–this post is part of a series of that suggests performance concepts.  please see the intro for more info.–

Henry Irving by John Everett Millais (1883)

i have a profound admiration for the english (and occasionally american) actor-managers of old (18th-early 20th-centuries)*.  these histrionic forces of nature formed companies around them, managed the business affairs, and chose the plays to be played.  they were titanic and vain, capacious beats that steamrolled across the countryside from london to the lake district, new york to peoria.  but their aspect that impresses me most is the REPERTOIRE that they maintained.  like any inferior-minded american, i am duly reverent toward one who can quote shakespeare as appropriately and eloquently as i can quote from ‘the simpsons’.  but to imagine having WHOLE PLAYS in one’s head – and not just any plays but shakespeare’s linguistic conucopia – this flattens me.  as theatre artists, actors particularly, we are not called on to maintain a repertoire of any kind, lest it be the usual stock of audition monologues, unseen by any regular audience.  might we?  could we?

photo by madamepsychosis (BY-NC-ND)

i took a little break from this blog after i got it started.  i’m a great starter, a good middler and an almost pathologically blocked ender.  but this is just a pithy psychological perception that ends when i say it ends.  if i were more of an ender.  onwards and middlewards!!

–this post is part of a series of that suggests performance concepts.  please see the intro for more info.–

Photo by villageidiot (CC-BY-SA)

there is a custom in italian towns both grande and piccolo called the passeggiata, which is a big and fancy word for getting up and walking around.  it usually happens in the evening, most commonly on sundays, and is a chance for locals to take a leisurely stroll around their neighborhood, exchanging pleasantries with their neighbors.  the unscripted nature of the event is intentional..  the participants know that the simple act of getting up out of their comfortable domiciles and just walking will lead to something happening.  i’d like to investigate this concept as it could apply to performance.

–this post is part of a series of that suggests performance concepts.  please see the intro for more info.–

photo by Fayster (CC-BY-2.0)

in a way, unless we are presenting a world premiere, every play is a kind of remix.  the play can be seen as the original “song”, presented first with an original “mix”, then when re-produced, the play is re-mixed with different actors, settings, staging, etc.  but remix culture has taught us that there are as many ways to remix songs as there are individual approaches.

Gilles Deleuze

"What Is Philosophy?" by Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari

Gilles Delueze, the radicalized french intellect and 20th-century philosopher par excellence, defined philosophy as the creation of concepts.  in this way, he carved out a place for philosophy that was more like the artist’s discipline and less like the scientist’s.  he suggested that rather than asking “is it true?” we might ask “what does it do?”  the concept was therefore made by the philosopher but the student (or subsequent philosopher) was obliged to make its application to various problems.  the concept is more a tool than a doctrine, neither true nor false, but only useful or not, applied or left alone.

Photo by normalityrelief (CC-BY-SA)

the act of performing is a landscape strewn with beartraps of impossibility.  one must be completely oneself, and at the same time completely be someone else..  exist in a real and an imaginary place at once..  pronounce practiced phrases for the first time..  what is attempted is that which cannot be.  as actors and audiences, we have become inured to this custom so that only in rare moments does the paradox strike us.  generally speaking, these moments are the best of all.

although trained (like most every other undergraduate actor) in the tradition originating with russian acting guru Constantin Stanislavski’s SYSTEM – and it’s subsequent adherents/mutations: Harold Clurman, Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, etc. / The Group Theatre, The Actors’ Studio, The Neighborhood Playhouse, etc., i.e. THE METHOD – i find the restrictions of this approach for 21st-century, post-dramatic theatre/performance art decidedly limiting.  in questing to find alternative approaches to the performer’s art, i have become delighted, even wonderfully fascinated, by the techniques on display in the era of the silent film.

there is unerring wisdom in the quick unloading of devalued candy after the holidays have passed on by.  it’s not that the soft golden peeps, heart-encased bonbons or candied cornses are, in any way, substandard;  just woefully passé.  and so it is that i find my ghoulish intents exorcised.  for now i will shelve them to gather the requisite gray dust and cobwebs, suitably rotted to trot out next we’en.

Sarah Berhardt as Lady Macbeth via RMN

in honor of the approaching halloween festivities (only 363 more days to get that joey buttafuoco costume together!) , i decided to try and poof up some classical dramaticals rigged up as haunted houses.  the enduring popularity (escalating popularity?) of the medium points no doubt to audiences’ desires to engage with their engagements, web 2.0-style.  this matter consumes a great deal of my thinking on modern performance practices.  the ultimate essence of performance exists neither in the performer’s particular agency, or from within the audience’s potential receptivity..  it rather crackles along the ionized air between the two:  performance = engagement.

i don’t really know how to blog.  i only recently learned it was a verb IN ADDITION TO a noun.  i looked up on internet how to blog and it turns out internet has a few and some helpful internet sites gave me a lot of educations but knowing the thing is doing the thing.  so here is a little about what i am going to do with this blog, how i am going to blogging do it and what blog is blog when blog will blog blog:

Photo by normalityrelief (CC-BY-SA)