An Awfully Big Adventure, Day Two: Sheila Take A Bow

Read "Day One, Part One" here.
Read "Day One, Part Two" here.

7. INSTRUCTIONS FOR FORGETTING; OR MARINA & LEE

I get my ass out of bed early (for me at any rate) and take a look out the window. Snow! Holy shit! When did that happen? It's a veritable winter wonderland out there. Luckily, everything on Granville Island is within ten minutes' walking distance, so it's not a big concern. But are people going to come to these theater productions if this keeps up? Maybe the Canadian theater-going populace is more hardcore than me. I'd stay home if I had the choice.

I head over to the Public Market. I grab some donuts from a well-reviewed (if the photocopied news article is any indication) donut shop called Lee's and a coffee and sit up in a little alcove-thingy that overlooks the river. There's an aquabus that runs every fifteen minutes from the Island to the other side, and I plan to take it the next day and see what downtown Vancouver is like.

There seems to be more people on Granville than yesterday. Technically, it's the first day of the PuSh fest, so I assume that people are arriving. I've got my artist badge hanging out over my jacket cuz:

I'm an artist, motherfucka!
It must be true, it says so right here!

I wonder if anyone will see it and strike up a conversation, because I'm an artist, and therefore inherently interesting. No one does.

It's time for a quick rehearsal at the (cement) repair shop with Rob and Cathy, so I stroll over there. The pit hasn't been covered yet, so we pick a spot in the middle of the room and we go over the rules and intentions of the piece again. For the first time, I get to hold the list of questions. Jesus -- there must be like fifty pages here. Mostly single-spaced. And some crazy-ass questions, too. "What is a tree?" "Where is your vagina?"

We talk about strategies. The idea is to keep it varied -- sometimes the questioner should rattle through questions as quickly as possible, sometimes he/she should give the answerer some room. Although there are two chairs in the performance space, we're free to get up, move around as we see fit -- keep it visually interesting. There's talk of "attitudes". While we aren't playing characters per se, it's interesting to adopt an attitude during portions of the questioning. This usually manifests itself as "authoritarian questioner vs. befuddled answerer", but it's open to other archetypal "roles".

(I get a taste of this during rehearsal when Cathy starts to interrogate me about the names of Wobbles or some shit. She genuinely throws me off-balance, and I just start naming names, which just "angers" her further.)

The key concept explained to me is that the questioner has the harder job than the answerer. At first, this seems counter-intuitive. Isn't the answerer the one with the onus to keep things amusing, interesting, entertaining? But then I'm given the question list and it becomes clear. The questioner controls the pace of the show. The questioner also, by taking an attitude, creates a world for the answerer to engage in via improvisation. Like the example with Cathy, if she's a harsh interrogator, that gives me the opportunity to create an attitude, whether it be brow-beaten or defiant or whatever, and we've instantly created a small theatrical "scenario" within the piece. The questioner is, in a sense, the director of the show -- which is a huge responsibility.

Finally, we have to determine who's on when. The whole thing is six hours, with the audience free to come and go, and it's divided into three two-hour shifts. Rob talks about how, because of the set-up, someone has to take a four-hour chunk by themselves, and how that can sometimes be interesting -- four hours is a long time to be improvising in front of an audience, and the wearying nature of the piece can put the performer into an interestng headspace. I volunteer immediately.

Big mistake. But that's for later.

So we break and agree to meet back up around five, five thirty for the 6pm start time. I grab some Chinese from the Public Market food court and take it back to my room, but my appetite isn't really there and end up throwing most of it out.

8. SHOWTIME; OR INSTITUTE OF FAILURE

I head back and everything is set up: there's a wooden plank covering the narrow pit, the stage is set (which consists of a circle of lightbulbs, as well as two brighter stage lights on the floor), and the chairs are in place. I explore the stage area, as is my wont, and I'm surprised how small the circle is. And how hot. The lights provide enough warmth as is, but there are two big-ass heaters above me, long metal strips that look like supermarket lights without the bulbs. I wonder if our makeup is going to melt.

I'm reminded of something else that was told to me earlier in the day: the performance is going to simulcast onto the wall of one of the neighboring galleries. At the time, I didn't really think much of this -- I don't think I really believed it. Can they do that? With sound and everything? I look up and sure enough, there's a camera up in the rafters. The height and angle of the thing is going to distort the image, I figure -- but yeah, we're going to be on a wall somewhere.

The repair shop's locker room, complete with clothed centerfold, is our backstage. We go there to get into costume and put on the clown makeup. I've never made myself up like a clown before, and they show me how. I don't get the red smear over the mouth quite right, and I look more like a drag queen than a clown, but it's not supposed to be perfect.

(They relate a story about how they brought the show to Russia and had Russian actors [students?] participate, and how the Russians spent hours on their makeup, only to be told to do it again because it looked too professional.)

I'm going first, for four hours, and then I will watch the door for the last two, until midnight. Robin and Cathy are still jetlagged, and there's the possibility that they will fall asleep past ten o'clock if they aren't on stage, but I wanted this anyway. Cathy and I are up first, so we take our positions and start the questions immediately, so that the show is already in progress when the audience comes in. And then they open the doors.

Yo Chuck, these honeydrippers are still frontin' on us!
Let's show them we can do this, cuz we always knew this!

I'm not going to go into a blow-by-blow, not because it would be boring (although it would), but simply because the four hours is now kind of a hazy blur. I remember being rather comfortable, perhaps absurdly so, as people came in, my actorly training taking over. I remember all of us getting a lot of laughs, and being surprised by that, surprised by how appreciative the audience was. I remember asking Cathy how to do the salsa, and then finding myself demonstrating the salsa, which involved unbuttoning my shirt and dropping my trousers. (Note: Never dare me in a theater context.) And then I remember thinking, Oh shit, this is on a wall somewhere. And then I got totally confused as to whether I was the questioner or the answerer, much to the amusement of everybody.

And then I remember realizing, when Rob came to take over for Cathy, how very few of the audience actually left. Yes, people left at various times, but they were always replaced by new people. I'm positive that some stayed for the entire six hours.

Yet the thing I remember most about the four hours was my ultimate failure. Now, I'm not talking about failure from the perspective of the audience -- again, they seemed very appreciative. Nor do I mean to suggest that Cathy and Robin thought I failed -- they, too, were happy with my performance.

However, "Quizoola!" requires a certain level of focus, as well as a commitment to the moment that I simply couldn't muster, at least not for that length of time. While I thought I understood, during rehearsal, the kind of responsibility that being a questioner entailed, it hit be me doubly so during the performance. And I fell down. I did my best to mix it up, but I could never find a rhythm to the questions, or a persona to adopt in order to create a mini-scenario. While Robin and Cathy, both amazing actors with tons of experience with this piece, were able to smoothly integrate all manner of strategies into their performances, I had trouble mustering even a whiff of antagonism, and when I did, it felt hollow and fake, a pose.

(Which to be fair, can be a legitimate choice, but it's only legitimate to me if it's an actual choice, and not an accident or an unconscious, default mode of performance.)

Worse, I felt like, as the hours went on, that I became very selfish with my choices. If the questioner's job is to be selfless, to provide opportunities for the answerer, then I did the opposite. Too often I would reflect the questions back on myself (example: "Why do you do this to me?"), or start with an interesting question from the pages and think I could improvise off of it, only to come up with nothing.

(What I realized later was, if you're going to go "off book", the questions have to be something other than yes or no -- and I had trouble inventing such questions. So potentially interesting lines of inquiry would deteriorate into "Really? Are you sure?" and then die.)

If I'd done it for only two hour blocks, I might have gotten through it okay. But the four hour block killed me. I was hoping that the tiring nature of the piece would propel me into some unexplored place in my performance. (In fact, Rob told me that, usually, people either get more truthful or less.) But instead, I found myself always taking the easy way out, at first with the questions, and then with the answers as well. By the end, the lights were drying out my eyes, and it was all I could do to keep them open. It was easier just to close them.

9. 200% AND BLOODY THIRSTY

Finally, my time was up and I retreated to man the front door. I read my library book ("James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon") and listen to the CD player (someone's copy of The Smith's singles collection). During the show, the snow came down harder and faster, and the temperature dropped below zero, I'm told. I felt bad for the PuSh volunteers who were outside, tasked with keeping track of how many people left the show so they could let an equivalent number inside. But everytime that door opened, I made damn sure it was shut.

After the show, Norman Armour, the executive director of PuSh, comes backstage. Norman's cool -- very smart and enthuiastic about theater. He tells us that it went very well -- there was even a big crowd in the gallery, where the simulcast was projected. I'm happy to hear this.

After the show, we go out for a late dinner with Norman Armour and other PuSh associates. But I'm so tired at this point, so drained, and the loud music is making conversation close to impossible for me, that I really have no memory of it. (I think I ordered some kind of spicy shrimp.)

I get a ride back to the hotel and crash on the bed.

Where we saw it: general | We deign to rate it: outta 100
Posted by kza at 01:47 PM