By about fifth week of spring quarter, I am going to have to hand in a Bachelor of the Arts project in order to graduate from my venerated institution. I don't have a clue as to what it's going to be about. There are things that I like and dislike, however, and maybe those things will help point me in a direction.
I like projectors and images that can waver and be walked through and can move and morph. I like non-traditional light sources, like flashlights, cellphones, LEDs, glowsticks, christmas lights, and fire. I love the elements. I want dirt and water on stage. I wish I could stage something in a pool or in Lake Michigan. I want to start a movement that puts all its plays in bodies of water. I would be suspicious of a kiddie pool. I like sand and rocks, but I also like forests. I like being barefoot and I have a taste for the mystical. I love theater that has a tingle of magic. I love watching people smear one another with various substances.
I like repetition and revision. I am fascinated my ritual and the building of it based on no God, no history, no tradition. I am interested in feminism that does not revere the past, unless it reveres the deep past, the witchiness of women, the shadows that slip by unnoticed but catch the corner of your eye. I am interested in the building of identity, in the group mind, in theater that supports my politics, and in the oceanic feeling. I like silent screams, moans, yawps, and baos. I want to move beyond Aristotle. I am not concerned with real vs. unreal only with consistency within a given space. I like non-traditional spaces. I like blood and want to see how I am might cross an audiences' boundaries with real blood. I have thought about making hooking the subject of this project. I like the sound of Carnal Art. I like sensory overload and experiential art. I love Olafur Elisson. I dig trips and hallucinations.
I think I might like one person audiences. But I care if people think I'm too bizarre. Throbbing, I like theater that throbs. I have liked Mabou Mines and Holly Hughes. I like Adrienne Kennedy and Suzan-Lori Parks. I love the Absurdists and the Magical Realists. I realize I am the product of a lot of things, but I hate consumerism and big-budget anything and useless wheely-swingy bits that do nothing. I like DIY. I wish theater smelled more. I think I like basic but sometimes I like the over-stuffed. There is part of me that is secretly Victorian. I am huge creep and have a taste for the dark, but also the baudy and distasteful. Theater could be a burp.
But I mostly think that art is another country, where the rules are yours to make up.
