Performance Theory

Hey, here is a spot for us to add notes to the performances: Laura: I thought your performance was inspired and powerful, and deserving of a spot light. Meaning, I am wondering if the lighting in theatre could be dark and you put in a spotlight? The screen is distracting in the back when it is lit up. Also, i think the projector was on too? This note goes for all the performances actually. Kali: Unfortunately I had to go to the bathroom during yours. Perhaps other clips of white trash? Maybe that's too much editing work. And/or add a naysayer? Like, "white trash are not the most oppressed people in the world, but suffering and stigmatization costs lives, and so its important to understand this form of oppression too." Josiah: This performance reminded me of Michael Jackson's performance methods in his BAD concert, which I was lucky to see as a kid. He would appear and disappear from different parts of the stage, and perform leaving his body with either a dummy, ...

In many of the moments that Lepecki describes, something seems to happen to the audience. The clearest example of this is the difference between the discussion at the beginning and the end of Xavier LeRoy’s Low Pieces (95-98). By sitting through the piece, by experiencing the different images and the moments of stillness, the experience of self-in-the-group changes. Is there a bit of “you had to be there”? Some of Lepecki’s description, especially the theoretical backing, makes sense without seeing the performance. For example, the links between darkness and the En light enment and racism. But, as I read his descriptions of the pieces that take place in the dark, a skeptical voice comes in and asks, “Really? Is it really like that?” I suspect I can never know if I would experience the piece in the same way because I can’t go back in time and take part in the same dance that Lepecki did. The description and the explanation cannot produce the experience of being in the dark with oth...

The question is not, “Why did Josiah give his presentation in the dark?” The question is, “What happened when we were sitting in the (almost) dark?” What was it like to sit in the dark and listen to a presentation, or to ask and answer questions in the dark? What did it feel like, and where did those feelings come from? By “feelings”, I hope to evoke all possible meanings, so, physical and emotional feelings as well as thoughts, attitudes, or associations. How was it different from Laura’s part of the class, and why? What happened in the dark, and what didn’t happen? It was the first time in this class that we have been in the space together without being able to see each other clearly. Why is that not common?

Perhaps it may be helpful to think of neoliberalism as a form of conduct rather than as an ideology. I came across this description in a footnote for an article for another project: “As such, it imagines liberalism not as a political ideology but as a governing rationality capable of harnessing specific techniques for the shaping of conduct, the purpose of which is to create the conditions promoting individual freedom” (Greene 32 fn 6). This explanation seems to fit with Lepecki’s approach to neoliberalism, “overall conditioning…governing conduct as if it were granting liberty” (2-3). The use of the word “harnessing” above recalls Lepecki’s discussion of “dressage” in his exploration of the limit between humans and animals. Noticing that the staging of a dance makes the audience constantly turn their head to one side, he describes the feeling of “invisible reins that pull our skulls to that one side of the stage” (91). He connects this manner of controlling animals to Henri...