21 Century Theatrical Performance and the Limits of a Discourse

Struck Stupid: 21st Century Theatrical Performance and the Limits of a Discourse A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY George David McConnell IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. Margaret Werry, Adviser December 2011 ©George David McConnell, 2011 Acknowledgements First, I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Margaret Werry for her support for this stupid project from the beginning, and her continued guidance as it often went off the map, forgot there was a map, and tripped over itself. I would also like to thank Dr. Werry for… I would like to thank Dr. Sonja Kuftinec, Dr. Cindy García, and Dr. Stuart McLean for being my committee and offering tactical support when I needed it. And for… I would like to thank Dr. Mary Karen Dahl for… I would like to thank my mom, dad, and Dennis for being great parents who always encouraged me to follow whatever path I imagined for myself. And for… I would like to thank Matthew Goulish, Lin Hixson, Stephen Fiehn, Mislav Cavajda, Selma Banich, John Rich, Erin Search-Wells, Jeffrey Wells, Sam Johnson, and Byrd Shuler for being so generous in allowing me to invade their workspace to see what they were up to. And for… I would like to thank Eleanor Caudill for being there when it began. And for… I would like to thank Paige Collette for listening to me talk about this project even at times I probably shouldnʼt have. And for… I would like to express my extreme gratitude to William Daddario and Joanne Zerdy for… Finally, I would like to offer a great heart-felt thanks to Samantha Johns for… i Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to Michael McConnell, my brother the artist. He said to me one day, when we were younger than we are now, “You know, the word ʻmotherʼ means a completely different thing to every single person in the world,” and forever changed the way I think. ii Abstract This dissertation is a critically creative response to contemporary U.S. devised theatrical performance and the relationships it instantiates between artists and spectators, and artists and critics. In order to tease out the complexities of these relationships, I theorize stupidity as an integral element in the creation of devised performances, their reception by spectators, and the critical methods best used to engage with them. I develop the concept of stupidity seriously and paradoxically as thought that cannot be thought. Stupid thinking is thought that interrupts discursive structures such as conscious thought that is shaped like language and is grounded in our storehouses of knowledge. Stupidity sustains the affective possibilities of non-knowledge that would otherwise be foreclosed by the drive for knowledge production. I attempt to answer the questions: how do I write of devised performances rather than about them? How do I attend to the embodied complexity of devised performances as I transmogrify them into scholarly discourse? To answer these questions I performatively write alongside devised theatrical performances and deploy methods that take their cue from ethnographic practices. My writing also takes cues from the work of the artists I engage: Ann Liv Young (New York), Every House Has A Door (Chicago), and SuperGroup (Minneapolis). Together my chapters argue that by relying on stupid tactics—such as chance, incompetence, and obscenity—in their own creative processes these artists all instigate a reconfiguration of the relationship between artwork and viewer, and thereby a simultaneous reconfiguration of the iii relationship between spectators and their own presumed-to-be-stable subject positions. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments i Dedication ii Abstract iii Table of Contents v Chapter One: An Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Dear Ann Liv Young 71 Chapter Three: Let Us Think of These Things Always. Let Us Speak of Them Never. 109 Chapter Four: SuperGroupʼs Shouldwetitleitnoworwait 146 Chapter Five: Conclusion Some Stupid After Thoughts 208 Bibliography 221 v Chapter One: An Introduction To write is to collude, but the issue is how. --John Law from “And if the global were small and noncoherent? Method, complexity, and the baroque” How do I collude with theatrical performance practice as a theatre scholar? Specifically, how do I write about contemporary experimental theatrical performances in all of their performed noncoherent complexity? How do I write about devised theatrical performances that are fragmented and fractured, non- narrative, bricolaged, and have little concern—if any at all—with making meaning, drawing conclusions, answering questions, or communicating a clear message? If they are not telling stories, or transmitting meaning from performance to spectator, then what is it that these contemporary theatrical performances perform? Why are they performed at all? How do I transmogrify the complex live and bodily processes happening in these theatrical performances into written text that in some way honors that complexity without streamlining and over-simplifying those complexities in the name of semantic intelligibility? If I acknowledge that any act of criticism is an act of collusion where the critic acts in relation to that which they critique, then how do I enact this relationship in such a way that opens up further possibilities through my writing rather than foreclosing those possibilities and limiting them in syntax? To write stupidly is the answer that I am putting forth in this project that engages the question of how to collude with contemporary theatrical performance. In this project I paradoxically imagine 1 stupidity as a kind of thought that cannot be thought. Stupidity is thought in process, always already on the move, and that sustains creative moments of encounter—encounters between artists working together to devise theatrical performance and encounters between devised theatrical performances and spectators. Before I get to the performances that I focus on throughout this project, I want to set the scene with a personal narrative that recounts the instance I first became self-reflexively and critically aware of my stupor in relation to a theatrical performance. In September of 2006, I was struck stupid at a performance by Dorky Park. Dorky Park is an international performance collective based in Berlin, Germany. Since 2003 Dorky Park has been led by artistic director/choreographer Constanza Macras and dramaturg Carmen Mehnert. The performance of Back to the Present shown at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis was one of only two appearances by the Berlin-based collective in the United States that year. Back to the Present was like an ill-behaved and unruly child who refused to sit still. Back to the Present would not settle easily into any predetermined generic category of theatrical performance. It was a performance with an identity crisis on multiple levels. Back to the Present was part theatre, part rock concert, part contemporary dance, part (auto?)biographical solo performance, part video, part reality TV parody, and all fragmentary, all non- narrative, all non-linear, and ultimately resistant to any easy process of critical classification or descriptive totality. Where could I begin to describe this 2 beautiful, and sprawling mess of a show? How could I say anything about it? As I watched Back to the Present it was as if my mind was speaking and then stammered, or suddenly got stuck in a stutter. The word that would come next was there on the tip of my tongue, but unable to finally be articulated. The words remained just out of reach and caused a discomforting feeling of an over- extended, irresolvable mental reaching. It was as if the familiar had suddenly become so very, very strange, and I had become so very, very stupid. As I watched it, the fragmented, non-narrative, messy quality of Back to the Present made it impossible for me to get mentally ahead of this stupefying performance by rationalizing possible outcomes. Additionally, because each new performance fragment seemed disconnected from that which had come before it I was unable to recall what had just happened on stage moments ago. The performance demanded that I become incredibly present in the theatre space. Within such unfamiliar territory my mindʼs ability to draw conclusions by associating new input with its storehouse of accumulated knowledge was thwarted. I did not know what I was seeing, and yet I was deeply affected by the performance. I did not understand the performance, and yet I was caught up in a process of understanding it. The evidence of this highly affective quality was materially presented through my bodily reaction. Throughout the performance my stomach hurt from laughing, tears rolled down my cheeks from crying, and yet I could not say that I was feeling happy or sad. I did not understand what I was feeling at all, and yet something was taking its course between the performance 3 and myself all the same. The theatrical performance instilled a bodily empathy as I stupidly felt knocked off balance sitting physically grounded in my chair. Where was I? What was I watching? Who was the I that was watching the what where when? My sense of subjective selfhood was destabilized in such a way that there was no ground for my thoughts to gain purchase. Back to the Present appeared to resist knowledge formations both internally—which indicated something about its mode of production—and externally—evidenced through its reception by spectators. Within the labyrinthine structure that shaped it, it was constantly disrupting itself. There was a sense watching it that I was always being lead down a dead-end, only to find the next wrong turn leading me deeper and further along an outwardly spiraling movement of thought. The various fragmented sequences appeared in some ways complete unto themselves, but when placed next to each other they tripped up any logic that seemed to be generated within and amongst them.

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