A Beginning

For my first post I thought I'd talk a little bit a bout me and my methods of work, as well as the ideas for the upcoming performances.

This fall quarter i will be conducting performance experiments in the form of performance art/street theatre. Let me quickly define what i mean by "performance art/street theatre." There is a line, although hard to draw, between what is considered performance art and what is considered theatre. Performance Art in my understanding is the attempt to integrate the 'human' element into visual art, not neccesarily for a specific audience, but usually constructed for a specific space/location and artistic concept(s). Theatre on the other hand, is an encouter between actor and spectator. This encounter, which at its highest form is a sort of spiritual one, is the aim of the performance. It is two humans meeting each other in a complete and honest way. In this processes the actor gives himself completely to the performance and shares this truthfully with the audience, while the audience or spectator accepts this offering and meets the actor at the same level. The kind of theatre that intersts me is a poor theatre, a holy theatre; that of Grotowski and Brook. This form of theatre does not aim at providing an audience with entertainment, or projecting at specific message throught the text. It's function is merely to evoke associations in the psyche of the audience through a series of specific sounds and gestures. So in trying to categorize the work i'm creating this fall, i'm saying that it lies somewhere between performance art and theatre. I am trying to bridge a gap in order to understand how they wrok together as well as how their functions differ.

Theatre does not need a stage, therefore there will be no stage for my performances. We will be in the streets and in any public space we see fit. This could include, sidewalks, parks, alleyways, parking lots, parking spaces, crosswalks, libraries, etc. The audience will not be specific one, there wil not be any advertising, no fliers, no posters. No one will reiceieve and invitaion and you will not need a ticket. In fact, I don't care if there is an audience at all. The people who witness these performances will do so by accident. They will not have planned it. It may be a delightful surprize, a bit of spontineity, or a inconvienent nusance. The audience will be the average passerby, who is going through the everday motions of life: 8:00 a.m. wake up, brush your teeth, take a shower, get dressed, go to work; 8:45 a.m. stop by Batorf and Bronson, get a coffee; 8:55 a.m. catch the dash line up to the Capitol; and so on. Theatre needs an auience, at least one spectator, performance art does not. Performance art is more of a selfish act. An Artist (of any medium) can work out an artistic concept through performance. The concept I am currently working on as a theatre artist is not clear. I know it has something to do with these characters i created last spring. Black suits, white faces, mannequin-like, the empty shells of businessmen maybe. I also wish to penetrate the concept of ritual, which in turn has something to say about our society and in the end reveals a truth about me.

Some have asked me about my methods of creating work like this. The answer sounds simple, but for me it can be quite stressfull, scary and unreliable, especially with the pressure of having to create these projects for college credit. It all starts with an image. This image, which is mostly fuzy in my mind, then resonates in my head for sometime until more images occur. This stage can take anywhere from a day to a month in my experience, but as the number of images increase so too does the frequency at which they occur. Sometimes i'll be thinking real hard about what a performance could be and nothing will come to mind. For days it is like this, and then all of the sudden all at once a bunch of great images come to me. Now the images start to take shape. Some are moving images, a gesture, a series of movements, sounds, arual images. It doesn't end there though. At this point i'm just left with a bunch of disconnected, scattered images--peices of a puzzle. It's my job now to try to find connections or a possible sequence of events. I try not to analyse my work as I'm working. I have little concern for what, if any, message or symbolism there might or could be. I just let the images work themselves into something that pleases me or stirs my emotions. The next step is to rehearse and workshop the the images. This is the materialization process--taking images from in my head and making them happen in the world outside. I start to construct the piece by gathering props and sounds, building structures, siting performance locations, then rehearsing and experimenting with different sequences of gestures and events until i/we find something that works. Then from there all is left is fine tuning before it is ready to be performed in public.

As I said, the work i will be performing this quarter will all be using the same character which i created last spring. Here is a production still from a peice title "OBJECT. CHAIR. TABLE."


There is no use in describing this performance, it was something you would have had to experienced to understand. That's the thing about theatre, it is a live experience. In order to have that encounter, you have to be there, open and willing to engage in it.


I have 2 peices I am working on this week. The first is for a performance festival called Microfest, which will be happening Saturday, Oct. 6th at the Red House in Olympia. And the second is for a street performance that will occur sometime next week in downtown Olympia. I have a couple sketches of the peice for the street titled "MILKMEN." Thes are preliminary sketches of the inital image that sparked this piece.



There will also be a text spoken in this performance by the actors--a sort of a dialouge i created call 'business babel', which spawned from an experience I had while at a sushi resturant involving a table full of businessmen.

I'll post a follow up on both of these performances along with some photos next week.