honest, because she was absolutely demonstrating herself. She is that showbizzy actress (I guess). Well, maybe not, maybe she was characterizing herself, because in the two extended scenes in which she played other women, she actually seemed like quite a good actor, if in a quite conventional sense.

But the paradox that I really want to get at is the fact that, as she demonstrated herself and "re-stored" or reproduced behavior from her stories, the style seemed to me to rob the event of authenticity. She wanted us to believe that she was really talking to us, that something was actually happening at the moment, but it wasn't. Somehow, not even the reproduction (storytelling) was actually happening (granted, this was a video of a live performance). Her talking to us was supposed to be real and wasn't; her acting out of other characters (when it was developed) was far more authentic because it was clearly artificial. In other words, the same old paradox.

So I think part of the lesson, as far as creating a performance piece, is this: heighten the artificiality and avoid any suggestion that the fictional event is "really happening". Only then will it be real. I need to remember this the next time I try to write a scenario. And avoid sincerity at all costs. It's only the most basic idea in theatre, the one I pretend I've been trying to teach all this time.

Oh, and one more thing about her piece, the "content" part that really spoke to me: She satirized herself as only able to describe the result of the piece she wanted to make, what it would do to the audience, but utterly unable to describe what it actually would be. That seems to be pretty much where I am with this current piece.

6/13 Thoughts...

I made one abysmal attempt at a scenario last night. Awful on almost every level. But here's a thought: If the piece is "really" about how we learn and perform our racial identities (and maybe it isn't), then that idea should be conveyed through the performance style, not in a direct way. No scenes about "learning to act white"; no putting on white/black/red masks. Every moment is contrived, artificial, indirect. The performance style should be one in which the artifice is always on the surface, never hidden behind a mask of natural behavior or "authentic" acts.

But won't the result be like SITI's MND? Disembodied actors looking "dancey" and performing technique rather than really reproducing behavior? (And that's assuming I could teach student actors to commit themselves fully to reproducing behavior--technically a huge challenge.)

So the question is: What is it that the actors are trying to do?

Maybe they are trying to be fully present to each other and to the audience while maintaining their artificial poses, and that's where the tension of the performance lies. And the point is, that's what we are all trying to do, and our poses are composed of the behaviors--cultural/racial/social-hierarchical--that we have learned to reproduce. We're caught in a trap, because we are our poses, they aren't masks we can drop, they are us, and yet we desperately need to touch each other in spite of them. And maybe being "like" each other (group identity) is the best we can do, the closest we can come. Or at least our tendency to define ourselves with/against others is driven by that need.

Back to the performance.

Steal an idea from Wooster Group: action is interrupted by dances/demonstrations/lessons?

Another idea: scrap the whole 18th Century business instead of trying to force it to say something it doesn't? No, because I still think the Indian Kings visit will still serve as a structure, an armature. But that's all it is, it's not what the piece is "about". The piece is "about" each of us trying to reach each other when all we have to work with is this behavior we invent which makes it impossible to reach each other.

So maybe what I need to do for the actors is make them want to really reach each other (be present to each other) and then set up real obstacles. And teach them not to play the obstacle but to play the action. And then frustrate them more.

Suddenly I'm worried that I'm just reiterating a big, simplistic cliche: We can never really know each other. Which is almost the same as saying, we're all really the same under the skin, isn't it?

But no: I want to find out if I believe that a) there is a real self that can communicate to another real self if we can just drop theses poses and masks that differentiate us from each other; or b) that we can't drop these poses and masks because they are what we are made of (they are the products of our cultural histories and we have learned to perform from infancy) and cannot be laid aside no matter how much we try or want to--and furthermore, the idea that there's a "real" self under my surface is a consequence of my refusal to see myself as white, that if everyone stopped wearing masks they would look and act like me.

If (b) is true, as I suspect it is, then is there any way that we Americans can transform the virulent racial cauldren our history has produced? More to the point, is there any way that I can escape it? Well, yes, because even if difference between individuals and groups will always exist, the signifiers of that difference (currently skin color, eye and nose shape, vocal inflection, mannerisms, etc.) are shifting according to economic and social status and power. So it's always in flux, even if change happens slowly.

So is there a question? Or have I already reached my conclusions and want to teach them to the audience?

Right now, my most pressing question is: At this moment in history, in America, can I really know a person of another race in the same way that I think I can know someone of my own race? Put that way, the questions seems as silly as the answer is obvious: Of course I can, depending on circumstance, how much I want to, and how much the other person wants to. On an individual level, those things are within my control. Or are they? Isn't the real question whether I am consigned to be a racist by virtue of my white identity, and my wishes have little or nothing to do with it? Whether history (and not just history but the present socio-economic setup) decrees that, for now at least, there will always be a gulf between myself and any African-American or American Indian that no amount of good will can bridge?

6/13 NOTES ON PROCESS:


Go back and read all the notes I’ve made;

Re-read Southern’s Oroonoko and decide whether to use it as a focal point, and, if so, what scenes to use;

Read as much of the original texts that I’ve accumulated as possible;

Think again about what the central question of the piece is;

Check emails for recommendations of additional sources, but try to avoid going after new stuff;

Get Queen Anne’s Indian Kings from ILL (again);

Make another stab at writing a scenario;

Make a list of possible rehearsal exercises;

5/23 THOUGHTS WHILE RE-READING ROACH: "FEATHERED PEOPLES"


Roach says that any remembering (memorializing) also entails forgetting, and in the instance of performances which are symbolic representations of the encounter of African, Amerindian, and European peoples, "one of these parties seems fated to disappear from the selective memory of another." The reason being that the "dominant trope: that of geneological succession, imagined as a stately procession" is threatened by interruption or usurpation; that is, threatened by mixture, influence, being changed by encounter. And the most threatening (because most fundamental) of these changes is that "blood will be mixed": "The fear that blood will be mixed, a fear that intensifies the ritual expectation that blood must be shed, haunts these representations like a vengeful ghost: the specter of future generations threatening to be born." (p. 122)

Furthermore: It is in the images of violence that these fears are expressed. So, what happens if I focus on these "images of violence" in Oroonoko, Macbeth, and The Indian Emperour?

"Representations of these encounters show how Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans, real or imagined, acting in one another's presence, real or imagined, repeated their special rites of surrogation." (p.122)

Also: The fear that Roach is describing, the fear of being replaced by something different, something of a different color, is not an artifact of the past. It is what is driving the current frenzy about immigration, and also--of course--what sustains institutional racism. Do I have to spell that out in a performance??

So: 1) if performance is restored behavior in service of remembering and (of necessity) forgetting; and
2) if it's necessary to maintain the myth of an unbroken succession, the idea that things will continue as they have been, and if these plays enact the desire and the threat to that succession (but how, exactly?); and
3) if the reason for this necessity is that a sense of racial and cultural identity is based on this sense of succession, because the fear is that those others, especially the "future generations threatening to be born," are going to erase "us"; then
4) is it possible to get at that fear, and make it the center of the performance, rather that "the performance of whiteness"? and
5) if so, how (in relation to these texts)?

Questioning my assumptions: Am I just being taken in by Roach's rhetoric? How, really, is it possible to make a connection between these performances during that moment in history and our lives right now? And is the issue really "white identity"? I keep assuming that the problem is that white people don't accept their role as recipients of "white privilege" and that I can create a performance which somehow addresses that problem. I THINK THIS IS A MISGUIDED WAY TO APPROACH THIS PRODUCTION.

It would be more productive to focus on the fear of being replaced:

"Whenever the sweet desire to assimilated or to be assimilated curdles into the fear of being replaced, the moment is propitious for the performance of waste." (Roach, 173)

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I keep remembering that Roach cites the "psychoanalytical truism" that anxiety is the longing for that which we fear, and that he says these plays reflect that longing. He then connects that idea to "the fear of superabundance." If he means, by superabundance, those generations waiting to be born, or if he means the vast wealth waiting for the English as a result of their growing commercial empire (replacing Spain and inheriting her empire, in a sense); then I can understand it, I guess. Or is he also talking about sexual longing, as reflected in the longing for Omoinda? Or the fascination the crowd shows for the Kings?

But how

5/16 Questions for Carol (revised):




QUESTIONS FOR CAROL (4/26)


-- I'm trying to understand the differences in attitudes (toward empire, colonialization, non-white peoples) between when these plays were written (1660s-80s) and 1710 when they were presented for the "Four Kings". What has changed? Doesn't`o audiences see these plays differently in 1710? Help!

-- Why did Southerne make Imoinda white (a change which was criticized at the time)?

-- Surely the fact of King Philip's War (1675) changed how English viewed Iroquois, and how they viewed Indians. ["The war proved a critical turning point by destroying the interdependent world constructed jointly by white colonists and Native Americans and replacing it with a new culture in which native peoples were marginalized and the white settlers were dominant." (Wikipedia entry)]

Doesn't this view contradict Roach's idea of negotiation between "equals" (visit as Condolence Council) and an alliance against the French? Or does it?

-- In Southerne's Oroonoko, no one seems upset by the fact of a white slave (Imoinda). Why not?

-- How is the tension between aristocratic (Tory) contempt for mercantilism and greed (especially regarding slave trade) and desire for empire/pride in British identity playing into view of Africans/Indians and identity as White/English? In other words, what values are associated with English/White identity? As represented by whom? Is this tension between the idealistic and pragmatic/commercial values something that has been bequeathed to us today in terms of White identity/privilege? (duh!) Who won? Am I oversimplifying? (again: duh!)

-- What about this idea of the threat posed by colonists changing sense of identity reflected in plays? Image of slave trader and planters, for sure; otherwise?
The fear is not that the barbarous colonial renegades and
criminals will come home to England, but rather that the primitive
tendencies already loosed in Surinam and Virginia are emerging in
England, spurred on by the seventeenth century’s multiple rebellions
and many emergent, subversive theories of political obligation.
Visconsi's "A Degenerate Race: English Barbarism in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and The Widdow Ranter" on file)

Such a conclusion is crucially important to the development of
early modern English nationhood. Instead of a naturalized or intrin-
sic racial quality, geographically determined barbarism was an oner-
ous and regrettable aspect of the English past which could be
expunged from the national character through the rigorous applica-
tion of political, social, linguistic, and epistemological civility.20 Thus
the process of English civilization was fashioned as heroic and
exceptional by its triumph over the rather cumbersome burden of a
“barbaric” geography. The process of civilizing England, as Helgerson
argues, was conducted with direct reference to the primitive north-
ern past: “sixteenth-century national self-articulation began with a
sense of national barbarism, with a recognition of the self as despised
other, and then moved to repair that damaged self-image.”21 By the
beginning of the seventeenth century, English culture had been
regulated, civilized, and refined as a response to the barbaric past—
(Visconsi)

-- Reading The Indian Emperour, I was really struck by the scene (4.1) in which Cortez is imprisoned and in chains and Almeria comes to murder him but cannot in the face of his absolute equanimity; instead, she falls in love with him. What a strange scene! Cortez does nothing but lie there and say, "I cannot feare so faire an Enemy," and Almeria is stopped in her tracks. She asks, "Whence can thy Courage come?" and he answers only, "From innocence." He is absolutely virtuous.
Along these lines, I'm wondering if there is something in the nature of Dryden's heroes, and in their connection to the libertine, which could be central to the developing sense of English identity during the Restoration (I sound like I know what I'm talking about...) I'm getting this from the introduction to John Dryden: Four Tragedies (1967, Beaurline and Bowers, eds.) in which the editors say that Dryden adapts the earlier English and continental hero "... to Restoration times and [depicts] him as a natural man who prized his freedom and self-respect above all things. That strain of primitivism was woven through contemporary libertine thought, and it was manifest in comedies of the age." They go on to cite contemporary ridicule of Dryden for making gallants into heroes. Then--I'm happy to say, because I read this after being knocked out by the prison scene--they discuss Cortez and the prison scene, and conclude that the virtue he shows in this scene (by remaining true to his first love, Cydaria, and honest with Almeria in the face of both his imminant death and her professed love) is repeated in subsequent scenes until "He wins both power and beauty, demonstrating that independence and truth to an inner code of natural virtue are finally consistent with power and public virtue."
So: Does Dryden's portrayal of this kind of hero (and the continued popularity of this and similar plays) reflect an attempt by the English to justify all the benefits gained through what they also seem to perceive as rapacious colonial mercantilism? Is it their attempt to have their cake and eat it too? How are our attempts to justify (and/or be blind to) White privilege similar to these earlier attempts? Are we doing the same thing, and, if so, are we re-producing, re-performing, the same behavior? Or am I being entirely too simplistic?

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LATER QUESTIONS:

Is this idea any good at all? Does some kind of look at London, 1710, Indian Kings visit, plays being performed--does that really have anything to do with the construction of white identity? Is that period a particularly good time to examine the question?

I like the idea that the Enlightenment, the Scientific Method, the need to categorize all life according to its outward, surface appearance led to the idea that skin pigmentation is the prime signifier of cultural difference. Is this idea valid?

Do these plays--Oroonoko, The Indian Emperour, The Widdow Ranter, Davenant's Macbeth, and whatever the heck was going on at Powell's Puppets--provide a reasonable window into how whiteness, or English or European identity was being constructed? Especially since the issue isn't race as much as the idea of a commercial empire based on trade in Africans among other things.

Should I try to work in Philip's German angle? It certainly enriches the mix by reminding us that Germans were "other" white people in British America. And the encounter (sort of) with the Kings--and subsequent Iroquois/German relations--is intriguing. Also the idea that the English are struggling with the question of immigrants and naturalization and citizenship (topical!) as the Kings are visiting. (If the structure of the play is a series of digressions, well, such a structure could accomodate including the Germans.)

Is there a link between the (Tory?) idea that English culture is vulnerable to the "degeneracy" of planters and other colonials and the fear that the white race is vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the dark races? (see Visconsi's "A Degenerate Race: English Barbarism in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and The Widdow Ranter" on file)

Why were these plays (Oroonoko, Indian Emperour, Widdow Ranter) being revived in London at this time? Were they just part of the repertoire and constantly revived? Even if that's so, what is the reason for their constant popularity, given that they were written as reactionary attempts to sway the public to the Royalist causes? Was it that the Tories were back in power? but more than twenty years had past?

5/16 Ideas

IDEA FOR SCENE 1.2 FROM OROONOKO

(Oroonoko's first appearance)

Whites portrayed as puppets (puppet bodies attached to actors' bodies w/ elastic, actual face and hands)

Curtain upstage of puppets parts for Oroonoko's entrance, showing lifesize actor on platform in chains, a lá King Kong

(thinking of Mabou Mines DollHouse)
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What if the play is structured associatively, like my reading? It starts with the India Kings, but before that thread can get too far, we have to go back and look at the North American colonies in 1710. But before we can do that we have to look at King Philip's War. Which makes me think of Bacon's Rebellion down in Virginia. Which take us to The Widdow Ranter playing in London in 1710. Which takes us back to the Indian Kings' visit. Which might take us to the German ships heading out as the Kings are heading in. Which takes us back to New York. And so on.

Like surfing the net.

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After meeting with Carol, Philip, Ron, and David P.:

Discouraged. Good, long conversation, but I failed to interest them in my idea, such as it is at this point, because, I guess, I'm so damned inarticulate--or because the ideas are lousy--or because I'm just a poor, misunderstood, but brilliant theatre artist. Not likely.

I stubbornly want to push ahead even if I can't see at this point how to make sense of what I'm doing. I know that I need to create a structure for this material, but Ron's suggestions in that direction seemed not to my taste. He had some good warnings: sounded like I was trying to stage research, which would make a performance of ideas--not theatrically exciting. Once again, it's clear that the project tends to grow out of control. Also: the "present" point of view is implied by the fact that it's a performance, so that doesn't need to be put on the stage (Phil's point, I think). I see that, and I know I tend to try to stage the obvious, but I'm still drawn to the idea of two students looking at each other trying to deal with racial difference (????).