I find this very interesting—that what one person thinks is the best performance in the festival, someone else finds amateur and clumsy. What to one person is genuine and multi-dimensional is to someone else an empty academic exercise. This is one of my favorite things about PICA, the passion for debate that it inspires. Last year, everyone was talking about Faustin Linyekula— half the audience loved the performance with all their hearts and half the audience detested it with all their might. I had a great fight the night I saw it with my boyfriend—it split us right down the middle (we recovered, thankfully) but I still stand staunchly behind my position that while it was a passionate work with striking images, it was too damn loud and made only one real point, which was “ARGGGGGHHHHghghh!” This year is no different, and I strive to wade into the differences, even if it means getting into a brawl at the Works. I overheard someone telling a woman next to me the other night not to bother seeing Yubiwa Hotel, and instead to see Vivarium Studio, which was “much better.” I disagreed so intensely that I intervened to tell her that I had the exact opposite opinion—if you must choose, I exhorted, see Yubiwa Hotel, because while not as well-structured, it has a much more interesting and provocative flow of images than Vivarium. Which one of us is right? Who knows. More kind-hearted people insist that we both are, but I still say I am.
Which brings me (long-windedly) to Universes, which I thought was the most smart, soulful, howling, wailing, stomping, heart-breaking and heart-soaring piece I’ve seen yet at TBA (not counting Kiki & Herb, upon whom I have already drooled my love). When it comes down to it, I like experiments to be exuberant, messy, and participatory. I like to see people take chances, bait the crowd, and bite off more than they can chew. And in this case, they bit it off, chewed it up, spat it out and stomped all over it, in lockstep and four-part harmony. This does not impress everyone, but I think the talented crew of Universes is experimenting within a strong tradition (a tradition that goes back much farther than the early 90s) of weaving poetry, spoken word and political calls to action in and out of old spirituals, work songs, musical ballads and Sly and the Family Stone. And strangely enough, it reminded me of song-based theatre I’ve seen in Eastern Europe— a tradition born of entirely different circumstances but also using voice, rhythm and body to generate music and rhythm and words that shock, delight, seduce and haunt the crowd. This is the kind of work I love to see: call and response that fuses the personal with the political and calls us on our shit (and if you ask me, the near-uniform whiteness of Portland culture could use some calling out). Whatever category you put it into, I call it FUCKING AWESOME.
Faith Helma
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Faith, what I’m saying is that Universes’ work is not an experiment (nor is it or my critique of it, “academic”). I agree with you that it’s pulling on wells that have existed prior to the early 90s, but these guys aren’t synthesizing anything new here. And I refer to the early 90s because that’s when this style of performing poem became commonplace. This is populist work performed in a populist, entertaining way. Bully.
But it is not in the same league as the stage experiments being conducted by Vivarium or Yubiwa or dance pieces like Linyekula’s. (Interestingly, I was thrilled by Vivarium’s work, and slightly less so by Yubiwa’s…this is a side issue, but I suspect you respond to emotion-based work while I respond to head-based work.) We have released theater and dance from the requirement that they adhere to narration, to telling, to entertaining. There are poets who are writing poems (and creating performance work) that move into this territory (and have been for a very long time), poems that are truly experimental, moving away not only from narration, but from accepted syntax, blurring and/or conflating meaning and/or connotation.
I’m not saying Universes wasn’t entertaining, “or wailing, or stomping,” and I love a compelling voice as much as the next guy, but the work was not experimental, nor have any of the other poem-based entries into TBA ever been.
You use language in your work in the theater. You also use language to order a pizza. Poem in performance is the place where language can do more than tell, where it can be unmoored from its traditional uses to function in unexpected ways.
I look forward to having you see work of this nature. It won’t make you clap along, but it may change the way you think about poem and language.
Absolutely! Dude, they used TOM WAITS.
TOM FUCKING WAITS.
who DOES THAT in their hip hop performancey thing?
universes, that’s who.
Hm… it’s taken me a while to formulate a response here. I’ve been talking about this piece with a lot of people. A good friend of mine has an opinion similar to yours, Lisa, and we talked about this for a long time the other night. On one level I can say that part of my strong response to their work is due to the fact that, yes, I am a bit more emotion-based than head-based (though I find the best performances appeal to both), and yes, my knowledge of what is going on within the medium of performance poetry (not to mention hip hop) is sadly limited. But even allowing for this, I have some questions that remain unanswered.
1. What is the criteria that makes a piece ‘experimental’?
2. What could Universes have done that would have been more experimental, more challenging within its medium?
3. Are there other groups working in this medium, in more exciting and challenging ways? If so, I’d love to know about them.
4. Does a piece have to be consciously experimental in order to be relevant at TBA?
To go further with this last question: one thing I loved about Universes was how they referenced and directly responded to what is going on politically and socially in our country right now. Other artists did this as well, but Universes alone (out of the work I saw) delved into the quagmire of Katrina, not to mention spending time in prison and growing up poor. Someone said to me, “Well, that stuff is good, but not the right fit for TBA.” This kind of bothers me, because are we saying there isn’t room for someone who comes from a different class, a different neighborhood, a different background than ‘us’ the patrons of PICA? Is the category of ‘experimental’ work narrow to the point of excluding those who don’t have a certain education, exposure to ‘high’ art and access to privilege?
Now, again, performance poetry isn’t really my area of expertise, so maybe there are other artists working in this style, addressing the events of our time in a more interesting or challenging way. I remember being in Poland a couple years ago, where there is a strong tradition of open air/visual theatre, and excitedly proposing to the company I was working with that we incorporate stiltwalking ladders into our piece. They rolled their eyes and said, oh come on, EVERYONE’S done stiltwalking ladders by now, which was news to me. My point being, one person’s mind-blowing experiment can be someone else’s old hat, and yes, if I see more performance poetry, perhaps I will roll my eyes at Universes. But I’m still not sure that’s true. You don’t have to be an expert in a field in order to be deeply moved by an artist and I believe in my response to the honesty, guts, and skill on display in the work of Universes. I heard what they were saying. I responded to what they were saying, and how they were saying it. It would be one thing if they were obviously untalented or unpracticed, or if they were expressing mindless tripe or hallmark sentiments, but since they were none of these things, I don’t understand why they don’t fit in with other TBA events.