Guest Blogger of the Week: Joe Mathers

We would like to thank August Schulenburg for his - ahem AWESOME posts last week.

We are very excited to announce that this week's guest blogger is Joe Mathers.

Joe Mathers has been in NYC since the late 90's after graduating from Syracuse University, and relocating from his home in New Jersey to Queens.  As a performer, producer, electrician, carpenter, or fight choreographer (sometimes many at once) he has worked with companies such as Boomerang, Impetuous, and as guests of Nosedive, Brown Bear Productions, and The Vampire Cowboys.  In 2001, Joe was a founding member of APAC and some years later was also a founding member of The Flux Ensemble.  He was a managing partner of a small scenic construction shop called No Time For Love Productions, which closed down in 2009-10 and while he misses the constant sawdust, he has been performing steadily since, currently appearing in Retro Productions latest offering Dear Ruth, and will also be making a showing at The Brick Theater's upcoming Comic Book Festival in June as Karl Marx in Action Philosophers by Crystal Skillman and Fred Van Lente.  

We Are Such Stuff

Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, August Schulenburg.

“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”

The infamous first lines of Peter Brook’s The Empty Space have set a tingle racing up the necks of undergrads ever since it was published in 1968. “Yes, that’s what it is, all it is, that’s all you need!” I remember thinking triumphantly in the sun-soaked quiet of Trexler Library.

The more you turn the statement over in your mind, however, the more its simplicity gives way to something more difficult. Theatre is not just someone walking across a bare stage with someone watching; or rather, that simple act has many different meanings. And so, our conversations about theatre are often defeated by the sheer size of the word, and the many different ideas it contains.

So what exactly is this stuff that dreams are made on?

Theatre is story: Theatre was the first storytelling medium, a brilliant invention to condense events into a pattern of cause and effect that could be re-enacted by anyone, and so passed down for as long as the story was useful. Because our pattern-hungry minds are so primed for narrative, storytelling is often seen as theatre’s primary function. As a result, it can seem theatre’s closest relatives are TV and Film, two later platforms for the transmission of story.

In reaction to the ease of film’s distribution, theatre retrenched in part by pretending there were stories that were “uniquely theatrical”, and therefore immune from the superior reach of film. This even led to a move away from story entirely, by fracturing narrative to the edge of incomprehensibility; but a confusing story is still a story, and any art form whose whole is revealed through its parts changing through time cannot pretend it is made of some strange new stuff. Theatre is story, and to those who feel this part of theatre most keenly, all that is needed to resuscitate the field are better stories (or the right stories, whatever that means to the person speaking). 

Theatre is place: Inevitably, when the old “theatre” vs “theater” debate comes up, someone will patiently instruct you that “theatre” is the act and “theater” is the place. Regardless of where you fall on that great butter battle, the simple fact is theatre is local. It can only happen in one place at a time. That weakness is also a strength, and theatre people can’t help but rhapsodize about the magic of artists and audiences “breathing the same air”. That many others don’t see that value in breathing the same air, and would instead prefer to be chilling with popcorn and beer as they get their story fix from TV, doesn’t change this unique aspect of theatre in an increasingly placeless world.

Theatre can also change the nature of a place: that charged feeling of possibility in an empty theatre can be translated to literally anywhere. Those who connect deeply with theatre as place often believe that theatre simply isn’t being done in the right locations, and if we free it from the traditional buildings(or change the dynamics of those spaces), all will be well.

Theatre is community: Both the process of making and process of performing a play are social acts, and because theatre is place, that social act invariably creates or reshapes a community. A unique community is created with each performance, and the impact of that event spreads out through the local culture. The invention of the 501c3 has led many not-for-profit theatres to place this civic/social aspect of theatre as paramount, believing that if only theatres better served their communities (whatever they believe that community to be), they would thrive.

Theatre is time: Theatre is never complete; it is always becoming (which I find very becoming (sorry)). Both as a collaborative process in rehearsal, and a collaborative event in performance, it exists only by moving through time, unfixed and in flux. There can be no definitive performance, because when the curtain comes down, it continues to evolve in the leaky cup of our minds. Those who most prize this aspect of theatre says things like “process is more important than product”, and believe if audiences only embraced process more, theatre would be properly supported.

Theatre is play: You might note that all of the above holds true for most religious rituals, and I sometimes think of religion as a play where the audience goes on suspending their disbelief after the curtain falls. But the transubstantiation of theatre, even in the most documentary of plays, is still the province of imagination, and that difference makes all the difference. Consequences of human choices matter both more and less in a play: more, because the pressure of a play’s brevity makes each choice (espresso, diamonds) count; less, because the consequences of those choices disappear into (thin) air when the play ends. The safety of this perilous place is what makes theatre as play so important; and this may be what I love best about it; that all the dead bodies rise again, that all the reunited lovers get on separate trains to go home.

You will note one glaring omission from this list: theatre is business. To make theatre, you may very well need to make some business decisions; and the theatre we end up talking about most is usually made by businesses. But it’s important to separate theatre from businesses who make theatre, as it is truly possible to make theatre from almost nothing (see Rising Phoenix’s Cino Nights); and there is no guarantee that financial resources will make it any easier to bottle the lightning.  

If there is a single characteristic that separates Indie theatre from the other ways to make plays, it may simply be that we live that distinction. We make theatre first, and businesses that make theatre second (if at all). That’s not to say that Indie theatre folk aren’t enterprising and entrepreneurial; some of the savviest folks you’ll meet sling spreadsheets for Indie companies. Nor does it mean that distinction belongs only to those toiling in the Codes. There are theatres producing at the highest resource levels that somehow keep that Indie spirit intact, just as there are many producing on gaff tape and moxie solely to “make it big”.

The distinction is essential in a culture that devalues any human activity that doesn’t make a financial profit, and in a profession where self-worth is so often determined by the financial size of the businesses where you make your theatre. I like artists making a living, just as I want everyone on the earth having enough to live out their lives in peace and dignity. But when you tell me you’re a theatre artist, I measure you first by what stories you’re telling, who you’re telling them for, who you’re making them with, and what they make possible in human life that wasn’t possible before. That’s the stuff Indie theatre artists are made on, so catch us now, because the thin air is calling, and we’ll leave not a rack behind.

All Theatre is Cosmology

Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, August Schulenburg.

When asking me to contribute to this blog, Shay passed on a series of thoughtful questions regarding the OOB/Indie theatre scene that I might tackle. Perhaps because I’ve recently been thinking about Big History, or because I was given Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations for my recent birthday (“he who does not know what the world is does not know where he is”); I found myself unable to consider those imminently sensible questions without tracing their roots a good distance backwards in time and space.

So, I hope you will patiently bear with me as I consider the history of the universe, the (potentially preposterous) possibility that we are alive at the beginning of a significant hinge in that history, and the proposition that all theatre is cosmology.

(Warning: this may be a slalom run of sort, as the snow of my knowledge is not deeply packed; expect an uneven descent of sharp turns, sudden moguls and occasional wipe outs.)

I’ll be considering four systems - the universe, life, consciousness, and technology – each which emerged unexpectedly from the system before. I’ll be talking about these systems as if they were distinct, because it is their differences that interest me; even as I acknowledge the evolutionary principles that drive them make no such distinction.

Specifically, what are the different relationships of these systems to change, loss and time?

From my anthropic perch, the universe’s relationship doesn’t look particularly good. The universe may preserve information, but the Second Law of Thermodynamics and asymmetry of time lock much of it away in the swelling black box of the past. And though we are lucky that our little solar system has been granted a brief respite from the general pounding of pulsars, the likely future passing of the universe into heat death gives cold comfort.

In short, it is a system that seems unconcerned with its own preservation: stars collapse, black holes devour light, quantum foam keeps the cold nothing of space restless, and everything falls away from itself.

However, something strange happened on our meteor-battered, molten-cored, water-soaked rock. A series of random chemical interactions resisted giving up the ghost. These chemical interactions began to sustain themselves for as long as they could; and then found a way to pass on the how-to manual to other chemical interactions. The reproduction of that genetic code was luckily imperfect, for through those imperfections the green fuse of evolution drove the flower.

Here, in contrast to the universe, is a system not only concerned with its own preservation, but defined by it. Every dizzyingly baroque stroke of life’s invention is governed by self-preservation; not of the individual creature, of course; but of that brilliantly flexible chemical code that brings birds, bees, and even educated trees to do what they do. The system of life uses loss (our dread friend death) to manifest change (Darwin, finches) to ensure the information of life’s genetic code persists through time.

Now it gets even stranger: just as the universe accidentally manifested a system with a different relationship to loss, change and time; consciousness (all Athena-like) surprisingly emerged from life. It must have seemed like such a good idea to life at the time: a self-aware creature might be more likely to persist and pass on that precious code. But like an ungrateful child, consciousness refuses to go into the family business.

Because while death is necessary to life, it is antithetical to consciousness. Consciousness is less interested in furthering the adaptive capacity of the genetic code, and a whole lot more interested in continuing its own particular existence. Consciousness has a far more adversarial relationship to change, loss and time than the two systems that contain it. But like life, it has its own unique way of persisting.

The genetic code of consciousness is passed down through culture: in the same way that DNA is a map for the building of a body, culture is a map for the building of a mind. And theatre – ah, theatre, we’ve finally reached it! – is one of the earliest technologies consciousness created to perpetuate those instructions.

Now, (of course) you remember that technology was the fourth and final system I listed at the beginning of this post, all those years ago. Because in the same way that consciousness emerged from life, technology is emerging from consciousness; and though currently technology remains under the firm control of its creator, we are approaching a hinge moment.

To appreciate that moment, remember that theatre, as the first storytelling technology, uses human beings as its primary medium. Because of this, it is subject to the rules that govern the systems of life and consciousness. A play happens the same way only once, and after that, lives only in our treacherous memories. Theatre is made of time, loss and change.

But then came the printed word (which Socrates warned us against!), then photography, then audio recordings, then video, then computers, then the internet; all of these and other technologies defying the idea that anything should be lost, that anything should change. You don’t have to imagine what Elvis sounded like based on the stories of those who saw him; you can see him and hear him yourself; and so, if things continue as they are, can your great-great-grand children. We are all cyborgs now; our memories a Google away from recalling anything.

When compared to life and consciousness, the evolution of technology is progressing at an extremely rapid rate. And while it may seem that technology remains just a tool of consciousness, I believe we are at the edge of it transforming into something as distinct from us as we are from trees, and trees from rocks.

While I’m not entirely on board with Kurzweil’s Singularity, I do think we are in the process of creating a system that completely rewrites the rules of change, loss and time. The chance that we’ll understand that system on a fundamental level is as likely as an oak chatting with a chimpanzee.

Like so many of my species, I am inclined to treat the time of my life as uniquely important to the history of the world, and so you should take the above with several grains of salt. However, I’m of the generation that remembers Pong and typewriters, and so perhaps feel the g-force of this coaster particularly keenly.  

And so, finding ourselves at this hinge of history; bound within the systems of life and the universe, poised on the edge of a fourth emergence; what should our conscious minds do to answer Aurelius’ question? What should such creatures as we do, crawling between earth and the internet?

For now, my answer remains primarily theatre; as it remains the most human way to wrestle with our questions of loss, change and time. But more on exactly how and why tomorrow, where I promise our flight will gradually nose down towards more earth bound conceits.

Guest Blogger of the Week: August Schulenburg

A huge thank you to Stacy Davidowitz for blogging for us last week.

This week our guest blogger will be August Schulenburg.

August Schulenburg is a playwright, actor, director, and Artistic Director of Flux Theatre Ensemble, where he is directing their upcoming production of Ellen McLaughlin's Ajax in Iraq. His produced plays include The Lesser Seductions of History, Jacob's House, Rue, Carrin Beginning, and Riding the Bull, which is being next produced in Seattle in July. As an actor, he was nominated for an IT Award for Ezekiel in 8 Little Antichrists. He also blogs for Flux and the TCG Circle.