Gay Paree

This weekend, I took a short trip to Paris to see some work in the Festival d'Automne and to try and conquer Paris for Proto-type. Although I can report that Paris is still French and not flying the flag of Proto yet, it was a fantastic trip filled with croissants, cafe creme and just a little bit of brouilly / cote du rhone...

One of the main purposes of the trip was to see Young Jean Lee's The Shipment which was playing in a Paris suburb at a theatre called the Theatre Genneviellers. My good friend Mikeah (and frequent Proto-type collaborator) is in the show, and he kindly arranged a ticket for me. It was good to see the piece as there has been a lot of hype about it and I know its touring everywhere. Interesting to see the kind of work that makes an impact internationally. The Shipment is structured in three parts (with no intermission): the first is basically a minstrel show updated to the current context of the performance space, the second is a sort of 'after school special' kind of parable performed in an obviously over-the-top robotic fashion, and the third is a domestic drama set in an upper-middle class apartment (presumably in New York). The performers were fantastic -some really detailed and energising performances from all of them in different ways. There were also a few stand out moments, like one section which included a beautiful song in three-part harmony. I left feeling somewhat puzzled though by some of the writing and the direction in general. I was really not sure how to respond to the material - was it meant to be lampooning something in the first half or just doing a stand-up comedy/minstrel performance? Was the third part meant to be a kitchen sink drama? It felt like it was veering into the realm of soap opera but I couldn't see any commentary on the form. The first half was meant to offend, I think, but I couldn't tell where the commentary was there either. The middle part seemed an attempt to inject a bit of playfulness / stylisation into the piece but, again, wasn't sure if I was meant to care about these people or what they were saying really... And the link between the parts didn't exist in any strong way for me. Its puzzling because Young Jean is probably my favourite contemporary writer - she has written work that has absolutely blown me away in the past. Not sure why I was left so puzzled this time. I'm sure I just need to digest it a bit more because most of the people whose opinion I trust have said such good things about the piece. Need to see it again I think.

A lot of my experience of Paris this time around was centred on some of the street culture of the city. I filmed these high-school age boys doing a dance called Tecktonic while having a meeting at the Palais de Tokyo. It is a crazy, jerky, arm based dance that is a derivative of vogueing but as if you are on speed or are a robot. I found it mesmerising and could have spent all day watching them go at it. Some real attitude in the form. I love, as my friend Ben said, that on the streets of Paris the big craze is dancing (not gun fighting, stabbing or spitting as in other cities I've lived in/live in).

I also kept seeing some lovely street art in the Marais where I was staying. Here are a few snaps from my phone:






I particularly like that last one. Something very endearing about seeing an 'olde worlde' man in black and white on the side of a building. Its like he is peaking through time to visit us. These bits of art served as my markers in my walks around the city; navigation points that helped me find my way home each night.

I left Paris wondering about what Europe means.... England and France could not be more different, although something about the cultures of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands feel very related. I wonder if England is really in europe at all culturally. I think the English could learn a lot from the European approach to cafe culture and food, and certainly to the arts in general. I was literally bombarded by high quality art work everywhere I went in Paris that seemed to be well-supported and well-attended. What is England doing wrong that the arts are so poorly attended and valued? Maybe we all need to eat more croissants?

Being an American

Being an American in England should be no big deal. We have a shared history, similar language and political systems that are intricately related, if not entirely similar. Despite the fact that the modern USA was forged in a war with England, our countries have been long time friends. When I decided to move here, I was eager for something different than the way of life I was leading in the US. I had grown incredibly weary of the Bush years and found myself really disliking a lot about American culture. England seemed like a good place to get a fresh perspective.

And it has been, for the most part. There are things I don't love about England (mostly the insane drinking culture, hen nights, and much of the 'cuisine') but there is a lot I love about being here (the relative liberalism, the mobility of people, the willingness to experiment). I am constantly wondering if this move to England is permanent, or is it more complicated than that? Is this the beginning of a co-habitation, of becoming a global soul (as Pico Iyer puts it). I am not sure, but in just a few short years, I feel I've made big steps in fitting in here, but I wonder if I will ever be truly integrated. It may sound slightly dramatic, but in many ways I feel like I will always be a foreigner here; always referring back to the modes of thinking/operating that have been ingrained in my from years of growing up in America. I find myself less engaged with politics here, for instance, because I don't have any rights. I can't vote. I can't impact change via the official political system. And I do miss that a bit as I am incredibly interested in politics. I stayed up until 2.30am last night watching Obama's speech on healthcare... that is how passionate I am about politics.

There is something about the massive scale of the US and the incredible geographic diversity that I think haunts the souls of people born and raised there. I don't mean to generalise, though, so I will bring it back to my experiences.... the sense of scale that you I have become used to in the US (giant houses, cars, meals, people, roads, horizons) means that I am always aware of the existence of 'more'. This makes me feel constantly like I need to strive for more, achieve more, make more out of my work. Which brings me to Proto-type more directly. This past year has been an incredible experience for me, and for the company. I have been so proud of how we have gone from being a very loosely organised group here in the UK to a machine where each company member is truly integrated into how we function. The scale of Proto-type is expanding, developing, evolving towards a shared vision of what it means to make performance now. We don't want to just make shows that are entertaining (although that is crucial) or that are thought-provoking. We want our work to stick with the audiences who experience it; to in some way alter a little part of the way they see the world. This is ambitious, and we don't always succeed but we always give it our absolute best. Maybe it is the American in me pushing the four of us to think big. Possibly, but equally I am being pushed by Rachel, Wes and Gillian to keep on keepin on - to trust that our ambitions are achievable.

We have a big, busy, complicated year ahead of us that matches our ambitions: we are doing a sited series of video projections on the walls of the Roman Gardens in Chester, touring Virtuoso (working title), teaching several workshops with higher education students at Bristol, MMU and Lancaster Universities, conducting a two-week residency at the School of Art and New Media in Scarborough, hosting an intensive Winter School themed around the seven deadly sins, building a new show called Third Person (redux) which will tour in the spring of 2010 and starting development on a complex and exciting project code named CITYeSCAPE that will unravel over the course of two-weeks and de-centre performance out of the theatre. Some of these projects are just in their infancy. Others are developing fast. I've put links in to any of the ones that we are able to announce information on. Keep your eye on this space for more about the others. In addition, I'm going to Germany in November to participate in a conference called Movements between hearing and seeing, where I will be presenting a piece of writing I've done about our show Whisper. We will also be traveling around Europe meeting presenters, venue managers and other artists as we seek to develop a European touring scheme. Whether it is American ambition, or a result of the gusto of the combined Proto-type members' passion for performance, this year promises to kick up a lot of dust. Look out.

Television and Virtuoso

For the past several months, I have been working on a piece of academic writing about Virtuoso (working title). Having just completed an article for Contemporary Theatre Review about Whisper (which should be out sometime next year), you might have thought I'd be ready for a break. Well, I am, but deadlines are deadlines! This new piece will be excerpted in a book next year (I'll let you know when it is out) that focuses on intermediality. The full piece of writing deals with the notion of the pixel, televisions, screens in performance, and Proto-type's Virtuoso (working title). It is way too long to post all of what I've written here, but I thought it could be interesting to share some of my thoughts. It is worth noting that the full piece of writing is about 40 pages long, so suffice to say this is really an excerpt. What follows, is the introductory three paragraphs (very much works in progress). I might put more up here if it seems of interest to anyone...

I grew up in the 1970s and 80s in American suburbia, where everything seemed just out of reach: the ongoing Cold War, Reaganonmics, the evolution of the personal computer, the start of the AIDS epidemic and the mythology of the nearby space programme. I was born in 1974 in Melbourne, on Florida’s east coast near the Kennedy Space Center where the Space Shuttle launches. As a child, I watched the increasingly frequent lift-offs from our front lawn, from the beach or from the football ground at my elementary school. When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986 I watched it live. I remember thinking nothing of it when it happened; it just looked a little bit odd, but not necessarily apparently disastrous to a twelve-year old boy. When I replay what happened on that day in my mind, though, I am uncertain of the authenticity of what I see; the images that come to me bear a striking resemblance to archival footage of the explosion (including the perspective and shot framing). Is it possible that my memory of the experience of watching it live is not actually my memory at all? Immediately after the Challenger disaster, I watched, passively and actively, hundreds of hours of video excerpts of the explosion cycled on my television screen. These images may have become my own. Sixteen years later the scene repeated itself in a different, more aggressive form. I was exiting the subway at Union Square in New York City when a plane flew into the World Trade Center. I saw it happen, but again, the visual images that remain in my memory are untrustworthy. In the moments, days, weeks after the World Trade Center was attacked, a twenty-four hour parade of disturbing, repetitive images of the event played on every television channel in America. In the words of Victor Burgin (1996: 226), “the actual events mingle indiscriminately” with the ‘memories’ as replayed on television. Perhaps this is because memories are not a cognitive act of recalling stored data per se. Instead, as Tim Ingold (2000: 142) says, “it is through the activity of remembering that memories are forged.” It should be no surprise, then, that my memories of these two highly broadcast disasters have been clouded with visions that originated on the television screen.

It is with cautious uncertainty, then, that I recall anything from my childhood, although the memories of the 1970s and 80s that are most vivid for me are domestic, not cataclysmic or of international significance and are therefore less likely to have been broadcast-worthy. I remember my childhood in ambers and greens, in wood panelling and shag carpet, in Long Island Iced Teas on the patio and unfiltered cigarettes smoked at the dinner table. Mine is a childhood filled with the banality of rented homes, whose anonymous halls and cinder block walls sat at the end of cul-de-sacs, or across from the local park; of the ‘woods’ at the end of the street where I had my first cigarette, of the eerie light of a cathode-ray television screen beaming its messages thorough the neighbours’ windows at night. I remember (barely) the time before video games proliferated and, yes, even the sound of the living room, pre-MTV. I remember standing on the lawn in our front yard to watch the Space Shuttle lift off, a visible symbol of America’s belief in the new. Something of the fantastical snakes its way through my childhood memories as well. Melbourne was not only at the heart of the American space programme, but also only a short drive to the pinnacle of fantasy: Disney World. In fact, my grandmother had a stroke at Disney World and died in the Disney hospital. Disaster and death, again, but this time in the fantastic realm of the pinnacle of simulacra (Baudrillard, 1994: 12). These flashes of my childhood are relics of what Stephan Berg (2007b: 11) has called “the unspectacular America” that is “a picture world whose credibility largely derives from its feeling like the sum of all those images of America one has already seen.” My childhood memories are, in his words, “a reality of the second degree that comes across with the convincingness of primary reality” (Ibid.).

How strange to be possessed of memories that bear the mark of images that the world has already seen and which I cannot even confidently claim as my own. In many ways, this is the fate of being an American who grew up in suburbia, for American suburbia has long captured the imagination of critical thinkers and artists, and has been endlessly dissected and replayed. Jean Baudrillard (1998: 56) says of America that “the whole country is cinematic” in his account of travelling through the American west in the mid 1980s. I cannot argue with the notion of America as cinematic, but, upon reflection, I think a more accurate description of my nostalgic memory of being a child in suburban Florida is televisual. Rather than fleeting encounters with the great expanses of the western American deserts and the unending highways of Los Angeles that Baudrillard describes, I am possessed of a long, drawn out set of experiences that appear more like episodes on small green screens in the living room of my memory. America, for me, is a country of the screen-appliance, not of the cinema.