Saint Genet Paradisiacal Rites
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SAINT GENET PARADISIACAL RITES THU - SUN | MAY 16 - 19, 2013 ON THE BOARDS TABLE OF CONTENTS Credits......................................2 Curator’s Note..........................3 Saint Genet Mission.................4 Synopsis...................................5 Beginner’s Guide......................6 A brief introduction to Saint Genet Essay........................................7 Saint Genet and Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty Interview...................................9 Sara Edwards with Ryan Mitchell photos by Dan Hawkins CREDITS Associated Artists: Jeffry Mitchell, Casey Curran, Anna Telcs Director / Author: Derrick Ryan Claude Mitchell Performers: Thomas Vincent Chapel,Darren Dewse, Associate Director: Lily Nguyen Matt Drews, Garek Jon Druss, Sara Edwards, Managing Director: Sara Edwards James Kent, Brian Lawlor, Carl Lawrence, Art Direction / Design: NKO Derrick Ryan Claude Mitchell, Lily Nguyen, Set Design / Sculpture: Casey Curran NKO, Kate Ryan, Salo, Jessie Smith, Communications: Kate Ryan Alan Sutherland, Calie Swedberg Dramaturgy: Mallery Avidon, Melissa Henry Assistant to Mr. Mitchell: Carl Lawrence Choreography: Jessie Smith Paradisiacal Rites was co-commissioned by donaufestival (Krems, Austria) Assistant Choreography: James Kent and Luminato (Toronto Festival of Arts and Creativity). Developed in residency at Mighty Tieton. Composers/Musicians: Brian Lawlor, Salo, Garek Jon Druss Thanks to sponsors and partners On the Boards, Publicide, Youngstown, New Mystics, Luxe Riot, Northwest Film Forum and Trench Art Records. Guest Musician: Judith Reiter Sound Operation: Lily Nguyen Sound Consultant: Paurl Walsh Seasonal support for OtB is provided by Photography: Dan Hawkins Video Projections: Juniper Shuey Filmmaker: Wes Hurley Technical Direction: John DeShazo This production is sponsored by Costume Designer: Robinick Fernandez Associate Designer: Anna Conn The Andrew W. Technical Designers: Nora Franklin, Elfy Essex, Mellon Foundation Ande Williams Design Consultants: Nate French, Jordan Christianson CURATOR’S NOTE I first got to know Ryan Mitchell over dinner a year or so ago, On the which is funny in retrospect because I remember him saying that eating is undignified as he looked over the menu. We spent a long time talking about getting in shape and Yukio Mishima’s Sun and Steel and how the two of us should meet regularly to do pushups, pull-ups and squat thrusts on the concrete of city sidewalks. Even though we never ended up performing a single calisthenic together, that little exchange encapsulates Saint Genet’s approach to making art for me: all the physical exertion and working oneself into states of fatigue and pain; going to extremes – whether the denial of basic necessities or indulging in excess – both in the name of some kind of transcendence; and even the idea of being in public and inviting a community to grapple with this merry band of performance artists. Despite all of this apparent intensity, Saint Genet is essentially a group of gentle souls. Somewhere I read something about them invoking the word “family” to describe the group, which makes sense: if you’re going to do some of the stuff they do to and in front of one another then you might as well get comfortable as a unit. It might even be necessary. It will be exciting to see how work that is typically seen as one-offs in nontraditional spaces – warehouses and galleries and museums – unfolds over four nights and gets reframed by a professional theater space. This engagement will require tons of stamina and this plays right into their hands. They welcome taking as much time as necessary to achieve their own brand of crystalline imagery and intense incantations. Lane Czaplinski MISSION, Our audience meets the great apostle of singularity; MANDATES, PAINS, he holds a sword, not a mirror, to the throat. As the room slowly fills and silently we drown. AND PROVIDENCE Me, you, all of us our hearts pounding, we know that no one has the right to forgive, no one has the right to forgive, Being nothing, Saint Genet possess nothing, and tomorrow dawn will break, no one has the right to forgive, while we secretly pursue the imminent possession tomorrow dawn will break, and nothing is beautiful of everything. Doubtless, there are sorrows here; save that which is not. manifesting landscapes that are both banal and beautiful. Doubtless, there are wounds here; unique and different hidden these wounds are always hidden. We must believe that. They are our solitude and our most certain glory. Must we not? They are me you all of us. Doubtless, there is blood here. With blood and a puddle of gold we mourn the marriage of our invisible and anonymous patriarch, to our disowned and silent matriarch. Each nearly, nearly invisible. This is essential. Preferring nothingness to being, tension to enjoyment, substance and will, soul and consciousness, magic and freedom, concept and judgment collide, gnash, beat upon, and scream out again and again until misery has twisted itself into ecstasy revealing our coded and cursed black history. We revel here, serving no one; and if our oft’ feeble hands have hinted at poetry it is the poetry that unites us whether we are swine or not. KNEE I ACT II It is important not to imagine yourself as one My Tender Antigone or anotherprotagonist; or with one or another event Part ONE that has to do with your life. from Cain Jean Genet to Aesthete paraphrased The Break It isn’t a break; ACT I it is a drowning Part TWO cute little bastards hewn with tears Tutelary Goddesses: “There is no other source of beauty than the wound - unique, Madness & Death different for each person, hidden or visible, that every man keeps within, that hepreserves and whither he withdraws when he wants KNEE III to leave the world behind for a temporary but deep solitude” It is important that the Jean Genet audience encounter himself, the studio of Alberto Giacometti 1957 not the ups and downs of action. KNEE II Jean Genet misery has shaped itself like paraphrased ecstasy inside a twisted body done. to. death, but not yet dead... just left on the floor, or behind a shed, in a ditch...whatever... waiting for a shroud, or a veil, or decay to wash the face away... ACT III away... away... The Dead beautiful and silent and alone. To change any of this here there is gonna be blood up -drcm to the horses bridle in the streets. a piece of text cut Horses will have to bath up up up to their necks in blood. & forgotten but be not to be afeared. No no no it is not to be feared. It is a friend...drowning...drown little friend. C. Manson J. Jones -drcm in homage to Jean Genet 3. Saint Genet is a reconfiguration of the Stranger Genius Award BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO winning Implied Violence after co-founder Mandie O’Connell left the group in 2010. Implied Violence insisted that, “theater can be as SAINT GENET dangerous/infuriating/unpredictable as life and that theater can happen everywhere that life happens.” To this charge, they gave their 1. Saint Genet keeps it mysterious. Example: a quote by Saint Genet very visceral and surreal performances in a bouquet of venues, commenting on their upcoming performances for The Stranger’s 2012 including but not limited to fields, abandoned buildings, a soon to Summer AP guide reads, be demolished hotel on Aurora, on rooftops, and in alleyways. “On June 17, Saint Genet will ride to victory or death. On June 17, Saint Genet may or may not stage a performance for no audience. 4. Helping Saint Genet in their production are several hugely talented The company may or may not live in an apple-storage warehouse. Seattle-based collaborators. To name a few: fashion designer The apple-storage warehouse may or may not be planted with a wheat Robinick Fernandez, visual artist NKO (have you seen this mural?), field.” There was also talk of a trench, a mountain, a gaucho, nitrous choreographer Jessie Smith (Dead Bird Movement, also see her dance oxide, local dancer Alan Sutherland walking into the mountain, it in Gloria’s Cause by Dayna Hanson at OtB in 2010), kinetic sculptor collapsing, and a funeral “that lasts till dawn.” Casey Curran, musicians Garek Jon Druss & Brian Lawlor and Salo, and a bunch more. Check out Saint Genet’s website to view the full list So if I was going to read this quote as a metaphor for how it feels to of the artists involved. research Saint Genet and/or how it will feel to view them as an audience I would say: on the one hand, this quote made a lasting impression on 5. Saint Genet may have taken the intentions of Implied Violence me (probably because it caused me to simultaneously scoff and fall a and turned down a slightly more maniacal road. Leading up to little in love) . but it is also vague in a way that allows the reader no Paradisiacal Rites, the group hosted a series of performances called satisfaction in knowing what is going on, or when or why or for whom— Transports of Delirium which consisted of four installations performed but I’ll be darned if it doesn’t sound enigmatic and magical. Here is a over four weekends in an abandoned warehouse on Airport Way. ‘beginner’s guide’ to Saint Genet, which I feel has, necessarily, been a Transports was loosely based around the Jonestown Massacre, bit of a Sherlock Holmes series of deductions. the Manson trials, and the Oscars. The performances were viewed by invitation only, the structure of the audience was loose, and the 2. Saint Genet is named after the book Saint Genet, written about performance took hours. Many whip-its were done, many medicinal infamous writer Jean Genet by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1952. Part myth, leeches were applied to Ryan Mitchell, and much gold leaf was applied part truth, and part philosophy--the book is an exhaustive biography to various bodies.