Efficiencies of Slowness: the Politics of Contemporary
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EFFICIENCIES OF SLOWNESS: THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY COLLECTIVE CREATION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF DRAMA AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Rachel Anderson-Rabern May 2011 © 2011 by Rachel Elizabeth Anderson. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/zn707mp3731 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Branislav Jakovljevic, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Harry Elam, Jr I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Janice Ross Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii Abstract My project focuses on the process and performance of three contemporary devising groups. Working from Henry Bial's claim that performance moments bear \. the hallmarks (and scars) of the process that generated it,"1 I draw processual and aes- thetic connections between collective creation methodologies and the consequences of those methodologies in performance. Initially, I take up the concept of collaborative \devising" in America, and compare its contemporary manifestations to American performance collectives of the 1960s and 1970s. I choose three contemporary groups that work from a collaborative base: Goat Island, Elevator Repair Service, and Nature Theater of Oklahoma. I compare their models of process and organization with those of earlier groups, including The Living Theater, the Performance Group, and the Open Theater, arguing that contemporary groups engage with collaborative process and the aesthetics of performance by turns resisting and embracing previous models. I then examine themes of everyday employment that persist in contemporary work, utilizing Henri Lefebvre's writings on the role of the worker within everyday philoso- phy towards a claim that collective creation constructs new economies of performance. Working from images of the everyday, I develop a theory of danced gestural forms in performance informed by Georgio Agamben's writings on gesture. These forms, 1Henry Bial, \Part VII: Performance Processes," The Performance Studies Reader, Second Edi- tion, ed. Henry Bial (New York: Routledge, 2007) 215{216. iv I argue, unfold according to a complex engagement with velocities and speeds that, along with the political implications of gesture, enable us to chart collective creation methodology|even when the content of performance is not ideologically explicit| according to its political significance. This not only opens up process as relevant to the aesthetics of performance, but also considers how contemporary collective creation, through interdisciplinary explorations of source material drawn from the everyday, constitutes political engagement. v Acknowledgements As this project has reminded me, the process of making work, and the multiplicity of voices that go into a process, are undeniable parts of the final product. In accor- dance with this, I would like to deeply thank the many people who poked, prodded, expanded, questioned, and added immeasurably to this dissertation. Peggy Phelan and my cohort Ljubi Matic and Ileana Drinovan, who read pieces of my work early on. Jisha Menon for her thoughtfully organized dissertation workshop, which served as such an excellent model for giving and receiving positively constructed critical feedback. Members of the dissertation writing group at University of Colorado at Boulder, run by Beth Osnes, who generously included me when I was away from my academic home. My supportive committee, who asked many questions that will continue to guide this project in the future: Harry Elam, Janice Ross, Leslie Hill, Andrea Lunsford, and Gabriella Safran. Creative collaborators who were partners in putting theory into practice: Slanters!, Morgan Spector, and the casts and classrooms I've worked with at Stanford. So many of my fellow Stanford graduate students (and former graduate students) whose conversation prompted new avenues of thought: Kathryn Syssoyeva, Ciara Murphy, Matthew Moore, Kris Salata, and many others. Most importantly, my advisor, Branislav Jakovljevic, whose guidance walked a diffi- cult line between tireless encouragement and rigorous standards. I cannot overstate vi his influence or my admiration for him; he is the kind of advisor I aspire to become. I also have many friends and family members whose support truly made this project possible. My mother Katherine Baker, my sister-in-law Jennifer Tomczyk, my brother Keith Anderson, and my father Clark Anderson. I also extend special thanks to Christine and Marie, whose extraordinary child-watching abilities freed me to think and write. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the tremendous support I received from my son Atticus and my husband Landon. Atticus, your arrival in February, 2010 taught me to organize my time in ways I could never have imagined. I have no idea what I did with all my spare time before your appearance, but it certainly wasn't finishing my dissertation. Thank you for putting my priorities into focus for me, and for teaching me that part of being a good parent is spending time on work I love. Landon, I am so fortunate to have you as a partner in life. Not just for your wicked formatting skills, but also for your questions, your calmness, your excitement, your willingness to toss me out of the house when I need to be tossed, your own academic passions that help to fuel mine. You are the most genuinely unselfish person I have ever met, the most annoying person to debate with, and overall the best possible collaborator I can imagine. I would also like to thank Lin Hixson, Matthew Goulish, and the other members of Goat Island. John Collins and the rest of Elevator Repair Service. Kelly Copper, Pavol Liska, and all of Nature Theater of Oklahoma. I hope this investigation is useful and interesting for you all. vii Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1 Successors 21 2 Performative Economies 67 3 Dance As Gesture 106 4 The Ethics of Velocities 144 Conclusion 177 viii Introduction I first encountered the work of contemporary collective creation groups Goat Island, Elevator Repair Service, and Nature Theater of Oklahoma via a circuitous route. This investigation, which analyzes the methodologies that fuel contemporary collective practice, evolved from simple questions: when we see groups of performers working together onstage, what is it we're looking at, and why is it important? Initially, I found myself inspired by performance moments I interpreted as ev- idence of processes committed to group-oriented ethos: I perceived such moments in Mary Zimmerman's Secret in the Wings when it arrived at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2004, and again in William Forsythe's Three Atmospheric Studies, which performed at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall in February, 2007. Secret in the Wings, a fusion of imagistically rendered fairytales, seemed to frame the delight and terror of childhood stories as a springboard for collective adult creativity. Part I of Three Atmospheric Studies is a dance that depicts a young man's arrest, which William Forsythe choreographs { with a complex variety of tempo changes and freezes { to no sound save the dancers' breath. These moments I interpreted as evidence of rigorous ensemble-based work that I assumed correlated with rehearsal processes emphasiz- ing the organism of the group as a creative and creating body. These perceptions, these assumptions with which I encountered Zimmerman's and Forsythe's work, were 1 INTRODUCTION 2 both wrong and not wrong. Group work, a vaguely encompassing term, is present in both pieces as in the form of ensembles made up of performers who have trained over time to be responsive to one another throughout acts of play, instants of si- multaneity, and within rigorous choreographic demands. However, my first tentative steps toward researching in this direction quickly unearthed the mismatch between my perception of process and the process itself: while I identified seeming indicators of \group process", both Zimmerman's and Forsythe's work is very much the work of Zimmerman and Forsythe. They build ensembles, onstage manifestations of mutually attentive performers. This does not, I discovered, necessarily equate with a process of development that involves the group as creative authority. Both Zimmerman and Forsythe maintain unquestioned control over the development and production of the creative product.2 Zimmerman writes scripts alongside guided actor improvisation, in a process similar to Caryl Churchill's work with Joint Stock, yet maintains strict single-authorship credit (she would not describe herself as a deviser at all) over the resulting text.3 This gap, a result of my own idealized sense of what staged collective practice would (or should) look like, helped me to establish a new set of assumptions that guided my subsequent exploration. Firstly, I believe that { when making per- formance { method matters. Secondly, method marks performance, a phenomenon scholar Henry Bial identifies in The Performance Studies Reader, saying performance \bears the hallmarks and scars of the process that created it."4 If I misjudged the 2For a discussion of Forsythe's process and aesthetics, see Gerald Siegmund's book William Forsythe: Denken in Bewegung (Thinking in Movement).