The Theater of the Future

(and now at the Public)

Spreading Joy and Hope

I don't necessarily agree with everything Abbey details in this excerpt, but I have to admit he was prescient about a number of things.

What reason have we Americans to think our own society will necessarily escape the world-wide drift toward the totalitarian organization of men and institutions?

This may seem, at the moment, like a fantastic theory. Yet history demonstrates that personal liberty is a rare and precious thing, that all societies tend toward the absolute until attack from without or collapse from within breaks up the social machine and makes freedom and innovation possible again. Technology adds a new dimension to the process by providing modern despots with instruments far more efficient than any available to their classical counterparts. Surely it is no accident that the most thorough of tyrannies appeared in Europe's most thoroughly scientific and industrialized nation. If we allow our own country to become as densely populated, overdeveloped and technically unified as modern Germany we may face a similar fate.

The value of wilderness, on the other hand, as a base for resistance to centralized domination is demonstrated by recent history. In Budapest and Santo Domingo, for example, popular revolts were easily and quickly crushed because an urbanized environment give the advantage to the power with the technological equipment. But in Cuba, Algeria and Vietnam the revolutionaries, operating in mountain, desert and jungle hinterlands with the active or tacit support of a thinly dispersed population, have been able to overcome or at least fight to a draw official establishment forces equipped with all the terrible weapons of twentieth century militarism. Rural insurrections can then be suppressed only by bombing and burning villages and countrysides so thoroughly that the mass of the population is forced to take refuge in the cities, where the people are policed and if necessary starved into submission. The city, which should be the symbol and center of civilization, can also be made to function as a concentration camp. This is one of the significant discoveries of contemporary political science.

How does this theory apply to the present and future of the famous United States of North America? Suppose we were planning to impose a dictatorial regime upon the American people- the following preparations would be essential:

1. Concentrate the populace in megalopolitan masses, so that they can be kept under close surveillance and where, in the case of trouble, they can be bombed, burned, gassed or machine-gunned with a minimum of expense and waste.
2. Mechanize agriculture to the highest degree of refinement, thus forcing most of the scattered farm and ranching populations into the cities. Such a policy is desirable because farmers, woodsman, cowboys, Indians, fisherman, and other relatively self-sufficient types are difficult to manage unless displaced from their natural environment.
3. Restrict the possession of firearms to the police and the regular military organizations.
4. Encourage or at least fail to discourage population growth. Large masses of people are more easily manipulated and dominated than scattered individuals.
5. Continue military conscription. Nothing excels military training for creating in young men an attitude of prompt, cheerful obedience to officially constituted authority.
6. Divert attention from deep conflicts within the society by engaging in foreign wars; make support of these wars a test of loyalty thereby exposing and isolating potential opposition to the new order.
7. Overlay the nation with a finely reticulated network of communications, airlines and interstate autobahns.
8. Raze the wilderness. Dam the rivers, flood the canyons, drain the swamps, log the forests, stripe mine the hills, bulldoze the mountains, irrigate deserts and improve national parking lots.

Idle speculation, feeble and hopeless protest. It was all foreseen nearly half a century ago by the most cold-eyed of our national poets, on California's shore, at the end of the open road. Shine perishing republic.

Edward Abbey, 1968.

L'Avenir/Derrida

And Then Bush Issues A Signing Statement

The U.S. is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the U.S. and the community of law abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating and prosecuting all acts of torture. — George W. Bush, U.N. Torture Victims Recognition Day, June 26, 2003

If you haven't seen this Frontline, check it out. Cheney's Law.

Things I Don't Need to Hear While Working on My Thesis

1. Screaming.
   
2. The evolution of any Pokemon character.
   
3. Howling or whining from animal or kid.
4. What do you have in mind for dinner?
   
5. Obtuse, patronizing statements about my progress.
   

As a writer (or for that matter as an artist), I've learned to inoculate myself against the sorts of statements/judgments/pronouncements people make about my career choice. I've learned to keep breathing when, in the middle of the chaos that can be the creative process, someone makes demands on my work that have nothing to do with what I'm trying to create. I've learned to shrug off helpful platitudes that do nothing but add to my frustration. But every once in awhile, someone drops a mind bomb that completely flattens my tires. And then, I have to spend time I don't really have trying to manage my psychology so that I can work. I don't need that at the moment, especially when my life right now is all about having to choose between personal hygiene and the luxury of sitting down to write anything.

Addendum: Or should I say the luxury of personal hygiene and the necessity of writing?

Interview with Dan Zanes

The Long Relay experiment is now. Check out The Story So Far.

Two for Friday

Susan Sontag: The Aesthetics of Silence. Thank you, Earlabs.

Yoko Ono: Snow is Falling all the Time. Thank you, Ubuweb.

Long Relay

Check out the Long Relay writing experiment being led by Tim Etchells and Adrian Heathfield. It starts 1pm, Saturday, October 13 and goes until 1pm, Sunday, October 14. That's British Standard Time, so it's 6am PDT. If you want to see what time that might mean to you - go here.

What is the Long Relay? I have no idea other than it's billed as a continuous writing experiment that's part of Serpentine Gallery's Experiment Marathon.

Ridiculous

I've been working on a project for the past three months that currently leaves me feeling utterly ridiculous. And I don't mean ridiculous in the comical sense. No. I feel ridiculous in the fully absurd, awkward, inadequate, open to derision sense of it. The only comfort I can take is that this has nothing to do with my thesis (which is moving forward slowly only because life keeps intervening). This feeling is a good thing. Even though it puts me in a I-wanna-lay-down-and-die- rather-than-work-on-this mode, at least I'm out of my comfort zone, eh?

Things started out well enough. It seemed like a simple project. Then after completing it to the level I wanted, I felt that more was required, so I plunged in. Having taken the plunge, I realized, "okay, this is huge and now there's no turning back." And there is a self-imposed deadline - well not entirely, it's for an event outside of my control. I'm okay with deadlines. I think deadlines are necessary. Unless, I go down I'd-rather-lay-down-and-die-etc tunnel - but all of this avoids the real issue.

The Audience. I know the audience. A group of people quite dear to me, hence the inspiration for the project. The ridiculousness comes in when I think about their response. In my mind, the spectrum for response runs somewhere between that awkward, uneasy feeling you get when Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) tells Paul Sheldon (James Caan) that she's his number one fan -



- to that sublime, exhilarating feeling you get from seeing the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies in Mark Morris Dance Company's The Hard Nut -



- or watching the snow fall in Hirokazu Kore-eda's film After Life.



But then who am I to second guess my audience? Who am I to have their reaction for them?

I haven't felt like this since I created a piece called ElectrOphelia and for a long time had absolutely no idea of what I was doing. It's good to be back in this spot, but working alone there's no one to share the terror with.

The difference between the act of expression and the act of creation is this: in the act of expression one plays for oneself alone rather than for any spectators. I always look for the actor who 'shines', who develops space around himself in which the spectators are also present. Many absorb space into themselves, excluding the spectators, and the experience becomes too private. If students feel better after doing the course, that is a bonus, but my aim is not to provide therapy through theatre. In any process of creation the object made no longer belongs to the creator. The aim of this act of creation is to bear fruit which then separates from the tree. - Jacques LeCoq

Masters of War

Lecture of a Lifetime

Campuses across the country have instituted a new lecture series called Lecture of a Lifetime in which esteemed professors are asked to speak deeply about a topic that matters to them, to speak as if this were the last lecture of their life. What wisdom would you impart?

Here's a link to the inspiring lecture called Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams that Professor Randy Pausch gave last week. Click here for full lecture.

Here are links to Randy Pausch's website. And a link to a truncated version of the lecture.