Reading week 4

Reading – Week 4

Bonney, J. (2000). Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century. New York: Theatre Communications Group.

LAURIE ANDERSON

Feedback

Anderson plays with language and sound through technology like recorders and synthesisers, projectors and visual. She layers the visual and the audio in the performance. Anderson gained much of her following through a song that reached the charts, she moved from the obscure down-town artist to the world of mass media and popular avant-garde. Her stories are autobiographical but include universal subjects like love, religion and politics that she can make personal. She uses microphones and audio equipment on stage to create her own soundtracks and sound effects.

New York Social Life

This piece looks at how our lives are similar and how they repeat each other. Anderson looks at social interaction of city goers who are surrounded by people but made lonely in their own little worlds. The interactions that occur become repeated and stagnated, we all say the same things, how are you, we should meet up next week, how work, bye. Anderson is making a point about society, particularly New Yorkers, we say the same things to each other so much that they become meaningless, automatic and unfelt.

After Science, Dinner: On the Road

This piece was created by Anderson during her travels around America. In this she seems to be concerned with accents and the voice because the few characters in it are all very different from each other. She shows different social types of people in America, including a couple who eat night food that they have shot, like possum. She shows them as potentially repulsive people who cook possum, cover it in coffee and maple syrup and call this a secret recipe. It is a very visual piece and Anderson describes her surroundings in detail.

United States: Difficult Listening Hour

Anderson shows this piece as a radio host presenting the ‘difficult music’ on his show. She plays with voice and rhythm throughout and shows that, even though it is discussed as difficult, it is actually quite poetic and thoughtful. She turns the preconceptions on their head.

Big Science

This is a piece that attacks society, it is a list of directions but all the reference points have not been built yet. Anderson attack what she calls ‘golden cities, golden towns’ for being an ever growing sprawl of the urban. The directions are pointless, even ludicrous because none of it makes sense unless you know what is to be built around the town.

Talk Normal

This is an autobiographical monologue from Anderson, as the rest of the readings are, but in this she talks about herself as I and discusses her relationship with Andy Kaufman. Nor does she embody any other character or sound effect.

False Documents

Anderson tells us of a time in which she went to see a palm reader and is made to believe that if what she is hearing is true, then she has been living a lie. The monologue is interesting as it looks at cultures and the differences and ignorance of separate cultures and societies rules. She worries that they read from right to left, and that maybe she has got the wrong hand, or that it is being read wrong. She also sees the potential of language barriers and problems in translation.

Wild White Horses

In this monologue Anderson tells her audience of a time when she has an identity crisis. She agrees to a vow that she thinks she cannot keep. She confides these concerns to a monk and he makes her realise the context of her life and that she should not worry about something as trivial as ‘being nice’ when her house could be burning down, or that she may have a long way to get home.