The One True Dave

Ric Knowles’ book Reading the Material Theatre is a methodical and important exploration of the semiology and phenomenology of theatre from a materialist standpoint on the production and reception.  It is divided in two parts: the first describes his methodological and theoretical approach; the second consists of case studies where he applies his materialist reading to the work of several companies.  Like a true educator, Knowles takes great pains to explain what he is going to say, what he is saying and what he just said repeatedly throughout the book.  He cannot be faulted for being unclear about the scope or intent of his ideas or examples.  With that said, I found his case studies very illuminating and his auto-ethnographic position gave his analysis a suitably subjective yet authoritative flavor.  However, I wish the book was not so Toronto-centric.  There is one mention of theatre happening in Winnipeg and one mention that there are Fringe festivals across the country.  I found it jarring that the second oldest Fringe festival in the world and largest festival in Canada, the Edmonton Fringe, wasn’t mentioned at all nor was Winnipeg’s (the second largest).  I also think it was a missed opportunity, especially in the sense of cultural capital and materialist reception that no mention was made of Robin Philips becoming artistic director of Edmonton’s Citadel theatre after his time at Stratford OR Ian Prinsloo’s appointment as artistic director of Theatre Calgary after his success(es) at the Tarragon.  The difference in how their work was received in the west compared to Ontario could be very interesting from a materialist standpoint – even for someone from Toronto! (Sidenote: I knew Ian Prinsloo while attending the University of Calgary.  For his Masters in Theatre Studies he was re-mining the theoretical foundations of Stanislavsky’s system.  This is extremely resonant after reading Knowles’ analysis of the Tarragon as a bastion of text-centric naturalistic theatre.)

I will focus on the chapter featuring the Wooster Group.  This part of the book raised many questions for me regarding Knowles’ intention and his materialist methodology.  Specifically, I question his choice of production to centre his critique around – especially since I interpret his critique of theatrical nostalgia as a form of selling-out.  I question his framing of the tendency for critics to invoke the names of Robert Wilson and Richard Foreman when describing the work of the Woosters as somehow negative.  Third, I think a deeper look at Stein’s concept of theatre as landscape as a strategic tool to circumvent and critique American consumer culture must be made as a valid (postmodern) direction for LeCompte to make.

I have read a good deal of Stein’s writing and was taken aback by Kate Valk’s assumptive challenge/question that Knowles reproduced on page 155.  The point that most people know more about Stein than her work, though, is taken.  However, it works both ways.  Because most people haven’t been exposed to her work directly should be a compelling reason to produce her.  The fact that she is one of the few truly modernist American avant-garde writers – a highly valued cultural commodity – is also, materialistically, another compelling reason to produce her.  New York has had a long history with Gertrude Stein (not mentioned by Knowles) most noticeably with her operetta Four Saints in Three Acts (produced in the early 1930s) that held the record for longest run on Broadway for many years.  That production, with music by Virgil Thomson and an all black cast, was both highly symbolic of the margins of American culture while being at the centre of the American cultural universe, Broadway.  Flash forward to the marginal place that The Wooster Group (and the SoHo District) holds in the New York cultural landscape.  The “Other” is needed to identify/legitimate the mainstream – in this case, Broadway.

On the jukebox of the American cultural canon, Gertrude Stein only has a couple “hits.”  The other is Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights.  Having read several of her plays it is one of the more immediately accessible plays to the ‘uninitiated’ due largely to the referential anchor of the Faust story.  (Also, it is one of the small number that follows a full-length play structure.) Knowles mentions that “the play has become something of a rite of passage for American experimental theatres” (151) and why not?  Knowles framed himself as a cultural tourist excited to see the show for nostalgic reasons and I know I would share that feeling.  I don’t feel ashamed for seeing “classic” shows.  However, it makes me question why Knowles analyses The Wooster Group based on this show and not on one of their other (less famous) productions or even an original collaboration with Richard Foreman’s Ontologic-Hysteric theatre.  There is a compelling material reason to produce a famous playwright (and to employ ‘star’ actors) and that is for financial reasons.  This ploy attracted Knowles as a cultural tourist.  Does it take away from the artistic potential of the work?  No.

Richard Foreman’s theatre and the Wooster Group have done several collaborations in the past.  Their methods are not the same but not mutually exclusive.  If I were a critic, especially one in Paris where Foreman’s work has also been featured many times, I would not hesitate to compare the work of the two companies.  In addition, early in his career, Foreman aligned himself with Gertrude Stein’s artistic objective to create a perpetual present – a continuous ‘now’ – for the audience.  Knowles does not provide this context.  Robert Wilson may be one of the most famous American directors alive today, his work is meditative, image-based and non-linear AND he has produced/directed Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights in the past.  Knowles does not mention this.  Is it a surprise, that these three sites of avant-garde work, producing within close vicinity of each other and with so many connections, would be compared with one another?  Knowles chooses not to provide this context and by doing so implies the identity of the Wooster Group is being circumscribed by association with the other two – that they are considered to be alike.

Stein’s concept of theatre as “landscape” bears some attention here.  What does it mean to produce a show that is “spatial and static as opposed to temporal and progressive” in this high-capitalist consumptive world?  To produce a show (by a professional – read ‘for profit’ – company) designed to provide an audience with an experience rather than a story/product is, in itself a provocative political act, one that the European critics seemed to be more in tune to.  However, the critic from Chicago, calling the show “incoherent” (160) is signaling how the show is unreadable as a linear (consumable) story to the American point of view.  The incoherence of Stein’s writing and, in fact, her place in society as an intelligent literary gay woman in the early 20^th century is what forced her to move to Paris.  Only there, surrounded by a supportive community of artists, was she allowed to blossom.  Once successful in Paris, she was then welcomed back to New York as a hero.  Her concept of theatre as landscape and her writing in a “continuous present” (161) was at least partially inspired by her friends in Paris like Picasso’s Primitivist experiments and Eric Satie’s concept of ‘furniture music.’  She returned to New York to become as Knowles quotes Bonnie Marranca as saying, “the patron saint of the avant garde” (151).  Jump ahead three or four decades to the liminal space that was SoHo, the site of Philip Glass’ early minimal music and the emergence of Steve Reich’s phase music – both denying a conflict/resolution structure of linear music not unlike the ideas of Erik Satie.  Satie, again,  influenced Brian Eno (who lived in Manhattan in the 1970s and early 80s) who coined the term ambient music. At the same time, Richard Foreman produced his first Ontologic-Hysteric piece in his SoHo loft (literally in his apartment), inspired by non-linear editing in local experimental film production, and is still producing his non-linear theatre today in a tiny space in the nearby converted St. Mary’s Church.  The Performance Garage led by Richard Schechner started in 1968….  The SoHo district and the artists there are immersed in a rich history of non-linear, experiential and experimental art.  The fact that Elizabeth LeCompte programmed Stein’s play, seems to me a very smart move in many ways other than nostalgia.  The fact Stein’s cultural currency is great enough to attract cultural tourists (like Knowles) while at the same time celebrating SoHo’s artistic legacy and problematizing capitalist commodification of theatrical performance seems an excellent strategy for LeCompte to take.  …Even if she thinks “There’s nothing avant garde in America” (160)