Reading week 3

Reading – Week 3

Dolan, J. (2001). ‘Performance, Utopia and the “Utopian Performative”’ Theatre Journal 53. Pp.  455-479

Feedback

·         This piece discusses how performance has the potential to provide us with the experience and sense of utopia.

·         Performance has the chance to change people’s style, trend, fashion and standards.

·         When audiences gather together, there is already a sense of community in that they are watching the same live performance with maybe a hope that what they see might change or enlighten them.

·         Performance and art can be used to change and make the world a better place, a utopia. Theatre has ‘a transformative impact on how we imagine ourselves in culture...a commitment to theatre and performance as transformational cultural practices might offer us consistent glimpses of utopia’ (456)

·         The utopia in question is not the idealised future world peace/harmony type of utopia, but can change attitudes towards poverty, famine, cancer, AIDs, health care, race and gender discrimination, homophobia, unfair global wealth distribution, religion, xenophobia etc.

·         However, Fascism and utopia can ‘skirt dangerously close together.’ (457)

·         Utopia is seen in more than performance, it can potentially be seen in the rehearsal process.

·         It is unlikely that a theatre performance will create an idealistic world-wide utopia, but it can have an impact on smaller aspects of life which leads eventually to a utopian society. The goal for a performance should not be to search for this ultimate utopia as this is unlikely. Instead, it should focus on a smaller slice of society, which is more likely to be achievable.

·         In a utopian society, theatre might not exist because it has to have a conflict to fight.

·         Theatre can ‘move us toward understanding the possibility of something better, can train our imaginations, inspire our dreams and fuel our desires in way that might lead to incremental cultural change.’ (460)

·         A non-mainstream theatre is more likely to produce revolutionary theatre. However there is a chance that the performers are ‘preaching to the converted’, or to people who already strive for the same utopian agenda.

·         The essay discusses Holly Hughes’s Preaching to the Perverted, Peggy Shaw’s Menopausal Gentleman and Deb Margolin’s Oh Holy Night, all solo performers who started their careers at the WOW Cafe in New York, a famous place for lesbian and feminist performers.

·         Hughes’s performance voices many people and representatives of society to show a world that is out of joint and discriminatory.

·         There are moments when audience participation can potentially open a window of utopian possibilities for the performer. Like when Shaw leaves the conventional performance space to walk and perform in the audience. She is making herself known to them, they are all on the same journey and are seen as being in the same group of people. This type of experience offers a ‘springboard to utopia.’ (473)

·         Margolin’s piece is about the search for the Messiah, but there are moments of utopia even in defeat. Moments of utter silence and stability show themselves as utopian, as well as moments of non-acting, like when Shaw drinks a bottle of water after a physical scene. ‘Perhaps in these moments of communal, almost loving rest, when the flesh stops and the soul pauses, we come together, at attention and relieved, to feel utopia.’ (477)

·         Utopian feelings are not restricted to the queer or feminist performances of Shaw, Margolin or Hughes. Nor will everyone in the audience feel this utopia.