Kyle’s Reviews > And Then, You Act: Making Art in an Unpredictable World > Status Update

Finishing up her art manifesto with reflecting upon time, mostly through visual art (and lyrics) remarked upon for their supposed timeless qualities. And yet, being outside of time and tackling it head-on recalls the great Dormammu/Dr. Strange face-off that does the same thing only different. For her theatre practice, built upon the many exciting theories, make for a marvel that I hope someday will see on SITI stage.

From the German Alps, along with the philosophies of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, to an abandoned warehouse in Berlin, a possible home for the grounded theatre practices of Brecht, Anne journeys between the extremes to find right attitude, mentioning the Buddhist Eightfold Path and an astronaut's outer space navigation. Not surprisingly it all come back to New York, the Will & Grace version, of being genuine.

A year ago, my PhD committee hit the nail on its head when they got me to include Bogart's magnetic forces in my research questions: not only is there Artaud and virtual reality mentioned in the same section, alchemy, but also it follows her prying thoughts on education, the need for eudemonia to be questioned throughout a play. Yet these are just two of the seven forces she mentions, and VR might have more?

My travels taking me through parts of Tokyo really draw out how and entire society patiently attends to peers, teachers and religious figures who often speak for a score or two of minutes uninterrupted. Most tellingly at Noh plays where spoken text seems to take a backseat to gesture and music, there is still a sense that every word repeated through centuries has a way of shaping the unconscious mind in quantum ways.

Not much alchemy here, but mention of the magnetism it later becomes part of still suggests something transformational in the text. Today is the opening night for Suzuki's Toga Mura Summer Season, and while I am pulled away in an opposite direction my brief visit last week to Toyama instills me with the intention to return and find my own place of art and research, much like Anne's flight from San Diego created SITI.

Again Anne mentions alchemy, and I suspect it is the common thread to describe her art making in every chapter. Here, she articulates how aggravation and anger, two inarticulate energies, can transform into poetic expression. She gives opposing examples of filmmakers: Fassbinder died soon after failing to find words for his craft while Girard spun metaphorical gold from a dinner conversation to fund his next project.

Starting off with a semiotics-strewn analysis of the shifting context for when a play gets put on stage, Anne mentions a couple of groundswelling events that contributed to a memorable run: Welles' War of the Worlds just prior to WWII, her own Radio Play before and after September 11th, but it is an undergraduate NYU production of Gorky's Lower Depths that first hints at contextual alchemy.

After reading everything Anne wrote I could get my hands on, I return to the book that started me off as a drama educator and arts-based researcher: my dissertation will seek to reply to her thoughts on magnetic forces. With a better understanding of mostly New York-based artists who inspire her work, it is no wonder that September 11th was Anne's call to turn up the music and think deeply about the role of the arts.

Filling the metaphorical container with meaningful content requires an attention to aesthetic, the feeling of how we each experience beauty that defies logic or measurement. Much like her concluding chapter on time, directors making art (while making art mean something) is about perceiving these intangibles and giving the actors on stage something to do that represents what cannot be held physically only experienced.

There is plenty going on in theatre before an actor utters the first line or performs an initial gesture, and Bogart breaks it down into seven fundamental forces that draw an audience to the stage. She also makes the helpful allusion to digital media such as virtual reality. The most important addition to this seven-fold theatrical path is the Samma-Sankappa described in the next chapter: inner magnetism or attitude.