Punk Theater: A Proposal
by Tom Foran
“Unlike British punk, American punk was not so much a working-class and bohemian response to economic depression and authoritarian ideology as it was a middle-class expression of alienation from and disgust with mainstream values. Like their British counterparts, however, American punks often embraced a sense of societal disintegration and futurelessness.” -Daniel Wojcik, on the origins of punk.
“ACTOR: A professional exhibitionist who manufactures emotions in a manner convincing enough to earn a living, generally by reciting the daily specials to restaurant patrons.” -Rick Bayan
“Punk rock will never die, until something more dangerous replaces it.” -Jello Biafra
“Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity.” -Marlon Brando
“Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing, and playing what you want.” -Kurt Cobain
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” -Jesus of Nazareth (hypocrites in this context means “actors”)
“I liked that time of decay. There was a nihilism in the atmosphere, a longing to die. Part of this feeling of New York at that time was this longing for oblivion, that you were about to disintegrate, go the way of this bankrupt, crumbling city. Yet that was something almost mystically wonderful.” -Mary Harron, speaking about the dawn of punk in New York.
“You need three things in the theater - the play, the actors and the audience, - and each must give something.” -Kenneth Haigh
“...in their [the anarchists'] mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves.” -G.K. Chesterton
“If you want a bourgeois existence, you shouldn't be an actor. You're in the wrong profession.” -Uta Hagen
“One thing I have faithfully observed and noted about punks: they're all legends, each and every one of them, in one circle or another. Even if you never see them in the elements of their renown, even the mere courtesy-handshake between friends of friends in a parking lot, you cannot help but feel an immortal vibrancy, a comic-book kind of costumed exuberance like that parking lot is host to a historic summit or a scene in ten thousand movies we're all living right now.... Inevitably I reached the understanding that this word 'punk' does not mean anything tangible like 'tree' or 'car.' Rather, punk is like a flag, an open symbol, it only means what people believe it means. There was a time in China when red traffic lights meant 'go.' How could you begin to argue?” -Michael Muhammad Knight
“O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak profanely), that neither having th' accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.” -William Shakespeare
“Well, I've been thinking things; thinking things that I just hope aren't true, like maybe you don't choose punk rock because punk rock chooses you.” -Pat the Bunny
“Legs, even if they are fat and short, when perceived as part of appearance of the actor's entire body, do not call attention to themselves. An actor can create a slender appearance; indeed, the creation of a desired appearance can serve as one definition of the art of acting. When a performance is truly effective, even a small actor can make an imposing figure—he can look even grander than the stage itself.” -Tadashi Suzuki
“At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.” -Emma Goldman
“With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying.” -Johnny Depp
“Most fundamentally, I would see Anarchism as a synonym for anti-authoritarianism.” -John Zerzan
“Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.” -Katherine Hepburn
“You are in Zapatista rebel territory. Here the people give the orders and the government obeys.” -Roadsign in Chiapas, southern Mexico
“I have a hard time seeing actors as human beings.” -Anthony Marvullo
“Punk rock is starting a band with some friends who don't know how to play instruments and people come to your shows and like you even though you totally suck.” -Fat Mike
“All the world's a stage, and it's men and women merely players.” -William Shakespeare
“I laugh along, but inside I know it's true: being in love is totally punk rock. Quiet kisses are so hardcore.” -Joey Comeau
“You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.” -Michael Wilding
“We start from negation, from dissonance. That dissonance can take many shapes. An inarticulate mumble of discontent, tears of frustration, a scream of rage, a confident roar. An unease, a confusion, a longing, a critical vibration.” -John Holloway
“Life's like a play; it's not the length but the excellence of the acting that matters.” -Seneca
Punk Theater
Theater
Punk
Punk Theater
I. Theater
Theater is dominated by artists. As a medium, it consists of one or more persons pretending to be what they are not for the purpose of telling a story to their audience. This means a theatrical piece must be presented by artists (actors, singers, dancers, puppeteers, etc.) to an audience: viewers, listeners, interpreters. The audience are observers, onlookers; in a word, they are witnesses.
This puts all the pressure on the artist to entertain a passive and uninvolved audience.
The “4th wall” is an invisible barrier which separates the artists and the audience. The belief that it exists is what makes the audience passive: they are on this side of the line, outside the imaginary world, looking in, as with a two-way mirror. The artists cannot see the audience, so nothing is required of them other than to sit down, shut up and observe. They have no responsibilities towards the play other than to witness it.
The 4th wall is used in theater in order to give a feeling of security to the audience (this same feeling of security is what allows them to be passive). The 4th wall allows the audience to acknowledge what they are seeing is not real, yet believe it at the same time. For example, an audience can be moved even to tears when Othello kills his wife, yet they also understand that the actress is alive and well: they need this understanding to prevent being compelled to leap onto the stage and rescue her. No sane person can be a passive witness to murder; the 4th wall in this way serves to preserve the audience's sanity and peace of mind. Theoretically, an audience relying on the 4th wall to protect them could actually witness a real murder and not even realize it, but this prospect is unlikely and frankly a little bit disturbing.
Whatever occurs onstage is happening in a magical world, an unreality. The magic can be as obvious as ghosts and aliens or it can be as subtle as fake blood. This practice is known as the “suspension of disbelief,” where the audience redefines what is and is not plausible or possible, but only within the context of the theatrical piece: on that side of the 4th wall men can fly and fish can sing, but on this side physics and biology apply their laws without exceptions.
If this barrier is removed, several things happen. The audience can no longer suspend their disbelief, because they are no longer separated from the artists. They can no longer distinguish the unreality of the magic world from the reality of their world. In a sense, the worlds merge and the two-way mirror is smashed.
Artists greedily seek to maintain the wall to keep the magic of unreality for themselves. They train their successors to mistakenly think that if the wall is broken the magic disappears (the “illusion is shattered”) instead of reaching equilibrium with the audience. By breaking the wall, they fall to meet the audience just as the audience is raised to meet them. Both parties, audience and artists, are moved to one another's levels against their will. The audience looses their serenity, and the actors lose their power.
Let us briefly examine the mind of an actor, and of performing artists in general.
There is a certain level of madness needed for someone to want to be an actor. Few actors that I have met function well in terms of their emotional and psychological states. They crave attention, wishing to be on the stage, wishing to have strangers look at them and judge them. Most actors have personalities which fall into one of two categories: there are the loud, outgoing actors who use their gregarious and extroverted personalities to mask their insecurities; and there are the quiet reflective actors, who are veritable mutes in real life but will easily froth and foam and shake the rafters once they step onstage.
To desire to be an actor means there is some fundamental unhappiness or discontentedness with oneself. The desire to act is one of escapism: to escape from one's own self. To become another person, to create a character and embody that “other” being, to give it life. When an actor puts on a mask, the actor hides himself. Or, the actor destroys himself, to “become” the mask, filling it with his own life. To assume a role is to mask one's own personality, shoving one's own problems (at least temporarily) under the rug. Or, to wrap one's own personality in the cloak of a character, to place aspects of oneself into a character, to find oneself inside someone else, even if that someone else is a fictional character, basically to express oneself by expressing someone else. Or, in my own personal case, I often fear that I have no personality whatsoever, that what I believe and say and the way I act are totally contrived so that I can appear to be human, and becoming a character gives me a personality, forces me to become someone. Acting in that sense is me doing intentionally on a stage what I'm already doing subconsciously in the day to day.
In that way, acting and all other forms of performance are at best therapeutic and at worst sheer escapism for the artists. It is a way to leave ourselves behind, to escape from our own problems and faults and failures and lives and insecurities. But this sort of art is extremely selfish, and so facades of humanitarian intent are often attached. The actor claims to be performing in order to transport the audience away from their own lives and problems and realities for the duration of the piece. And this may in some cases indeed be true, but if it is it is only because the audience is carried along in the actor's attempt to do the same for himself.
I do not say these things disparagingly nor wholly as criticism. Indeed, they are part of what endears me to theater and I think they have great benefit for all involved. In this life of struggle and pain and suffering, it is truly necessary for us to be able to forget and overlook and leave behind the world and ourselves sometimes, for the length of a play.
But escapism is dangerous; a drug more addictive than any narcotic.
Let us now leave our examination of the actor, for it is useful in understanding what he creates but ultimately just a sideshow. Let us now address the problem of elitism in theater.
The Hartford Stage Company has ticket prices ranging from $28 to $57 for their next production. Bowtie Palace Cinemas, also in Hartford, shows all it's films for a maximum of $12. Theater is elite and it will continue to be so until these costs are comparable. Now, why is theater so much more expensive as a medium to enjoy? Because it has a significantly smaller audience to pool from. But whose fault is that? Theater does not advertise itself to the public: the only people who come to see a show are those who already know about it, whereas a film actively seeks to persuade and entice the masses to come to the cinema. The general public is either unaware or apathetic about Hartford Stage's upcoming production, but could probably tell you when the next superhero flick comes out.
So much of theater has become stagecraft: it is concerned with form, style, with it's own creation. Far too often I've talked with other actors about plays we've seen and instead of discussing the messages and ideas and conversations of the play we critique the performances of the cast or aspects of the direction or staging or lighting or of the set. And while these things are all valid and necessary, to focus on them entirely defeats the purpose of seeing a play in the first place, which is to witness the story and form opinions and interpretations and emotions of the messages or questions raised by the play.
Theater is insular and done by artists primarily for other artists, for internal appreciation and criticism. A friend once told me he had no desire to see an experimental movement piece because it meant nothing to him beyond “weird theater shit,” being abstract for the sake of being abstract. There is some validity to this viewpoint: otherwise, Joe Q. Public would feel just as comfortable walking in to see the strangest short of Samuel Beckett as he would to see the latest blockbuster.
The elitism kicks in when instead of actively trying to make a piece that is topical and relevant to their communities, artists insist on lamenting how the public doesn't appreciate what they do, secretly smiling at being “misunderstood” by the masses. But why should the public want anything to do with something which has no bearing on their lives, which means nothing and serves no purpose other than to be an expression of a particular style or form of theater? Snobbery is not art. Art is supposed to unite us, to make us emote and escape from the horrors of the world, it's supposed to have a message, a purpose. Instead, it has nothing to impart on the audience other than they should be appreciative of the discipline and effort put in by the artists. That theater is empty and meaningless, a waste to everyone involved except the compliment-fishing artist.
If theater does not have something relevant and important and urgent to say to an audience, it is nothing more than intellectual masturbation. I choose this word, masturbation, very deliberately, because I think it is an accurate comparison. It serves only to satisfy one person: it shares nothing with anyone else nor does it create anything; it has nothing to show for itself, no yield. Theater must demand an audience's attention, not capture their attention, not hold their attention, as we are so often told. Theater must share something, some question or statement about something, about human nature, about society, about history, about the supernatural, about the future, some thing. Theater must be confrontational, it must spark debate. It must present something to the audience and then ask them, “Having just seen this, what do you, as individuals, feel about it? What will you do with that feeling? Where do we go from here?”
This final question I now pose for the artists: Where do we go from here? Do we continue to make empty, self-glorified masturbatory theater? Or do we find a way to make something which will make our audiences grow larger, both in their numbers and in their way of thinking?
II. Punk
Punk is a term with multiple meanings. The first is an insult, a delinquent. The second, directly inspired by the first, is a movement which has it's own subcultures, musics, ideologies, and lifestyles, whose listeners and adherents are called “punks” or “punk rockers” (or sometimes humorously as “punx”). The third is an archaic term for prostitute, but this has passed out of the modern lexicon. It did, however, give rise to the fourth and final term, one used primarily in prisons, that of a catamite. It is to the second term which I will be referring.
Punk is, in the eyes of most people, a genre of music, alongside rock-n-roll, hip-hop, or blues. Punk music, however, is only one aspect of the social movement that is “punk.”
The punk movement hinges on a few things: anarchism, the DIY ethic, fierce non-conformity, and a belief in the necessity of individual freedom above all things and at all costs. Freedom to the punk is more important than peace, justice, safety, and even love. Some punks even feel that these concepts are all mutually exclusive from one another: that true freedom would mean the absence of peace, because peace requires compromise. Justice, true justice, is harsh, hard, and unforgiving. Too often we think the words “just” and “merciful” can be used in the same sentence, without realizing they are at odds with one another. Punks are not concerned with the ever-receding horizon that is “justice.” And safety is the worst of all: freedom is killed the moment someone brings up the need for security. Freedom is inherently dangerous.
And love. Love, which we as humans believe is of the utmost importance. Punks believe in love and all it's good. But to love someone, you give them power over you, you make yourself beholden to them and responsible for their well-being, emotional, physical, intellectual and otherwise. And the freedom of a punk means you are beholden to nothing, and responsible only for yourself. True freedom is not happy, it is lonely and terrible and cold and hungry and dirty and homeless. But it is beautiful, and it is free.
(For clarification, it would be stupid of me to say that punks do not value love. In many cases, they are motivated solely by love, and in particular the folk-punk movement will sometimes make claims that love is the path to freedom. This may be contradictory, or it may be perfectly harmonious with the rest of punk ideology, depending on individual viewpoints.)
The punk laughs at those who think freedom comes from laws and documents and declarations and constitutions. These things are impediments to freedom. A law is a bar in the prison that cages freedom. “Break some laws and be free,” says the punk. Freedom comes from within, it cannot be imposed from without.
This freedom is found within anarchy. There are strands of punk which are infused with other philosophies, like socialism, communism, Rastafarianism, and sometimes even (tragically) Nazism and white nationalism. Punk has been wedded to just about everything by someone at some point, but nothing has been attached to it as long or as successfully as it's original political philosophy of anarchy. Anarchism is a fundamental part of punk. Punk without anarchy is like water without wetness: yes, it can be distilled or frozen into another form, but when one thinks of water one thinks first of liquid, and ice and gas secondarily.
At this point, it would probably be in my best interests to try to define anarchy. But that is a can of worms I am hesitant to open. If I were to begin trying to explain anarchy, I would completely lose sight of my original intent with this paper. I cannot give a true description of anarchy and anarchistic philosophies, because every anarchist has a different idea of what anarchy means (as the Oxford Companion to Philosophy so eloquently states, "there is no single defining position that all anarchists hold, beyond their rejection of compulsory government, and those considered anarchists at best share a certain family resemblance”). I will instead assume the reader already has at least some clear understanding of anarchism and what anarchists believe and feel. But, just in case, I will very briefly and very poorly describe anarchism as the belief that government, authority and nations are unnecessary, immoral, and directly prevent freedom from being realized. I suspect if I were to try to go into more detail, I would basically wind up ripping off everything from Wikipedia, so I direct those unfamiliar with anarchism as a philosophy to use that. It is a much better resource than I am (case in point, I just took the above quote from Wikipedia's page on Anarchism).
Different ideas on what anarchy means are as intense within punk communities as they are in anarchism in general. However, it can be safely taken for granted that while two punks may not have the same idea what anarchy means, they will agree that anarchy is of fundamental importance to punk as a whole.
Another punk fundamental is the DIY ethic. DIY stands for Do It Yourself. The basic principle is that if you are a free individual, as punks strive to be, then anything you dislike is your own fault. The DIY motto is “don't hate the media, become the media,” first articulated by punk guru Jello Biafra. Is there a type of music you want to hear, yet aren't hearing? Make that music yourself, don't hunt around for something close at the record store. Don't wait for the local corporate-sponsored rock bar to bring someone in when you can ask your favorite band to play in your basement. Want to record an album? Don't try to convince a record company to to sign you, make your own record company instead and burn CDs. Want a magazine that isn't totally fluff and commercials? Make your own independent zine. Is there some issue you want to call attention to? Don't write to an elected official, make your own pamphlets and hand them out in parking lots or throw an awareness benefit.
The DIY mentality is a very empowering one. The quality of each product is not as glossy and polished as it would be if it were “professional,” but that's part of the charm. It is rough, it is raw, it is unrefined. And to maintain the staunch anti-consumerism DIY demands, everything is cheap. Plan-It-X Records, a punk record label and strong proponent of DIY practices, prides itself on not selling anything for over $4 (“if it ain't cheap it ain't punk”). This way, the only profit from the music is purely emotional and intellectual instead of monetary: prices are fixed in such a way to only cover the cost of production and distribution with no one making any money from the product. Plan-It-X has inspired many punks to start their own small independent record labels or distros, each catering to the tastes of the local punk “scene.” The networking of these different scenes together has been expedited greatly by use of the Internet. A touring band could, at least in theory, go anywhere in the country (or beyond) where the DIY network has a presence. A band would be given a place to sleep, get something to eat, play their music, distribute their CDs or literature, and make just enough money to get to the next city. Once again, the emphasis is on experiencing the event, not making money from it.
(Much of punk is hypothetical: many punks have jobs or go to school or do things which stand ideologically against what they believe in. Each punk reconciles these things on an individual basis.)
This rejection of the monetary system means that victory is achieved only when a CD sells enough copies to make zero dollars, preventing those involved from getting greedy and therefore compromising their creation. Music (or anything else) is made for the sheer satisfaction of creating and a transmission of ideas instead of to be capitalistic.
For punks, DIY ethics extend beyond media and into practical life: repair your own bicycle (punks tend to prefer bikes and skateboards or public transportation over cars), sew damaged clothing instead of throwing it away, or if you're really ambitious you can try to make your own clothing. Plant a garden to grow your own food, raise animals for consumption if you can and are so inclined. You shouldn't have to pay to live in your home: squat somewhere to show your defiance and disregard for law, or if you fear the possible repercussions, move into a punk house (where many people live in a space intended for a few so that each person's rent is as small as possible). What is regarded as trash is often very useful. A group of punks in Vermont built a village completely out of things they found in the garbage, dubbing it “Trashtopia.”
Punks are inherently insane people. They live their lives with a sort of joyful nihilism that makes self-destructive behavior a bonding experience. The basic idea is that the world is a violent and destructive place, more powerful than we are, so it is our responsibility to destroy ourselves, so that we exercise our freedom. The world cannot have the satisfaction of destroying us if we destroy ourselves, in our own way and on our own terms. It is a reaction to the injustice of the world: stomp and scream and raise your fists because it's the only way to keep from rolling over and dying, giving up. In this way, at a punk show, there is very little division between the band and the crowd. The audience is part of the performance: their slamming in the pit and screaming out lyrics is just as necessary to the performance as the band and the instruments are.
One of punk's main drawbacks is that it is short-lived. By it's very nature, it burns out, for one reason or another, and the scene dies. Or, it becomes stale and stagnant, no longer a threat, but trite. Then it ceases to be punk. A comparison will probably help me explain what I mean. Punk is a lion in the wild: it is either killed by poachers or captured, de-clawed, de-fanged, tamed and put on display, caged in a zoo. If it does not die physically, it's spirit is killed. This is the suicidal nature of punk: if you live long enough, you're a sellout. But sellouts are necessary: they are the chroniclers of the dead lions.
A few punk slogans and mottoes and graffiti tags will probably demonstrate what I mean better than my explanations. Once again, however, these are not universal: what may seem profoundly right to one punk will be incredibly stupid to another. They will, hopefully, serve to point out how apocalyptic, self-aware and joyfully nihilistic punk viewpoints are.
“Beauty is the end.” “The price of existence is perpetual warfare.” “It's way too late to grow up.” “Take care.” “The world remains a terrifying struggle but we needn't go through it alone.” “Too fast to live, too young to die.” “[There is] No future.” “Live fast, love hard, die with your mask on.” “Grown-ups are obsolete.” “Better to burn out than to fade away.” “DIY or die.” “Here's one chord, here's two more, now form your own band.” “God isn't dead, but I'll get that bastard someday.” “Here's to our lives being meaningless and how beautiful it is.”
Those who decry these mentalities as naive miss the point: the punks says there is no future and he means it for everything: for himself, for society, for the country, for systems, for structure, for civilization, for humanity, for the world, the universe. But this is something he encourages, it is cathartic, it is release and abandon. Oblivion, to the punk, is worth celebrating, because it is the most moral or rational answer for him.
The sense of necessary oblivion is manifested in punk scenes. Scenes burn themselves out. There is varying self-awareness of this fact. It is because they have no longevity that scenes have beauty. They spin and swirl, they burn themselves out. Each scene exists for only a moment, briefly flaring in glory before going cold, never to exist again, impossible to be replicated. It is similar to live theater in this way. It is a singular event, never precisely the same twice. The audience opening night sees (in a certain sense) necessarily a different show than the audience closing night.
A fellow punk fan once told me that the elitism is part of the reason he loves punk: it is not for everyone, it is not mainstream. You will never hear about a punk show on the radio. If you want to go to the show, you have to search for it, find it for yourself. Punk will not come find you, you have to find punk. He called my attempt to make it more open “populist.” And there is some definite truth to this accusation. As he said to me, “I don't want to be in the pit at a show with the asshole who just wants to hurt people” instead of experience the event. However, punk communities by their very nature are finite and short-lived. I do not think this will be a great problem. As more people come into the scene, it will begin to break down until eventually it is dead or so drastically changed that the founders would not recognize it. This means new scenes would develop, just as short-lived, to prevent stagnation. The scene is constantly reinventing itself to avoid becoming irrelevant. And as it divides, it will produce individuals who can easily move in and respect different communities and scenes, allowing these scenes to network with one another yet remain independent.
And to a certain extent, there is no need to worry too much about punk becoming populist. The instant it does, it is no longer rebellion, it is no longer punk. The point of removing elitism is not to win converts to punk, not to bloat a swollen scene, not to abuse the already over-extended DIY network, not to bring assholes into the shows; it is to allow those who might be able to contribute something to punk's growth not to be blocked by fundamentalists reveling in punk orthodoxy.
III. Punk Theater
There are two things which I am passionate about: theater and punk. It seems to me ridiculous that I must divide these aspects of my passion, as though they were mutually exclusive. I should be able to self-identify as a punk and as an actor simultaneously, not separately. I do not place one above the other. I am not a punk who acts, nor am I an actor who is into punk. I am a punk actor, or an acting
punk (I can think of no cute portmanteau).
Great theater can speak to me and great punk can speak for me. Great theater moves me, great punk makes me move.
Both things are aspects of my true self; neither one is more dear to me than the other. Being an actor should not mean I cannot slam in the pit just as being a punk should not mean I cannot recite Shakespeare.
I intend to try to merge these two unrelated things as far as I am able in my own self: I will try to live a punk life, imbued with an awareness of theatricality and the natural stories of my life and the greater world around me, as well as ensure my acting has the same level of urgency and deliberation and relevance as a punk show. I want to try and see if this can be extended beyond my own internal processes. I want to make theater with punks and I want to make punk with actors.
My proposal is to create a company or tribe or troupe or band or what-have-you, work with these people to make something collaborative and theatrical using ethics and tour the production. DIY mentalities, applied to all aspects of theatrical creation: costuming, set design, masks, puppetry, etc, done without a 4th wall, directly to the audience, to engage them, remove their passivity, and hopefully encourage them to participate. Punk music need not necessarily be be a part of the production, but it would certainly make me very happy if between scenes (or monologues or slam poetry or mimes or whatever we make) there were mosh pits to literally mingle the performers and the crowd. Every show would be cheap, nothing more than $10. Ideally, there would be no requisite payment at all, but rather solicitations or donations, and cheap merchandise available, be it CDs of the music or T-shirts of the company's name/logo (which we make ourselves, obviously). We live, as much as we can, off the generosity of strangers: stay in punk houses or with whoever offers us a place or abandoned buildings or empty theaters or on the side of the road if need be.
The production itself would have to be something we can set up and execute just as easily in a black box theater as in a dirty basement, or outside. It must be easy to set up, easy to take down, and easy to transport. Content-wise, it doesn't have to be completely created by us (punk Brecht or punk Shakespeare or punk Marlowe sounds so so so so so so so so so so cool), but it couldn't hurt. It does, however, have to be unsettling to an audience. Or, if not unsettling, at least conversation-starting, to get people questioning their foundations. We must use this as a vehicle to grab the audience by the face and attack their minds, assault their assumptions, challenge their beliefs! For when we mill around after the show, that we get people confronting us, saying "I disagree with everything you said, here's why" or "I absolutely love what you said, here's why." There must be no ambivalence in the audience. We as actors must share with them some of the magic we've been hoarding for ourselves.
What I propose: a group of interested individuals get together and discuss what we would like to do with this project in mind. We would work for however long we thought necessary on the show, then, once comfortable with it, take it on tour, stopping at festivals, theaters, basements, parks and parking lots, using the DIY network to get booking and housing along the way. We would perform in dirty basements of punk houses as much as in theaters, if possible. We would travel no more than four hours a day to each venue and hopefully make enough money at each show to afford food and gas to the next venue. We would do this for about a month, theoretically getting to Chicago in mid to late August, where we would then go our separate ways just in time for the next school year to begin.
Theater is a business. A strange, cerebral business where creativity is encouraged, but a business nonetheless. Punk is as far from business as possible. In fact, punk is almost the exact antithesis of business. While actors compete, punks converge. Actors and other artists seek to use their art to make money to live, or to live and make money to fund their art. They seek success. Punks, however, reject money completely. They make their lives living art. They measure success on their own terms. So too with myself: If an audience does not like my performance, I don't want them to politely and half-heartedly applaud, I want them to throw rotten vegetables at me.
I suspect there are other with this same idea, perhaps not taken in this same direction as myself, but the spirit of what I'm trying to say. It is to those for whom this treatise is intended: punks, artists, pirates, wingnuts, bandits, bank robbers, gypsies, nomads, cowboys, clowns, creators, destroyers, vagabonds, bullfighters, beatniks, lunatics, anarchists, circus freaks, radicals, dancers, acrobats, actors, singers, hermits, steppenwolves, drunks, whores, hedonists, heathens, pagans, immigrants, orphans, prophets, pariahs, poets, dreamers, dissidents, exiles, subversives, rebels, revolutionaries, and madmen. Let us band together and then create something more than just mediocrity and angst, and take it to the world. Not just a similar-minded segment of the world, but to everyone around us!
(It may seem odd that I appeal to people like myself and then talk about destroying elitism; this paradox is obvious to me as well. I'm trying to justify it this way: I'm searching for people with similar interests to open these same interests up to anyone. Weak justification, to be sure, but I'm clinging to this raft with all my strength.)
The punk ideology is the only one I have seen in my scant few years that makes any sense to me, that makes me feel honest and true and sincere. But despite this love of punk life, I am not a true punk, nor, I think, will I ever be. I cannot be a punk for many, many reasons: because the life I live is too comfortable, too capitalistic, too soft, too full of concessions and compromises. I cannot be a punk because I am a college student. To be a college student, or indeed a student in general, means I accept the American educational system. This would mean that I accept the American economic system, which would in turn mean I accept the American governmental system, and the American value system of nationalism, consumerism, and militarism, which combine to form fascism, oppression and conformity, the very things punk actively attempts to destroy.
Basically, I am too much of a coward to be a punk. If I were to turn my back completely on America and on the middle-class Irish Catholic value system I was brought up on, it would be a slap in the face of my family, who believe in these things and hold them dear. They think I should use my strange ideas to make a contribution to society, or to change society, not uproot it. It is out of love for my family that I continue to go to school, to try to make money and to judge my life by the standards of society. As previously stated, love limits freedom. I do not say this with bitterness: indeed, I am lucky to be so loved. But that does not change the fact that this love inhibits me. Love is an inhibition.
I will not pretend that my desire to create this punk theater is not inextricably tied to my desire to live with the intensity and honesty of a punk without totally alienating those I love. But I have other selfish and vain reasons, as well. The entire idea for this evolved out of the pipe dream that wanting to be an actor should not have any bearing on my desire to tattoo meaningful messages and memories onto my body.
Another part of me says that I am truly a punk. There is nothing more punk than defining the world on your own terms and disregarding what other people think of you. And what is it that I'm trying to do if not define my own world, of both theater and punk? No, I am a punk. I'm so punk I reject honoring punk. I'm so punk I pick and choose what parts of punk I give myself to. I'm so punk I say fuck punk.
This schizophrenic war takes place in my mind all the time.
I live in Connecticut and divide my time (basically) between two locations: the first is the ancestral home of my immense Irish family and clan, East Hartford and it's surrounding areas. The second is the place where I go to school, UConn, and it's surrounding areas. East Hartford is an interesting place: it lacks the severe, crippling problems experienced by Hartford or Bridgeport or Willimantic, yet it retains much of the stigma of poverty and economic stagnation. Perceptions are so strange. I talked to a lady on the bus who grew up in Hartford and considered moving to East Hartford her escape from the hell that is the North End ghetto. This was her promised land. I've talked to people who grew up in East Hartford who think the place is going down the drain and are considering leaving. I've talked to people from the woods of Marlborough or the huge silent suburbs of Glastonbury who think East Hartford is the ghetto. And it does not escape me how great a role race plays in these perceptions. Hartford County is roughly 77% white and 12% black. The city of Hartford itself is about 30% white and 40% black. East Hartford is about 65% white and 20% black, somewhere in between the demographics for the county and the larger city. UConn is basically the same. I grew up in a world where I was constantly exposed to black culture and faces, so coming to UConn was not a culture shock for me at all. What was a shock for me, however, was the fact that it was a culture shock for other white people. This boggled my mind. I know and understand Hartford County is not exactly the most diverse place in the world, but seriously! I honestly did not realize how little diversity some people grew up with.
In the theatrical world, there is a question which is becoming more and more pressing: to what extent does skin color matter in a role? Can white actors play black parts and can black actors play white parts without the entire piece losing it's original meaning? To what extent are roles created for the express purpose of being “a character who represents the viewpoints of black America,” as though black America has only one viewpoint?
I was once told that Lawrence Olivier, the great Shakespearean actor, played the role of Othello, a black man, in blackfaced makeup. My initial reaction was to see this as blatantly racist. But then I read about a black actor who considers the entire play Othello to be racist and refused to ever be in a production of it. I have an actor friend, another black actor, who considers the role of Othello to be one that is inspirational to blacks. I don't know the answer. I have another actor friend, white, who was once competing for a role and was told by the director the reason he didn't get the part was because they wanted it to go to a black man. This, to me, seems just as ridiculous as letting a white man play Othello. But then I think, should not every actor get an opportunity to play every role? What about fat actors? What about differences in sex? Can a man play a woman without the piece becoming either a political statement or a farce? What happens when we combine these questions? Can a white woman play Othello? Can a black woman play Ebeneezer Scrooge (as happened in Hartford, done by the HartBeat Ensemble)? Can a white man play Tituba? At what point do we draw the line? Should we draw the line at all?
My younger sister is a pretty talented softball player. She recently went to Ohio to participate in a tournament. While there she related to me that there were “only white people here.” The region she was in, apparently, was overwhelmingly white. Now, the same could be said of Hartford County in Connecticut, where we grew up. But I try to imagine someone from Ohio coming to Hartford, and the entire scenario gets reversed. Even though blacks are still obviously the minority, a white guy from Ohio would see Connecticut as being mostly black.
It is our responsibility as punks to be violently iconoclastic and to threaten paradigms, to shake up people, to be offensive, to keep the audience ill at ease. Am I shallow in thinking the introduction of black people in an overwhelmingly white environment would ruffle some feathers? Or am I submitting to the very racism that I decry by wanting to have a few “tokens” of diversity to be a part of the punk theater? I am just wracked by white guilt?
And it dawns on me now that my definition of “diverse” is horribly flawed. I have only seen it in terms of black and white, ignoring Jews, Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, Eurasians, Indians, both American and those from the sub-continent, and even Eastern Europeans (a Slavic friend once very articulately convinced me that Eastern Europeans should not be lumped in ethnically with Western European “whites,” but now I can't remember his reasoning). It is probably twice as hard for, say, an Asian actor to be cast in a Shakespearean production as it is for a black actor, and without having done any research I think it's probably safe to say that there are even fewer roles being written for Indian characters than there are for black characters.
Another aspect of this that I haven't even touched upon is the fact that punk itself is primarily dominated by white males. But that is to be expected, somewhat: it caters to people disgusted with middle-class life in the suburbs. Punk primarily attracts people who are “angry young and bored,” and who better fits those qualifications than white male teenagers? It's sort of the sad nature of punk: this population feels they are coralled into being drones to a system. They have a desire to rebel but don't really know what to rebel against because they have no oppositional identity: a white kid filled with angst from suburbia cannot rebel against “the Man” because he is “the Man.” Punk is a new identity: a middle-class white kid can legitimately find some rebellion by leaving the middle-class, turning his back on suburbia, destroying his middle-class background and rediscovering himself as a punk. I doubt this process is quite as deliberate and intentional as I have made it seem: in most cases I'm sure it happens subconsciously.
And despite it's supposed proclaimed radicalism and anarchism and postliberalism, many female fans of punk music don't go to punk shows or live punk lifestyles for fear of being groped at the shows or dismissed as “angry man-hating feminazi bulldyke punks.” Not that angry man-hating feminazi bulldyke punks don't exist, they do, and oftentimes will readily admit it, usually with amused delight. And it is also sadly true that females are oftentimes justified in feeling uncomfortable at punk shows.
Thankfully, however, there have been distinct attempts to rectify this. The Afro-punk movement, for example, gives us black or mixed-member punk bands, like Dandelion or Bad Brains. And the growing connections between punk and underground hip-hop has lead to ties between those realms, with bands like Whole Wheat Bread and individuals like P.O.S. or Saul Williams. And, once again, there is more to this than the black/white divide: Chicano punk is small but has long been established in certain parts of the country (though regrettably I know next to nothing about it), mostly in the southwest; gypsy punk, one of the most successful sub genres, brings Eastern European, Jewish and Roma aspects to punk radiating out of New York and the northeast (e.g.: Gogol Bordello, Monotonix, the Luminescent Orchestrii, Golem); queercore uses punk to express rejection of traditional gay and lesbian communities through organizations like Queer Mutiny (once again, though, I don't know too much about this); the riot grrrl movement has brought feminism to punk in a positive way thanks to the efforts of Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill, among others.
And, in my opinion, coolest and most interesting of all are people like Kimya Dawson, who bring together various strands and threads cohesively into one, possibly even doing so unintentionally: she is revered throughout the folk-punk world for her accessibility, has appeared on Afro-punk compilations and documentaries, and has toured with feminist singer Ani DiFranco.
(I have also heard via the Internet of a new movement called taqwacore, taqwa being an Arabic word meaning “fear or love of God.” Taqwacore combines punk with Islam, musically and ideologically. This has met with resistance from both punk and Muslim communities: punks are wary of theologies being injected into their movement, as they see theologies as instruments of oppression and therefore not punk; while the more conservative and puritanical Islamic imams frown upon the disrespect and apostasy of these new “progressive” Muslims, who encouraged women-led prayer and speak irreverently about Muhammad, as well as their obvious ties to Western culture. I personally think that part of being punk means not caring what people think of you and what you do in your pursuit to find truth and freedom, even other punks. Most interestingly, though, is the fact that taqwacore began as a fictional movement in a novel by Michael Muhammad Knight (who is himself not Arabic but actually a white ex-Catholic who converted to Islam) called The Taqwacores. The novel apparently inspired many punks of Islamic heritage and has spawned this new movement.)
However, despite the efforts of these various bands and people, punk is still very white. Let's use punk theater as a means of changing that, while also discussing and addressing the questions raised by diversity in theater, if we can.
A very brilliant acting teacher of mine spoke out against what he referred to as “pedestrian theater.” “I'm not going to pay a hundred-and-some-fucking dollars for something I could go see out on the street,” he said. I can think of no clearer example of the elitism in theater than this statement. Punk can also be just as close-minded. By merging these two very different ideologies, our goal is not to merge two elites. Rather, it is an attempt to make something that has not been tried before, something we have created ourselves, and we call on you, the audience, to be a part of it. You must assist us.
That “pedestrian” theater is exactly what I'm suggesting we make. Pedestrian, guerrilla, DIY theater.
Any takers?
