Re: RAT Hey Brad!

[brad rothbart <scrdchao@nni.com>]

>I know this wasn't meant for our eyes, but since we read it...
>What is endo-colonization?
>Secondly, tell me more about why your theater group wasn't let into the
>fringe festival.  What was the political nature of the piece and why did it
>threaten the fringe board?
>Signed,
>Intruiged



Endo-colnization, a theory, put forth by  Paul Virillio, that when military
adventurism was unpopuplar  in the 1960's (Prague , Mexico City , Vietnam)
the  military turned inward and colonized the populace.


 Alison, there was  no piece- we were simply applying for a slot at an
unjuried festival.. However, some time before at the AIDS Day of
Rememberance at Seattle Central Community College, we performed a
sound-and-movemen piece called The Plague, taken from Artaud's description
of the Plague in his essay The Theatre and the Plague.. The piece is
orchesal, in five  rough sections. 1) I'm fine 2) I'm not feeling so well/
fear , localized body aches 3) I think I have the Plague/ terror,   body
pain increases and becomes generalized  4) Everyone around me has the
Plague as well / , total loss of body contr ol,complete flipout 5) death
and the building of the body Pyramid.  As such, it goes from complete
silence , to unendureable screaming agony,  back to complete silence.
somewhere in that build- someone on Lower Broadway ( you could probably
hear us for blocks, is my guess)  this human, not knowing what was going
on, called the police. The police, not  knowing what was going on,  came in
full riot gear.  At the end of the piece I looked up to see a
fully-eqiupped policeman, face shield up and mask off, tears running down
his face, come up to me. He was sobbing, threw his arms around me ,
thanking me-- while his buddy was groewling that " if he could just get a
piece of me".... they almost came to blows at the Vigil. 15 year old kids
had climbed the brick, w-shaped wall to watch the piece as it was going on,
and they were crying,too.
Needless to say , all that got onto TV was that police were called to the
Day of Rememberance to break up what sounded like a disturbance, but
everything was cleared up.  This was a few months after a small  riot had
broken out during one of my performances at the Pioneer Square Theater.


So, we had no piece, but we did have a reputation. It's my gut  that that
reputation scared away a fringe festival that was only in its first or
second year.

There ya have it.

Hey Wa,


Brad