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RE: RAT Money, value and art
First off,
One of my points was meant to be that I couldn't judge voluntary
poverty because I'm not doing it right now, and frankly, I kinda
like my computer, cable TV, Air Conditioning.....
What frustrates me is the schism betwenn praxis and practice. Go be
voluntarily poor. Great. Have the experience- learn. Then you have
the clout to tell me that I should give up my belongings and change
my life. My irritation is when plainly Middle-class people tell me
that I should be voluntarily poor as an act of solidarity. By the
act of being on the RAT-List, owning or having access to a computer,
we are all at least middle-class, whether it's in upbringing or
currently. For me , recommending a life I don't lead is hypocrisy
and I can't do it. Genet's point was much the same: all of the
protesters who thought they were representing disadvantaged America
were actually representing their idea of disadvantaged America, as
disadvantaged America ( by its very name) lacked the possibility of
getting to the protest in the first place.
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No argument from me here whatsoever. I, too, like my computer and cable TV.
(One of my least favorite complaints from my small town upbringing was about
people on welfare who had cable television--grand luxury that it was.) I do
without a car and some luxuries because that allows me the freedom to not
have to take and keep a job I don't want.
I think you and I are discussing a little bit at cross-purposes. You are
talking about ABJECT poverty, it seems like. People who Buddha- or
Christ-like reject every single thing. (Great quote here, although as
usual, I don't remember the source--"It takes a lot of money to keep Gandhi
in his poverty.")
I do think everyone should go through a period of understanding what it is
to do without. My lifestyle choices have amounted to poverty--voluntary or
otherwise--for most of the past 15 years of my life, save maybe 3 or 4 years
here and there. Much of it was hard. I was talked to like a piece of shit
by bill collectors and landlords alike. I was once told in college "I've
heard of people like you, but I never thought I'd meet one." Hard--shit,
yes. But I wouldn't trade that experience because of what it taught me
about compassion and trying not to judge other people.
But short of embracing voluntary destitution, I am talking more about
rejecting excess. Americans, as a rule, have way more than we need. We
have more shit. More videos. We throw away more food. More styrofoam.
More plastic. Someone poor by American standards still has a hell of a lot
more than someone poor by standards in Haiti. Perhaps I am talking more
about voluntary simplicity, although you could still pull down $100K a year
and embrace "simplicity" in theory. What happened to taking what we need?
We don't even know how to distinguish what we need from what we want
anymore. A period--for however long in your life--of voluntary poverty can
help you distill that a little bit.
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The problem with most theatre artists is that we consider ourselves
disadvantaged when we're not. We sit at the table and beg for scraps when
we should be out building a new house- our house. I did a 5 week residency
in Germany with the Living Theatre. While I was there, I asked the
organizer why they felt a need to bring us from the US- why not use a German
company? Like who, he asked?? Pina Bausch, I replied. He said," They charge
for a weekend what you charge for a month", and walked away. Yes, we got
the opportunity to do our work and get paid- at the same time, we were
played like a violin.
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If you got what you wanted out of the situation, then who cares if they felt
that they exploited you? Did you feel exploited? Would you have felt
exploited if Bausch had never made that comment? Is money the only way to
measure value?
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WE UNDERVALUE OURSELVES TERRIBLY. Chris, although you'd take the $ 5,000.00-
you're worth a lot more- and you shouldn't be afraid to ask for it. Nay,
demand it.
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I have a friend who keeps telling me "You are too smart to be poor" and I
keep wondering what that has to do with it. I am smart ENOUGH to be poor,
because I know how to get what I need.
I am worth SO much more than money. I know that sounds like an idealistic
pose. But when I start talking about my worth with a dollar sign, then I am
commodified. What's a car "worth"? What's my art "worth"? What am I
"worth"? How can I compare my own worth with someone else's?
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I think that many smaller theatres take this attitude of voluntary poverty-
feeling that the only way to preserve artistic integrity is to be out of
the "blood money " cycle.
This is a nice theory until one considers the repercussions.
Suppose, theoretically, that I have a playwright friend who has a new play
that I want to do. The piece, while small, is technically difficult, and one
role seems to call for an equty actor, simply due to its difficulty. But
wait- we have no money to pay an equity actress. Ok- I'll settle for
someone who isn't quite right, but also comes free.
Rehearsals go better than I had hoped- I'm rather excited- until I discover
that the advertising budget has dropped out. I can't get a story in the
newspaper because no one's ever heard of the play, the actors, the
playwright or the director- and all I have are postcards. So, through word
of mouth, I get 10 people a night to see the wonderfully intriguing play
that runs for 3 weeks. This story hasn't happened yet- it's simply my
waking nightmare.
Question:
Has any purpose been served by doing that production? Was it useful to the
actors, me as the director, the playwright? Is it of any use to put
something up simply to do it? Because we settle for voluntary theatrical
poverty , this kind of story gets repeated too many times.
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this is a question for each person to answer. If you "need" actors with
better name recognition to draw a crowd, then are you feeding into a
"celebrity" notion about theatre? As you know from some of our
conversations this week, to me, the process of the production is the most
important thing. I never assume that my work will only be presented once.
So I take the approach that with each production, I am learning something
about the piece and about the process of presenting it. Yes--I want
audiences to see my work, and it is frustrating that I have to build that
slowly. But I don't know that it's just a matter of money. Would the
equity actor and the huge advertising budget still pull your audience away
from Riverdance and CATS and television and whatever else distracts them
away from theatre?
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What I want from RAT:
For us to infest the world with Radical work. To be a force in the American
cultural dialogue. To be denounced on the senate floor on C-Span as a
"major force in the weakening of the American Moral Fiber." To be banned in
35 states and 3 countries. To have our pictures up in post offices: WANTED
for acts of treason against American cultural hegemony. I want us all to
be outlaws. To do this we have to be giants- we have to dare to be as
powerful as the system we despise- but focus that power in another way-
power with, not power over.
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I want these things, too. Isn't there a way--through RAT, through the
internet, through coordination and concentration, to do this anyway? Is it
only the technical and complicated spectacle (i.e., expensive?) that can do
this? We're CREATIVE people, after all. I thought doing this with what
we've got was the point.
So--Let's DO IT! Let's start tossing out some ideas. Let's organize a huge
election day national PERFORMANCE. Let's start getting concrete on their
asses instead of sitting around feeling bad that we don't have enough money
yet to take over. If we can't all get to where each other are, then we act
locally but concertedly.
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As long as the system stands , and money is conflated with value- everyone
on this list deserves to make their living as an artmaker. We are that
valuable to society, whether they know it or not.
Our task is making them know it.
La Lucha Continua,
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Amen.
"Those poor kids. So young. So nauseous."
--Krusty the Klown Telethon for Motion Sickness
Laura Winton
fluffysingler@prodigy.net
http://pages.prodigy.net/fluffysingler