4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

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drama, script, theater, and performance
comments, “something’s funny, something’s out of whack,” and I felt
that moving from the arena would incarnate the weirdness of the
round. For several months, the round was staged according to my
wishes. But spectators followed grudgingly, if at all, making a lot of
noise. The performers found it difficult to concentrate, and most of the
round was lost both to seeing and hearing. I compromised, staging
most of the round in the north-east corner of the Garage, just on the
other side of the narrow bridge that delineates one side of the arena.
Still, it didn’t work. Spectators were loath to move even a few feet;
they simply dropped out of the scene and waited for round 3. The fight
was simply “public,” no matter what niceties of interpretation I
wanted to emphasize. As the round finally was played, Crow leaves the
arena for only a few seconds as Hoss drives him around the supporting
post of the narrow bridge. Crow immediately re-enters through
the arch. The audience stays put; the scene has focus, intensity,
rhythm, completeness.
Most of the seam-breaking in TPG’s Tooth was between the realms of
performance and theater; the audience was, as it were, enfranchised.
For about ten performances we experimented with breaking the drama
away from the script and the theater. During May–June, 1973, two
scenes were repeated with no change whatsoever except for the repetition.
After Hoss got a shot of heroin from Doc, Gray stopped the drama
by saying: “That’s one of my favorite scenes, I’m going to do it again.”
Usually there was a big laugh from the audience, some readjustment of
bodies, and an appreciative delight in re-viewing the scene, and the
make-believe high Hoss–Gray got. After committing suicide, Gray again
stopped the drama and said: “I’m going to take the suicide again.
Anyone who wants to watch it from a different perspective, just move
around.” Most everyone made an adjustment. The reaction to repeating
the suicide was closer to shock. The second time through the house
was extremely quiet. We discontinued repeating scenes because the
performers felt the repetitions were becoming routine. As part of the
script they were not exciting to perform. But, however much part of
the script the repetitions were, they were always breaks in the drama.
Pirandello’s plays are an attempt to integrate into the drama breaks
between drama and script. Genet’s The Maids is a deeper elaboration of
this theme. The action of The Maids is the drama, and the fantasy life of