It's been a while

but I've been preoccupied, lazy, taking qualifying exams for my Phd, and worrying that all this work won't result in an academic job eventually (rumors of lack of teaching positions in the field, or jobs being cancelled due to budget problems infest our department, but that's a different story).

I should be restudying for my oral exams on Thursday now, but I'm bored and feeling that instinctual hesitation that, I'm growing to believe, comes with realizing that I've studied enough and don't really need to do more.

Recent news: our experimental theatre company here in Lubbock now has a permanent home. We call it the Limelight Theatre:

It's located at 1104 Avenue J in the Depot District of Lubbock. For those of you unacquainted with Lubbock, this used to be the hurly-burly downtown area. After a tornado ripped it to pieces about 30-40 years ago, it became something of a ghost town and the hurly-burly relocated elsewhere.

It may be hard to believe, but the inside walls are of a brighter, more neon green than the outside. And, yes, we're keeping it. We want it to be a black box (actually it's a rectangle) theatre, but without the "black"ness. (The color black actually inhibits audiences from responding or laughing, yet black box theatres continue to be black.)

I called the local gas company and spoke with a very sweet woman who helped us set up an account for the space. She asked all sorts of questions about the space, what we were planning to do, even offering the suggestion of putting in a snack bar to augment our income (people in Texas are that friendly and talkative). Then she said something like, Y'all are so brave opening a business in this economy!

Yes, I suppose we are. But when you have an army of desperate, passionate theatre people willing to work on something like this and donate not just time but money to making it happen, well, it's sort of like being on the Titanic: if it's going to go down, at least we won't have to be in the rowboats alone, and the possibility of cannibalism will keep some of us alive until the Navy comes to our rescue.

We have two one-acts coming up in April: "Hell in Keller" and "Frank Lee Anne." HIK is a loose interpretation of Helen Keller's time as a vaudeville performer (seriously, she toured vaudeville for 4 years). FLA is about a drag queen hiding in his walk in closet and worshipping Anne Frank as his hero. We're also planning to have a Gay Prom at the beginning of May, an event hopefully done in conjunction with the Gay/Lesbian center on Tech campus. We figure something once a month will help keep it afloat, and there are so many people here who want a space to do something, it shouldn't be too difficult.

Helen Keller

The latest adaptation idea: merging the life history of Helen Keller with Helen of Troy. What the fuck do these two chicks have in common? I'll get to that.

Helen Keller: it suddenly occurred to me this morning that any dramatic depictions of Keller are from the point of view of the non-handicapped. Keller is seen as a freakish deformity---a little girl trapped in a silent dark world, etc.---and the movement of the plot involves bringing her into the proverbial light---or, to put it another way, teach her language.

I've read much too much postmodern theory lately (whilst studying for my quals) to swallow that one without gagging.

This is where the Trojan War comes in (apparently): Helen was abducted by Paris because he was "in love" with her, because she was "the most beautiful woman in the world," because her face "could launch a thousand ships," etc.

I'm much too jaded to swallow any of those without gagging.

The Helens move from one world into another and not without violence. Willing or not, good or not, beneficial or not, all depictions of both chicks are much too clean and unchallenged.

I got struck with an image: Helen Keller on stage, pulled at, punched, dragged about, yanked by actors all in black. That for Keller, lacking usual sensory input, it would seem as if her environment was acting upon her.

Discussing this with others today in the annex, I was asked if Helen Keller would either 1) hump someone's leg, or 2) shove food into her vagina. I think it's inevitable.

Homicide Reports

I started a new conceptual art project for my class (of the same name); this project is supposed to focus on serieses. It's a series of homicide reports about Kyle (the fiance).

Every day I write a new report that documents an incident in which I find him asleep and assume that he's dead. I managed to find online (after a serious amount of time searching) the homicide report of JFK. I "erased" the info about JFK, leaving only enough to create a (virtual) palimpsest.

What made me think of it? I don't remember. I do remember being in the annex and talking with Kyle Conway about it. He thought the idea of using homicide reports lovely.

It's an interesting process. My projects so far have been theatrically based. The previous blog was the latest. The one before that was Jackie's wig from MFMDing, and I presented it as her performance in the show. I wanted to get away from theatre and do something more personal.

Not that MFMDing or Wonderland or Gilgamesh (etc.) weren't personal---they were only heavily masked.

It's interesting filling out the form every day, filling in the boxes describing Kyle physically. But what I love most is the large (yet small) box for the narration of the events as well as the boxes for suspects and motives. I'm always the only suspect. My motives have become a long list---including everything from he didn't put dishes in the dish washer to he simply being my fiance.

Why? to call attention to the very serious event of coming upon someone dead---of sleep mimicking death---of knowing that its very possible that I will find Kyle dead one day. That of all people I would have the strongest likelihood of murdering him (and him me) because people who love one another are the first to kill each other (though, I've read this statistic is changing in light of the increase of serial killers in this country). That forms cannot truly document an incident, yet they do. Information collects, but what does it all mean. There is documentation of our relationship occurring, but what is it reflecting/revealing?

Roller Derby Hamlet

This was a recent art project I did for my Conceptual Art class. Can it be done? Should it?



Roller Derby Hamlet

CAST: The Maui Roller Derby Girls.
This is a group of trained roller derby players who compete on the island of Maui in Kihei. Though not publically advertised, the MRDG are also lesbians who, during their off time, engage in Jackass-type performance acts (for example, getting drunk and hitting each other with tasers).

PERFORMANCE:
The performance itself will be comprised of all or a selection of works listed below (excerpts will be chosen with the MRDG). The MRDG are not to be directed to perform the texts in any theatrically traditional fashion, nor should they perform the texts in ignorance. To do so might create a performance which could be unintentionally negative, insulting and condescending to the MRDG. The MRDG should be familiar enough with the language and subject of the works, allowing them to expand the works in any way they wish. This could include rewriting dialogue, adding and/or changing characters, altering storylines, etc. The MRDG are not to be fitted into the texts; the texts are to be sculpted so that they fit the MRDG.

TEXTS:
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Duclitus, Hrosvita
Medea, Euripides
The Cid, Corneille
Phaedra, Racine
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler
‘Night Mother, Marsha Norman
Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet
Fight Club
I Love Lucy
Michael Jackson’s Thriller Video
The Dark Knight
Queer as Folk
Silence of the Lambs
True West, Sam Sheperd
Married, With Children
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Notebook
South Park
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Jackass

Kazimir Malevich's Black Square:

How the fuck does one put such an artwork on stage? I could begin by explaining why this is a work of genius, but I think it would be a waste of time. (I'm getting tired of conversations about art, theatre or history that begin with apologies and arguments supporting why such things are important and how the discipline is valuable to study---history profs particularly like to begin semesters delving into these questions. It's all internalized anti-intellectualism..but I digress)

When I see this I think of actors in all black, their faces blacked out, their individuality physically engulfed by the blackness, yet they still retain something of a recognizable human form. As far as dialogue goes, I hear witches---not to associate the blackness with evil (or witches for that matter), but I hear the shrieking, cackling vocal noises usually associated with witches. I think of Jonson's anti-masque "The Masque of Queens," not for its content particularly, but its dramaturgical rebellion of producing a work of ugliness where ugliness wasn't allowed before: the creation of contrast and negation.

What are these shriking, cackling vocal noises talking about? What is their goal? What do they want and can they achieve it? Will it descend into a Beckettesque extentialist carosel of meaningless repetitions in a sad effort to generate meaning? (No, because that's cliche)

I won't know until I start writing.

ideas for productions for EAT!

During MFMDing, I kept thinking of ways to do theatrical adaptations of art works. Primarily because in MFMD we staged The Annunciation and The Pieta. Now that I'm taking conceptual art, my mind's gone kinda crazy with the concept. So I came up with:

The Gallery: Three rooms (staged at Boston Avenue Playhouse, where this would work) and each room has art works hanging on the walls, with actors before each piece peforming them. They would be art works that wouldn't necessarily be realistic, with recognizable human forms. I'm gravitating toward Duchamp, Kandinsky, Pollock, etc.

Maybe an entire room devoted to female nudes. Another devoted to conceptual, non-human forms. Another comics and/or graphic novels.

Phallus Pan: Our version of Peter Pan. This has the most excitement generating now, probably because everyone knows I'm not above strapping 5 foot phalluses to actors to make a point.

This one's still in the works, but I'm falling in love with it:

An adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank. Kyle Conway suggested (after he finished laughing) I call it Anne Frankenstein or Frankly Anne.

MFMDing recently closed...

and a few people came up to me and said they wanted to spent time inside my head. I've had this comment before. I've always found the comment flattering, if not a little weird, and have felt bad that I can't accomodate them. Or, to put it another way, I felt awkward because I couldn't offer them hospitality of time in my mind.

The idea of people coming into and out of my mind at their whim, to observe the hamsters race on their wheels and the crap dice shoot, isn't something I dream of. I doubt I could function under such scrutinization.

But technology has provided another option: blogging. It's not a pure, undiluted feed from my consciousness, but it's the next best thing. I'll try not to edit too much, but don't expect me to spread eagle either.