we heard about this little manifesto event in nyc

this essay has been bouncing around the web for the last few months can't believe you and your cocurator missed it but we think it should have been referenced in the cuny prelude event its the most incendiary text weve read in some time we have no clue as to who wrote it though but we could make a good guess
cheers!

Every January, for as long as anyone working in the performing arts field can recall, the Association of Perfonning Arts Presenters hosts their annual national conference in New York City. Officially entitled APAP | NYC the conference is billed by the Association as the worlds largest networking forum and marketplace for

performing arts professionals. Continuing with the Associations description: More than 3,500 presenters, artists, managers, agents and emerging arts leaders from 28 countries convene in New York City. The conference formally lasts about five days and takes up the entirety of two major midtown Manhattan hotels. Think of it as one part Auto Show and one part Arts Fair, with all the sophistry and illusion of defense contractors courting the Pentagon. Over the years, the bulk of New York Citys small theaters and studios are regularly rented in advance by fledging, emerging or established music, dance and theater companies to coincide with the conference. These performing artists undertake the herculean task of trying to court the industry professionals to view condensed or pared down versions of their work, in order to obtain lucrative touring engagements at universities, theaters and arts centers throughout North America and around the world. It can be a Shit-Show Circus On Ice. The bulk of the work from these performing artists is fairly sanitized stuff. The kind of arts for arts sake fare that is beautiful, stunning, and deftly executed by trained professionals that will certainly not offend anyone, anywhere, ever -- regardless of whether its booked in a Blue State or a Red State. Its the kind of safe contemporary dance (that isnt ballet) which is aesthetically pleasing on the immediate eye and doesnt require an MFA in Dance or Performance Studies to comprehend. The theatre is the kind of generic contemporary interpretations of the classics or ensemble-created physical theatre that is a marvel to behold. The touring interpretations can usually be tied to courses at college campuses being taught in Shakespeare or The Greeks; or they can be connected to studies at the conservatory level on physical theatre or different approaches to Acting. The music is generally easily digestible fare, ranging from jazz standards to cabaret acts to world music. If the musical artists veer into edgier territory, it is usually associated with some gimmick or angle or narrative that can be pre-loaded into advance copy and press, in order to make the edginess go down easier. There is performance art (or solo performance), but it is accepted to be the kind of performance art that will not wake Jessie Helms from the dead. Rather, it is to be a more neutered brand of solo performance; one that can be easily wed to the cornucopia of courses taught in multicultural or gender studies programs at universities. Its the kind of neutral performing arts that looks gorgeous when you see it advertised in catalogs and brochures at university or regional arts centers across the land. It will offend no one. It should not challenge any social status quo. And it fulfills local municipalities needs to appear artistic while also satisfying universities mandate to deliver arts to their large student populations (and the activity fees tacked on to their tuitions). Of course, there are bigger players in the American national touring circuit; but they dont really come here to APAP to play ball. For heavyweight artists like Philip Glass, Mark Morris, or Robert Wilson -- and the heavyweight presenters who book them based in cities like Ann Arbor, MI; Los Angeles, CA; or Dallas, TX -- their arrangements are generally established and finalized years in advance. APAP is not generally used by these forces to initiate any new relationships or finalize contracts. For them, APAP is pretty much a social fimction -- a large, expensive get-together if you will. However, for the bulk of emerging to mid-career performing artists and ensembles (and the boutique agencies and agents who represent them) -- APAP is a matter of life or death. Months of planning, coordination, rehearsal, and marketing are expended in the hopes of getting the right person to see a showcase of your work on just the right day at just the right time under just the right conditions.

Roughly eight years ago, the Association decided to collaborate with noted producer Mark Russell (the cofounder and former head of Performance Space 122), in order to create a formal festival consisting of what is billed as the best of new, contemporary work from the United States and abroad. The result has become the annual Under

The Radar Festival; usually with New Yorks The Public Theater serving as the main venue and partner, but with additional venues spread throughout the city. The effort is an attempt to formalize and consolidate the Shit-Show Circus On Ice, down to a more manageable and digestible event. To assist the beleagured arts professional in their shopping choices, while also commodifying and contextualizing to an extent the contemporary, experimental performing arts scene. Not soon after the founding of Under The Radar, a second festival was created by the new head of Performance Space 122 -- the Australian producer, Vallejo Gantner. This second festival was called COIL and its main venue (prior to its recent temporary closure) was P.S. 122 itself. The COIL festival has since grown and evolved to also partner with other venues and locations throughout the city; sometimes even directly with Under The Radar and The Public Theater. The programming choices of COIL tend to be more New York centric and a bit more edgier on the dance, performance and theatre spectrums than Under The Radar. However, both festivals have emerged as the arbiters of alternative taste and the generators of new experimental talent -- even if the end results of their are targeted more to the national and international curator/presenter than to the actual, general audiences of New York City. Other mini-festivals have cropped up in recent years to coincide with this insatiable quest for national and international programming and touring contracts. The American Realness Festival at the Abrons Art Center and the Other Forces Festival at the Incubator Arts Project, are two of the more prominent. But even those theaters and artists not officially part of these festivals still attempt to get in on the action by mounting full productions of their work during the course of the APAP | NYC conference. The conference itself has morphed and evolved beyond the official five day period. Many international and national arts leaders arrive days before the formal start, or leave days after its formal conclusion. The result is that the bulk of New York City productions mounted in January are now almost singularly geared to attract the attentions and favors of presenting members from the Association. The amount of energies and budgets expounded by all parties is unlike any other event in the North American performing arts scene. The work presented as part of these pseudo-unified festivals is generally accepted (and touted) as the best of the contemporary and the experimental across the fields of dance, performance and theatre. For the lucky participants in these pesudo-unified festivals fortunate enough to be selected for national tours or festival engagements -- they will be heralded as the best of The New and The Experimental to audiences across the United States. If programmed internationally, they will be trumpeted as the best of the New York alternative scene to audiences in Australia, Canada, Europe and maybe if theyre lucky, certain cultured Asian cities. So what exactly do these productions have to say about our national state of affairs? How do they approach a discussion or examination of our contemporary culture? What artistic tools are they using? What methods of representation are they employing? How do they structure their work? Do the goods match up to the billing? In terms of contemporary theatre/performance and an experimentation with form -- the answer is a resounding no.

The Predictable in contemporary American performing arts is back. Not just with a vengeance, but with an all-encompassing conquerors roar reminiscent of a Mongol horde encroaching upon a Kazakh steppe. Do not be afraid. The calendar on your portable electronic device may read a date from the 21st Century, but be calm. Be

reassured. You are firmly rooted in the 1880s. As an attendee at a decent number of shows mounted during APAP 2012 this previous January, one cannot help but be startled by an unmistakable shifi towards elements of traditional Realism in what is otherwise supposed to be contemporary, experimental work. The message being sent out is crystal clear: There Shall Be No Other Means By Which To Interpret Our Contemporary World Than Realism. There shall be no re-invention of form; nor shall there be any rediscovery of previous incidents of innovation. The edict seems not only to be laid down by the programming choices made by the respective presenters and curators; it seems to be a prison chosen willingly by the creative artists themselves. How else can one explain several of the monstrosities that pass for contemporary experimental theatre-slash-performance-slash-whatever? No amount of downtown theatre tricks can conceal it. No amount of advance-word PR can spin it. No amount of fabricated F acebook "likes" can gloss over reality -- these works achieve nothing more than recreating and reinforcing The Predictable. Let us begin with the worst offender: Mission Drifi by THE T.E.A.M. at the Connelly Theater presented by Performance Space 122 at their COIL Festival. [Let's put aside what is possibly the lamest initialism/acronym known to man. Only American theatre people could cook up "Theatre Of The Emerging Moment" and a) think its cool and b) get away with it.] What are the creative artists at THE T.E.A.M. smoking on A/Iission Do you mean to tell us that after three years of development on a piece -- which mirrors nearly five years of ceaseless economic ruin for the bulk of the American population -- that the best the creative team at THE T.E.A.M. can cook up is some concoction of traditional magic realism with some Shake N Bake splashes of musical cabaret on top -- to depict the vastness of America's colossal, continuous financial disaster? Reza Abdoh and David Wojnarowicz must be turning over in their pauper's graves. Have the folks at THE T.E.A.M. ever come across terms like "deconstruction" or "repetition" or "abstraction"? Or does the real estate goliath otherwise known as NYU only teach Ibsenesque narrative, mid-careerWilliarnsesqe magic realism and outdated Brechtian cabaret? Surely there must exist some other form or container by which to tackle the vast, intricate horrors of American predatory capitalism than Naturalism and Realism and Character and Generic, Linear Narrative. Surely someone at THE T.E.A.M. must have seen something -- anything -from mainland Europe or French Canada that has come through New York City over the past say, fifteen or twenty years? Some other relevant contemporary work that grappled with contemporary issues utilizing tools other than Realism? Something -- anything -

to serve as some point of inspiration, or offer a signpost by which to depict the cyclical madness of Americas destructive financial bubbles?

I can only imagine the reaction an average working American would have to seeing this piece. Perhaps a member of a low-middle class American family who lost their jobs and home as a result of misguided govemment/corporate policies and/or their own poor consumer choices. Someone who by some miraculous act of The PR Gods who play with us mere mortals (non-theatre people) in the Greater New York Tri-State Area -- this person actually finds out about "Mission and actually pays for an honest ticket in the expectation of seeing something that the advance PR copy promises regarding the housing bubble and the financial crisis -- only to encounter a rambling, shambling piece of "epic theatre" that can't decide if it wants to be a concept album, bad musical theatre, or some vintage Brady Bunch Prime Time Special staged in something resembling a dated downtown contextualized format. I mean, TI-IE T.E.A.M. actually utilized the running-in-place-on-stage-motiff-to-convey-thepassage-oftime-on-stage trick. The collective groans and sighs and uncomfortable shifling-of-weight-inthe-seat -affect could be seen rippling through the assembled audience of respected European presenters.

At the very least -- the folks at THE T.E.A.M. could have shaved twenty or twenty-five minutes off this seemingly two hour bitch and at least made it a 75-minute mercy killing instead of trying to replicate some medieval form of monks in an operating theater conducting brain surgery.
But the average audience member's reaction is of no concern at all in this context. Contemporary experimental American theatre does not function for the average American. Contemporary experimental American theatre only functions as staged, PR events for the benefit of their fellow contemporary experimental American theatre practitioners. No matter how much private fimding major philanthropic foundations want to pump into the carcass, it doesn't change the sad facts. Mission Drifi functions for both the presenter and the creative artists as just another oval on their resume to be filled out in the hopes that it can be placed into service for the next marketing plan, the next proposal pitch, the next grant application. Here, Grant Lords. This is what we did to tackle the financial crisis. Now, Your Eminence, please support our next piece. The actual content does not matter. Mission Drifi functions as the perfect, ideal reflection of the very same government and economic policies it supposedly seeks to depict or criticize. Empty and vacuous, it replicates and reinforces, then moves on. We should have known something was up when The British raved so much about it.

Next up is NE WYORKLAND by Temporary Distortion. A worthy by a reputable company who actually know a thing or two about fragmentation of narrative, dcollage of source materials, and other widely accepted ideas such as abstraction, deconstruction, or repetition. Which makes their near
total descent into Realism and The Predictable all the more perplexing -- and am sorry to report -somewhat disturbing based upon the advances made in their previous work.

Imagine for a moment you have made great strides over the years as a company and as creative artists, to hammer out one of the more original, aesthetic stage pictures in recent theatre history.

Production photos of the interactive box-like worlds that Temporary Distortion have created on stage -equipped with multiple projection surfaces above, around or in-between the boxes in which the actors live during performance -will most certainly be included in any Theatre History text book that attempts to cover 21st Century American

Theatre. They are iconic. They are ground-breaking. They are certain to inspire imitators for decades to come in the same way other great leaps forward in theatre design or staging have been during centuries past. In terms of pre-recorded film content -- and filsing that pre-recorded content either with live performance or spliced amongst live performance -- Temporary Distortion are unparalleled in their work ethic, quality and technique. With all why Temporary c h 0 s e n with

merge with this towards Realism is

previous strengths
utilization of the

this going for them, Distortion have

NEWYORKLAND to reverse march troubling. All the expressed in their reduced to the the deconstructed. All elements of their prewere reduced to projected episodes of video design were decorative instead of

the previous surreal recorded content

something resembling Law & Order. During one lengthy exchange, a cast member recounts all the neighborhoods (or streets, or landmarks) a New York City police is expected to patrol while endless scrolling landscape footage of the New York City skyline and New York City streets scrolls and scrolls and scrolls endlessly upon the massive projection surfaces positioned above the box-like structures. The scene simply runs and runs, with no attempt at contrasting or splicing or reconfiguring any other scene or moment or aspect of a police life in front of this roll call. In a way, it is pure documentary film; almost journalism -- but devoid of any evolution towards meaning, or even anti-meaning. It just is. And we are just there. Watching it scroll and scroll -- as if we were watching footage from one of the many authentic documentary films all the rage right now about American soliders authentic lives in Afghanistan or Iraq. Which is fine, in and of itself, as something worthy of exploring. But then, why are we here? In this theatre? Why go through all the trouble of constructing these box-like worlds and their accompanying projection surfaces and monitors? Why not just show us the film version? Why assemble an audience in a performance space? If NEWYORKLAND is not going to explore an interplay of relationships between live actor, box-like world and projection surface -- or live actor, boxlike world and pre-recorded film content -- why not just make a One certainly would not enter a performance space expecting something more than just a film. One certainly would not be let down when we enter said performance space expecting some deconstruction or abstraction of what it is like to be a New York City police officer -- only to encounter SERPICO ON STAGE. It may be prerecorded and projected upon structures and boxes -- but it still smells, sounds and tastes like Realism. In a country and culture already inundated with television shows

and feature films which document the authentic experience of cops through the usage of gritty, ultrareal Realism -- why simply recreate that same experience in a performance space?

This recreating of that same experience already experienced in other fields and mediums is troublesome. The reason why Temporary Distortions descent into The Predictable is so startling -- is that it seems to be the means and medium chosen by nearly every artist or ensemble from this January 2012 sampling of what is The American New marketed to presenters from across the world. If this is The American New and it merely uses new technology in the service of The Predictable and Recycled Realism -- then it comes up short when compared to what is going on in the rest of the world in terms of contemporary performance and theatre. Lets take for example, the work of Jay Scheib and his World of Wires at The Kitchen. What is the point here? Take an obscure sci-fi film by a foreign director from a previous era -- and re-stage it in its relatively abridged entirety within a performance area? Huh. Okay. Sounds just like something the Flemish director Ivo van Hove would do with the company, Toneelgroep Amsterdam. Oh wait. I see. You are going to film every moment of this re-staging and project it onto screens above the performance area, so that we the audience can basically watch TV in the performance area and have close-up views of exchanges between the actors -- as we also simultaneously watch their three-dimensional persons live in the space on stage. Huh. Okay. Sounds just like something Ivo van Hove would do. It sounds very groundbreaking. Oh wait. Its not. Its just filming people live on stage and then projecting it onto screens. There is no attempt at reconfiguring or abstracting or reconstituting any of that live feed from the camera to the screen -- its just pure live feed; as if we were watching a simulcast on the intemet. There is no attempt to have an actual team of video designers working collaboratively on how that live feed from the camera can work in conjunction (or disjunction) with the live action on stage. In a manner eerily similar to the New York City locations recited in Temporary Distortions NE WYORKLAND -- it just is. And we are just there. And the director is there too! On stage! Scheib is the one filming the footage that is in turn being displayed above the performance area. Are we to infer this is an intentional choice for the director to be immersed in the work himself? That his pure directorial eye is all-seeing as -- we assume -- Scheib not only has staged the actual blocking and placement on stage in advance during a tedious rehearsal process -- but is consciously fiaming each specific shot for us the viewer during performance. If so, he desperately needs to hire an assistant director. On the night I saw it at The Kitchen with two European colleagues -- Scheib tripped more than once, nearly falling over chairs and other set pieces (almost

crashing to the floor with his camera). His ensemble seemed lost and adrift in their performances, with the main character appearing to carry the entire production on his back. Upon our exit, one of my two European colleagues remarked: There was hardly a trained actor in that entire ensemble. I cant recall ever seeing a worse example of

acting in my life. The second European groaned in agreement as we consoled ourselves with over-priced Manhattan alcohol on 11th Avenue. Maybe what Scheib was going for on this piece was pure simulacrum? If so, it wasnt the exploration of simulacrum that The Wooster Group successfully employed in its exploration of Poor Theatre. It is more akin to an American brand of sirnulacrum that Baudrillard would critique; something fimctioning on the level of the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty in Las Vegas. This was simply recreating film, Literal Realism on stage; minus any of the subtleties, nuances or depth one might find in Ivo van Hoves Roman Tragedies or Opening Night. Simulacrum or not, in Scheibs hands this night -- it was just plain Predictable. Nothing more. Fihning an event live on stage and feeding it through to us -- The Audience -- is nothing revolutionary, nor experimental, nor even contemporary when it is not contrasted or abstracted or reconfigured or juxtaposed against anything else at all. Why was this piece even at The Kitchen? (One of New Yorks oldest and more respected experimental arts venues.) Another American example of the development pitch and mission statement outpacing the actual artistic content? When simulacrum exists just as it is and that is all it is -- its just another form of Realism; another manifestation of The Predictable. Why not just stay at home and the original film? There is a harsh conclusion one arrives at, but no one in American professional circles wants to admit it publicly. Ivo van Hove -- Jay Scheib is not. And Scheibs ensemble is not Toneelgroep Amsterdam. And World of Wires is not Roman Tragedies or Opening Night or Teorema. Dear OBIE and Guggenheim Committees: Lets stop pretending like it is. Because its not. Not even close. World of Wires was just a group of well-intentioned non-actors -- or real-actors mixed with non-actors -- reciting lines from a movie. Oh. And they recite those lines from a movie as they are being followed by a camera. We the audience see everything the camera sees. But thats it. Sometimes we get to see some tits and ass and cock. Hooray. How edgy. Meanwhile, the whole EU crowd groans, massages their temples and uncomfortably in their seats. Another example of this collective European seat-shifiing, took place during Young Jean Lees Untitled Feminist Show. For starters, I dont why it is referred to as something of Young Jean Lees. Several of the routines or skits witnessed during the performance at the Barysnikov Arts Center in midtown -- were nearly identical to routines and skits I personally witnessed during the 1990s or early 2000s at downtown venues like Surf Reality and Collective Unconscious. I found myself asking the same questions of Lee as were asked of Scheib. What is the point? Is there anything truly revolutionary or experimental about nudity onstage in 2012? Is there anything truly groundbreaking about displaying the naked female body on stage -- either collectively in groups or in solo performance? It appeared as if the majority of the American MFA Scene in attendance seemed more willing to evade these obvious questions. Instead, choosing to hide behind some celebration of the female

body, the female form -- and contextualize it by connecting it to feminism. Honestly, it all just seemed pretty basic and literal. Some nice group choreography by Faye Driscoll thrown in for good measure, but basically it just read as an appropriation of pantomime and/or vaudeville techniques mixed amongst some routines that seem directly lified

(or inherited) from a tradition of downtown NYC performance art. The eating of the penis routine being the most obvious. Is the fact this is all clothed in nudity and taking place in a formal setting such as the Baryshnikov Arts Center supposed to be part of the experiment? Are we supposed to be partaking in some scandalous event in midtown, above 14th Street? If so, this is ground well-trodden in the past by players with a greater sense of deconstruction of form than what was displayed within the confines of YJLs Untitled Feminist Show. Reading about the long development process it sounds eerily similar to Scheibs situation in World of Wires -- where the development pitch outpaces the actual content. It comes close to describing what has happened of late to Young Jean Lees work -- which functions more as a marketing or PR event, as opposed to some authentic exploration relegated to the reahn of art. I couldnt help but think of the fable The Emperor is New Clothes during Untitled Feminist Show; and again as I lingered in the lobby afierwards listening to the MFA Scene chatter. We tend to recall only one singular aspect of the fable -- the famous line by the child towards the end of the tale. A child is the only one who has the sense to point out the obvious. The reader may expect now the obvious connection to be made between the nudity displayed in Untitled Feminist Show and the childs exclamation at the end of the fable. This is not the case. A lesser known aspect of the fable is more appropriate. The actual story details a group of ministers and courtiers who are sent by the king to inspect the handiwork of the clothiers. Rather than state the obvious and living in fear of appearing stupid before their peers and their King -- each round of ministers and courtiers claim to see the beautiful invisible clothing. They report back to the King that the clothing being created is of the highest quality and of supreme beauty. Even the King himself, when he finally bursts into the clothiers quarters, is to state the obvious. Even the King declares how fine the imagined items are. All this -- all this transpires before the King marches out nude in the street before his subjects. It is the fear expressed by the courtiers and ministers -- this fear of stating the obvious -- this is more ominous in a contemporary American theatre-slash-performance-slash-whatever context. This process of selfreinforcing, self-perpetuating round by round of PR and Development justifications -- this is a more appropriate aspect of the Hans Christian Anderson story to mention. All this support. All these resources. All this rehearsal time. All this -- not in the service of some ground-breaking endeavor. No. Just in the service of a hyperreal marketing event disguised as art. One can only wonder what artists like Wojnarowicz or Abdoh could have realized with such resources. We will never know. The best of our American avant-garde -- those who were able to translate the vast, intricate horrors of our contemporary American reality -- are long since dead and gone. Instead we have events that are chiseled together

from whatever touring networks or presenting organizations we have left, which are in turn created by and created for a self-enclosed and self-referencing world that is so wrapped up in its own narcissistic status updates -- that it hardly notices their fields steady drift away from the true experimentation that was a hallmark of American arts for

nearly forty years. It is ignorant and unaware how deeply the entire field has sunk into the morass of The Predictable. And what was the point behind the sudden projection and video design dropped down from on high towards the end of Untitled Feminist Show? Why everything else transpired did we need a large useless cheny on top of our three scoops of ice cream in This Doesnt Make Any Sense Sundae? This disguising of experimentation and the edgy and the abrasive within the realm of The Predictable was a recurring theme from venue to venue during the entire APAP 2012 festival-slashconference madness. Curators and artists from opposite backgrounds were not immune to it; nor was this process of disguising The Predictable in language of the experimental strictly an American trait. Three are worth mentioning briefly -- 1) Botanica by Jim Findlay at the 3LD Art and Technology Center; 2) Brake House by Big Art Group at the Abrons Art Center; and 3) El pasado es un animal grotesco at The Public Theater. Botanica by the designer-turned-writefl director-but-who-is-really-just-a-great-designer Jim Findlay -- bore all the representative advance press code words and weird online preview trailers to label it abrasive or downtown. Sadly, somewhere along the way of drinking too many beers on stage for the bulk of the last two decades, Findlay forgot some of the key lessons about experimental theatre that he may have learned while he was still on staff at The Wooster Group. Simply, that the best avant-garde or experimental theatre still retains a legitimate and solid dramaturgical spine. This skeletal core makes all the kooky, downtown dicking around actually resonate with an audience. Eerily similar to the Scheib production, it was just like a retelling of a sci-fi film on stage. It was gorgeously presented in a design that possessed layers of monitors, audio equipment and what seemed to be hundreds of live plants in a fullyrecreated green house. The visual stage picture was simply stunning. But it was all design and no substance. Not even the recurring nudity of a sexy lead actress, nor the efforts of one of New Yorks better actors could save the shipwreck that was the U.S.S. BOTANICA. The steady, deranged decline of the two lead characters was a descent this viewer has seen better European companies trace with greater interest and affect. Did we mention the third character? An elderly non-actor was recruited to play the role of the janitor and caretaker of the plants. When the most memorable moment of your $50k (or more) production is when this older non-actor pulls down his pants to reveal his penis and proceeds to have intercourse with one of the plants on stage -- when this is the