Future Productions!

Here's a little list of 5 potential future shows (well, 4 shows and one comic) to whet your appetite. Financial support (see previous post) will enable us to focus more energy on making these things happen. Otherwise, they'll be competing at a financial disadvantage with earning enough money to live and fund the projects ourselves, reading a lot of Antonio Negri and participating in this intentional community.

1. Mauser- an updating re-write of Heiner Mueller's updating re-write of Bertolt Brecht's best Lehrstucke (Lehrstucke = learning play, intended to be "didactic for the performers" The Measures Taken= Brecht's best, in my opinion) Our version will feature power electronics karaoke, with the audience playing the part of the chorus. It'll be didactic for EVERYONE! Cuz we know how much America loves didactic!

2. YURT! an absurd insurrectionary comedy about Mongolian invaders taking over america one city at a time (to punnish you all for hating didactic theatre). Performed in a traveling yurt (yurt= mongolian hut, like a teepee but less pointy) and featuring sniveling caricatures of local politicians from every town we visit.

3. The Demon Bargain. A series of related scenes written by anyone (and made available for anyone to produce) that confront our choice to sacrifice the entire future for our mild comforts through a demonical analogy. Jeff Grygny is responsible for this initial idea, and Damned Theatre (allies in Milwaukee) might be mounting it's initial production.

4. The Trial- A one man show about Maoist paraphernalia, the erosion of public commons, and the absurdity of the American judicial system. Based on a true story!

5. Ceasar's Ruin- A fantasy adventure comic book idea i outlined a while back (not a play, but still awesome).

Sounds fucking awesome, right? Please help out. Seriously, we're incredibly efficient and your small contribution will go a long way. If you wanna know more about any of these things, each has been at least outlined and initiated in some form. Just drop me a line at insurgent.ben@gmail.com and I'll share!

Show 56: Urbana, UC-IMC

Turnout: 21

Monetary Votes of Support: $66

Personal Injury Report: nothin'

Show Description: I felt really good about our performances, and really enjoyed having a larger audience than we have in the past when performing in Urbana. Also, the opportunity to see our friend Mark perform was priceless. Great playful yet heavy experimental acoustic stuff. We're always glad to come to Urbana, there are lots of experienced artists and activists here, and we look forward to the challenging and energizing post-show discussions.

This time the discussion left a bit of a bad taste in our mouths. It's great when the discussion is long, thorough and critical, but it's hard to not feel like we've gone through a wringer when we get certain kinds of reactions. I don't want to discard the fact that this was a great show with some great discussion, but I'd also like to use this space to muddle out some thoughts on these reactions.

The first troubling reaction comes when we've offended people. That means we've failed somewhere (the error is either in the writing, performance, introduction, or in the invitation of offendable folks to our show). This reaction is especially troubling because it makes me worry about some of the people who don't talk to us afterward, what they're thinking. Some of the people in Urbana mentioned being sick of being "sucker punched" by performance artists. Sucker-punching, offending, or otherwise shocking our audience is not at all our intention. We're trying to honestly present something that is discomforting, to manifest that discomfort without disrespecting the audience. When this fails, it is our failure, we must take responsibility for it. But like any challenge worth pursuing, such failure is only completely avoidable by ceasing to try. I like to think of John Schneider's response to the show as a goal: "their generous, even tender, care for their audiences, reflect a passionate commitment to learning, a faith in the value of theatrical communion, and a desire to help this country rise to its best."

The second troubling reaction is when some members of an audience get downright condescending in their responses. In Urbana the best example of this is a man who said, with exaggerated surprise "wait, are you telling me this actually works?" It's difficult to maintain one's composure when taking in such a dismissive assessment of something we're putting our entire lives into. Especially when somewhat exhausted from performing, and especially when coming from someone who was otherwise acting quite arrogant (not only toward us but toward the rest of the audience). I couldn't help but grin at his sheltered liberal ignorance, but managed to briefly describe some of the types of people who do find the play engaging, relevant, and successful, or even who disliked the play for directly opposite reasons he did. I didn't go into detail of what these people might think of him (or what some of them might do to him in a dark street) but it wouldn't have mattered, because he dismissed them just as condescendingly as he had us.

This guy doesn't deserve to be singled out, and actually the numbers of people who feel similarly but walk away without communicating at all bother me much more. Such reactions, while unfortunate, are expected and unavoidable. We won't let this slow us down.

Did you see this show? If you did, please write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it, because we love artistic transparency.

ARTISTIC TRANSPARENCY

If you've seen us perform Ulysses' Crewmen and were confused or upset in any way, we hope you spoke with us afterward. If you didn't feel comfortable or weren't able to speak with us, we owe you an apology.

We hope to create an intense and powerful experience for our audiences, but we do not intend to shock, upset or bewilder them. We withdraw from the quasi-mystical sublime in art. We know some artists are really into this kind of thing; fetishizing the ineffable, the emotionally deep, the ambiguously ironic, or the 'true expression of their artistic soul'. We're not. We do find such approaches occasionally intriguing, but too often they result in work that is either trite and sentimental or manipulative and self-indulgent. We try instead to be clear, approachable and honest. This doesn't always work. Sometimes the stress, exhaustion and excitement of performing (not to mention limits of time and space) make it hard for us to always be as open and available as we'd like at our performances.

Any work of art more involved than a shallow representation can be thought of as a sort of puzzle. We would like our play's puzzle to be challenging, but workable. We want Ulysses' Crewmen to ask compelling questions, and suggest interesting potential answers, without force feeding or coddling the audience.

If this didn't work for some in the audience we consider it mostly our fault. A good play should contain and communicate its intentions fully within itself. We're offering a poor substitute in cases where such communication has failed. If you have questions, please contact us via email and we will gladly answer your questions and send you a thorough statement of our intentions (which we don't want to publish here, cuz it's kind of long and might spoil the play for those who haven't seen it). Send requests to this email: insurgent.ben@gmail.com.

This statement of intentions does not cancel or abolish any other interpretation of the play. Art's meaning comes from audience reaction as much as from artist's intention. We are only sharing our thoughts to avoid confusion, dismiss mystification, answer questions, make suggestions and add to the crowd of valid but divergent responses we’re hoping the play creates.