RE: RAT Re: Tickets

["Sylvain, John" <jsylvain@station.sony.com>]

Nick=Genius.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Nick [SMTP:nick@whirl-i-gig.com]
> Sent:	Thursday, December 30, 1999 12:29 PM
> To:	rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
> Subject:	Re: RAT Re: Tickets
> 
> Box Office is real the way the Lemonade Stand is real. 
> 
> The Lemonade Stand is the most important arbitrator in the neighborhood.
> Here the parents teach their children well.  We sometimes forget that the
> first definition of commerce is something that may have little or no
> relationship to money: 
> 
>  commerce 1. social intercourse: interchange of ideas, opinions, and
> sentiments.
> 
> The big bully of the neighborhood has always been KeepingUpWithTheJoneses.
> But if Box Office remains as deliberately ineffective as Lemonade Stand,
> it becomes the only real contender for that first definition of commerce.
> Otherwise all that Theater is selling is one more product, one more
> ticket. That OneWayTicketToPalookaville.
> 
> The Xmas Tree is the perverted Box Office.  Santa has sat his fat ass down
> on Baby Jesus.  The gifts are X'd out by bar codes. 
> 
> Theater is a gift first, not a product.  "presents" sounds like
> "presence"; the actor gives his unmediated presents to the audience.
> 
> The Sistine Chapel is the exact dimensions of the Temple of Solomon as
> given in the Old Testament.  I imagine the Lemonade Stand as scale model
> where the parent has commissioned the child to paint the ceiling.  So the
> gaze is not pedestrian, but upward.  Michelangelo instructs the Holy
> Father and vice versa. The angry christ is a tot throwing a tantrum when
> He chases the buyers and sellers from the Temple; he is able to do that
> only because his Father is the landlord.
> 
> The Lemonade Stand and Theater create fictive realities that become the
> wise and ethical guardians of our social intercourse.  Patron/Artist
> Parent/Child conflate.  Box Office is at best a funny-house mirror for
> viewing our "patronage."   Free Market Capitol is our true parent,
> affording us the leisure that allows us to create art.  Especially in this
> country the artist, even with a day job, is merely one more Landlord of
> Leisure. 
> 
> As landlords then we should be conscious of how we exploit the resources
> of the world both overtly and covertly in the creation of our art.   I
> thought another wise thing that Erik said at NYC Conference that relates
> tangentially to No More Box Office was that one ought to weigh the value
> of producing a script written about finding a serum to a disease against
> actually producing that serum.  
> 
> As landlords we can differentiate between being a proprietor and a host.
> 
> Host, from the Latin 'hostia' Eucharist, fr.Latin, sacrifice.  
> 
> Proprietor, from the fr.Latin 'proprietas',  property. 
> 
> This is a matter of mindset and intent of both performer and audience
> alike.  Blanche DuBois always relied on the kindness of strangers.  But No
> More Box Office relies on the strength of friends and community.  The
> words sacrifice and donation are related.  The presents, say presence, of
> performer and audience are equal equal.  
> 
> The Sun Dance offers more than a mere ceremony or ritual then.  But for
> both the dancer and the audience (community) alike, the Sun Dance
> sympathizes fully with nature and provides a serum.
> 
> --nick
>