tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10910078894912388882024-03-04T21:53:01.141-08:00ParapraxisContemplating the practice of directingJoy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-37304544845239226632014-03-11T14:44:00.000-07:002014-03-11T14:45:46.066-07:00The Rainbow Passage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"When sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a
prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many
beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high
above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to
legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds
it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is
looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.</div>
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Throughout the centuries men have explained the rainbow in
various ways. Some have accepted it as a miracle without physical explanation. To
the Hebrews it was a token that there would be no more universal floods. The
Greeks used to imagine that it was a sign from the gods to foretell war or
heavy rain. The Norse men consider the rainbow as a bridge over which the gods
passed from earth to their home in the sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other men have tried to explain the phenomenon physically.
Aristotle thought that the rainbow was caused by reflection of the sun’s rays
by the rain. Since then physicists have found that it is not reflection, but
refraction by the raindrops, which causes the rainbow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many complicated ideas about the
rainbow have been formed. The difference in the rainbow depends considerably on
the size of the water drops, and the width of the colored band increases as the
size of the drops increases the actual primary rainbow observed is said to be
the effect of superposition of a number of bows. If the red of the second bow falls upon the green of the first, the result is to give a bow
with an abnormally wide yellow band, since red and green lights when mixed form
yellow. This is a very common type of bow, one showing mainly red and yellow,
with little or no green or blue."</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">My close reading of
the text “the Rainbow Passage.” <o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By Joy Brook
Fairfield go back Brooke Burke Brooke Brooke Brooke Brooke Brooke Fairfield
Fairfield enter the lack</div>
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What is the unconscious of the text? This is always the
question for the interpreter of literature. While we like at times to believe
that the possibility of text without the shadow of intent exists, we will find
ourselves hard-pressed to find evidence for it. The words chosen from the narrow
script of the waiter seem, perhaps, to have the kind of uniformity that one
could imagine devoid of poetic or psychological content: “Can I get you
something to drink with that?” But language is never in control of its own
intent, the speaker never fully in charge of his language. Language exists in a
constantly shifting flowing field of signification surrounding us full points
we have no comprehension of and affects we don’t understand. This is its magic
and its curse. </div>
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I have been given a computer program, a tool on loan from an
institution invested in my process of learning and participating in a greater
exchange of ideas. They have an entire fresh clean contemporarily furnished
spacious and even hip building in which their office for accessible education
exists. In this building I meet with a sweet educated white man who supplies
me with codes to make my Dragon Voice Activated Software program legal and little
telemarketer headset to make it more accurate. With an awareness of my time
constraints, he gives me the information I need to begin experimenting on my
own with the system. I am given a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>single sheet of text entitled "The Rainbow Passage"and told that I should read it thrice
into this program: “Apparently this passage has almost all of the sounds in the
English language.”</div>
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I have heard this claim before, in regards to “the quick red
fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.” I have never personally taken a stab at
tabulating the ratio of sounds in the English language represented in this
phrase. Perhaps a linguistics major would know the answer. I imagine a table of
linguists huddled over their IPA dictionaries crafting poetry within the
strict confines of speech’s strange architecture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Should we make the text scientific? Or more cultural, so
that it can appeal to those in the Humanities?” “If we invoke cultural references,
which should we include?” The author references the Hebrews the Greeks and the
Norse, indicative of knowledge systems formed within contemporary Western
academia or its colonial spaces. There is no reference to what the ancient
Egyptians, for example thought about the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>phenomenon of the rainbow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well, I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and in ancient Egypt the rainbow
was associated with the goddess Nut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As the goddess of the sky, Nut was sometimes described as wearing a
rainbow gown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her laugh was
thunder and her tears were rain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Every night she swallowed up her grandfather and every morning she gave
birth to him again. </div>
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This passage
forgot about Egypt. Or, perhaps more accurately, was never taught. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly the title of this document
reminds me of “The Middle Passage,” the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>journey of enslaved Africans to the Western
Hemisphere under inhumane conditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I look up the origin of this
phrase on Wikipedia and learn that it was the terminology used by the European
traders at the time for the second segment of the triangle trade. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps everyone could switch over to
using the term “Maafa,” the Kiswahili<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>term for disaster. </div>
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I sure hope Wikipedia is accurate. I understand why the
politics of the Internet are so significant given the way it becomes a funnel
to what is known as “common knowledge.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I fear as the Internet grows in power within profit-focused,
war–dependent economies, its revolutionary potential will be increasingly
evacuated. Every tool is a hammer if you use it right. Or as Performance Studies scholar Angela<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Farr
Schiller points out, “ The system that pounds the dough is the same fist that
pounds the face.” (That was an example of the unconscious of this machine, the
Dragon voice program I’m using.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
said in fact, “the fist that pounds the dough is the same fist that pounds the
face.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The replacement of the word
“fist” with the term “system” is quite elegant).</div>
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The Rainbow
Hostage, ahem Passage (hello again machinic unconscious!) invokes both physics
and art, legends and logic. It performs a kind of scholarly inquisitiveness, a
curiosity about the natural world. It appeals to me as a document that purports
to report, transforming a miracle to a series of almost comprehensible particulate interactions.</div>
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Someone found this text appropriate for this context. This
person was likely not a feminist, as the repeated male pronouns resound in my ears as unconscious exclusivity: “ Throughout the centuries men have explained
the rainbow in various ways.” The uninterrogated prejudice of the Enlightenment
era hangs over this passage like a rain cloud.</div>
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And yet I feel like this text was intended as a kind of
gift. Rainbows, the clearest of natural phenomenon,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m mean the theorist,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>queer rest, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>queries, queerest of natural<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>phenomenon. Usually bode well. From the light cue of hope
after the Old Testament’s flood to Lisa Frank stickers on your 8<sup>th</sup>
grade notebook, rainbows are a pleasure to our eyes. </div>
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“Rainbow rainbow red and blue</div>
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Rainbow rainbow I love you</div>
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Yellow orange green and white</div>
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You give off such perfect light”</div>
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This is a song
my mother sang me when I was a child. I remember thinking it funny that she
included “white” in the colors of the rainbow. I didn’t use a white pen when I
drew rainbows on the brown paper in my kindergarten class. I think she
mentioned something about physics, maybe something like what the Rainbow
Passage says: “the rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful
colors.”</div>
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I just searched these lyrics on Google and found nothing.
It’s so nice to know there are some things that only one person has said. Of
course, I have no idea if someone taught it to her.</div>
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The first hit I
get provides me with this text:</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #880000; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">I</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #cc3300; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">a</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #ffcc00; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">m</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #006666; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">t</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #0000aa; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">h</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #660099; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">e</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #880000; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">R</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #cc3300; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">a</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #ffcc00; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">i</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #006666; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">n</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #0000aa; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">b</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #660099; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">o</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;"> </span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #880000; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">w</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000099; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: #CC99CC; color: #000077; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />
<br />
On the days when it doesn't seem worth it. When you think that maybe they were
right. That "queer" and "freak" and "abomination"
seem to have your name on the list. When "outsider" and
"other" or "faggot" or "dyke" want to claim your
autograph, remember. We are the rainbow.<br />
<br />
When never seems bigger than always, and always seems like a terrible place to
be, remember. We are the rainbow.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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It is a tacky site and the font is hard to read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few clicks and I find that this site
is maintained by a transgender activist named Deborah Davis. She worked as a
high school Media specialist in Minnesota<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and has maintained this site for over a decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am grateful for her labor. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She references of course the rainbow flag, adopted by the gay
community in the 1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wikipedia
tells me it was designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It initially included pink and
turquoise too, but apparently fabric dyed in those colors was harder to find.
Makes me sad, they seem like particularly queer colors.</div>
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The second hit is the Wikipedia page for rainbows, which
reads a lot like “The Rainbow Passage.” I am grateful
for my mother and her nursery song.
Like Deborah Davis, her message was that the world was full of a kind of
beauty called difference.</div>
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I remember now that the last line doesn’t say “You give off
such perfect light,” but “you give off such pretty light.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should try to remember that perfect and pretty are not the same thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
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I am in this hip and spacious office because I can no longer
type, a problem when one is attempting to write a dissertation. I can’t type
because I’ve broken my right wrist in a skateboarding accident only a month
after my first day as a skateboarder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was not very good but it was the pleasure of every
day. My increasingly–impossible schedule has made every second precious, so
cutting my cross-campus commute in half was practical at the same time as
pleasurable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dropped into
the moment in a combination of glee and terror, it was keeping me sane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I have a cast, a disability
counselor, and the friendly adaptive technology guy who handed me “The Rainbow
Passage” and opened the door for me on the way out. </div>
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My exposure to and thus understanding of the knowledges
formed by people with significantly different abilities has been limited. Only recently,
thanks to the work of scholars like Petra Kuppers and dance companies like AXIS
Dance, have I been introduced to the exciting aesthetic and philosophical
possibilities engendered through the differences often known as disabilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m particularly grateful for
generosity of artist Isaak Tait, a performer with<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“A Different Light” of Christchurch, New Zealand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our intimate correspondence has been
meaningful, heartfelt and mind-blowingly creative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our differences have aligned in a beautiful way, perhaps
similarly to the ways that “[t]he actual primary rainbow observed is said to be
the effect of superposition of a number of bows.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A scholar, I forgot who right now, described all of human
culture as adaptive technology (or a prosthetic) for the mathematical mean of
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Left-handed people hurt
themselves on devices created for right-handed people. Chairs in public spaces
are uncomfortable for the significantly shorter or taller than average. When
did “average” become so ideologically linked with “good”?</div>
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In his book<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Security, Territory, Population,</i> Michel
Foucault suggests that the current dominant mechanism of social control is no
longer threat of punishment or simple brain-washing. Instead, order is
maintained through the construction and measurement of norms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those outside of norms are afforded
less socially–legible power by those highly implicated in the maintenance of
those norms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can understand
this in terms of representation in government, representation in media, and participation
in economic markets. A population is an imaginary entity vulnerable to non-consentual marketing and management through its compliance with norms. </div>
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There is nothing wrong with the fantasy of average. Average
is convenient. Average means you can always find the right bra or pair of
shoes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Average can be quite beautiful. The only danger is in
creating a hierarchy in which averages become tyrannical, in which the only
thing better than average is above average, in which one’s performance is
constantly being measured in comparison<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>to radically different entities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fantasy of the average creates failure, creates shame, and forgets,
in its attempt to quantify, the unquantifiable thrills of the unknown unknowns.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The text of “The Rainbow Passage,” like my mother’s song,
reassures me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I repeat its exhaustive set of English
syllables I remember that there are always more interpretations than I can imagine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Queerness and disability seem to me
linked in the way that they gesture towards the beauty and potential intimacy
possible in the vastness of difference. </div>
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<br /></div>
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My wrist will heal, and this headset is only mine on loan
until the end of June.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s so
easy to feel sorry for yourself even when you have so much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yesterday in the orthopedic trauma
center, a septuagenarian sitting next to me said offhandedly that she’d broken
both wrists: “When I broke the left one they just put in a titanium plate and sent me home,
no cast or anything.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am in awe
of her toughness and her genuine concern for a stranger. How can I become stronger and more sensitive
all at once?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can I stop
thinking of these two as opposites?</div>
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<br /></div>
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After reading
through the exhaustive syllables of The Rainbow Passage, I am to practice
speaking into the headset so that it can learn my voice. I am to teach it the
words it doesn’t know yet that I frequently use:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>performativity, queerness, radicality (not “rat ecology”),
hierarchicalization (not “hierarchical as Asian”),<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>intersectionality (not “intersection island”). “Maybe
try writing some e-mails,” he says. I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>remember my long–dormant blog.</div>
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Later that day, I am told by one of my advisors that philosopher
Henri Lefebvre dictated all of his critical theory texts: “You can really tell where he starts
to wander.” I feel the pull of the wander.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I must think of my breath as a valuable resource.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I must think before I speak and seek out more precise and genuine ways to share my small but reverberating personal truths because we are all contributing to the knowledge that is known as "common." </div>
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Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-29552673165600790892011-05-03T16:16:00.000-07:002011-05-03T16:59:07.533-07:00The Truth Fairy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRMGmdU3RN7S6ZHg18RzX7k6jhrnkPDUCxTmAO6HjILgqtipQwsriradZ-vqBdnbgQlu_A91lmuM4sVQGzZS2uWenxiUHSuU8lqhLIALMfHqX93SeryRtNPs7I_Vrab9JA6A2_alyWBRg/s1600/fairy.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRMGmdU3RN7S6ZHg18RzX7k6jhrnkPDUCxTmAO6HjILgqtipQwsriradZ-vqBdnbgQlu_A91lmuM4sVQGzZS2uWenxiUHSuU8lqhLIALMfHqX93SeryRtNPs7I_Vrab9JA6A2_alyWBRg/s320/fairy.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5602636953165482018" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">The following is an excerpt from a short solo performance piece I did in my dramaturgy class. Sharing it here for fun. </span><br /><br />...When I was a kid my parents and I had an agreement that we would never lie to each other. We could joke around and tease, but if someone asked “Is that true?” you had to fess up.<br /><br />So at age five, when I asked my mom about the tooth fairy she had to confess there was no such thing. In fact, parents were the ones slipping dimes or dollars under pillows. <br /><br />However, instead of clearing things up, this just made it more magical. I suddenly had an image of my mom dressed as a fairy slipping into my room and doing some magical alchemy that transformed teeth to dollar bills<br /><br />Now this idea wasn’t completely crazy. My mother was also the school nurse, and I have a vivid memory of her in front of my kindergarten class with a giant toothbrush and an oversized set of teeth teaching us how to brush. My mom saying there was no such thing as the tooth fairy was like Clark Kent denying the existence of Superman.<br /><br />The truth contract was established to make me an honest, trusting kid, but it had almost the opposite effect. I had the growing sense that truth itself was unstable and multivalent. Perhaps even malleable. <br /><br />I experimented a lot with truth as a kid. One time I thought the hard candy I was sucking on looked a lot like a tooth. I cradled it in my hand and brought it into the kitchen where my mom was cooking dinner: “Look mom, I lost a tooth.” <br /><br />She looked down at it skeptically and uttered the magic truth fairy spell: “Is that the truth?”<br /><br />My face grew hot and tingly. I was immune to the spell of her power. “Yes.” I said, hoping the force of my words would make it true. “I’m going to go put it under my pillow.” Needless to say, the tooth fairy didn’t visit that night. <br /><br />I continue to struggle with the truth fairy. While I no longer attempt random subterfuge like the hard candy incident, little lies still slip out of my mouth before I can catch them. The edges seem blurry sometimes between believing, wanting to believe, wanting someone else to believe, wanting someone else to believe that you believe, and wanting to call something new into being through the force of shared belief. <br /><br />Most artists know that sometimes the truth is truer told slant than it is told straight-up. And as I learned hearing my mother disavow the existence of her magical alter ego, sometimes the reductive act of telling only the mundane truth (when in fact multiple levels of increasingly ecstatic truths always abound) seems falser than a lie...Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-86261020509978213892011-04-23T13:54:00.000-07:002011-04-23T14:28:00.104-07:00Fuck Yeah, Awkwardness!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4Kwup48ZXXsJ-ER-LBcCtlUWUrzlEBXM14zAWlLk8luUuur-iUAOtVFgYAmkpmPqIAwOg6-K32Oo-FqnoP6n1xcjsm1lIANc4gkIEoJE0lDHkYXxRJsl39g9nd_5cQopTzbF4rWy1B4/s1600/birthday.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ4Kwup48ZXXsJ-ER-LBcCtlUWUrzlEBXM14zAWlLk8luUuur-iUAOtVFgYAmkpmPqIAwOg6-K32Oo-FqnoP6n1xcjsm1lIANc4gkIEoJE0lDHkYXxRJsl39g9nd_5cQopTzbF4rWy1B4/s320/birthday.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5598888842125655730" /></a><br />So I’m trying to start a movement. I think I’ll call it the awkwardness appreciation movement. In short, I believe that the emotional/affective/psychic experience that we often call awkwardness is beneficial, necessary for personal growth as well as social change, and should be courted rather than avoided.<br /><br />In critical theory, much attention has been paid to the experience of shame. Shame, theorists say, is a moment of intense awareness of how you are different from other people, often accompanied by the fear that your difference is unacceptable. In this way, shame simultaneously creates the sense of differentiated individuality and the desire to re-aggregate with the whole. In shame’s hot intensity, you see yourself from a new angle. Your perspective on yourself expands to include the shared context of others. <br /><br />The problem is that shame has a stopping force. It can freeze you like a wild animal sensing the rifle sights. It’s hard to let your perspective on your own significance shift when you’re afraid you’re going to be annihilated. In the face of shame, childhood defense mechanisms (however useless) rush in to protect you: fight, flight, freeze, play dead.<br /><br />Awkwardness, however, is shame <span style="font-style:italic;">lite</span>. If shame is the terrifying fall into the cavernous gap between self and other, awkwardness is the giggly, heart-racing fear you feel when peering over the edge. There is space to move and breathe inside awkwardness, but it is still a meditation on the sometimes-precarious experience of being a self surrounded by other selves that are constantly affecting you and being affected by you. <br /><br />In awkward experiences, we sense the precariousness of our ego boundaries as well as the sheer randomness of the social conventions that regulate our interactions with each other. In that heightened sphere of awareness, you wonder how else you could be, other than the way you are right now, and how else we could be together within the grip of this strangely funny, embarrassing, uncomfortable moment. <br /><br />Awkwardness is vulnerability with its fly unzipped. <br /><br />Awkwardness is a prologue to transformation and invitation to grace.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-76079891544077011062011-04-20T14:24:00.000-07:002011-04-20T14:41:59.929-07:00Performance Notion: Malinowski’s Diary<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP7Ts98pegnzPMvXo2U_yHCirdLwvq3A6gCxun6jAs5cfj4yXDymPQ-0mcqeO2peo-PwSYhcjE69Css4RsovSP6h22GJC1gZUCh0sgpm4yEcPI4mCe9iTCy4iD5FufZ-8wQP9hYUV7I4A/s1600/malinowskifondle.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 207px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP7Ts98pegnzPMvXo2U_yHCirdLwvq3A6gCxun6jAs5cfj4yXDymPQ-0mcqeO2peo-PwSYhcjE69Css4RsovSP6h22GJC1gZUCh0sgpm4yEcPI4mCe9iTCy4iD5FufZ-8wQP9hYUV7I4A/s320/malinowskifondle.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5597782013797649554" /></a> <span style="font-style:italic;">I used to keep my ideas for future devised pieces hidden safe in a little black notebook, scrawled in big excited letters, waiting for the day when I had the time and resources to manifest them. Not sure where that book is today, and given that we live in an age of over-sharing, I’ll record them here. Feel free to steal them if they appeal to you.<br /></span><br />An ensemble show using as source material the writings of Bronislaw Malinowski, the influential Polish anthropologist from the early 20th century who was well-respected for his thorough research on indigenous Melanesian culture. Malinowski was a major supporter of enduring, in-depth participant observation, and as such got very involved in the lives of the people he studied. While a contemporary reader may be suspicious of the colonialist tone and the firm belief in the possibility of objectivity, his work is still taught in anthropology courses today. <br /><br />His personal record of his time doing fieldwork was recently published. Titled <span style="font-style:italic;">A Diary in the Strictest Sense of the Term</span>, the text reveals the disturbing thoughts, feelings, and desires previously hidden under ostensibly-objective descriptions of the world around him. He lusted after indigenous women, insulted his closest native informants, and mocked the very cultures he was there to study. Overall, the diaries paint a picture of a narcissistic, judgmental westerner with a fetishistic fascination for people that he sees as different.<br /><br />This piece would be about how hard it is to understand difference and how thrilling it is to try. It would be about the potentially annihilating gaze of the so-called-objective observer, and about how any time you attempt to describe something else, you always end up describing yourself. I have a hunch that taking the time to reflect, 100 years later, on the blind spots of early anthropological discourse would result in a timely, urgent and engaging piece of theatre for contemporary audiences.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-14588237421752966452011-04-19T13:27:00.000-07:002011-04-20T14:43:50.319-07:00Performance Notion: Beckett & Bion<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW3I8Bnijq2ynhfK40mi2OrLMK5E-7Wjj0J-VQkpoPFM0jQJtk1BP2G8AFMqvMO8U5qiQsuxkQdzjLpIB5HMr-pDouYTG-_JdMTwAz4BFtVlYMdd51WG1AFDFDXo0_upn4Ij1JAGFPhPA/s1600/1021144930_875edea5da.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW3I8Bnijq2ynhfK40mi2OrLMK5E-7Wjj0J-VQkpoPFM0jQJtk1BP2G8AFMqvMO8U5qiQsuxkQdzjLpIB5HMr-pDouYTG-_JdMTwAz4BFtVlYMdd51WG1AFDFDXo0_upn4Ij1JAGFPhPA/s320/1021144930_875edea5da.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5597395679493179890" /></a> <span style="font-style:italic;">I used to keep my ideas for future devised pieces hidden safe in a little black notebook, scrawled in big excited letters, waiting for the day when I had the time and resources to manifest them. Not sure where that book is today, and given that we live in an age of over-sharing, I’ll record them here. Feel free to steal them if they appeal to you.</span><br /><br />A two-person piece about Samuel Beckett’s relationship with his psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. At age 27, Beckett was in a deep depression after the death of his father and had an uncomfortable relationship with his strict mother. As psychoanalysis was illegal in Ireland, he traveled to London where he became Bion’s second patient ever. There’s ample source material (Beckett wrote about Bion and Bion wrote several essays that some speculate were about Beckett), and as long as I could keep the Beckett estate out of it, it could be a really beautiful, strange piece – genius, melancholy, friendship, healing, and the murky workings of the unconscious mind.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-36172682743852733912011-04-12T22:06:00.000-07:002011-04-12T22:11:22.995-07:00Thin as Foil<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMunF_hguKsfkE8Xoy1vTJ7z7n-EfHl8CCGk26jZ8J1VyLMFU7sYbZ2CKncQGzOvd0WYm7X-0Qbv3tSsOTgQYQBZeau4TPRTCc9mMwVBiMCtash5zK-NztC-JbhEfGXHjFNqwb_vrzTo8/s1600/birdglass_audubon.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMunF_hguKsfkE8Xoy1vTJ7z7n-EfHl8CCGk26jZ8J1VyLMFU7sYbZ2CKncQGzOvd0WYm7X-0Qbv3tSsOTgQYQBZeau4TPRTCc9mMwVBiMCtash5zK-NztC-JbhEfGXHjFNqwb_vrzTo8/s320/birdglass_audubon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594931319266807874" /></a> “Perhaps that’s what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that’s what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, I’m neither one side nor the other, I’m in the middle, I’m the partition, I’ve two surfaces and no thickness, perhaps that’s what I feel, myself vibrating, I’m the tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I don’t belong to either.” (Beckett, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Unnamables</span>)Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-87893999092652834722011-04-06T18:04:00.000-07:002011-04-10T18:44:06.455-07:00Erotophronesis<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8lB3CWF9rBFoJchDjEaVlOSbirrWIYw5gtYt0LpufXkeSiMuv4tezLjB3EeorWWSiH5DFfdTt78IMh4QaGq6abL7nBDPWAYmUJfRr09b5IWE-pfhncdcxi-p3IGivrlhoUsYBMN_s1ag/s1600/5598851993_330ec88545.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8lB3CWF9rBFoJchDjEaVlOSbirrWIYw5gtYt0LpufXkeSiMuv4tezLjB3EeorWWSiH5DFfdTt78IMh4QaGq6abL7nBDPWAYmUJfRr09b5IWE-pfhncdcxi-p3IGivrlhoUsYBMN_s1ag/s320/5598851993_330ec88545.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594135375675399858" /></a> Like Shakespeare, I like to invent words. However, unlike his, I don’t think mine will catch on. Like this one: <br /><br />EROTOPHRONESIS<br /><br />Go ahead. Try to say it. Rolls right off the tongue. <br /><br />The word “philosophy” as you probably know, comes from the roots <span style="font-style:italic;">philia</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">sophia</span> and is usually translated as “love of wisdom.” <br /><br />But those clever Greeks had other words for love and wisdom.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Eros</span>, as you also probably know, is the kind of love that lies in the body. Unlike <span style="font-style:italic;">philia</span>, which is an abstract, transcendental form of affection, <span style="font-style:italic;">eros</span> is sexually-charged desire with the potential to incite change, growth, or chaos. <br /><br />Related to the word for light, <span style="font-style:italic;">sophia</span> is the kind of wisdom that you gain through looking; it’s the result of outside observation paired with thoughtful consideration. <span style="font-style:italic;">Phronesis</span>, however, was used by ancient Greeks to describe knowledge that develops through first-hand experience. While <span style="font-style:italic;">sophia</span> helps you contemplate the nature of the world, <span style="font-style:italic;">phronesis</span> must be used to determine a course of action that will generate change. <span style="font-style:italic;">Phronesis</span> is something that comes with age and practice and that can’t be explained through words or pictures.<br /><br />Erotophronesis. Erotic love of embodied knowledge. <br /><br />The term isn’t very catchy. But the concept is a virus that I’d like to spread.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-91129907602987992102011-04-05T16:20:00.000-07:002011-04-05T16:58:16.661-07:00Creation Myths<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Od7W4wIvAQJCMtsBD-u2PO6Xuis1Ma4KaUABLc90RWyJ-ARNnC63Jne47E1PFqefnFvrFR8uJU76WPfvEbxot7YGLEzQeFiO7oRlFZ6LFq7ro6WWNgWdgwO5AUPm9WssK-Oxk3jaytM/s1600/Creation+Myth.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Od7W4wIvAQJCMtsBD-u2PO6Xuis1Ma4KaUABLc90RWyJ-ARNnC63Jne47E1PFqefnFvrFR8uJU76WPfvEbxot7YGLEzQeFiO7oRlFZ6LFq7ro6WWNgWdgwO5AUPm9WssK-Oxk3jaytM/s320/Creation+Myth.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592253114360571314" /></a><br />In theatre and performance studies, we have a story that we tell about the origins of drama. In the misty pre-history of humanity, rituals were performed to the gods incorporating song, dance, special apparel, manipulation of props, and the recitation of intentional language. <br /><br />In this legend, these transpersonal, spiritual events eventually shifted to interpersonal, social events. While retaining ritual-like techniques, theatre became a forum in which citizens told stories to other citizens about issues of shared import. Speaking to one another instead of to the gods, we no longer expected our rituals to actually <span style="font-style:italic;">work</span>, but instead to <span style="font-style:italic;">represent</span>. Rather than attempting real-world transformation, theatre tried to show us what transformation looks like.<br /><br />This origin myth is a necessary foundation for many revolutionaries in the theatre and performing arts. They say – sometimes in a hushed whisper – let’s return drama to its roots in ritual. Let’s forgo the gaudy illustrations of human suffering, joy, and healing. Instead, let’s actually <span style="font-style:italic;">experience</span> suffering and joy onstage. Let’s actually <span style="font-style:italic;">enact </span>healing rites inside the charmed circle of spectators. <br /><br />With deep appreciation I welcome these innovations to the imagined community of Western Drama. Without them we’d remain mired in the fantasy of objective rationality inherited from the Greeks or obsessed with the irrefutable authority of the text as truth inherited from our Judeo-Christian traditions. Yet I am always skeptical about quests for origins. The reality you find is never as good as the dream you sought, and looking towards an idealized past is often just a rejection of the present.<br /><br />What if we turned the myth around? What if rather than ritual begetting theatre, what if theatre begat ritual? Perhaps a pre-historic human got up on a rock and began to wail and flail the felt forms of her personal experience across the fire to her watching friend. Perhaps the friend understood, perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps the performer was changed by her attempt to share with an attentive other the infinity she felt within her. <br /><br />Maybe the next night the friend was gone and the pre-historic performer repeated the wail and flail, looking up into the night sky and hoping that some distant, invisible friend might see her. Perhaps she did it the next night, and the next, or on every full moon or every time she saw a shooting star or just every time she felt alone. Performance is pleasurable. Pleasure wants to repeat itself. Repetition begats ritual. <br /><br />If pre-historic performance art as the precursor to organized religion is too much of a stretch, at least let's consider ritual and theatre side by side rather than parent and child. Both give form to the baffling sensations that rattle around inside the human body and pierce its permeable border. Whether sharing those forms with close friends, the majesty of the empty night sky, or an obeisance-requesting deity, we enact the shapes of our striving and - in hushed whispers - hope that this enactment will yield transformation.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-77124251309094953012011-04-02T08:48:00.000-07:002011-04-13T08:52:44.324-07:00The Rosenberg Project<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI6B_sKrY1UvbjZ31wwnjo-y6JSdjJaZtV3UfgAZCv925nfnWsK8oHC9wphgPHXjPjeH7rQKi5WNWf96oE5lQgDYa7ZJMnJCaB37PnOVvcPI_a80c12H7irEE6_II5WQRNvCwqayu42JQ/s1600/rosenbergs.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 257px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI6B_sKrY1UvbjZ31wwnjo-y6JSdjJaZtV3UfgAZCv925nfnWsK8oHC9wphgPHXjPjeH7rQKi5WNWf96oE5lQgDYa7ZJMnJCaB37PnOVvcPI_a80c12H7irEE6_II5WQRNvCwqayu42JQ/s320/rosenbergs.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5595096472200614594" /></a><br />This quarter in my dramaturgy class we’re developing performance pieces based on the court transcripts from the Rosenberg Trial. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, as you probably remember from high school history class, were executed in June 1953 for passing along nuclear information to Soviet Russia. Our source material for the project is two-thousand pages of stenographers notes released in 2008.<br /><br />With this as inspiration, I now begin development of a one-act group performance piece that will include movement, dialogue, music and possibly projections. Rather than creating a full script, I’ll be building an aesthetic and thematic foundation for the piece, and sketching out a roadmap for the methods I could take into a collaborative rehearsal process. <br /><br />In my prior experience with devised and ensemble-generated work I’ve entered the process with only preliminary ideas and relied on the creativity of the group to flesh everything out. While I love this mode of production, I’m not always lucky enough to have a throng of willing collaborators able to start a project from scratch. Developing a process through which I can get halfway down the road myself will be practically useful to my future work.<br /><br />In addition to doing dramaturgical research for this project, I’ll also be doing embodied research as part of my weekly solo training practice. Working with song, movement, recorded and memorized texts, images and objects, I’ll begin building a world for this piece in the space of my body and the rehearsal studio. <br /><br />I’ve just begun to sift through the stenographer’s notes, not to mention the bountiful secondary sources available, so I have no idea at this moment where this research will take me. But I keep thinking about Bradley Manning, the soldier who’s currently in solitary confinement for passing information Wikileaks. The Rosenbergs passed classified information to the Soviets, but Bradley placed it someplace even more dangerous – in the hands of the public.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-86669735761483619222011-04-01T13:01:00.000-07:002011-04-20T16:43:06.932-07:00Stalking the Dramaturg<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6-B3r7R1lm6QxwhPr-eEdgajmUKHqS9zLapN4YYvHSvxid7cGemxOL5orkutvORFUMqIZ4nigzYaLo8pV0fzX_0SskED1GO6oaxoDkSO1mBV14aX9ETAtPS-rOc8HsH9zpx2NMWE8Np4/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-04-10+at+4.09.44+PM.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 222px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6-B3r7R1lm6QxwhPr-eEdgajmUKHqS9zLapN4YYvHSvxid7cGemxOL5orkutvORFUMqIZ4nigzYaLo8pV0fzX_0SskED1GO6oaxoDkSO1mBV14aX9ETAtPS-rOc8HsH9zpx2NMWE8Np4/s320/Screen+shot+2011-04-10+at+4.09.44+PM.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594049953403371442" /></a> Few people in the United States who are not directly involved with making theatre know what a dramaturg is, and many of us who are devoted to the craft still have a hard time understanding or describing what exactly the job entails. <br /><br />It’s a confusing term! The awkward “turg” (or “turge” if you’re French) comes from the Greek word for “making.” But isn’t everyone who works on a show somehow responsible for its making? Why is the dramaturg etymologically saddled with such a heavy task? <br /><br />As part of the beauty of the position lies in its flexibility, dramaturgs themselves are loathe to over-define their role. Generalizing grandly, dramaturgs are charged with the duty of thinking critically about the historical and aesthetic world of a performance (both before and throughout the rehearsal process) and collaborating with others to help integrate that information into what the audience experiences. <br /><br />A famous dramaturg was asked once what exactly he did and his response was simply: “I question.”<br /><br />On the first day of my dramaturgy class, we brainstormed alternative answers to this question. The list we made reminds me why I love dramaturgy. <br /><br />I visualize<br />I gather<br />I make connections<br />I research<br />I probe<br />I challenge<br />I support<br />I provoke<br />I remind<br />I stimulate<br />I translate<br />I adapt<br />I inspire<br />I refocus<br />I synthesize<br />I chronicle<br />I witness<br />I record<br />I remember<br /><br />All of these actions seem powerful, productive, and truly necessary for engaged art-making practice. Dramaturgs in the (blogospherical) house, do you have any additions that we forgot? Anything on this list you’d like to question?Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-45622216431022139342011-03-05T02:24:00.000-08:002011-03-06T19:11:22.318-08:00Tiny Imaginary Play #8<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6g3gi-s18PgaojLh296I9LE-DjLY2RFEJmcCO7eG_QToORabBd6RXBjKw5yYHUoLRgC-D48SehP5uNgefRcLWBpPKzB_03WHjMu-ifR3n7HOQbR4othAaaFK6AUcrtSnm2NWsdv70Vqo/s1600/douard_manet_a_bar_at_the_folies_berg_re_le_bar_aux_folies_berg_re_1882.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6g3gi-s18PgaojLh296I9LE-DjLY2RFEJmcCO7eG_QToORabBd6RXBjKw5yYHUoLRgC-D48SehP5uNgefRcLWBpPKzB_03WHjMu-ifR3n7HOQbR4othAaaFK6AUcrtSnm2NWsdv70Vqo/s320/douard_manet_a_bar_at_the_folies_berg_re_le_bar_aux_folies_berg_re_1882.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5580543673693144626" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">A giant velvet curtain covers the stage. <br /><br />A particularly fantastic portion of Handel's messiah plays and the curtain begins to rise. <br /><br />A woman is revealed standing onstage atop a small pedestal. <br /><br />She is wearing a corset cinched around her middle and a long petticoat and would look like a half-dressed Elizabethan but for the dark sunglasses.</span><br /><br />CORSET: I am here to tell you something very important. Thank you for coming, I was afraid no one was going to make it on account of all the rain. The message I bring you is not just from myself, it's a gift from the beyond, no, not God, and not aliens either, though I'm sure there's more life out there somewhere, aren't you? I am talking about history -- all of those that have come before, whose flesh begat ours, who've strutted and fretted their lives upon this planet, they're still here, no, not ghosts, though I'm sure ghosts exist also -- but more like cellular memories that inhabit me and you and that chair and that curtain. We are all vessels for that which has been, and today I'm going to speak, because that chair cannot and today you're attending to me, for which, did I mention thanks? So. Anyway. Here I go. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">She takes a deep breath.</span> <br /><br />CORSET: Hold on, I think I have to take this off. Hard to breathe. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">With expert hands she unlaces the corset rapidly, creating satisfying whipping noises. She pulls the laces all the way out of the eyelets.<br /><br />In the moment the corset drops off her body, the woman's image wavers, then, in an instant, dissolves completely, leaving only a few sparking atoms in the air where she once stood. <br /><br />The curtain falls.</span><br /><br />(Written 3/5/11, after <a href="http://phantomsuns.blogspot.com/2011/03/3411-solo-training-session-8.html">Solo Training Session #8</a>)Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-42285215406203646172011-03-03T09:20:00.000-08:002011-03-03T12:38:11.752-08:00The Imaginary Spectator: Interior Scroll<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0D9qoKnb4d8b5R5FL_Od9KxM7vO5PKyB1-UrRYctS4ggQNWMoByc5wNnsrVJF167hgbkNN4Wb5MWA6BAWmxEZpUQ1fA4bz6TJqiyHgVKOdW9Yztd5d5Og5vZHMJS3KU9gz0wREsiyUEM/s1600/schneeman+interior+scroll+1975.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 217px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0D9qoKnb4d8b5R5FL_Od9KxM7vO5PKyB1-UrRYctS4ggQNWMoByc5wNnsrVJF167hgbkNN4Wb5MWA6BAWmxEZpUQ1fA4bz6TJqiyHgVKOdW9Yztd5d5Og5vZHMJS3KU9gz0wREsiyUEM/s320/schneeman+interior+scroll+1975.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579917257990932946" /></a> <span style="font-weight:bold;">(<span style="font-style:italic;">In this new series, "The Imaginary Spectator," I narrate from an imaginary first-person perspective certain famous performances across history that I wish I'd actually seen.</span>)</span><br /><br />August 29th, 1975 – Dispatch from the "Women Here and Now" Festival in East Hampton, Long Island.<br /><br />This evening I had the privilege of witnessing a unique performance by artist Carolee Schneeman. About twenty of us, mostly female artists from New York City, convened in the large exhibition hall to see each other’s work - primarily paintings and sculptures. In the corner, there was an empty table dimly lit by two spotlights. Schneeman entered wrapped in white sheets, carrying a paperback book and a white paint bucket filled with an unknown substance. <br /><br />She placed one sheet over the table then got up on top of it, announcing that she was going to read for us from her book. She then unwrapped herself from the second sheet, revealing her costume – a small white apron covering only her lap. <br /><br />Schneeman reached into the bucket and began painting the contours of her body with a mud-like substance. As it dried, the markings changed colors and crackled, transforming her image into something simultaneously wretched and ritualistic. She then performed a series of gestural poses as though she were the model at a figure drawing class. <br /><br />Her anatomy was both emphasized and abstracted by the paint marks on her skin and I kept thinking about the frustrating endurance of the notion of the woman-as-ideal-form. It’s embarrassing how attached we still are –in 1975!— to the image of woman as art object. Can we not, at this late date in history, apprehend the female body as more than just something to be looked at, desired and guarded? <br /><br />Moving through the poses, she read to us from her book entitled <span style="font-style:italic;">Cezanne, She was a Great Painter</span>. The book begins something like this: "At age twelve, I knew only a few names of the great artists of history...I chose a painter named <span style="font-style:italic;">Cézanne</span> for my mascot; I assumed unquestionably that Cézanne was a woman." <br /><br />Schneeman then put down the book, stood up, and removed her apron. While full frontal nudity has become increasingly common in performance art these days, what came next was a surprise to all of us. She reached between her legs and began to extract, from her vagina, a piece of long brown paper. Hunched forward in a wide stance, she looked like she was birthing the crinkled scroll with her hands alone as midwife, nurse and doctor. As she pulled it out, she read from the text typed on the paper. I’m recreating it solely from memory, but I believe it began like this: <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I met a happy man - A Structuralist filmmaker<br />who said, you know we like you<br />We think you're lovely<br />But don't ask us to watch your films<br />We don’t want to see your personal clutter, your persistence of emotions, <br />your hand-touch sensibility, your journalistic indulgence, <br />your disgusting mess, your angry gestalt.<br /><br />He said do it like me – just take one thing, and follow it through<br />Create a system, a set, like Pythagoras!<br /><br />We can be friends, he said, equally<br />But we cannot be artists equally<br /><br />He told me he had lived once with a sculptress<br />I asked, does that make me a “filmmakeress?”<br />He said no, we think of you as a dancer.</span><br /><br />We all watched intently, small noises erupting from the mouths of other female artists in the room, many of whom can sympathize with this feeling. The women at this conference are tired of being cast always in the role of art muse and fighting to be seen as legitimate art makers. Are the aesthetic products of our bodies, minds, and life experiences never to be valued equally with the work of our male compatriots, who seem to deny that their work too emerges from the dense soil of their bodies? <br /><br />Finally, Schneeman dropped the scroll, climbed off the table and walked out, covered only by the mud-like residue of her struggle. The audience applauded thoughtfully then stood in silence for a while, looking at the detritus of this intimate performance: the book, the sheets, the crumpled brown paper. <br /><br />This short performance was one of the most affective I have ever witnessed. None of us in that room will ever forget it, and I hope that Schneeman will have the opportunity to present it again. I’d like her structuralist filmmaker to experience this piece. I wonder if he’d consider it a dance recital.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-40550642442025703632011-02-27T16:20:00.000-08:002011-02-27T16:39:46.654-08:00Tiny Imaginary Play #7<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcrrQPNJshIC9MNFJRtDSbfhUqWlrVUjtWDssyzdzrQOYAtCRmqJejibvaKUxtY2qQPU7EcwXNbc_aMEraj8OhRHrQIj_tTppxd7ZG0zlFRDz2YerVUwassjbrKR95tzvGseFrkC23hak/s1600/alicescreenshot.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcrrQPNJshIC9MNFJRtDSbfhUqWlrVUjtWDssyzdzrQOYAtCRmqJejibvaKUxtY2qQPU7EcwXNbc_aMEraj8OhRHrQIj_tTppxd7ZG0zlFRDz2YerVUwassjbrKR95tzvGseFrkC23hak/s200/alicescreenshot.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578533181053997938" /></a> <span style="font-style:italic;">Two genderless beings are having tea. They drink out of delicate porcelain cups with matching saucers. <br /><br />The teapot, which has a candle under it so it will stay warm all day, is almost out of hot water. Wet chrysanthemums crowd the tea strainer. </span><br /><br />HABUS: I've been wanting to talk to you about something delicate...<br />TABUS: Just spit it out.<br />HABUS: You smell. <br />TABUS: Fuck you!<br />HABUS: Not really you, actually, I think it's your deodorant. <br />TABUS: Of course my deodorant smells, that's what it's supposed to do, smell to keep me from smelling. <br />HABUS: But it smells worse than you do.<br />TABUS: Oh<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">They sip their tea for a moment in silence.</span><br /><br />TABUS: Can you smell it now? <br />HABUS: Yup, can't you? <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">TABUS sniffs.</span><br /><br />TABUS: Maybe. But I like it. It smells...safe.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The tea-shoppe proprietor, or perhaps her assistant, approaches them.</span><br /><br />MARIE: More hot water? <br />TABUS: Can you smell me? <br />MARIE: All I can smell is chrysanthemums. Would you like more tea? <br />HABUS: Excuse me, I think you have something on your shirt. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Habus reaches out for what ze thinks is a small caterpillar that has attached itself to Marie's shirt, right below her sternum, but as ze pulls it, ze finds that it is attached, through a small aperture, to the inside of her body. Ze keeps pulling and the caterpillar unfurls itself out of Marie's chest until the table between them is covered in meters and meters of yellow and black caterpillar fur. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Finally, with a strange rush of wind, the far end emerges. <br /><br />Marie's eyes roll around in her head and for a moment it looks like she is about to faint. Habus and Tabus stand up, preparing to help her. But then her vision clears and she picks up the teapot decisively.</span> <br /><br />MARIE: I'll go get you some more hot water. Sit down! Be comfortable! Oh, and just brush that off onto the floor okay? I'll come sweep it up later. <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />She exits. Habus and Tabus look down at the table with suspicion, then sit awkwardly down again. What will happen to the strange mass between them? </span><br /><br />(Written after <a href="http://phantomsuns.blogspot.com/2011/02/22511-solo-training-session-7.html">Solo Training Session #7</a>, 2/25/11)Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-78855581100485876762011-02-26T14:10:00.000-08:002011-02-27T16:37:11.335-08:00Eonnagata's Interpellation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguQhDZyqKQ3_Bw_S8PR3Y5abHHb6VPnf2iMmgJUdW2r2UFH9931xzjxcsLprbpSm4SzYCUVipPjOD4ttVlr9J4PVYvEhGGmXNwMfi7NrqdMUOBAoytDJ2SHBzlxT94FuKwcmKfHZi_8_4/s1600/EonnagataPinkCreditErickLabbeA.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 223px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguQhDZyqKQ3_Bw_S8PR3Y5abHHb6VPnf2iMmgJUdW2r2UFH9931xzjxcsLprbpSm4SzYCUVipPjOD4ttVlr9J4PVYvEhGGmXNwMfi7NrqdMUOBAoytDJ2SHBzlxT94FuKwcmKfHZi_8_4/s320/EonnagataPinkCreditErickLabbeA.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578515146173917762" /></a>A few weeks ago I saw <span style="font-style:italic;">Eonnagata</span>, a collaborative theatre piece by a trio of acclaimed artists who also serve as its sole performers. Theatrical innovator Robert Lepage, ballerina-turned-contempory-dancer Sylvie Guillem and choreographer Russell Maliphant premiered Eonnagata in London in 2009 and recently brought it to the states on a brief and limited tour. They take as their storyline the history of the Chevalier d'Eon, an 18th century french diplomat and spy who lived the first part of his life as a man and the second half as a woman. Most accurately described as dance-theatre, it blends theatre, dance, martial arts, visual spectacle, and a Kabuki technique of cross-gender performance called <span style="font-style:italic;">onnagata</span>. <br /><br />I saw the piece at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Theatre, which was probably a few hundred short of its 2000 seat capacity, and found myself almost blissfully engaged throughout the entire performance. There was a great interpretive openness that allowed my mind to drift in and out of their visually stimulating world. The minimal text and frequently changing mis-en-scene invited me to assemble the pieces as I saw fit, which I deeply enjoy, and if I was ever lacking engagement, I had merely to turn my attention to the breathtaking grace of Sylvie Guillem, who moves like something out of a liquid dream. <br /><br />The piece was certainly not flawless. The staging was frequently stuck centerstage, their reliance on expensive design elements was a little too easy, the dancers didn't handle spoken or sung language particularly well, and Lepage's limited dance abilities held the trio back. <br /><br />And still I loved it. The piece called out to an audience that I don't quite believe exists yet in the United States. It interpellated us as viewers who embrace the non-linearity and characterlessness of post-dramatic performance art. It trusted that we too were interested in a world in which gender doesn't resolve itself to an entrapping binary, and where performances of self-expression are not merely in service of a constantly hardening and sedimenting individual ego. These are things that I frequently see in small fringe theatre and dance spaces in San Francisco and New York. Seeing them explored onstage in a large venue to a seemingly warm audience was exciting. <br /><br />I believe we can say things in art that we don't yet have the words to say in critical and academic discourse. In <span style="font-style:italic;">Eonnagata</span>, I felt Lepage, Guillem and Maliphant reaching towards new visions of gender and embodiment - visions that are as yet unarticulatable with language, but might be almost graspable through attending deeply to the materiality of bodies in motion onstage.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-90102500254669384642011-02-24T01:22:00.000-08:002011-02-24T01:51:57.169-08:00Tiny Imaginary Play #6<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcUlNj77KD6lHYug7N-RL46MqPGeZOfonlQxz_GnFnXzPUDQnAC5gTVAzkh0zeHY43n4NQauSUFV9uaNNrvjXwYAwqce0uvHSyiP109pf5Az-4QOqJLsJRcz-H5Qfpha1CYv088VvLsk/s1600/Vincent%252Bvan%252BGogh-Wheat%252BField%252Bwith%252BCrows-1890.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 187px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcUlNj77KD6lHYug7N-RL46MqPGeZOfonlQxz_GnFnXzPUDQnAC5gTVAzkh0zeHY43n4NQauSUFV9uaNNrvjXwYAwqce0uvHSyiP109pf5Az-4QOqJLsJRcz-H5Qfpha1CYv088VvLsk/s400/Vincent%252Bvan%252BGogh-Wheat%252BField%252Bwith%252BCrows-1890.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5577190191526254514" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">A crowd of people stand at the top of a hill on a sunny windy day.<br /><br />Half have their hands jammed into their pockets to fend off the cold.<br /><br />The other half have their arms stretched out into the air like they could take off at any moment. <br /><br />The wind sounds like a symphony and the birds seem to cry welcome. </span><br /><br />BIRD #1: Craven crawlers, crispy palms<br />BIRD #2: Sun snuggle noonday down the hard therefoot. <br />BIRD #1: Ceasing up? Down a long dawn side.<br />BIRD #2: Richer then fullsong louden alltune time<br />BIRD #1: Now ringthen?<br />BIRD #2: Ring to then.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">One person with his hands in his pockets pulls out a harmonica and starts to play. <br /><br />Barely audible over the whistling air, the tinny chords sound strangely noble. <br /><br />Two of the ones with arms outstretched move closer and reach down to hold hands, their rigid limbs softening as they meet each other. Together, they run down the hill towards where they can hear each other more clearly. </span><br /><br />Lover #1: It's warm if you lie right there, on the dark rocks where the sun bakes.<br />Lover #2: You first.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Lover #1 lies down in the dark rocks. Lover #2 lies down next to her. If they strain, they can still hear the harmonica.</span> <br /><br /><br />(Written after viewing the video documentation of <a href="http://phantomsuns.blogspot.com/2011/02/21711-solo-training-session-6.html">Solo Training Session #6</a>, 2/23/11)Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-68865268260669145472011-02-23T15:16:00.000-08:002011-02-24T17:58:29.734-08:00I'm Not Offended<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQ6pyLy6hajoWTiZq-VJB8vfjcv-GJoF7o12nkjIHAG3DTL8fuGSTfpBGJGQyFeENVDk2PSTWKFEnrfqSyINjN0hcb0uCqIvVq-VTSPSLYD_e1JRq5yy823xFMUZ67JBIRCC3mDvlOI0/s1600/crotchshot.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 345px; height: 210px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQ6pyLy6hajoWTiZq-VJB8vfjcv-GJoF7o12nkjIHAG3DTL8fuGSTfpBGJGQyFeENVDk2PSTWKFEnrfqSyINjN0hcb0uCqIvVq-VTSPSLYD_e1JRq5yy823xFMUZ67JBIRCC3mDvlOI0/s320/crotchshot.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5577400005697815826" /></a> I’m trying to stop using the phrase “offended” to describe my response to works of art. “Offended” is a cop-out word, a polite substitute for what I’m actually feeling, which is usually closer to hurt or anger. <br /><br />Some art hurts me. Often it breaks my heart consensually, painfully cracking me open in that way that hurts but feels good at the same time. The pain is a sign that the intensity of the work’s vision is spreading to me, where it has the potential to change me. Change hurts. <br /><br />Some art hurts me in a non-consensual way. Some ideas, like unchallenged expressions of bigotry, feel particularly poisonous or dangerous when nestled into a work of art. I don’t want them to get inside me and I’m scared of what they’ll do if they take root in other people. <br /><br />In the wake of this fear travels anger. Anger at ideas that I think are cruel or unfair, at people who spread them, and at their power to access a pulpit.<br /><br />All of these experiences – hurt, fear, anger – can generate energy. Rather than use that energy to shout “I’m offended!” I’d like to use it to make more art, “better” (in my opinion) art, that speaks more directly to the world I live in and the one I envision. <br /><br />Saying “I’m offended” carries the spectre of censorship. It’s an attempt to claim moral high ground without first acknowledging the vulnerable experiences of hurt, fear, and anger. Rather than hardening into feeling offended, I want to first feel what the work of art is conjuring inside me, then discuss why, then, if there is still energy left over from the exchange, create something new in response to my experience.<br /><br />Being offended has the subtle air of privilege. When you’re offended you seem to say “Well I can handle the intensity of this art, but other people can’t. Women and children shouldn’t see this. Weak-minded or weak-willed individuals couldn’t understand its ambiguity. So it should change or go away entirely.” We don’t always watch with our own eyes alone, often our response to art is caught up with our fantasies and fears of how other people would respond to it. This kind of collective spectatorship can be a manifestation of empathy, but it can also point to a distrust of other people’s ability to process input, both pleasure and pain.<br /><br />When a work of art hurts me (in that non-consensual way) sometimes I think “Dear God, don’t let others be hurt by this the way that I was.” The pain of representation and misrepresentation can hurt like sticks and stones. But if set into motion, the energy of that pain and anger can transform into new forces of expression. <br /><br />Being offended is an (ultimately futile) attempt to stop the forceful exchange of expression and responsiveness. Instead let's express and respond even more fully, even more energetically, with deeper respect and greater endurance.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-49453953295668029932011-02-16T12:22:00.000-08:002011-02-16T12:53:21.619-08:00Tiny Imaginary Play #5<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMhRUHec-WS8pd5y3WGiP8xhC64v2TKkEVvOoxYflxn5mzvirfzEeWe3gAkBruJUB6ebHygSwJGokJ9vn26tCkOkkBjfnoDyTUIwM6U7xDhrcewwQZU6AIcXf66RKKbZ2a7dJfKY4kTw/s1600/Pollock_Jackson-Ocean_Greyness.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMhRUHec-WS8pd5y3WGiP8xhC64v2TKkEVvOoxYflxn5mzvirfzEeWe3gAkBruJUB6ebHygSwJGokJ9vn26tCkOkkBjfnoDyTUIwM6U7xDhrcewwQZU6AIcXf66RKKbZ2a7dJfKY4kTw/s320/Pollock_Jackson-Ocean_Greyness.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5574385854680374738" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">A pock-marked man in uniform looks out over the grey sea. <br /><br />He can feel the salty wind on his face, its noise almost drowning out the clanging sound of some piece of equipment bouncing against the ship’s hull. <br /><br />A second man approaches, also in uniform. He’s wearing sunglasses. </span><br /><br />SHADES: Don’t do it.<br />POCKS: Hrm? <br />SHADES: Don’t look out over the grey sea and ponder the uselessness of it all. <br />POCKS: M’not. <br />SHADES: Can see it in your eyes. <br />POCKS: Just looking. <br />SHADES: You should look when no-one else is looking. At you looking. <br />POCKS: Shouldn’t you be somewhere? <br />SHADES: Got tired of playing World of Warcraft with teenagers in Tennessee.<br />POCKS: Tired of getting your ass kicked you mean.<br />SHADES: I don’t play because I’m good, I play because it’s fun.<br /> <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">They look out at the grey sea and ponder the uselessness of it all. </span><br /><br />POCKS: I love her I miss her I don’t know if I love her or if I’m just lonely I don’t know how to talk to her I don’t know how to touch her she’s a foreign country without a consulate and I don’t know the local customs and I can’t stomach the food and I know she knows me but she also doesn’t know me and I can’t tell if the me she knows is me or not and if it isn’t do I want to become that me or is it a trap she’s luring me towards so that all the other me’s that may or may not be realer than her version end up vanishing into the ether and what happens to this me the one without limits the quiet one I feel moving in the nighttime and speeding with the sky the one that loves the rush of acceleration and the absent breathing stillness of no one watching I’m afraid that this one will die I’m afraid to lose the most abstract corners of myself I don’t want to map their contours I don’t want to plumb their depths and I’m afraid she won’t let me leave anything vague and sometimes I want more than anything to be left in peace in vagueness.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">SHADES takes off his sunglasses and looks at POCKS for a moment. </span><br /><br />SHADES: Wanna go play Crysis? <br />POCKS: Sure. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">They exit.</span><br /><br /><br />(Written 2/16/11 after <a href="http://phantomsuns.blogspot.com/2011/02/21611-solo-training-session-5.html">Solo Training Session #5</a>)Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-52551358431827660682011-02-07T20:54:00.000-08:002011-02-07T22:55:22.528-08:00entropy. redress.My friend and collaborator <a href="http://www.soikowski.com/www.soikowski.com/bio.html">Rhonda Soikowski</a>, who works on the edge of performance practice, embodied research, and pedagogical innovation, recently asked me to participate in her current project titled <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.soikowski.com/www.soikowski.com/entropy._redress..html">entropy. redress.</a></span> <br /><br />Rhonda invited collaborators to create short video pieces incorporating a single red dress that criss-crossed the globe. Shortly before I got my hot little hands on it, the dress was ripped untimely from the land and disappeared into the Mediterranean. Our small constraint reduced to none, myself and my collaborators Joe Moore and Beth Hersh took to the beach to try to reach towards the lost object. <br /><br />Click on the image below to see the results of our work. How Rhonda will incorporate it into her piece is still unknown, but it was a privilege and a pleasure to be a part of the journey. <br /><br /><a href="http://xacto.dadamancer.org/video/ReDress.html" target="new"><img width="480" height="280" src="http://xacto.dadamancer.org/video/ReDress_posterframe.png"></a>Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-48700724124305877332011-02-06T02:56:00.000-08:002011-02-07T22:07:33.704-08:00Tiny Imaginary Play #4<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNqK4_dFjxvFAQZLKQjAxYypVsfy_wu2Dxg0KNr8W4BkdxgvHLgCDCm8UIljano83YsHIigZ5N6XML1goCU536LmdFqvs6yi6-DICmHrIOcYXTxRrOICgfUq3bMlo59ChIRuqXTU7-C80/s1600/hubbleM42-full.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 216px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNqK4_dFjxvFAQZLKQjAxYypVsfy_wu2Dxg0KNr8W4BkdxgvHLgCDCm8UIljano83YsHIigZ5N6XML1goCU536LmdFqvs6yi6-DICmHrIOcYXTxRrOICgfUq3bMlo59ChIRuqXTU7-C80/s320/hubbleM42-full.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569790309285457730" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Two people sit in a large bathtub, heads on opposite sides. <br /><br />They are sorta blissed out, each in their own way. </span><br /><br />PERSON #1: Can you turn on the jets? <br />PERSON #2: Shhhhhhhhhhhh<br />PERSON #1: What? <br />PERSON #2: I'm thinking<br />PERSON #1: Can't you think with the jets on? <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Person #2 shakes head.<br /> <br />Time passes. <br /><br />The ceiling dissolves and above the bathtub swirl constellations and meteors and new galaxies only recently discovered and captured by Hubble photographers. The moon rises through the astral dust til it's perching above them where it begins <br />to pulse and hum. <br /><br />Person #1 turns on the jets.</span> <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The ceiling quickly returns.</span> <br /><br />PERSON #2: Goddamn it!<br />PERSON #1: Can you pass the loofa? <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Person #1 throws the loofa at Person #2.</span><br /><br />PERSON #2: You always gotta do that kinda shit.<br />PERSON #1 <span style="font-style:italic;">(loofa-ing)</span>: Can you run the hot? Water's getting cold. <br /><br /><br /><br />(Written 2/3/11, after <a href="http://phantomsuns.blogspot.com/2011/02/020311-solo-training-session-4.html">Solo Training Session #4</a>)Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-4997445731313008592011-02-05T15:19:00.000-08:002011-02-05T15:47:15.998-08:00Movin’ On Up: Clybourne Park at ACT<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrdBWaBxlXvkRA3Jc3y-_xHOZWi3zSoVtUfulWH98o0yRE6C3Y4Q40a4pyQDqZayEqUnxsDt9SqummYVeXc5XY99zNNYvwGZTa3T-BFiHjvFc-rxnBe0Cu7oqmecVZinMuk5mLI2jF4dA/s1600/ruth_and_walter.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 241px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrdBWaBxlXvkRA3Jc3y-_xHOZWi3zSoVtUfulWH98o0yRE6C3Y4Q40a4pyQDqZayEqUnxsDt9SqummYVeXc5XY99zNNYvwGZTa3T-BFiHjvFc-rxnBe0Cu7oqmecVZinMuk5mLI2jF4dA/s320/ruth_and_walter.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5570351315558794770" /></a><br />Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play <span style="font-style:italic;">Raisin in the Sun</span> looms large in the history of American theatre. As my playwriting teacher Cherrie Moraga described it, for a black female playwright to be produced on Broadway in that climate, she had to write the mother of all “well-made plays.” Indeed, the characters and plot are wrought so skillfully that not even that era’s heavy fog of racism and sexism could cloud the eyes of the Pulitzer committee. Over the past half-century, <span style="font-style:italic;">Raisin</span> continues to be taught in high school classrooms and produced extensively, especially on college campuses. <br /><br />I admire the boldness of playwright Bruce Norris, whose new play <span style="font-style:italic;">Clybourne Park </span>is in direct conversation with Hansberry’s. At the end of <span style="font-style:italic;">Raisin</span>, the Younger family moves out of their cramped apartment in the south side of Chicago to the fictional white neighborhood of Clybourne Park, willing to take on the potential racism of their new neighbors in pursuit of a better life for their family. Norris’s play takes place in the very house that the Younger family purchases: Act One is set in 1959, as the prior occupants, a husband and wife haunted by the death of their son, pack their final boxes. Act Two is set in 2009 in the now run-down house in the now black neighborhood that has been purchased and scheduled for heavy renovation by a middle-class white couple. <br /><br />I’ve had the privilege of seeing <span style="font-style:italic;">Clybourne Park</span> twice – once at its New York premiere at Playwright’s Horizons, and last weekend at ACT in San Francisco – giving me ample opportunity to muse on its successes and limitations. <br /><br />It’s great to see a play that takes on the urgent question of gentrification. We’re asked to consider the politics of who lives where, in proximity to whom, and what facilitates and limits freedom of movement within cities and between communities. Norris’s play acknowledges that the living-room drama is (and in fact has always been) synonymous with the drama of the local community and the larger society. In foregrounding the inter-articulation of family and society, this play attends to the truth that (in this country, at least) conversations about race are always conversations about class, capitalism, and the history of exploiting human beings for profit.<br /><br />I’m a sucker for plays that use theatrical devices to put history into direct conversation with the present (see Stoppard’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Arcadia</span>, Churchill’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Cloud Nine</span>). They seem to make un-ignorable the truth that “the way things are” is a product of “the way things were,” rather than a natural, unalterable state of affairs. Both the SF and the NYC audiences seemed to “get” the connections the playwright was drawing between “then” and “now”– made clear by their timely laughter and thoughtful harrumphs. <br /><br />However, despite finding content and form appealing, ultimately <span style="font-style:italic;">Clybourne Park</span> doesn’t satisfy me. Here’s why. <br /><br />The story of gentrification is the story of privilege. Privilege is getting what you want without too much work. We have terms like “silver spoon” and “silver platter” to help us talk about the materiality of privilege. <br /><br />Ultimately, much of the drama and almost all of the comedy of <span style="font-style:italic;">Clybourne Park</span> emerges from the difficulty white people have talking about race. The heat and confusion of this difficulty is very sympathetic to audiences at expensive theatres in New York and San Francisco, most of whom are white, middle-class or higher and progressive enough to truly care about issues of class and racial privilege in this country. It’s fine to make plays that speak specifically to this audience (and in fact Norris has said that he is trying to do exactly that). The only problem is that when a play presents issues to an audience from a perspective so similar to their own, they don’t have to work that hard to “get” it. There is no empathetic reach on the part of the viewers to understand what is transpiring onstage in front of them, the kind of reach made by the audience at the premiere of <span style="font-style:italic;">Raisin in the Sun</span> in 1959. It is this reach, and the bravery of a playwright who compels her audience to make such a reach, that results in watershed moments in theatre history.<br /><br />The other kind of playwriting is the artistic equivalent of the silver platter. The privileged audience sees privileged characters stumbling uncomfortably over their own privilege, and gets to laugh and cry at it from the safety of the velvet chair – thus releasing the pressure valve of that tension in their own lives. Rather than asking the audience to step forward towards the unknown realm of another person's reality, I worry that <span style="font-style:italic;">Clybourne Park</span> holds the platter out too far, requiring too little from the viewers and thus participating in the same structures of inequality that it critiques.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-14903566502424925762011-02-03T22:58:00.000-08:002011-02-04T13:48:46.623-08:00Tiny Imaginary Play #3<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKM0-VkA3loBhF8kmaXRdWh56bFz2XsiODj83bZcrqoKeu6SgwZUB2ZxZNz67fJUFkK8cDTA9m7H72rP9CU_a6D4po4JBHwf73M-f0plHM_AAopGkYntDoXUzMOjlSG2z7doeXPfxfvsU/s1600/degas.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 210px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKM0-VkA3loBhF8kmaXRdWh56bFz2XsiODj83bZcrqoKeu6SgwZUB2ZxZNz67fJUFkK8cDTA9m7H72rP9CU_a6D4po4JBHwf73M-f0plHM_AAopGkYntDoXUzMOjlSG2z7doeXPfxfvsU/s320/degas.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569784113860568786" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Two women sit in an urban park throwing bread crumbs to pigeons. <br /><br />One has hair so long it twirls around her body to the ground, where it blends in with the autumn leaves. <br /><br />The second has fingernails so long that their curlicues dance with every gesture. She is visibly pregnant.<br /><br />They look at the birds.<br /></span><br />ONE WITH THE HAIR: The first time you really think you're going to die. Each contraction feels that much closer, and you keep thinking of all the women throughout history who've died in childbirth, and all the animals that die immediately after giving birth -- <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The woman with the fingernails gives her a look. </span><br /><br />HAIR: Sorry. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">They go back to feeding the birds. </span><br /><br />HAIR: When my second was born, though, it felt like an orgasm.<br /><br />FINGERNAILS: They say death feels like that too. <br /><br />HAIR: Men get erections, right? <br /><br />FINGERNAILS: I think that's just in Beckett<br /><br />HAIR: No, really, I think it's rigor mortis or something. <br /><br />FINGERNAILS: I mean better, like the release.<br /><br />HAIR: Who says? <br /><br />FINGERNAILS: I guess it's a hypothesis. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Suddenly a pigeon falls out of the sky with a splat, landing in front of them. It stands up, tries to take a few steps, and then falls over dead. </span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />The women look at each other. </span><br /><br />FINGERNAILS: I wish I could just skip to the second time. <br /><br />(Written 02/02/11, after <a href="http://phantomsuns.blogspot.com/2011/02/2211-solo-training-session-3.html">Solo Training Session #3</a>)Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-11327224569637165532011-02-01T16:51:00.000-08:002011-02-01T17:59:11.617-08:00Feminist Methods<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgUvKe9KBE-sSZ_f2MAalBDKCmIDM7zVvzWcG5QN6zfbby9LugUQAgjHgpyhlHNTosGgywRdSZD24nDyTYFZtbgoGB7qGWz1KRDH7XzBMOCZimIic8tGDhAIB3PxTmn9FnD3G6q_Dx6W0/s1600/babymom.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgUvKe9KBE-sSZ_f2MAalBDKCmIDM7zVvzWcG5QN6zfbby9LugUQAgjHgpyhlHNTosGgywRdSZD24nDyTYFZtbgoGB7qGWz1KRDH7XzBMOCZimIic8tGDhAIB3PxTmn9FnD3G6q_Dx6W0/s320/babymom.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5568900510136499154" /></a>So I considered taking a class this quarter called "Feminist Methods." My plate was too full for the additional course, but the title keeps ringing in my head. I know it's basically a class examining how feminist methodologies are used in research practices across the academic disciplines: history, literature, sociology, psychology, etc. But I keep thinking of all the other things this course could offer. <br /><br />I sometimes feel completely baffled about how to live in a world that remains unrelentingly sexist, racist, classist, homophobic and xenophobic. Despite progress (and lip-service to progress) I feel like I run up against institutionalized inequalities every day. And I live in San Francisco! And I spend most of my time at a university! How do other people even manage? <br /><br />I know I'm highly sensitive to the suffering caused by sex and gender prejudices; I always have been. And it feels like the more I learn about the world, the more sensitive I become to identity-based injustices.<br /><br />I have taken many a course on how to see and analyze these injustices, but not a single one that teaches me how to deal with the difficulty of integrating this knowledge into my daily life. It's painful to walk through the world perceiving these half-visible hegemonic structures holding us all trapped in places we don't want to be. I need guidance on how to deal with the information I've gained. <br /><br />If I were teaching a class called <span style="font-weight:bold;">Feminist Methods</span>, my syllabus would include these topics: <br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br /> - Feminist methods for approaching the study of history without breaking down into tears when you realize that women are systematically left out of most of the juicy parts.<br /><br /> - Feminist methods for appreciating Western art even though 90% of the time women are stuck being the looked-at subject, not the creator. <br /><br /> - Feminist methods for dealing with street harassment from men, especially across cultural lines and in countries that are not your own.<br /><br /> - Feminist methods for thinking about and interacting with pornography in a way that celebrates sexuality, resists censorship and opposes exploitation.<br /><br /> - Feminist methods for getting over jealousy and competitiveness towards other women over who's prettier, sexier, smarter, more capable, more put together, etc...<br /> <br /> - Feminist methods for not getting angry when people call you an angry feminist.<br /><br /> - Feminist methods for holding faith that a highly sensitive, responsive, emotional, intuitive, receptive, accepting mode of human interaction is just as valuable as an assertive, rational mode. <br /><br /> - Feminist methods for approaching the monumental task of motherhood with respect even though it's devalued and sentimentalized by Western culture, and usually entails sacrificing hard-won power and privileges in your professional life.<br /><br /> - Feminist methods for forgiving your father, since he's stuck in the system as much as you are.<br /><br /> - Feminist methods for not confusing your boyfriend/husband/lover/friend with the patriarchy just because he's grown up with subtle privileges of having a penis.<br /><br />- Feminist methods for avoiding the psychic burnout of remaining a feminist.</span><br /><br />If you know of any place that offers coursework like this, would you let me know? I could really use it. <br /><br />And I'm sure there are topics missing from this hypothetical syllabus. What would you add?Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-90352572217792258642011-01-27T08:45:00.000-08:002011-01-27T08:45:00.856-08:00Tiny Imaginary Play #2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj51yNW6sgtmuwU-j0OiSwsH2iyFgHFpsIPTUVTS10O0Ieo2aCeiRpDpHXQkZ6RUQ58Eqr9S1-DJXi_txpAZnuOSi1XQkNbTn3V4_4sXRbWRcrU8hyQe5nzhdp0GV5mEHsXQVJ3wY9yAOg/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-26+at+3.24.48+PM.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 370px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj51yNW6sgtmuwU-j0OiSwsH2iyFgHFpsIPTUVTS10O0Ieo2aCeiRpDpHXQkZ6RUQ58Eqr9S1-DJXi_txpAZnuOSi1XQkNbTn3V4_4sXRbWRcrU8hyQe5nzhdp0GV5mEHsXQVJ3wY9yAOg/s320/Screen+shot+2011-01-26+at+3.24.48+PM.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566790326779745730" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">A bright world full of light and sand.<br />A young woman in white, veiled, spins slowly.<br />She looks like an angel or a prophet or a nun or the virgin Mary or the sacred whore Magdalene or a particularly poised belly-dancer or the Western fantasy of a mystic Hindu saint.<br /><br />She starts to sing, at first so quietly you can barely hear her. No words, just wails and warbles.<br /><br />Her song grows louder, filling with strange resonances and dissonant overtones. Soon you realize that it isn't her singing after all. It's a recording, you can feel the amplified reverberations in your bones. <br /><br />She stops abruptly. Suddenly the world is dark and silent and the woman is on her knees. Her muscles clench, her body heaves, and from her throat, past her lips, into her hand emerges a crystal-clear jewel, dazzlingly brilliant. <br /><br />She heaves again and, like a cosmic hairball, coughs up another jewel. <br /><br />Holding one in each hand, she rises quickly, as though she's heard something coming. (Do you hear something?) She turns around in the space, listening intently.<br /><br />The music begins again and the woman begins a slow-motion battle with an invisible enemy. She wields the jewels like weapons and they seem to glow in her palms.<br /><br />Shadowboxing.<br />Sciomachia.<br /><br />She fights for so long that the audience eventually gets up and wanders off.<br /><br />She keeps fighting. It's beautiful and sad. And boring. </span><br /><br />(Written 1/21/11, after <a href="http://phantomsuns.blogspot.com/2011/01/12111-solo-training-session-2.html">Solo Training Session #2</a>)Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-51137389632651599862011-01-26T22:40:00.000-08:002011-01-27T00:32:19.963-08:00Syncopated Censorship<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinm53qaurf6i2DQyKOv1KIYlVHWF9FnDc_7ctqLSUOvYFRhh52dZ5DCkm-FFvDG-PBn_V1ugjrqHPlJwEq3zneypYOuaDa0Z2lBg4oEK0joFtQzBH6AarAIyuSmMgwDDD-Rg1n-LgMegY/s1600/ClaudeCahunAngel.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 260px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinm53qaurf6i2DQyKOv1KIYlVHWF9FnDc_7ctqLSUOvYFRhh52dZ5DCkm-FFvDG-PBn_V1ugjrqHPlJwEq3zneypYOuaDa0Z2lBg4oEK0joFtQzBH6AarAIyuSmMgwDDD-Rg1n-LgMegY/s200/ClaudeCahunAngel.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566777233678655826" /></a> The rhythm of self-censorship is syncopated. Like coming in on the upbeat instead of the downbeat, self-censorship is premature; you restrict your own self-expression in advance, so as to not risk being silenced by someone else. <br /><br />Expectations about what we do or don’t express are the unwritten rules of social groups, and ignoring them is tantamount to challenging the authority of existing power structures. The “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy of the U.S Military was an extreme, legislated form of expected self-censorship. Gay men and women were required to remain invisible or be rendered invisible through discharge from the service. Paradoxically, self-censorship both precedes and is a result of external censorship. Syncopation.<br /><br />When expectations about self-censorship are outright flaunted, things get interesting. These moments force into the public eye the ongoing negotiations between internal and external censorship. Breaking a taboo always serves to bring that taboo to light, thus exposing the machinery of social order.<br /><br />One example of flaunting expectations of self-censorship is the “Too Soon” joke. <br /><br />The “Too Soon” joke is a joke of variable offensiveness that is made <span style="font-style:italic;">unbearably</span> offensive because it’s told “too soon” after the tragic event to which it refers. The more traumatic the event, the more likely the cry “too soon” will arise from the audience. The “too soon” joke also operates on the syncopated rhythm of prematurity. Self-censorship is covering your mouth before someone else can do it, and the “too soon” joke is uncovering your mouth before the collective decision that it’s acceptable to do so. <br /><br />One of the most famous examples of the "too soon" joke was comedian Gilbert Gottfried's performance at the Hugh Hefner Roast at the Friar's Club on Nov 4th, 2001, three weeks after 9/11. The atmosphere of this event was unique - the traditionally raucous, offensive nature of a roast was at odds with the emotional sensitivity of New Yorkers in the wake of the attacks. And then Gottfried, known for pushing boundaries of appropriateness, cracks a joke about his flight from LA to NY making an unexpected connection at the Empire State Building. <br /><br />The audience turns on him, booing and shouting "too soon!" What was not even a very good joke in the first place threatens to ruin the whole party.<br /><br />In response, Gottfried immediately launches into the dirtiest joke of all time – <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGVL_reIuJM">"The Aristocrats."</a> Suddenly the image of planes hitting buildings is replaced by images of sex, violence, excrement, incest and beastiality. <br /><br />The joke goes on for almost ten minutes, and Gottfried's aggressive delivery seems like comedic retribution against his audience - "You didn't like that joke? FINE! Have this one!"<br /><br />Oddly enough, this horrible, disgusting joke eventually wins them back. <br /><br />I wasn't there so I can't claim authority, but it seems Gottfried did a bit of a magic trick. The 9/11 joke conjured uncomfortable emotions that the audience wasn't yet ready to process. However, that discomfort was quickly re-purposed as disgust at the X-rated "Aristocrats". And through the elaborate, increasingly ridiculous telling of that joke, the disgust was transformed and released as laughter. <br /><br />Not only did Gottfried bring into public awareness the ever-present tension between external and internal censorship, but he also reminded his audience that sometimes too soon is right on time. <br /><br />The rhythm of the artist-activist is necessarily syncopated. We must risk speaking too soon for comfort. Sometimes the art lies in finding roundabout ways to address those questions that beat urgently inside us like so many winged creatures, wanting to get out.Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1091007889491238888.post-56697230006836912582011-01-26T01:12:00.000-08:002011-01-26T01:38:10.838-08:00Tiny Imaginary Play #1<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO_9-Rf3Av3I2XDi0f0QQnyjiEYgDho2-S4tay3PWoFldRiPyiaWttyfy9LiyDWrsaF64msauCfvBhpyKN8DW5lAn3tPrRm09VScQ-6N8mGTS3jQrNvextj9ZNW16-ByabaZ0qGsVgfT8/s1600/empty+stage.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO_9-Rf3Av3I2XDi0f0QQnyjiEYgDho2-S4tay3PWoFldRiPyiaWttyfy9LiyDWrsaF64msauCfvBhpyKN8DW5lAn3tPrRm09VScQ-6N8mGTS3jQrNvextj9ZNW16-ByabaZ0qGsVgfT8/s200/empty+stage.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5566425327264191410" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Empty stage.<br />Upstage right, a drumset.<br /><br />A drummer enters, sits down, starts fooling around on the drums, amusing himself. <br /><br />Three women enter, wearing black coats of various styles (leather, overcoat, ski jacket, etc) over dance-training apparel. They are barefoot and look vulnerable, protected only by their bulky jackets. <br /><br />They dance. It involves lots of elbows and angles. Their coats simultaneously inhibit their movements and make their dance more interesting.<br /><br />The drummer continues playing. He's not accompanying the dancers. Rather they seem to accompany him. <br /><br />A large, beautiful woman in a red sequined dress enters downstage left. She and the drummer greet each other. She gets into his groove, she begins to sing</span><br /><br />WOMAN: <br />What do ya say to the hole? <br />What do ya say to the hole? <br />What do ya say, tell me what do ya say<br />to the hole in the bottom of the well? <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">We start to hear the dancers as they move. Not words just sounds, animalian and breathing. <br /><br />They begin to remove their coats, each in her own way. It's a struggle. <br /><br />Playful struggle? <br />Frustrating struggle? <br />Hopeless struggle?<br /><br />As each coat is removed, something is revealed on each woman's body. A hidden prop, a jagged scar, a bleeding wound, a fresh tattoo? <br /><br />They look at the audience for a long beat, then exit. The woman in red sings the final verse of the song, and lights dim.</span><br /><br />WOMAN:<br />What do ya see in the hole? <br />What do ya see in the hole? <br />What do ya see, tell me what do ya see<br />in the hole in the middle of the sky?<br /><br />(Written 1/14/11, after <a href="http://phantomsuns.blogspot.com/2011/01/11411-solo-training-session-1.html">Solo Training Session #1</a>)Joy Brooke Fairfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066108869425708805noreply@blogger.com2