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

drama, script, theater, and performance 73
together, now being explored in ways that break them apart? The attention
of the spectators is redirected to those structural welds where the
presumed unified event is broken open. Instead of being absorbed into
the event the spectator is invited (or forced) to experience where the
event is “weak” and disjunctive. This breaking apart is analogous to
the process of defiguration and abstraction that happened earlier in
painting, and which has left a permanent mark on all the arts.
In rehearsing Sam Shepard’s The Tooth of Crime, The Performance
Group (TPG) opened the seam between performance and theater.
Ultimately these were experienced by performers and spectators alike
as separate systems. This opening of the performance–theater seam was
facilitated by an environment that not only was dominated by a central
construction that made it impossible for a spectator to see everything
from a single vantage, but which also required the scenes to move from
place to place, audience following; as this movement became orchestrated
during months of rehearsal and performance, the Garage
environment clearly developed two sides, a public side and a private
side (figure 3.3). This division into spatial-emotional areas strongly
contributed to opening the performance–theater seam. In a condensed
and reduced way, TPG’s Tooth was like a medieval pageant play; the
actual progression of events in space matched the awakening of
consciousness on the part of the drama’s protagonist, Hoss.
Our contract with Shepard did not allow us to restructure his text, as
TPG had done with Euripides’ The Bacchae in making Dionysus in 69.
Furthermore, what attracted us to Tooth was its wholeness, and
Shepard’s rich, allusive language. We didn’t want to deconstruct his
text. But as we worked on the play, and the seam between performance
and theater opened wider, definite changes occurred in the script, if
not in the actual words of the drama.
1. The cast of seven males and one female became four males and
two females. Four roles were condensed into two, and these
became the Keepers, a kind of chorus of one man and one woman.
2. A song written to be sung by Hoss at the start of the play became
the production’s theme song: “So here’s another illusion to add to
your confusion / Of the way things are.” The song was sung at the
start, and three other times, but never by Hoss.