I wanna do that, What you do, How do I do that?
by guest writer Adrienne Truscott
While sitting in my truck, in the rain in Philadelphia waiting for someone to jump me – I mean that in the vehicular sense – I got a text from an old friend, at Edinburgh Fringe for the first time, telling me that it seemed like (another) friend at Fringe might be ripping off another, dear friend well-known to Fringe stages.
How do we know the difference between being inspired by someone to make something of our own, paying homage to someone, outright copying because we want to do what we’ve seen or feel that experience first hand? The last impulse could be so deep and sincere that we fail to notice the theft in the excitement of the embodiment.
In circus we have a somewhat built-in mechanism to avoid this – What if? What if you could do this thing that no one else has ever tried? (Even then someone somewhere probably has).
Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ pops up frequently at the intersection of cabaret, comedy, variety and Fringe. Covers of an original song about a creep and a weirdo in the hands of other creeps and weirdos – I mean that in the best sense – can take on different meanings; they suddenly comment differently when the gender changes or queerness, race, altered instrumentation, etc. are new elements present in the cover. But once it’s been covered within the same community what happens after that? Is it being covered because it’s popular and thus all the covers ultimately only comment on the original? Are the second and third generations of a cover commenting on the original or the ‘original’ covers that came before it and their popularity? Is the fourth generation of a Creep cover commenting on the ubiquity of Creep covers? Who knows? That’s for the individual artist to say but are those questions being asked when the choice is made? Where do we trace inspiration back to and when and how do we name, nurture and hold originality? Are we asking ourselves these questions when we embark on making a new character, show or performance? How do we track what we produce creatively ourselves, what we intentionally comment on, what we accidentally absorb from our community and what we borrow or steal – even if it’s unintentional. There’s empathy in connecting to someone else’s performance so deeply that you want to do it but of course, that is not enough? Not to sound like a creep or a weirdo but is the person singing creep for the first time at a Fringe Festival in 2018 aware of who sang it in 2015 or 2012 Or 2007?
In the midst of developing an immersive theater/cabaret project in Philadelphia right now a new artist friend, Jody Kuehner, shared a story about a young performer approaching after a performance to say, by way of a compliment and clearly inspired: “I love what you do. I want to do what you do. How do I do that?”
Bless.
When Jody explained trying to answer the aspiring performer’s query she recounted what a confusing question it was. In her head, she ran through her life, imagining that the answer might be: ‘Well, I guess you have to start taking dance classes at eight and then realize you will never really do ballet and then find weird contemporary dance and teachers who profoundly change who you are, grow up and start to notice how your family and town affect who you are, move to Seattle, come out as queer and then discover the drag scene and then….’ And then suddenly there you are on stage being this brilliant, singular, unique, bonkers performance fantasy named Cherdonna Sinatra who moved somebody else to want to be and feel what they imagine she is and feels on stage. At first glance, it’s a warm compliment and the expression of inspiration. At second glance, it is a preposterous question that could literally take a lifetime to answer.
What if the person who has inspired another artist has come upon their ‘thing’ – some unique exemplary iteration of their humanity as informed by the sum of their own experiences and influences, as the result of years of training, attempts and failures, being broke, demanding space on stage, finding and nurturing an audience and then, having found this and a way to express it, another artist lifts some essential thing about their performance after watching just one performance and starts replicating it? On the other hand, what if seeing something/someone on stage who you relate to is that brilliant ‘click’ – where you finally see something about yourself represented – and you realize you will strive to create the same thing? How do you respond to that impulse yet commit to your own originality? How do we navigate this journey to the stage?
What questions do we ask ourselves as we make creative choices? Where do these creative choices come from? Our training? Our influences? Our childhood? Our fantasy of ourselves? Our desire to be applauded and having evidence of how to get that?
There’s a three-part series called My Life As An Artist by Suzanne Bocanegra, which speaks to this beautifully. The New York Times called it “an illuminating theatrical portrait of the mind of an artist at work.” Theater critic Helen Shaw said, “This show didn’t just knock my socks off. It took my socks, re-wove them into a cunning fabric-art work, and handed them gravely back.” Bocanegra created this ‘lecture’ series which is part artist talk, part memoir and part voluptuously rambling cultural essay about the odd, sometimes fleeting moments in her life that revealed to her that she was an artist – influences fine echoes in and define her work. Using text, video, music, and costume she shares these quintessential experiences that add up to the artist Suzanne Bocanegra: a Texas upbringing, stories about a political artist asked by a radical Catholic priest to surreptitiously redesign the stained glass windows of the town church to reflect racial tensions in the town, how she interpreted the town scandal between said priest and a witch in to a way of understanding gender, narrative and representation and the influence of sociopolitical forces on all of that, her teenage years spent in a plaster body cast, and her grandparents’ farm across from the actual ‘Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’ (represented in the less affecting movie of the same name). Of course she didn’t have language for that at the time, but that she remembers these moments, periods, locations as significantly connected to her art-making is profound and speaks to the integrity and originality in her art.
Can we trace these things in our own journey to the stage, the page, the mic or the trapeze? When we take to the rehearsal room is it because we have a trick, a joke, a character or an idea that we can’t bear not to do, to see if and how it affects an audience? Equally valid, do we feel compelled to entertain but are certain it’s in a way that is uniquely ours? Does going on stage somehow tell us who we are as an individual? Do we have a gift that is so rare and compelling – like the voice of the recently departed Aretha Franklin – that simply the sharing of it is art – yet it’s made even deeper and eventually legendary by the application of craft, risk and rigor? Do we simply want to be onstage and are searching for a way – any way – to arrive there?
In an interview on her long and provocative career* the artist Carolee Schneeman poses these questions as a far more confrontational and insistent invitation. She said, “Interrogate your motive for being an artist. Might we possibly have enough artists?”
I’m not suggesting that we have too many artists (although maybe we do?!) and all I have for myself and my extended family of performers and divas and clowns and acrobats and idiots (again, a term of affection) are questions and I don’t think there is such a thing as too many questions. The answers I suppose are on stage.
*This article was given to me by Amy Saunders/Miss Behave who inspires me endlessly so I’m giving her full credit! I then quoted the article in a performance that also physically quotes and changes Schneeman’s most famous work. #fulltransparency!
Adrienne Truscott
Adrienne Truscott has been making genre-straddling work in New York City and abroad for over 20 years. The Wau Wau Sisters, her neo-vaudevillian collaboration with Tanya Gagne, has been presented by such iconic venues as the Sydney Opera House (Aus), Joe’s Pub and CBGB’s (NYC), Victoria Arts Center (Melbourne) and The Roundhouse (London). The Wau Wau sisters are fixtures at most Fringe Festivals and are seen regularly in the international sensations La Soiree and La Clique. Their contemporaries broadly recognize the influence of their radical and ludicrous take on circus and cabaret and received a Herald Angel Award among others. Her evening-length solo and group works have been presented at Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Just For Laughs, Darwin Festival, PS122, Joe’s Pub, The Kitchen, Dublin Fringe, Danspace, and Dance Theater Workshop among others and she is the recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award, the Fosters’ Panel Prize, and the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Ingenuity and was a finalist for the Total Theater Award for experimentation with form.
Truscott has taught at Wesleyan University Dance Department and Sarah Lawrence College’s Theater and Dance Departments and is currently teaching at Bard College, Barnard College and the Pratt Institute.
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