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?