If theatre is the world in microcosm, what's tabletop theatre?

[imomus]

From Nose To Mouth, the film Hisae acted in last year, is now available in its entirety in the new SpecialTen DVD magazine. You can see a clip of it on their site. The clip also shows Silvia Mercuriali as an ice skater, and last night Hisae and I met with Silvia in Kreuzberg to experience Etiquette, a miniaturised theatre piece (running as part of HAU's experimental Cut and Paste series) she's put together with artistic partner Anton Hampton (they call themselves Rotozaza).



Basically, "Etiquette" is tabletop theatre: an experiment in which two people, sitting at a table in the theatre cafe, slip on headphones for thirty minutes and follow a series of instructions and dialogue lines fed to them. There is no audience, apart from yourselves and the people glancing over from other tables in the cafe. The props are some little figures, some white blu-tak, a blackboard "stage", a tiny LED torch, a pipette you fill with water to make it rain on the palm of your partner's hand (which becomes a hilly landscape at one point), a notepad and pen, and a stamp.



The story coming over the phones (via a Dolby DVD containing two interlocking sets of stereo instructions) didn't make much sense to me -- there were snatches of Ibsen's "A Doll's House", some excerpts from cop show Colombo, a dialogue in a cafe between a philosopher and a prostitute, some instructions relating to a woman leaving her husband, some flirtation, and something to do with blood in a bathroom. There was no room for improvisation on the part of the performers, and reading your lines -- or hearing your partner's lines -- was difficult with the headphones on and background noise (including music) in the cafe.



Some interesting questions came out of the conversation we had with Silvia after performing the play. She got us in free, but what's the financial etiquette here? Normally the performers have to pay to do this play. Shouldn't they both pay (as the audience) and get paid (as the performers)? Shouldn't they give ten euros as they arrive, then get ten euros as they leave?



We thought about art pieces that work by some of the same principles -- Yoko Ono's "Instructions for Paintings" (early 1960s), for instance, which allows amateurs to make paintings she merely specifies, or recent Relational Aesthetics stuff like Tino Sehgal's piece at the ICA, where he got children to guide adults around the building. Rotozaza's next piece takes place in Japan, at a festival of art in cars. They'll drive two members of the audience (who'll gradually discover they've been "kidnapped") in a car around the Shikoku island of Kochi.



What was interesting about "Etiquette" was how it reproduced the basic theatre experience in miniature. You were suddenly not just an unprepared (and amateur) actor repeating lines, but someone defining spaces on the blackboard stage, lighting props (I threw a lovely spot onto the blu-tak at one point, I was quite proud of the way I lit it) and moving tiny figures around. It resembled child's play, a doll's house or puppet theatre. It also reminded you of one of theatre's great strengths -- the way it can set up and play out the consequences of a series of etiquettes which differ from those operating in the everyday world, and whose arbitrariness contains the suggestion that all etiquettes are arbitrary. If the world is a kind of theatre, and the theatre is a kind of world in microcosm, the malleability of etiquettes in theatre has big implications for the malleability of the world itself. We could pinch the world into new shapes as easily as we pinch and stretch a blob of blu-tak. If theatre is the world in microcosm, tabletop theatre is theatre in microcosm; it contains both theatre and world, shrunk down to fingertip scale.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Anyone following the Tino Sehgal link will have read the Evening Standard's critic saying:

"For where once the pushing of boundaries in art gave the ICA its purpose, that very concept now appears extremely tired."

It's a lovely example of a conservative British defense mechanism you could call "I yawn at excitement". It also gets trapped in "recursive circles". If excitement is boring, what's the new excitement, boredom? If pushing the boundaries is "tired", what do you do to offset fatigue, respect boundaries? Is respecting boundaries the new pushing boundaries? These are the kind of logical leaps you have to perform when your worldview is basically conservative, but you want to damn the opposition by calling them conservative.

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

Won't be long before passivity is the new interactivity!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be "interpassivity"?

It sounds like the mid-90s Blam! slogan "Interactivity is a lie!" (they programmed Blam, a "CD-ROM", to be unstoppable -- you had to crash your computer to get out of it). Maybe we need a Web 2.0 implementation of "Interactivity is a lie!" For instance, a YouTube upgrade that makes it impossible to watch anything except the featured recommendations they've made a little more intrusive each time new technology allows it.

"Welcome to YouTube -- interpassivity is the new interactivity!"

A post-theatre planet

[(Anonymous)]

"If the world is a kind of theatre.. if theatre is the world in microcosm.." To be honest, I'd be happy to see this concept pass, with the twentieth century and 9/11. Stemming from Freud, where elements of the mind co-acted like independent characters, rather than machinic; or an end-of-colonial tendency to apply similar sets of relationships/personalities to nations and even ideologies. Does anyone think that George Bush can't see how he is strengthening Ahmadinejad's position by threatening him? Of course he does. The trouble is that the valuable theatre of it all conceals the machinics. The post-theatre planet may take a few centuries, but we'll get there.

Anyway, thanks for thought-provoking on a wet Saturday.

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

Bravo!

magnolia is the new black

[(Anonymous)]

Good addendum post. What indeed does Guner mean by that comment? Does he have a caveat with boundary-pushing for it's own sake (which in itself can be as reactionary and empty of ideas as a more traditionally defined conformity of stasis) or is he witlessly tilting a crooked lance at progressive art in general?
Thomas S.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

If pushing the boundaries is "tired", what do you do to offset fatigue, respect boundaries?

Yes.

If the bombast of transgression has become boring, then we've no one to blame but ourselves. It's far more interesting to tease and toy with the boundaries--obey them here, jab at them there--instead of bursting through them recklessly like a twit. The ideas might kep their flavor far longer.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"It's a lovely example of a conservative British defense mechanism you could call "I yawn at excitement".If excitement is boring, what's the new excitement, boredom? If excitement is boring, what's the new excitement, boredom?"

You're presuming everything boundary pushing = exciting. Not everything boundary pushing is exciting. In fact, in my experience, things that push the boundaries tend to ask us to intellectually re-evaluate the mediocre, rather than present us with "excitement".

I'm 99% sure your response to this will be "Yes but in re-evaluating and appreciating the mediocre, isnt the birth of a new perspective, a new way of seeing the world the most exciting thing of all?" which leads me onto my next point:

"If pushing the boundaries is "tired", what do you do to offset fatigue, respect boundaries?"

Well, yes, if necessary. I'm not saying that pushing boundaries is tired, but I do think there's nothing wrong with respecting certain boundaries if it more effectively communicates your intentions.

To quote you:
"The story coming over the phones didn't make much sense to me... There was no room for improvisation on the part of the performers, and reading your lines -- or hearing your partner's lines -- was difficult with the headphones on and background noise (including music) in the cafe."

For a piece that's supposed to "expose human communication at both its rawest and most delicate", leaving the participant understanding little and even straining to hear the communication is definitely a sign that the medium and perhaps the content is lacking somehow.'Etiquette', from what I gather of it, is a very typical case of art being pseudo-intellectually annotated behind the scenes (http://www.rotozaza.co.uk/etiquette2.html), whilst the participant is left scratching their head because theres too much emphasis on "breaking boundaries" going on. Sometimes more traditional methods are better implimented if you're trying to communicate something important. It's a balancing act.


On a slightly different note... almost everything this piece of art tries to achieve is also achieved by a boardgame thats been at the centre of geek culture for decades: 'Dungeons & Dragons' and other traditional roleplaying boardgames in general. And honestly I think I'd enjoy those more than this.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You put this thought better (or at more length, anyway) back in April, in response to a post I made about Yasunao Tone and Shelley Hirsch (http://imomus.livejournal.com/282256.html) (I just re-read it because I bumped into Shelley today and she told me the post had been rather hurtful to her at the time):

"As is the case with design, architecture, clothing, etc., we apes have needs and limitations in our art, too. Something can be inscrutable, but shouldn't lapse into unintelligibility. We humans use relationships to make sense of things. No relationships, no art. It's far more challenging to push and pull at those nebulous margins than disregard them outright--find all those uncanny valleys along the rim rather than simply hurtle into the chaotic void (I won't bring up lines, squiggles and dots...)

Avant Conventionalism is an insufferable bore in a similar way that mainstream forms are. With mainstream fare, you know exactly what you're going to get and when--all structure, with very little improvisation. With avant conventionalism, you never actually get anything, which is just as tedious--no patterns, no form, no structure--hence, just as predictable. Maybe that is why earlier avant garde forays are more interesting and enjoyable that what came afterwards--sometimes you got it, sometimes you didn't. The event horizon exerts a pleasingly gentle pull.

Better to flit in the space between the two ossified conventions, throw in a bit of structure with the chaos, play them off of one another: showbiz schmaltz meets oblique narrative, folk meets glitch, silly moustaches meets pixels, etc."

[signorphibes (from livejournal.com)]

Some subcultures insist or focus on "pushing the boundaries" as a way to stay the same over and over - say, goth imagery of sexual transgression thru allusions to fetishism or S/M - whereas mainstream pop culture has probably already digested that stuff. The emphasis on "pushing the boundaries" is rarely a refreshing tract in art. The critic is trying to explain Sehgal's work in these "rebellious" terms that talk very poorly of the extremely specific preoccupations of this artist. The critic's words would probably better fit the latter works of Saatchi's ex-enfant prodiges

[skazat.livejournal.com]

KABOOM!

http://www.pmog.com/

kookle

[(Anonymous)]

Art is dead; we have killed it.


Latham "Idiot" Green

[(Anonymous)]

More importantly. What did you have for your breakfast? nothing more please.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"With avant conventionalism, you never actually get anything, which is just as tedious--no patterns, no form, no structure--hence, just as predictable."

How did you come to that conclusion?

I dont agree with Whimsy that "recklessly bursting through boundaries" is boring, but I also don't agree with you that Avant-conventionalism is predictable. I believe both have their place dependent on the artist intentions.

Forgive me if these next explanations seem patronisingly obvious:

Mainstream forms of expression implement straightforward narrative, techniques and imagery to convey a message to the audience. For example, I'm using standard English to converse with an audience right now. My intentions are to be straightforward, and this is the best method for this. However, if we wish to truly broaden our ideas & culture we have to delve into the experimental.

"Avant-Conservatism" is a balancing act. You want to stretch the boundaries without breaking them. For example, poetry is a good example of this -- In general it's experimental with its use of language without breaking through the syntax. To hear you scoffing at Avant-conservatism is baffling because it's the method your entire musical career is built upon. As I said before, it's a balancing act; It allows a degree of experimentation but retains a degree of its broad communicational capacity. This method is best implemented when you have a message to convey to the audience, but you want to do it in an unobvious way.

"The avante garde" disregards straightforward communication to the point it becomes uncomprehensible. Where mainstream form is the automaton and avant-conventionalism is the domesticated, avante gardism is the untamed. With the untamed comes total freedom (a very exciting prospect) but it's a freedom in isolation. It leaves people scrambling in the dark as to what it's supposed to mean; your only option is let the viewer take a shot in the dark, and that shot in the dark will almost always without exception miss the mark (if there is a mark at all).

In summery:

Mainstream form allows for crystal clear clarity but it lacks the capacity to broaden ideas and culture. Avant-conservatism tries to balance mainstream and Avant garde and is effective as a way of broadening boundaries whilst still communicating the artist's message to the audience. The Avant garde is free and wild; it destroys the boundaries, but leaves everyone in the dark and the artist in isolation.

These 3 catagories are obviously separated within a spectrum. And you know what? I enjoy all 3. Anyone who doesnt is either an ignoramus or a snob, and both of those types of people are intolerable.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Eggs, mate. The rest is silence.

late..

[(Anonymous)]

i'm sorry to be late to this, as it seems there needs some clarification. Kumikoji (?) is so way off the mark, it's a shame he wasn't able to try it out before making comparisons with Dungeons and Dragons! Etiquette is in no way a game. I've never been much into competition and never board games. It's a common misunderstanding though, as in pictures of people doing ETQ it always end up looking like it's a game of some kind. But it's not: as Nick (who experienced it) said, it's theatre.

The balance we had to strike in making the work is between allowing an audience to actually experience something themselves (like in any theatre piece, nothing too pseudo intellectual about that), and the practical challenge of producing a performance for the person opposite you simply by following instructions. There's a generosity of spirit involved - and a concentration on the live moment - which is very much at odds with any idea of 'gaming'. I'm not going to get drawn into useless conversation about whether or not pushing the boundaries is necessary (not now, in 2007), but Lord Whimsy pretty much describes Etiquette for me with his 'showbiz schmaltz meets oblique narrative, folk meets glitch, silly moustaches meets pixels'...

.. anton