Jay Carlon

“House” Party – a reflective theatre study

The term “site” is, but not limited to, a physical, virtual, or historical space in which human interaction or reception occurs (or has occurred.)   Site-specificity pertains to the artwork in a particular “site” (venue, website, theatre, memory, etc.) and is (usually) created and housed in a specific arena for social, political, and cultural context.  Again, site-specificity is not limited to a particular site, but the artwork should be created with a mindfulness of its home.  In my case, site is – in a tradition sense for performance – the theatre.  Theatres, like museums, are spaces where artwork is exhibited.  However, I am using a theatre to critique social receptions of the theatre’s spectator.  This is similar to Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ 1973 series of “Maintenance Art” performances, discussed in Miwon Kwon’s “Genealogies of Site,” where she washed the entry plaza and steps of the museum for four hours.

In doing so, she forced the menial domestic tasks usually associated with women-cleaning, washing, dusting, and tidying-to the level of aesthetic contemplation, and revealed the extent to which the museum’s pristine self-presentation, its perfectly immaculate white spaces as emblematic of its “neutrality,” is structurally dependent on the hidden and devalued labor of daily maintenance and upkeep.

Similar to Ukeles, I presented a work in a conventional space for artwork, but in lieu of exhibiting it by the standards of the theatre/museum, I forced the audience to witness the art in another lens.  In effort to create a less-passive audience member, I strategically placed the audience on the stage whilst the performers represented an actual audience in the house seats.  Using Brechtian theatre, I abandoned a narrative and used interruptions like laughter, cheering, abrupt virtuosic dance sections, and stillness to remind the audience that they had an obligation as an active receiver of the art/performance.

This superficial swap of the audience and performers was employed to – literally – place the spectator in the typical performers perspective.  That shift in itself was not enough.  I experimented and altered the choreography using cut-and-paste techniques to find the proper timing of when each “moment” was appropriate.  Another approach I used was I asked my dancers a series of questions:

1. What is your dancer/improv personality or persona?
2. What are your pet peeves in audience etiquette?
3. What do you enjoy/expect in a dance performance?  …What do your family or friends expect?

I then asked myself to utilize the following:

• Inclusion: especially for my family – which includes the non-highbrow, layman folk that see something simple and mundane and don’t understand the beauty in it.  I suppose I’m not trying to say that I’m attempting to be the gateway drug for “high art,” but for my family, perhaps I am.
• Epic Theatre: reminding the audience that they are watching a representation of reality and not reality itself.

Throughout the process I found that the moments that worked best were when the performers acknowledged the audience as if they were audience members themselves.  There was definitely an element of participation and play involved in this piece, even in the moments where there was just stillness.  Incorporating staring, laughing, applauding, and cheering brought a reflective quality that I think was effective.  Breaking the fourth wall seems to help too.  Now, I think I’m interests lie in how I can break that fourth wall while still maintaining a [traditional] performance quality.  I know there are theatre techniques such as lifting the wings and turning on the house lights, but I think it would be interesting to see how solely movement can be the conduit.  I want my audience to be curious… and in the end not have the answers; instead, have more questions.