Forced Expectations
Is the word ‘seminal’?
sem·i·nal adj
1. highly original and influential
2. containing an idea or set of ideas that forms a basis for later developments
3. relating to, containing, or carrying semen or seeds
ok, that fits. Except for the semen.
I can name two seminal moments as a theatre-goer. The first occurred around 1989/90 when I saw Le Dortoir by Carbon 14, the now-defunct Montreal theatre group. It was at SFU and I was a theatre student at the time and the show set my brain on fire. I can still see and feel the passion from that show. I walked away wanting to make theatre.
The second also had a Montreal angle (everything cool can somehow be traced back to Montreal) when I was there in 2003 for the Festival de théâtre des Amériques (now Festival TransAmériques). I’d had a recommendation to see Sheffield, England’s Forced Entertainment perform First Night and And on the Thousandth Night. I had been making theatre for a little while by that time and was shocked to see Forced Entertainment break every rule of what I believed theatre was supposed to be but somehow fulfill everything it could be. I will just describe one moment in First Night. Cathy Naden pointed at each audience member and dispassionately listed their form of death. There were probably about 250 of us in the house and the lighting likely hampered Cathy’s vision but it really felt as if she were singling out each on of us. “Bus crash. Liver Disease. Choked on a piece of meat.” A series of painful or horrific deaths. On and on it went without hesitation, all of us riveted as we wondered if, a) she was going to point out everyone and, b) if so, what were we going to die of? It took a long time but finally she got to me, her last victim, sitting close by in the third row. And with a sigh of relief, and a big laugh from all, I learned that I was going to die of “old age.” It was the punch line of an incredible monologue and with it my fate was sealed as a Forced Entertainment fan. Until death.
So you could say when I heard Forced Entertainment would be playing the TBA (Time-Based Art) Festival in Portland, Oregon, I headed south with high expectations. They were going to perform Quizoola (which I had missed at PuSh here in Vancouver in 2007) and a new show, Sight is the sense that dying people tend to lose first. And to top it off Artistc Director Tim Etchells would give a lecture. Three great reasons to dip into the “Fun Fund,” a savings account where I’d gathered enough money to get myself, wife and child down to Portland for the weekend.
While I don’t intend this to be a travel article I just gotta tell ya that if you haven’t ridden the Amtrak south yet, you should one of these days. It’s remarkably affordable and super fun. The Vancouver-Seattle leg is particularly striking as the track runs next to the ocean for a good deal of the way. You can sit in the snack car with your family or friends (coincidentally we discovered three friends on the same train) and watch the landscape drift by as you sip a beverage, knowing that your inner environmentalist can rest easy because you’re traveling somewhat green. Plus, kids love trains and they can stay occupied for hours counting cows.
We got to Portland and it felt like Hawaii. Warm and sunny, my favourite kind of weather. We stayed at the Ace Hotel which was very clean and comfortable, I’d recommend it highly. After cruising part of Portland’s beautiful and very people-friendly downtown, I was off to the first show “Sight is the sense…” I try not to read too much about a show before seeing it, I don’t like walking in with high expectations, so all I knew was that it was a monologue. And that’s what it was. An actor (Jim Fletcher) in street clothes entered and stood at the centre of the stage, and began to list many of the rules that we know about life.
Socks are gloves for the feet. Snow is cold. Water is
the same thing as ice. In America things are bigger.
America is a country. Korea is also a country. Some
men have sex appeal. Blind people cannot see
anything. Burglars are men that go into houses and
take things which do not belong to them. Mist is
like smoke but it comes without fire. The telephone
is an amazing invention. A mouse that is dead
is sometimes referred to as a specimen. Love is
difficult to describe.
And on and on he went, in much the same way that Cathy Naden had done during First Night, listing one thing after another dispassionately and without hesitation. After about ten minutes someone in the third row walked out. Fletcher paused as the patron made his way to the door and, after his exit, continued where he’d left off with something like “A fart is a gas expelled from the anus,” which got a big laugh. Unfortunately it didn’t stop several others from leaving.
Certainly some of the ‘factoids’ were compelling but the sheer wealth of them became too much and I drifted off. From my vantage-point I could see a trap door in the stage floor next to where Fletcher was standing and I wanted to see a fiery dragon pop out and swallow him whole. When that image passed I began to be amazed at how Fletcher had memorized the list, and wondered what techniques he was using to pull it off. But then some of his words would grab me and I’d be back in again, amazed at the wealth and complexity of things we take for granted. Suddenly it was over. Fletcher’s last line was the title of the play, and with that he exited the stage, returned for a bow, and that was it, about 50 – 55 minutes after it had started. I was left wanting. Having experienced other, more ‘epic’ Forced Entertainment productions, the monologue felt like part of a larger show, not a show in itself.
The next day Tim Etchells was giving his lecture, and again my expectations got the better of me. I was hoping for some kind of State of the Union address; instead Tim talked about some of his own visual art works, gave a basic history of Forced Entertainment and described some of their shows. The question and answer period allowed the audience to dig in a little more, particularly when we got Tim to describe Forced Entertainment’s process. One of the things I found most interesting was his description of his job as director in the collective. He said they might get to a certain point where the group seems to favour three possible lines of inquiry, and as director he would identify those three and then say “Let’s try this one today and see how it goes.” I really appreciated his observation that they’ve all been working long enough (since 1984) to know that any one of them could easily be wrong, and that there’s usually enough generosity in the group to go along with something they may not feel strongly about. As a collective creator on numerous occasions I’ve felt certain a particular idea would work, only to be proven otherwise, and I took heart knowing that Forced Entertainment creators felt the same. And then suddenly the question and answer period was over too, as out-going TBA Artistic Director Mark Russell intervened to say that people had to get to other shows. The cliché “Always leave them wanting more” was taking hold.
That night I took my wife and child to Quizoola, based on the show description that it was a show a person could easily duck in and out of—kind of necessary for a two year old with the will of a large animal. We cabbed to the location, a former plastics factory, only to discover you couldn’t come and go. They were only letting 25 people in at a time, and there was already a line-up. A video monitor played nearby offering a look at what was happening inside, but at a glance the sound and video quality seemed so poor as to be nearly unwatchable. We quickly hailed another cab. Quizoola is basically six hours of questions and answers—regrettably, my experience did not include one minute.
[img_assist|nid=522|title=Lucy on her way to Portland but not Quizoola|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=216|height=288]I saw one other show at TBA, Superamas which I would summarize as a superficial look at superficiality. I know some reviewers raved about it, and certainly it was incredibly well executed, but the show left me with a big empty feeling-probably the point however I was still, well, wanting. Seems I was just wanting all over the place. Perhaps the theatre is trying to tell me something: in life, you always want more. Or maybe you should want less? Then you would be satisfied more. I really don’t know. I’m not very good at analyzing these things. But I was thinking of developing a pill that wipes all expectations from one’s mind prior to any theatrical experience. And then taking a bunch with me when I head back to Portland again next year. Because the truth is, we had a great time despite the less-than-expected theatrical results. I was even thinking of organizing a group outing to all travel on the train and stay in the same hotel. Could be fun, no? Start putting $50 into your Fun Fund each month and you’ll have enough by next September. Expecting the banks don’t collapse by then.
Andrew Laurenson is the Artistic Director of Radix Theatre in Vancouver.