ART & PERFORMANCE NOTES

Julie Taymor’s Die Zauberflöte: Puppet theatre stage on the opera stage. Photo: Courtesy Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera, for the Performing Arts, New York.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2005.27.3.132 by guest on 29 September 2021 LA BELLE INDIFFERENCE

Patricia Coleman

Accidental Nostalgia, an Operetta on the Pros and Cons of Amnesia, written and performed by Cynthia Hopkins, accompanied by the band Gloria Deluxe. Under the Radar Festival at St. Ann’s Warehouse, January 5–23, 2005.

hat is so fascinating about and shifting into the externalized for- hysteria? Since its peak in mal stagings in the past 30 years of New W the late-nineteenth century, York’s downtown scene, it has informed and through the twentieth-century de- the style of performance, as in The velopment of psychoanalysis, it has para- Wooster Group’s stagings of a form of doxically represented the core of no- hystericized behavior. It has proved es- tions of subjectivity. New “dynamic pecially prominent in ’s psychiatry” saw in the hysteric secrets to Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, where explain the double nature of the “uni- many of his earliest productions fea- versal” human mind and experience, tured the female hysterical subject as a ironically reimagining the masculine traveler in a world of blurry definition. universal through the female hysteric. Developing from these traditions, Alongside Charcot’s Tuesday morning- Cynthia Hopkins’s Accidental Nostalgia performing hysterics at Salpêtrière, a draws on the history, both medical and lineage of writers, from Ibsen to André theatrical, of hysteria. Over a two-year Breton to Tennessee Williams, respec- period of development that began in tively, saw the hysteric’s dilemma as key 2002 at Dixon Place, Hopkins has cre- to the modern drama and idealized her ated a collage of identities to reimagine as the quintessentially creative creature, the interplay of notions of the amnesic one who allegedly performed for her and hysteric in the space of the theatre. own pleasure. Opening the piece, as the neurologist Throughout the past century, hysteria Cameron Seymour, Hopkins proposes has remained an undercurrent in the- to lecture the audience on the historical atre and the cultural imaginary. Emerg- understanding of psychogenic (or hys- ing from the hysterical characters and terical) amnesia in order to reframe our emotional content of modern drama usual understanding of it. But as the

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2005.27.3.132 by guest on 29 September 2021 singer and accordionist of her own songs nally stage left, Hopkins’s “real life” she reenacts memories that may or may band, Gloria Deluxe. Each section, not belong to her as author (both though always visible, proposes a box to Hopkins and Seymour) or as character be opened uniquely by her representa- (Seymour). By juxtaposing these two tion of memory: the lectern, activated ways of intertwined remembering—ex- by her presence behind it, stages the plication and immersion—Hopkins at- values and limits of empirical knowl- tempts a neo-Brechtian turn which gets edge; the screen reveals the byways and to the very question of subject forma- movements that produce and transport tion/development. What she frames di- us into memory—in videos of roads, a dactically in her lecture outlining the locomotive, a house, voyeuristic pas- contours of amnesia and memory for sageways into Seymour’s body; the band her audience, she counteracts by per- both produces the music that cu(r)es forming bitterly nostalgic lyrics in four- both Seymour’s and the audience’s nos- teen blues- and country-inspired songs. talgia and is the product of her own This music inexorably pulls the intellec- musical nostalgia. tualized Seymour into narratives of suf- fering and emotionality that she cannot But the stage is a memory theatre in resist, memory both overwhelmed by another way as well: it recalls the the- and overwhelming the amnesiac truths atres from which Hopkins’s own pro- of nostalgia. It is this intertwining of duction derives. In the tradition of The modes of remembering that reverses , two simultaneous per- hierarchy, rather than the lecture alone. formances that are neither behind the The nature of memory dictates that scenes nor entirely presentational con- amnesia may be kinder, in fact, than tribute to the central performance while memory. This reversal in turn forces a functioning as their own independent theatrical questioning of the very premise performances; overlapping spaces allow of theatre: what is so good about reen- both collaborations and transgressions. actment? Does returning to the place of From one end, the workshop of de- injury merely prolong injury? Hopkins signer/technician/performers, Jeff Sugg theatricalizes Pierre Nora’s lieux de and James Findlay, is visible, and they mémoires, proposing alongside them are as well. Equipped with Mac Power- éspaces d’amnésies—the places of memory books and iSight cameras, they create juxtaposed to spaces of forgetfulness. the mirage-like sets that Hopkins moves through and the PowerPoint collages The intertwining coalesces in her refer- that imitate the structure of the brain. ences to the Renaissance memory the- As performers and operators, Sugg and atre; in fact, her stage physically recalls a Findlay are more than merely unmasked memory theatre of the three sections puppet masters; they have what seems that make up Seymour’s/Hopkins’s to be free movement in the interior and “self”: a lectern downstage, a screen exterior of Seymour’s brain. Their pro- upstage center that projects us into jections serve as memory aids in addi- other spaces, the downstage presence of tion to producing new remembrances; technicians and their Macs recalling they leave their workshop to dance re- both the theatrical apparatus itself and strained but sexy vaudeville-inspired notions of mechanic memory, and fi- numbers or to peek underneath Sey-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2005.27.3.132 by guest on 29 September 2021 mour’s dress with an iSight, while prod- not; Hopkins never completely aban- ding her to disclose her remembered dons her teacherly tone. Unlike those victimization. During the song “Swarm singers Hopkins is compared to in re- of Bees” Hopkins lies on a hospital table views of the piece, “ part Lou Reed, part that Findlay manually revolves upside Patti Smith, part performance artist ” down. Onscreen, her body appears sus- (The Washington Post), and “Lotte Lenya’s pended in mid-air, as if she is perhaps kid sister shacking up in a cheap Atlanta hanging by a rope or dancing on a roof. hotel with Tom Waits” (Time Out New The moment produces dizzying intensi- York), Hopkins complicates their nos- ties through the shifting places of talgia with a narrative of self-knowledge Seymour’s inside and outside and the achieved by analysis, or at least a thor- alternating positions of Findlay and ough reading of psychoanalytic litera- Hopkins as master and victim. As ture. As Hopkins sings in “Cover Me Hopkins sings, she produces an auto- With Your Darkness”—“the best way to hypnotic trance. Her voice seems to believe you have control is to self split from her, partly a simple physical destruct.” reality as upside down the blood is rushing to her head, but also she/ Hopkins’s pursuit of self remains after Seymour sings as a victim of incest, the songs end, sought elsewhere in other recalling how she described patterns on nostalgic artifacts of the production. the wall, rather than feeling/remember- Her stories recede and fall out of her ing the physical realities. Her theatre grasp, that is, she tests their limits and seeks always to find a/the subject; it then lets go to find some other kind of strains to reproduce the hysteric as self, evocative cueing. Once the lecture has finding nothing but performances all reached the limits of “lab study,” the way down. Seymour conducts a “field study,” de- ciding and promising to track down her The switch from inside to out is made self by uncovering the memories lost possible by the remembered presence of through amnesia. She will go to her Hopkins’s own band and her perform- hometown in Carlson, Georgia, where ances of the songs. Hopkins’s songs, her memories and thus her self may such as “Swarm of Bees,” often begin as have been buried: perhaps as the result stories that she appears in control of, of the trauma of her mother’s death; or but then she trails off into a world of perhaps as the result of the sexual abuse amnesia and hysterical imaginings. It is she suffered at her father’s hands; or her own songs and singing that propels perhaps as a result of her father’s mur- her/Seymour forward to reenact with- der, suicide or disappearance. It is to out any reason. The narratives of her this imagined and remembered child- songs pull and strain against the struc- hood that she runs to find fixity, and yet tures of her dissociated person. They are paradoxically, she fleas to avoid being hysterical performances, which both map fixed; to “Sweet Pretty Lies,” the finest this disembodied memory and burst orchestration in the piece, she tears a forth from an unremembered, but not childhood diary to shreds rather than forgotten past. The songs seem about to read it; she refuses to be arrested by release something, perhaps even her self, childhood friends turned cops, choos- in the process, but they cannot, they do ing instead to break her neck. She

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2005.27.3.132 by guest on 29 September 2021 “jumps” through the window of the The greatest strength of the production house that Sugg and Findlay have fabri- is this balance of distance and closeness, cated by filming a maquette with an dissociation and embodiment, defor- iSight and then projecting it onscreen, mity and seduction. This is most clearly actually diving below the screen and visible in Hopkins’s characterization of thus escaping her pursuers. In this one Seymour. She maintains what Foreman pivotal turn in the plot line, Seymour in his early productions called the atti- refuses to pursue more memory. The tude of actor as “teachers in front of a one piece of evidence she recovers from class, writing lines for dictation on the her narrow escape turns out to be, in a blackboard for students to practice their perfect melodramatic turn that would penmanship” (Unbalancing Acts). For not have been out of place in nine- Foreman this was a Brechtian means to teenth-century proto-hysteric drama, keep the actors from too great a reliance adoption papers, which offer to both on empathy, but it also established/ cancel out the past and provide a new portrayed a hysterical (traumatized) dis- identity for the future. When she dis- sociation—the famous Rhoda stare. It covers that she is not the “natural” is a kind of dissociation that is also daughter of her presumed parents, but visible in LeCompte’s work with The perhaps the birth daughter of an ad- Wooster Group: a psychology that per- mired icon, she accepts—chooses to meates the structure of the production believe—her amnesia and to remember even if it is not meant to serve as the relativity of stories, identity, and analysis of characters. Hopkins makes memory. this dissociation (her) material, the struc- ture of her production and her role. As the stories dissolve, so too her char- This is clear in her multiple personas acter slips from her grasp; she can no from the beginning of the performance. longer be so sure if she is or ever was She comes equipped with a mission: to Henrietta Bill or Cameron Seymour or reinhabit the dissociated self and talk to any of the other imagined characters. her audience from inside it, to produce She seeks answers in the future, unable a “hysteric theatre” perhaps. She to find them in her past; she imagines a switches, as if dancing, from the posi- fresh start, a new identity, or identities, tion of observer to observed and back perhaps. She runs away again; the again. Her gestures, neatly chosen, and “happy ending” of the piece in which choreographed by Jordana Che Toback, Seymour ends up in Morocco seems to eloquently demonstrate the measure that proffer an answer where there is none. is taken both to watch oneself and be Lying within it are the endings of fan- watched by oneself. Most pointedly and tasy and performance as well, but this explicitly, Hopkins performs one recur- longed-for space where there is satisfac- ring gesture that describes the mechani- tion cannot be grounded in the terms of cal act of choosing a thought: two the rest of the play. It (and she) must fingers on each side of her head, one escape the frame of even this fractured over another, denote recording memory. plot in order to provide a possibility of Each time the gesture reappears it ac- giving up reenacting, and resisting the centuates Hopkins as accumulator of desire to remember trauma. the devices—Charcot’s medical theatre

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2005.27.3.132 by guest on 29 September 2021 Left: Cynthia Hopkins with her accordion in Accidental Nostalgia. Bottom: Hopkins and James Findlay perform “Swarm of Bees.” Photos: Courtesy Paula Court.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2005.27.3.132 by guest on 29 September 2021 Right: Hopkins and Findlay. Bottom: Hopkins en fuite to Morocco. Photos: Courtesy Paula Court.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2005.27.3.132 by guest on 29 September 2021 or perhaps Foreman’s Egyptology tri- The production’s look is rooted in New angle—that have been used to portray York avant-garde performance in large and describe the hysteric, and as she part because the young group of per- inhabits these, she also exhibits them formers and crew has been qualitatively like artifacts. schooled by the stalwarts of that scene. The director of Hopkins’s performance, In interviews, Hopkins often seems be- DJ Mendel, has acted in Foreman’s mused by the difficulty others have in productions and recently directed Hop- categorizing her music, the stories in kins in Planet Earth, a screenplay writ- her production and even the produc- ten by Foreman in which Mendel fur- tion itself: an operetta, a theatre per- ther demonstrates his comfort and formance with songs, a concert with familiarity with the themes of hysterical scenes? The work is certainly fractured paralysis and dreaming that comprise in so many directions to frustrate any Foreman’s vocabulary. The choreogra- individual plotline: it is divided as five pher of the production, Toback, has chapters (though I count only four), danced in the Mark Morris Company three acts and fourteen songs. This al- and choreographs for the hybrid, lows her to layer and refer, to thematize Chicago-based performance group the self’s elusiveness. The explicitness Fischerspooner. Sugg and Findlay are about the performance’s workshopped associate members of The Wooster history raises questions about when Group and have their own respective pieces became fixed—how much of this companies, Collapsable Giraffe and layering is memories of earlier versions? Radiohole. Hopkins has written music Some of the more traditional structures for several theatre companies, winning within the piece are like remnants, shards Obies for Big Dance Theatre’s play of other forms, other works. At earlier Another Telepathic Thing and Ridge points in its development, for example, Theatre’s Jennie Ritchie. She also has Hopkins thought of calling the play “a collaborated with DJ Mendel on the good old-fashioned thriller” and the music for his film, Make Pretend. current production retains some of that form’s qualities, especially in the second Hopkins has mastered and rendered act. If the search involved two people— explicit the implicit suggestions of the a man chasing down a woman, for avant-garde of woman’s role in generat- example—it would be the woman’s in- ing hysteria in theatre. Her virtuosity— teriority that escapes the man in mys- as both performer and bricoleur—is tery befitting the stylization of film noir what allows the audience to embrace or maybe Bartleby’s escape from the Hopkins’s traumatic play, her trauma- understanding of the lawyer/narrator. tized roles, and to see in her one’s own In the spirit of a Dennis Potter mystery wounds. This hysteric theatre asks the (an influence Hopkins cites), Seymour audience to see and love it, for like a is always just on the verge of catching patient or a performer in her own cru- up with the culprit, when suddenly she cible, she ignites the flames that both becomes distracted by music and her engulf her subjectivity and allow it to be nostalgia and carried off in another reformed anew. Hopkins balances the direction, into another character. popular music that stands in for and

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2005.27.3.132 by guest on 29 September 2021 performs her own seduction against the work rather than on the work itself. dissociation that provides distance and Nevertheless, Hopkins goes beyond be- safety from seduction, trilling on the ing a fine performer. She is almost boundary between hysteria and amne- single-minded in her pursuit of some sia. Yet this virtuosic adeptness can also other unimagined space—to embrace leave her audience (like the one I heard forgetting. More than the happy ending the night that I attended) commenting of the piece, ever-recurring reenactments on the many wonderful talents of evoke that “absent” space in Accidental Hopkins or particular qualities of the Nostalgia.

PATRICIA COLEMAN is a Ph.D. candidate at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center where she is writing her dissertation, Rhythmic Juggling, on disembodied voice in avant-garde theatre and recorded voice in Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric productions.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2005.27.3.132 by guest on 29 September 2021