PAJ77/No.06 Sabatini

FROM DOG TO ANT The Evolution of Lee Breuer’s Animations

Arthur J. Sabatini

BOOK REVIEWED: Lee Breuer, La Divina Caricatura: A Fiction, Koben- havn & Los Angeles: Green Integer #43, 2003.

Outside a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog it’s too dark to read. —Groucho Marx

a Divina Caricatura, subtitled A and his comedy abrasive, is not just a Fiction by Lee Breuer, is narrated wild duck. L by and based on the life of a dog, mainly. You might know the dog if In La Divina Caricatura, it becomes you have followed Lee Breuer and clear that while he may have been mak- Mabou Mines’ works for the past thirty ing mayhem with Mabou Mines, he has years. Her name is Rose, a mutt whose also been engendering a substantial tales wag on about her love life and the mytho-theatrical cycle of plays and a fate of her friends, lovers, and incarna- singular approach to acting and per- tions. Rose is not Breuer’s only animal formance that brings together world attraction. He has been walking and theatre traditions and American pop talking with animals for his entire ca- culture. Moreover, his comedie animale reer and features an imaginary menag- descends from a lineup of notable think- erie in the very titles of his plays: The ers, most of whom he merrily misreads. Red Horse Animation, The B. Beaver, “To misunderstand is to transmute,” he The Shaggy Dog Animation, The Warrior claims, and “to transmute is to make Ant, Epidog, and Ecco Porco. Far more from another one’s transmogriﬁed self.” than a zoo story, Breuer’s batty vision is (There is, I suspect, an entire theory of at once biotoonic (biology + cartoons) acting in that mutter.) Unlike Breuer’s and mythopreposterous. It is conceived previous publications, which are mostly within a concoction that mingles Hin- in script form, La Divina Caricatura duesque cosmology and snatches of recombines and annotates his cockeyed sociobiological hypothesizing with nods plots and looney scenes as a narrative. to Dante, Disney, and Nietzsche. But, This allows for a more interiorized per- Breuer, whose language can be explosive spective on his characters and their

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048250 by guest on 30 September 2021 relationships. The book concludes with lines, varies the layout and typography, a twenty page Summa Dramatica, in and interpolates new material. Unlike which one of Breuer’s characters sum- plays, the novelistic (re)formulation frees marizes his approach to performance him to indulge in literary, authorial and matters of the spirit. Overall, then, spiels, and insider asides. On the page, Là Divina Caricatura offers an opportu- Breuer’s punsterism is incessant: “I nity to track Breuer’s mythmaking, in- dreamed I was Computer Literate and quire into his sources, and speculate sent you an Email in my mind . . . I was about his deeper doings. Pregnant John I’m Happy to Announce we have a Love Litter,” Rose types. That More than two decades ago, Bonnie Breuer opted to metamorphose his the- Marranca identified Breuer’s creativity atre texts into a novel speaks to his sense in terms of a “personal mythology,” of intertextuality and performance, which revolves around love, creativity, narrativity, and processes of cultural and artistic success in the fractured pop transmission and reception. and cultural scenes in America. (see the PAJ title Animations: A Trilogy for Mabou La Divina Caricatura has two long Mines, 1979) Her insightful introduc- Canticas and sixty pages of endnotes tion to the volume compares Breuer to and appendices. Cantica I, John and Spalding Gray and Richard Foreman, Rose, begins with Rose’s “Dear John” among others, in the context of an letter about her emotional dependency “auto-mythopoeic” strain in American and sexual involvement from Venice avant-garde theatre. She also alludes to Beach to Avenue B. (This is The Shaggy the mythmaking practice of “bricolage,” Dog Animation.) John’s infidelities are cited by Claude Lévi-Strauss, and marks tallied along with his breakthrough into Breuer as “the Groucho Marx of the the Downtown Manhattan Art World. American avant-garde.” But what began Rose’s lament comes from her heart and with nascent autobiographical content New Jersey, where she is a patient at the and a sophisticated joker’s take on the- Institute for the Science of Soul (ISS) in atre has, cumulatively, evolved into an Cheesequake, N.J. She is being treated extensive and complex system of thought for Animation Addiction and Anima- and practice. By now, Breuer’s oeuvre tion Abuse. The Animation theme ac- loops together several interconnected counts for the book’s new material. narratives, recurring characters, signa- ture images and motifs, all suffused Rose’s story continues three years later, with an elaborating dramatic (yet comic) in A Prelude to Death in Venice, as she and serious (though comical) metaphysi- imagines/writes/lives in a movie script cal depth drawn from his lifelong rein which John cracks up while he is searches and personal and professional being scripted into a film version of journeys. Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (as in Venice Beach, California). In perform- La Divina Caricatura derives from The ance, John handles two street corner Shaggy Dog Animation, A Prelude to telephones and engages in rapid bursts Death in Venice, Epidog, and Ecco Porco. of conversation. A Bunraku puppet, To novelize them, Breuer edits out stage crafted as a replica of John, was at- directions and photographs. He rewrites tached to the live actor’s chest, and its

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048250 by guest on 30 September 2021 ventriloquized voice and actions doubled ces on topics ranging from meditation the doubling of voices from off-stage and sex to dieting and “Petamony” actors. For La Divina Caricatura, Breuer claims. One “official” letter concerns replaces playscript formulae with cin- Worker’s Compensation: “The law must ematic shot and camera angle directions provide a definition of Reality. For if a as a frame for the utterances. For audi- Character is proven to be Unreal, all ences, the mise-en-scène with an actor/ Bets, including Worker’s Compensation, puppet, multiple voices, and narration- are off.” Here and elsewhere Breuer’s within-narration is captivating. In a satire smells of Jonathan Swift, whose book, the layering of narrative perspec- Tale of a Tub is a riotous compendium tives—by representing spoken voices, of Prefaces, Introductions and Digres- written notes, movie script lingo, tele- sions. Breuer is also Swiftian in his phone talk, and quotations from Mann’s unhinging of holy leanings, unfettered Venice—amplifies Breuer’s thematic dis- depictions of human bodily functions, course on the invasive mediation and and penchant for animal leavings, lov- animation of consciousness. ing and logic.

As John talks on the phone on Man- La Divina Caricatura is written in para- hattan’s First Avenue, Rose is creamed graphs consisting of from six to forty by a garbage truck and winds up among phrases (sans periods). Uttered in Rose’s roving Lost Souls in Bardo. Thirteen first person dogese and an omniscient years later, the saga continues in Cantica mindvoice dotted with old radio tunes, II: Ecco Porco. Rose is befriended by there is a letter writing form of address John’s former lover, Suelee, who is work- for most passages that has the quality of ing on a Master’s thesis on Gender Beckettian rants. With typographic fonts Ontology at Brown (this is An Epidog). aplenty—bolds, italics, and flights of Suelee’s subject is Diogenes and the cursives—the text bounces with Breuer’s Cynics. She is arguing that the Cynics, propulsive rhythmicity, vernacular grit, or the dogs, were Feminists. Amidst ear highjinks, and proclivity for skewer- discussions of Love, Feminism, Specia- ing intellectual sources at the drop of a tion, Animal Rights, and Spirituality, dime. Burroughsian, Jimmy Dean Joyc- Suelee and Rose have an extraordinarily ean, Lacanian—Breuer’s brew dashes erotic and intellectual affair. The novel doo wop hip hop lyricism up against closes with a rapturous prose poem on pomo banter and classical gags. Con- female love, the heavens, and death. sider the following. John is in a crisis, Rose dies again, but she is reborn as a it’s past mid-Saturday night and he is Warrior Ant. standing between two pay phones on 6th St. and Avenue B: “A fiction with documents” might be another subtitle for La Divina Carica- Who am I talking to? (We’re at Љ 1 Љ tura. The paperbound 6 x 4 /2 format- #29) We’re back on the Hotline ted book includes a pastiche of letters, Back to the Damoclean Angle questionnaires, transcriptions of therapy Back to a high Angle Oh just sessions, and mock-medical forms. It some Bitch whose got my contains screeds, recipes, and appendi- Number Can you hear the

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048250 by guest on 30 September 2021 Music That’s my Number It’s remarks, his autobiographical project. on the Track “Jack You make She says Breuer is not narcissistic in my Lips Smack Lemon Ice”... relation to his life, but “self-projected.” More directly, Aschenbach’s creative and Breuer’s linguistic lip service is hilarious identity cum sexual crisis in Mann’s for the hip. It is mixed allusively with story appears, in Breuer’s Prelude and La slices of the sacred and scientiﬁc, then Divina Caricatura, to underscore John’s shaken and stirred, profusely: “Soul is artistic dysfunction and hopeless aes- Orgasm . . . One’s Orgasm is one’s thetic idealism. Mann, who disdained spiritual address—one’s dot org.” For popular culture, found dogs comfort- decades, Breuer’s performance texts have ing. His longer than any shaggy dog been an anathenenema (excuse me) to story I’ve ever heard, A Man and His the theatre’s more righteous rear-garde Dog, is an eloquent love letter to a seat packers. La Divina Caricatura piles short-haired German pointer named it on, including pop porn in the form of Bashan. Part character study, part re- several crude and tender interspecies sex port on Bashan’s recovery period in a scenes. clinic, if it is not one of Breuer’s soul sources for Rose, I will be doggoned. Watching and listening to Breuer’s actors in performance makes you realize A Man and His Dog, from 1918, is a how visceral and volatile language can sentimental narrative about a bourgeois be. Reading his prose leads you in other gentleman and his daily walks with his directions. For example, there is the dog. Written in copiously detailed, con- matter of his sources. In addition to versational prose, the novella became a ’toons, rock and roll and intercultural best seller and is generally regarded as a theatre, Breuer, a California kid, has piece of escapism Mann wrote in order often spoken about being inﬂuenced by to avoid addressing Germany’s predica- Kafka’s writings. But while Kafka’s per- ment immediately after World War I. turbed cockroach (“Metamorphosis”), Since 1954, the English translation has mild mannered ape (“A Report to an appeared in a collection titled, Death in Academy”) and curious canine (“Inves- Venice and Seven Other Stories. Recog- tigations of a Dog”) bear some resem- nizing Mann and A Man and His Dog as blance to Breuer’s beasts, it is another one of Breuer’s sources does not grandly German writer who seems more kin to alter our understanding of Breuer and his more dogged concerns. “Desire pro- his dog. But, insofar as Breuer monkeys jected itself visually” for Gustave Aschen- with Mann explicitly in two of his bach, writes Thomas Mann, of the pro- major works, it is worth speculating tagonist of his famous novella, Death in about what relationship he might have Venice. Following Mann’s writer, Rose to that of the 1929 Nobel Prize-winner. moans, “O to be a Creative individual A Filmmaker To project the light of Compared to Breuer’s lovesick Rose or, one’s Desire onto the objects of this for that matter, Kafka’s Kantian Snoopy, world.” Similar phrasings seem apt for Bashan is Lassie in LaLaLand. Pages are describing Breuer’s vigorously sexual- devoted to observing the dog’s histrion- ized mises-en-scène and, as Marranca ics and musing on his feelings and

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048250 by guest on 30 September 2021 thoughts. Mann’s narrator is enamored. Mann’s case, the inflexibility of the Law Bashan is “good and good-looking” and (religious, sociocultural, ontological, aes- “lofty and dignified” with “splendid thetic) as it pertains to everything from coloration.” His actions are often cast in artistic form to sexual identity is at the theatrical terms. Bashan’s kennel has core of his shorter work. Mann’s method “curtains of sackcloth” and he scampers is to create fictions with manifest sym- into his master’s room like a comic bolic polarities (age/youth or ethereal/ actor. On walks, the dog’s “theatre of earthly) and have characters engage in action” is a “parklike valley” with dirt extended dialogues or overtly ironic paths. There, Bashan chases birds and monologues about them. Death in gallops freely. Up to a point: “But if I sit Venice, whose main character is dying of down at a bench he is at my side at once love/lust, is overstuffed with medita- and takes up a position at my feet. For tions on dyadic subjects ranging from it is the law of his being that he only spirit/body and art/life to the eternal runs about when I am in motion too; Apollonian/Dionysian contrast. Not sur- that when I settle down he follows prisingly, Mann relies on illusion/reality suit.” and, inevitably, theatre and performance metaphors to advance his dia- It is here that Breuer’s senses perk up tribes. One story in the collection, Mario and he focuses on the inherent “master/ the Magician, is an elaborate description slave relationship” between dog and man. of a grotesque illusionist in a seaside Rose can’t help herself. She is in love. resort who reduces audience members More pertinently, she has memories of a to a trance with arithmetic tricks and path: poetic speeches.

I remember the first time I laid Death in Venice is, of course, Mann’s Eyes on you You were in the most pronounced dramatization of the park With your Box On your antinomies that concerned him. Simi- Bench across the Path I saw a larly, his Tonio Kröger (same collection), space at your Feet Between your revolves around a youth’s desire for feet was a Space my Size I crept fame as an artist. Like Breuer’s ambi- into it . . . That was my Place I tious, conflicted, doubt ridden charac- knew my place I knew how Big I ters (the Red Horse, B. Beaver, and was I was the dimension of the Rose’s John) Tonio wants to be an artist. Shadowy Space from one shoe to He has devoted his life to art, he la- another Down there at your ments, but, alas, he has no life, no love. Feet . . . I sucked myself I pissed In Felix Krull, the role of actors and the on my paw John I was in Love theatre is also briefly depicted. Krull, a with you Love Laid Down the wealthy businessman, writes his scan- Law dalous confessions, in the middle of which he recalls a painful day as a child The notion of a “law of being” for when he first visited the theatre. At a Mann and “law of love” for Breuer is matinee performance, a dashing cad one cipher for connecting these two charms ladies and entertains the audi- writers and their psycho/sexual/aesthetic/ ence with his wit and exquisite cos- artistic and social/class obsessions. In tumes. The actor is a friend of Krull’s

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048250 by guest on 30 September 2021 father and when they meet him in his sion.” The scene Tonio is describing dressing room, he turns out to be a occurs when the King publicly sobs as stumpy, vulgar, pimply, despicable hu- he realizes that he has been betrayed by man being. Another illusion lost. the Marquis. The “explosion” is a tender, emotional, and, perhaps, homo- Thematically, Breuer apes Mann in erotic moment that halts the narrative. broad strokes. In Mann’s tales, as in Apart from Rose’s weeping over John’s Breuer’s, polemics abound on creativity, affairs, I can think of many instances in art, dreams, delusions, sensuality, love, Breuer’s work with Mabou Mines where fame, health, and recovery. Illusions, the story and succession of media and theatrical and otherwise, are stripped bodily images stop and a richly felt bare with irony and emotion. In her moment transpires, usually with a rock essay Marranca writes that the narrator and roll soundtrack and crisp lighting of Red Horse “is struggling to discover effects. In short, this is Breuer’s method his identity and style as an artist” and as a writer and director: to have a scene that “if on the metaphorical level B. gallop along rapidly and then instanta- BEAVER acts as a fable about the artist, neously freeze everything in order to on the mythical level it demolishes myths convey the vivid emotional center of about the male ‘animal’ in society.” In the situation or to reveal a character’s Venice, Ashenbach is tortured by his feelings. Even though it is many years struggles with style and identity. More ago, I can still see Bill Raymond, his curiously, at one point, Tonio Kröger puppet, and the other actors in The exclaims, “Is an artist male, anyhow?” Shaggy Dog Animation, standing still in Nearly all of Mann’s male characters, front of a bright enlarged radio band like Breuer’s, share Kröger’s plight at the spanning the performance space. Is this theatrical performance: “he was looking conscious borrowing or postmodern within, into himself, the theatre of pain pastisching on Breuer’s part? I don’t and longing.” know.

Here is how I imagine The Red Horse In a 2002 interview in the New York Animation came to be staged after Breuer Times, Breuer offered this self observa- read Mann. In Tonio Kröger, Hans re- tion: jects Tonio’s plea to read Schiller’s Don Carlos, instead saying, “I’ll stick to my What is my motivation for at- horse books. There are wonderful cuts tempting to push the envelope in them . . . .” Hans excitedly contin- at times? Why do I risk social ues, explaining how you cannot see the disapproval? Why do I clearly horse’s motion because everything is attempt to defeat myself? Would moving “so fast.” The books are Edward I rather take the suffering than Muybridge’s famous stop-motion pho- the success? Is that the key to tographs. But, Tonio interrupts Hans to the so-called Art Martyr? talk about his experience of reading Don Carlos, “it is beyond anything you Mann raised similar questions. Aschen- could possibly dream of. There are places bach and Tonio Kröger are two ex- in it that are so lovely they make you amples of Art Martyrs. The latter asks, jump . . . as though it were an explo- “what more pitiable sight is there than a

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048250 by guest on 30 September 2021 life led astray by art?” Strangely, in The But, unlike those of such predecessors, Magic Mountain, which takes place in a his philosophical underpinnings are sanitarium and is a deliberation on art more metaphysically hybridized. In per- and popular culture, Mann’s method formance, his raw stew is cooked with prefigures aspects of postmodern prose. an interculturally theatricalized fare that In the quote above, Breuer is talking mixes puppetry, masks, storytelling, and both about himself and his character, shadows and light. Western and Asian Porco. The adoption of animals as char- performance theory are in his recipe acters is Breuer’s most complicated twist box and, of course, the latter are insepa- on Mann. By inhabiting animals, rable from religious and mythical Breuer’s ideas on sex, gender, love, iden- thought. Thus, Breuer’s plots and theory tity, class, family, creativity, and the self- thicken considerably when, in La Divina destructive tendencies of human beings Caricatura, he serves up sides of science are held in arrested development, and and salts it with myth/belief solutions. comic relief—suspended animation. His Rose, we learn, meets the wise cow, Sri animals—B. Beaver, Rose, Porco—can Moo, ends up in Bardo, with Porco, love, suffer, complain, even die, but the and is reborn as a Warrior Ant. In other level of self-knowing that they ulti- words, E.O. Wilson and evolutionary mately demonstrate, or the amount of biology are bardo-ized and with responsibility they have, is not account- prop(ositon)s from Indian religio- able in fully human terms. After all, mytho-performance theory. what can you expect from a pig? Or, an artist? As Kröger asserts, the “artist must Holy Cow! Has what started as a stag- be unhuman, extra-human; he must ing of a Loonie Toon Horse and Puppy stand in a queer aloof relationship to show metamorphosed into a Dantean our humanity.” and DNA-ian parody? Is this not the ultimate Shaggy Dog story, which is not For Breuer, the human/animal relation- about a dog at all, but all about god? ships are metaphorical, tricksterish, Eschewing Dantean grandeur and sanc- mythic; and sex happens. When Rose tity, La Divina Caricatura profanes ev- and Suelee fall in love and have sex, at erything sacred. (Rose is in hell, Porco is the climax of which Rose dies, one has in Purgatory, and the Warrior Ant is in to pause at the paradoxes. Rose remains Paradise.) Breuer’s emphasis is also subordinate to human desire and ma- theatricalized, scientific, and trans- nipulations (Suelee seduces her by read- theoretical. In an earlier book, Sister ing from Plato’s Symposium), but she is Susie Cinema, he included an aphoristic also triumphant as she finally chooses essay, “The Theatre and Its Trouble.” LOVE and is not its victim. She is “Top The essay pleads for poetry in theatre, Dog.” Then a Dead Dog. Then reborn for more non-Western performance, for as an Ant. considering that “[Performance] is the method of natural selection adopted by And the moral of the story? I doubt culture. Culture is society’s DNA.” In there is a moral. Like Aesop, Swift, and the last part of La Divina Caricatura, other fabulists, Breuer’s animal figures however, the stakes are higher. As Sri and voices can skewer human foibles Moo Paramahamsa, a cow who teaches and rake our morality over the coals. at the Institute where Rose recovers,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048250 by guest on 30 September 2021 puts it, “What is God’s Action?” She Moo then demonstrates how souls, like moos, “What is the Divine Through those of Rose and Porco, become ad- Line?” dicted and are unable to function because the pool of dominant roles are Sri Moo lectures to Doctors of Divinity limited and market driven. Souls need in Scotland. Her rumination, titled vital ideas and imagery, i.e., culture, to Summa Dramatica, ranges freely into evolve. But our choices are becoming the fields of theory, genetics, spiritual- idiotic. Souls seek pure animation, but, ity, physics, addiction, and cartoons. instead, become addicted to Art Mar- Being a divine bovine and an “Adjunct tyrs like John, or the mindless products Ungulate in AntiEleatics,” she subverts of Broadway and Hollywood. Moo’s genus and species with genius. “As an Institute is dedicated to the rehabilita- academic, a mammal, and a cow,” she tion of souls so they can return with utters, “I know I have a soul.” Sri’s beast clearer understanding of themselves and to man treatise cites the Quantum Dra- thereby reinvigorate “the Biocultural maturgy, The Qu’Ant UM—Holy Books Game.” of Ants, and thinkers from Aristotle to Tweetybird. Breuer/Moo’s pataphysical Moo’s logic loosens the longer she muses. discourse argues for performance as an God is aware of the situation and “se- eternal matter of soul seeking, acceler- lects for stupidity.” HIS idea is de- ated by recombinatory genetics that evolution. For Breuer/Moo (and E.O. quest for becoming light and pure ani- Wilson), the solution lies beneath our mation. Animation, Moo enucleates, feet. That is, the perfect creature, the refers to a recirculating, soul, spirit, most socially yet individuated organism immortal life force, a neuronal “meme.” of all time is the Ant. Ants, in Breuer’s Descendant from a Jungian anima, reincarnation dogma, are at the apex of cousin of the Warner Brothers, Breuer’s the cycle of the soul’s life. An ant has no animation is as real as the soul of Galy “I,” thus only acts for the community. Gay. Group action and consciousness is what is needed for the regeneration of life. Briefly, Sri Moo applies physics to the Breuer’s cycle of plays, The Maha- soul, eventually concluding that the baratAnt, takes on this problem and soul is receptive to light, but behaves dramatizes the ascent (or re-ascent) of like a quanta-particle until it attaches to ants, thereby, retuning (retooning) rein- a role, at which point it becomes ani- carnation with sociobiology. Of course, mated. “Plays,” Moo explains, are the Sri Moo’s realizes that each individual cultural entities where roles, in the form is, paradoxically, a composite and a of knowable characters (heroes, fools) cultural entity in itself. Thus, individu- appear, with historical and social varia- als, following the logic of natural selec- tions. Roles, scenes, dramatic genres, tion, are conflicted between becoming and acting are discussed. Sri Moo states: more individuated or adapting to their “Roles, when Animated, are Souls. Souls culture to preserve it, thereby losing are Resurrected as they play Roles. As their identity. one’s Immortal Soul is Performative, these Performances are Immortal—the As a performance theory, this is sugges- Divine Sarah comes to mind . . . .” Sri tive for thinking about Breuer’s work.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048250 by guest on 30 September 2021 On stage, his characters are deeply con- The Birds, The Seagull, The Bedbug, ﬂicted between being animals and re- Rhinoceros, Animal Crackers, Cats, sponding to human/social behaviors. BatBoy, The Hairy Ape, and, two other Yet, they cannot help but react to the plays, which might be subliminal tem- total ecology of the mise-en-scène: mu- plates for his oeuvre, In the Jungle of sic, lighting, gesture, sound, motion. Cities and Mann is Mann. Like real cartoon characters (Goofy or Wily E. Coyote), Breuer’s are pliable, Admittedly, as the Summa Dramatica is indestructible, but adaptable to every rendered by a cow to theologians in an environment, which is why he employs “Afterword” of a novelization based on Bunraku and hand puppets, shadows, existing plays, it amounts to less than a projections, masks, and stage gimmicks formal presentation of theory. That said, galore. Breuer seems to be crookedly like all theories of performance in artis- following Kleist, Artaud, and Grotowski tic works (say, Hamlet talking to the in his probing of a spiritual center for players), there is doubtless method in it. theatre, along with traditional aesthetic As for the rest of La Divina Caricatura, practices from various cultures and per- there is much more to consider. But, tinent scientiﬁc concepts. Thinking from you are on your own. My copy is Breuer’s perspective (yikes!) leads me to already too dog-eared to be of further imagine entirely different approaches to use.

ARTHUR J. SABATINI is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at Arizona State University West. His work is on language, music, and performance. He is currently writing about Robert Ashley.

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