by Kathryn Syssoyeva
CO-DEVISED WITH: Bryan Brown, Olya Petrokvka, Kris Salata, Alexei Syssoyev;
A performance and teaching shift for PSi 18, in Leeds in June of 2012.
Our project is to challenge the... more
A performance and teaching shift for PSi 18, in Leeds in June of 2012.
Our project is to challenge the aims of conference culture, notions of laboratory conditions, and the realities of making viable work in an academic setting. With this in view, our proposed “performance of training” is at once commentary upon the limits and challenges of the institutional structures within which many of us conduct our artistic praxis, and an investigation into the possibilities of spontaneity, collision, leap of faith.
Abstract:
This porous shift is intended as a meeting place for five scholar-practitioners, who have never before gathered as a group, and who share research and artistic interests in practices associated with the theatre laboratories of Russia and Poland. Choosing absurdism, particularly that of the OBERIU, as a springboard for this encounter, our aim is to investigate and problematize the rich complexity that is training, schooling, performance - and the possibilities of art within the institutional structures of academia. Playing with the phrase ‘training for the absurd’ has led us to devise a structure in which performance pedagogies can be proposed, while engaging in a performance of pedagogy.
In what is, on the surface, a “work demonstration” format, a group of PSi and non-PSi performers will be active participants, with an audience invited to watch the work, and, afterward, respond and reflect with us. In order for active participants to have a clear understanding of the supertask, actions and concerns, and a foundation of interpersonal comfort from which to begin the collaboration, we will commence our work with a ‘closed’ session of one hour, directly prior to the open session.
Participants will be given a text by Daniil Kharms to work with, and asked to engage in an accruing montage of “actor-training” tasks, while maintaining the supertask laid out in the closed session. As the shift leaders are from Russia, Poland and America, differences in schooling and theatre training serve as a starting point for the structure. Shift leaders will each adopt a particular pedagogical pose; we might think of this as character work, the performance aspect of our dual role (in this shift) as performers and teachers. While participants engage with very real artistic-pedagogical objectives, the performative dramaturgy of the event plays with the negative dimensions of pedagogy (such as spatial and behavioral constraints imposed upon the child in school, or the batons used to beat out rhythm and threaten the legs of young dancers in Russian ballet training).
The shift will conclude with a moderated reflection and exchange between students, shift leaders, and audience, contextualized by a scholar steeped in history of absurdist theatre and avant-garde performance practices. Taking this critical lens as a starting point, it is anticipated that the reflections will further challenge conceptions of training, schooling and performance interrogated within the shift.
Open to observers from Day 1, Day 2 provides an opportunity for the five shift leaders and the work participants to share approaches to performance practice, in a non-performance mode, in order to further investigate and develop processes and impulses that will have emerged during the performance.
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