Monday July 6: Writing Live in Performance

Readings:

1.	Payne, Ben. "What Is Writing Live?" Writing Live: An Investigation of the Relationship between Writing and Live Art. Ed. John Deeney. London: New Playwrights Trust, 1998. [PAGES 41-50.] INITIAL RESPONSE: This article discusses the relationship between live art and writing. Beginning with personal opinions of what the definition of live art is, provides contradictory ideas-however this could be the source of its potential. Live art has started to encompass a wider range of practices than performance art has done previously. It could be that performance art was a distinct form yet still under 'theatrical approaches' yet for some, they just broadened the live art possibilities. Work for the purpose of content, focused more on ethical questions and relationships. Modern dance and movement based work focus on the emotional and intuitive, exploring and exploding the personal into the political. Live art has encountered many challenges that could insult it in some way, whether it be exploited to main stream culture or turning into live artS. Live art though, has still been able to become a distinct and self confident art form in its approaches to creation. The text in live art has been existent for a long time and is skeptical about tradition. As for the declining audience attendance, getting rid of the playwright or well made play wouldn't assist in any way.

The writing is 'alive to the contribution of site', open to 'serendipity, improvisation and collage' in its process and performance. It's needed to expose tensions between text, performer, performance and audience as well as to expose literature, science, music, architecture etc. On one hand, writing is necessary to breakdown the role of the writer and on the other hand we need writing to make an auteur of the writer to re-establish direct connection between writer and performer. 'Do we have a writing able to engage with the terms of its own creation and to engage its audience in that redefinition? Will there always be a gap between this work and what the audience is prepared to understand?'

Response: Victoria The premise of this article is to define the definition and debate of what live art is and the role writing has played in its development of the medium. Since the form is difficult to define due to its nature of constantly breaking classical structure of both visual and theatrical art, defining it merely asks the question of “what it does” (46 Payne). I found that defining the medium is as just complicated as defining the form, since it defines how it is being “characterised as a deliberate strategy of disruption at the boundaries of practices, forms and terms” (46 Payne).

Response: Candice(Jingyi) Chen

From my point of view, I think writing a projector which projects people’s mind onto papers or other medias. Undeniably, as a form of live art, writing efficiently builds a bridge between performers and audiences. However, that how to let a form of live art break its boundaries needs a deeper thinking. No concern about the form of writing being used, writers or performers can naturally transfer their thoughts, “ ‘Yes, I’m becoming more and more convinced that it is not a matter of old or new forms, one must write without thinking about forms…’ ”(P46). Playing unboundedness of writing, live art is given a creative and unlimited developing opportunity.

Response: Meng Shi

I really agree with Candice’s point about the relationship between writing and live art. I get the definition of art live and an extensibility point is that writing is necessary to break the role of the writer down. I like the form of wiring as a performance to express people’s feelings and minds. In this video, performers get their own paper on the hand and show them to the audience with the explanation. To me, I really like this form because it is very immediate, manifest and simpler. Actually, the process of a performance creation is very difficult, however, writing can also be as a brain-storming.

Response:

Writing live for me is created to memorize, record and recreate post-modernism, the age which we live in. Live art to me is somewhat delicately different from performance art in which performance art has quite specific forms and “what to do, what not to do”; and live art is more interdisciplinary, sometimes even not as rapidly anti-aesthetic values. Performance art puts traditional aesthetic values into question, and live art is also trying to put some elements of performance art into question (or maybe "into expansion" is more appropriate). Some live arts I have seen is more crude than performance arts, to me there is always this raw tension among the parties (artists, spectators and guidelines), though it might serve the purpose of questioning and breaking the relationships among the parties, but the raw tension could very easily be overdone, which then makes the art project feels pretentious and unnatural in a sense.

Response: Nathan Hunt

I found this article to be enchanting. Writing as a performance, writing for a performance, and writing a performance seem to greatly be differentiated by the intent and knowledge of the writer. As the article states 'you have to know what you aren't doing'. There comes about an absurd difficulty in writing for any means, when one writes with intent surely the performance will be shaped in a manner influenced greatly by the beliefs of that individual, however even if the writer instead writes external from self the writing can still be shaped by deeply imbedded societal notions. Writing needs to be recognized as a technology, and as such one influenced by certain beliefs and notions. Until we can clearly know what we aren't doing we can never be free of the natural classification and framing that will come about through our use of the written word with performance.

Response: Sijin Chen

After I read this article, the concept about combination of Live Art and Writing interested me because the nature of live art, live art means all acts of performance undertaken by an artist as a work of art. Writing itself isn’t alive on stage, however, when performers find the delicate connection between writings and themselves, and when certain rules applied to the performance of writing, written words become alive. In my opinion, this writing live art works best when the written words are commands, questions, answers or statements that are very specific or about someone’s personal life. In addition, it can be more productive when multiple performers involved and all perform writings separately.

1.	The Great Devisor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJCVdaGA04I&feature=channel_page

Response: Carly In hearing, and seeing the process of creation for the members of Forced Entertainment, I realized that their process is quite a lot like putting together a puzzle. They talked about “checks and balances” how, if there is one character in their piece that is crazy, they should try and balance that character out with something less ridiculous. What I think is the most incredible part of their creation process is that they start with nothing, and through a set of lists as they said, and these checks and balances they work out this totally original piece of theatre, out of something as simple as a list of confessions, read out loud.

Response: Derek One of the things that i would question about this type of performance is the funding. In the state our economy is in how much funding and finacial support is there for this new art form? one thing that is evident in the history of theatre is that there is always change. One of the dangers of experimental art in my opinion is the lack of funding, so i wonder if this particular art form will last our "economic crisis"?

Response ：

What is the relationship between writing and live art. Well, I think, writing as the form of performance to use in the live art. Writing unfolds its flexibility and changeability; people are able to change the position of words at random by moving or taking out any letter. Then, there will create some different result by the performance artists .Indeed, writing, as the dramaturgy of live art, has much space of improvisation, which the performance artists express their luxuriant imagination to write in their works. However, as the method of communication, writing should be a medium between performers and audience .The performance artists use the different wrote cardboards continually to create up some different scenes in order to imply the continuity of performance. It could say that writing as a leading factor to control the development of the whole live art. Therefore, I think what the relationship between writing and live art is mutual effect.

Response:

There is a relationship between writing and performance. In some performance we have watched in the class. Some actors hold a piece of card which tell audience who is the actor like to be. Sometimes, at the beginning of a performance, one people stand on the stage and read a writing essay about background of a performance. Writing in the performance is a good and effective way to tell audience the story about a performance, however, I think some artists like to tell audience some meanings of a performance through their performing. Acting is more significant and impressive than writing or read an article for audience. Personally, I like watching a performing more than reading an article.

response ： James

As a new form of art, the live art is very hard to be simply categorized into any art label. Live art is an interdisciplinary work involving visual art and performances. Although it's controversy whether content is more important than form in the performances. I personally emphasize more on the thoughts of a play than its contents and forms due to its longevity. The writer must have main thoughts to express, which can be explained via numerous contents and forms by the performers. Writing is still necessary to record and this main objective and it can work as a guide to the performers, even after a century of time (e.g. A. Chekhov). When the time and circumstances change, to attract new audiences, new performers still can improvise the play by following the main thoughts recorded by the writing.

Reponse: Luana Yu

It’s hard to distinguish between live art and performing art. As it says in the article live art “pushes the performer to find a truth in what they’re saying ” (p42). Live art also expresses experiences, and it is mostly related to the context of writing. However, there is a conflict between keeping the “traditional” performing art or widening the possibilities in live art which explored different issues in life. I think performing art is easier to understand because we are familiar with the way it is expressed, and we don’t need to think about the truth behind it. However, live art is new artistic stragedy towards modernism in performing, and it is harder to clasp the concepts or the meaning of live art. It really depends on whether the audience prefers “live art” or “performing art”.

Response: Keitha Tetreault In this article about the cast of Forced Entertainment the rule that intrigued me the most was No.6”be a good director.” (179) This rules talks about how a dedicated director can build a performance from limited components. If a director is given no narrative structure, no storyline but random questions and a set of rules set then authenticity can be created. This can be a challenge for the performer but the director must work within the rules to encourage the performers to answer the questions and solve the problems while making the performance interesting. This idea is similar to a rule that is used in traditional improvisation. A good performer must always make his partner look good. If the performer is accepting and helping his partner to succeed then they both succeed. I appreciated that Forced Entertainment uses the same principals when creating their performances. Forced entertainment believes that the director must always aid the performer by providing constructive answers and solutions to the challenges that present it’s self.