tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post8060368197613312624..comments2024-02-24T18:30:26.749-07:00Comments on prairiemary: "ENCOUNTER THEATRE" via ROBERT BENEDETTIUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-83761238376308512932012-11-06T10:47:47.873-07:002012-11-06T10:47:47.873-07:00This comment makes me think of the cross-arts coll...This comment makes me think of the cross-arts collaboration among ballet-related personalities: Diagilev, Bakst, Stravinsky, Picasso et al. I suppose they are "performance theatre."<br /><br />Prairie MaryMary Strachan Scriverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00538160009129822362noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-25189428620093246702012-11-06T10:45:52.103-07:002012-11-06T10:45:52.103-07:00Mary’s reference to the Blue Men brings up the inf...Mary’s reference to the Blue Men brings up the influence of visual artists on the radical theatre. Meyerhold involved important painters in his work and it is no accident that the building in which the Living Theatre worked in New York also housed the studios of people like Robert Indiana and Jasper Johns. Julian Beck was himself a brilliant scenic designer. In 1991 I recreated the 1913 Futurist Opera, VICTORY OVER THE SUN by Kazimir Malevich, a “Suprematist” painter with strong ties to the dada movement. This could be called the first piece of performance art, created by a painter, a poet, and a composer. When we performed the piece at LACMA, there was a near-riot when “New Wave” people like Dennis Hopper and the art-rock group DEVO (formed by Kent State art students) fought to get in. We eventually took it to the Berlin Festival, the Demervaart Avant Garde museum in Amsterdam, the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, and the BAM Next Wave Festival. Robert Wilson’s work is firmly in this tradition (its roots are in the art of autistic children.) I noticed at these performances that the “art” audience was much more open and excited about it than the “theatre” audience, which was resistant to the destruction of recognizable narrative structures, and often booed (which would have delighted the Russian Futurists – there were riots at the 1913 opening also.)<br /> <br />A congenital Aristotleian like me does miss narrative structure and traditional characterization in these works, but if I switch to my painter/designer hat (I began as a lighting designer – that was why I was at Northwestern, to study with Ted Fuchs) I love the new vocabulary, which is being absorbed (as always) into the mainstream by people like Julie Taymor.<br /> <br />I dearly miss the spirit of the Sixties and Seventies in our theatre, but as a movement the radical theatre made the mistake of regarding the audience as an enemy instead of a collaborator. There were exceptions, and that’s why the work of groups like El Teatro Campesino and the San Francisco Mime Troupe lives on, because they were based in a love for the audience instead of treating the audience like a patient in need of therapy and political re-education (even though it was.) In this sense, Artaud, the fountainhead of most of the American radical theatre, was a mixed blessing. He opened up a new vocabulary of performance and the use of theatrical space (he literally “unscrewed the pews”) but he also gave us a messianic and somewhat sadistic streak, heroine addict and misogynist that he was. But if you want to understand the movement, you must read THE THEATRE AND ITS DOUBLE, and the work it spawned, like Grotowski’s TOWARDS A POOR THEATRE.<br /> <br />Beny BenedettiMary Strachan Scriverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00538160009129822362noreply@blogger.com