Re: RAT Politics and Theatre

[nick <nick@ratconference.com>]

At 08:32 AM 6/2/01 -0700, erik ehn wrote:
>     Maybe an aspect of this rat meet could be a clarification of commitment
>to the formation of local cells. BCT is a model of rat politics in action;
>it's been a summer dream to watch Philarat come together (knowing that
>summer and dreams ain't easy); maybe SF will cohere...

Forming local rat cells helps break down the insular nature that is a
common trait among most theaters.  We always proclaim these grand
aesthetics and missions of what our theaters wish to enact.  But we act too
much like all the other petty rival marketeers.  Hyping one more unwanted,
nonessential product to the almighty Kmart shopper instead of becoming the
artists and community builders we really want to be.  So wherever or
whenever any two or more theaters are brought together in collaboration
instead of competition we have accomplished a radical political act.  This
is rat.

The Edge of the World Festival and BCT listserv built by rats in Los
Angeles is a great model of an ongoing collaboration between diverse
theaters and individuals at the regional level.  But my sense from the
outside, which may or may not be true, is that BCT reached its plateau at
the LA rat conference.  There no longer appears to be the same necessity
that BCT initially had to connect with rat nationally.  

The national and international rat is necessary to keep the local rat cells
from falling into that other kind of insularity.  Provincialism is always a
possibility no matter the size of the city.  For instance New York can and
does act just as parochial as Austin or any other smaller city can in its
relationship to theater and art.  And shrewd marketeers can and do always
capitalize on this fact.  Peopling the product with those downtown
darlings, divas and celebs can always ensure a limited market and critical
success regardless of actual quality.  But this is the aesthetic of
dilettantes.  The market, the box office, or the commercial viability of
our theater work is a big fish in a little pond.  The mature use of the art
form has us swimming in a much larger metaphysical pool.   In this big pond
theater is little fish in the same manner that "bait fish" are little fish.
 And there are bigger fish to fry than the market.

The promise is that PhilaRat is beginning not culminating with this coming
rat conference.  And my wish is to imagine the idea of rat sister cities
developing to help in this.  Many of our New York ratty friends are coming
to the conference and I hope for continual collaborations between these two
cities.  But I am really thinking of sister cities linked by something
other than proximity.   Where the "Room And Transportation" is a more
poignant affair than a two hour car trip down the turnpike and where the
ethic of mutual hospitality comes completely into play.  For instance
Austin and Minneapolis suggested at one time (still do) such sister city
possibilities of rat exchange and collaboration between one another.
Certain cities of ours should became something like a theater home away
from theater home with different forms of artists' residences being
supported.  This is not anyway a utopian vision but a reality that has been
slowly manifesting more and more regularly for some committed rats. 

We continue our political experiment.  The City of Brotherly Love Seeks
Sister Cities.   Meet and discuss all potentials June 21-24, 2001.  

--nick







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