writing.performance

Today I watched Hidden J on video, made in (I think?) 1993. It begins with Claire coming on stage— a semi-basement space, with brown theatre flats leaning against walls– and sitting right downstage on a chair. She has a large sign around her neck that reads LIAR. Then the others come out and in “everyday” mode, set up the space. They build a small house/ box set/ in various combinations, which they consider, pull apart, rebuild, upstage. this seems like a tiny work demonstration of how they do theatre in fact The box they build is like a tiny theatre inside the theatre, complete with red curtains that pull across. There is a low wall downstage they climb over to get in and out through a big window, through which we can see what is happening in the box.
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Another day in the library— I’m discovering how hard it is to just watch theatre on DVD or video. It’s exhausting, being in 2 mindsets at once– live and recorded. But this show (First Night made in 2001) was great. The idea was a bad vaudeville performance. The performers (5 men, 3 women) come out on stage in glittery frocks and bad checked suits, with bad make-up, and stand in a line and smile at the audience. Very cheesily. For quite a long time. The show is loosely composed of a series of bad vaudeville acts: A woman stands on a chair in a bathing suit covered in balloons and punctures them, one by one, with a cigarette. (more…)

Today personally was less of a bloody mess at the British Library. I’ve now watched 2 videos of shows of Forced Entertainment and I think that Bloody Mess gave me a context for understanding more of the show I saw in Vancouver. Also viewed (after a few glitches) the CD-ROM Imaginary Evidence which is a great title and also very informative about working methods and archive. It’s organized in a hand-drawn diagram that to me loosely resembled a brain or a picture of an electrical circuit. Words mind-mapped with arrows connecting them. (more…)

Yesterday was one of those hideous days when nothing works— wifi, public transport, etc. Today is much better. I’m at the British library where I”ve booked 5 days in the sound archive listening/ viewing Forced Entertainment materials. The British Library, by the way, is as impressive as you might imagine. Many floors, a lovely new building, reading rooms, collections of some 12 millions items. One would be forgiven for imagining that viewing a CD-Rom here wouldn’t be that hard. But in fact, it is. There are two computers in the library, it appears, that have this facility and neither of them have sound. (more…)

On what happened instead, and my reluctance to see the show again— It strikes me that the life of a show unfolds afterwards, if it’s any good, if it can generate this kind of afterlife. Therefore there’s something unpleasantly forensic about going to see it again because it lives in the ripples of conversation and walking and the flow of images and associations and remembering and forgetting that constitute waking life. Like a little innoculation of dreaming into the everyday, that gets assimilated slowly (or fast if it’s junk food packaged art).

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Well I didn’t go see the show again. I’m some lame theatre sleuth. It was a freezing rainy day and somehow I wanted to stay with first impressions as well. In that life-art folded way I ended up walking around Dublin with Michele, who I met last night at the performance. The fictional walk through the city, the second-person beginning to the show last night (“you arrive in a city you don’t know well”) infiltrated the following day and became our day’s performance. (more…)

Dublin pub and buildings (in a rare moment of sun) on Georges St

Looking out my window at the B&B where the purloined wifi seems to have kicked in, it’s suddenly a different city. It’s day. The sky is blue. The streets are almost empty. Last night they were filled with young Europe, its pockets jingling, and the Irish I saw were serving— in the B&Bs, the pubs, the shops. Today there are white, down at heel, local Irish walking off to school, to work, commuting and the entire demography of the street is different. I’ll pull on my boots and go walk through this new city, this dublin by day. Of all the things I like here so far, this one seems most significant: the river runs fast. It’s not a sluggish piece of scenery, but a forceful living thing snaking through the city.

The story you write is never the story that happened.

This phrase came to me walking home through windy, chilly Dublin on this January night, post-show, post-drinks, and came truer than I expected, here in this B&B that pretends to have WiFi when it’s nicked from over the road and the weak signal flickers out. My blog draft died shortly after the bit about the story of falling, jumping/ falling, from the top of a tall building. In the show I saw tonight The World In Pictures, this introductory story left “you” suspended— (more…)

So, this is a test post— I’m in a little guest house with some very affable gentlemen who are siphoning wi-fi from across the street!!! Hence the signal is a little spotty and the “wifi in all rooms” is also, er, a stretch. Maybe i’ll crack and go over the road to the source and write on a public computer…. Dublin seems busy and sweet and has beautiful doors, all different colors, with fan windows above them. More after a show and a Guiness.