Re: RATS in Iowa

[Mary Ann McGivern <mmcgivern@stlnet.com>]

So what happened in Iowa that led Erik to such a panegyric of mystical
expression? Here's my initial summary. I hope it spurs more discussion.

I. Politics: Friday morning Dijana Milosevic, director of Dah Theater,
described how in 1991 she wanted safe theater, for a small audience,
enclosed in a small space, indoors, non-political. She held fast to
Matisse’s comment that two world wars had passed without entering into
his art. But the first performance of Dah was outdoors, before hundreds,
in an open mall; and it was proclaimed as political theater.

Dijana and her company from Belgrade, Pat Mulkeen and Pauline Ross from
Derry, Northern Ireland, and Deana Roskovitch (spelling?) from Buenos
Aires and Roberto Ruyes (spelling?) from Cordoba, Argentina, all took a
lot of time to explain the political situations that formed them and
that they respond to/ resist/ express in theater.

For example, Pauline Ross who manages the Derry community theater inside
the walls described finding the space in the context of the troubles,
and she showed a marvelous tape of kids reenacting the political crisis.
Pat Mulkeen, a Derry playwright described her play Bloody Sunday about a
stereo and musical instrument dealer who's shop was in the bogside
opposite the walls but who was listening to opera and didn't hear the
shooting. And another play about prisoners coming home from jail which
she wrote out of the experiences of five IRA men who'd served fifteen
and twenty years and who played themselves. Their wives came to her and
asked her to work with the families and write it.


II. Art: Dijana, Pat, Deana, and Roberto all showed video tapes of their
work and talked about the wellsprings of their inspiration. Their
aesthetics and ethics of creation are different from one another. Dijana
and Deana are more allegorical and Pat is more realistic. I'm willing to
share my summaries of their presentations, but I’d be glad to hear other
interpretations. This was the theoretical crux of the weekend.

III. Performance: One of the Dah actors, Maja Mitic, deconstructed her
performance, illustrating movement and vocal technique and then showing
us how she uses that technique to find meaning in texts from Three Penny
Opera and Helen Keller. That evening Dah performed Documents of Times.
The next evening Kathy Randals performed The End and Back Again, My
Friend. These performances were the affective crux of the weekend.

IV. Workshop: Pat Mulkeen, Dijana Milosevic, and Erik Ehn took us
through a variety of exercises in movement and writing. Late one night
we had an open stage, with readings, poetry, and performance segments.
This was praxis.

V. Graffiti Theater from Iowa City fed us well. This was praxis too.

VI. Making meaning of it all: everyone talked intensely in small groups
and in meetings of the whole. For myself, I feel the same urgency as our
visitors expressed -- that in the United States we are the center and
source and beneficiaries of so much violence . And I share the dread
realization expressed frequently that the intellectual and the artist
may also be the barbarian.

Mary Ann McGivern