( Under the guidance of my supervisor I am working on a response to version 1.0's This Kind Of Ruckus. I posted my first attempt earlier on the blog and now here is my second attempt. My challenge has been writing analytically and without opinion, i am also exploring what I mean when I say 'political performance')
Innovative Political Performance?
Why This Kind Of Ruckus isn’t a Ruckus
There are certain expectations I have for performance, let alone performance that claims to be innovative and political. As an artist who is also exploring similar themes to collective Version1.0, I was excited to read a flyer advertising their latest work This Kind of Ruckus.
“This Kind of Ruckus explores the forming and wrecking of relationships, patterns of control, and cycles of abuse. Drawing upon recent high-profile sexual assault scandals, accounts of relationship violence, and the subtle violence implicit within most relationships, this is confronting, unsettling and powerful theatre from Version 1.0, the acclaimed makers of Deeply Offensive and Utterly Untrue.”[i]
Now having seen the show twice (once in Sydney, late 2009 then again during the Adelaide Fringe, early 2010) I am frustrated. I am frustrated on many levels; as an audience member, as a young woman, as an artist, as a student, as a feminist and as an individual who has experienced the violence V1.0 claims to discuss in this work.
There is a lot to be said for a collective that attempts to address such controversial themes, this is important for contemporary performance to move forward and resonate with its spectators. There is something, though, in TKOR’s execution and collective energy (or lack of) that leave a lot to be desired and makes their choices for the piece questionable. In response to this performance I must actively critically question what a performance is to be “political”? And, how is TKOR an unsuccessful “political” work?
“A performance about power, control and violence in intimate relationships. The work explores sexual violence in a range of spheres – from the realm of the domestic, to the judicial system, to the media and popular cultural attitudes, to the recent spate of sexual assault scandals in the sporting arena…”[ii]
To be political is to engage in the relationship between those with power and the powerless. A political performance needs to question social and cultural hierarchies; it should empower victims and criticize aggressors, it can undress and redress current issues by confronting prejudice, violence and morally corrupt behaviour. Political performance can open up a forum for discussions about change and equality. Works should be inclusive not alienating, showing people and things with cultural and social intelligence, aiming to remove bias yet maintain focus on stereotypes, figureheads and systems that hold political problem.
The structure of the show itself is a series of repeated actions. The cast performs fractured (I assume) ‘football’ actions; they negotiate a quiet cheerlead grasping red pom poms at the front of the stage, they line up and execute footballer’s warm ups and training. An abstracted nightclub dance is repeated throughout the show where male performers attempt to dance with female. They jump up and down side-by-side together moving towards the audience. The female performers become increasingly intoxicated off cans of VB that are lined up side-stage on a table,they appear as if ‘cool down’ drinks for the athletes of a game.
There is a scene of a marriage counsellors session where a male and female player navigate conversation whilst another female player enters the audience and sits looking back onstage whilst counselling the two. The show uses verbatim text from unknown (to the audience) sources. Rape is introduced in a variety of ways; through a monologue delivered at the front of the stage by a female performer casually addressing the rest of the cast, rape is made physical in a drunken dance between a male and female performer, there is also another moment where female performers desperately try and pick up an excess of clothes whilst a male performer tells a story of a gang rape he witnessed his friends commit.
The show concludes with a quote from footballer Matthew Johns. Two male’s stand centre stage,one announces the famous ‘apology’ and the other slaps him on the back saying. ‘Well done mate… Now, on with the show...’ As if purely re-enacting this moment does anything to comment on how embedded these attitudes are in a male dominated mainstream culture. TKOR perpetuate this hierarchy because; thematically it is not clear whether the performers are hyper-real caricatures or performing realism, there style is not coherent, therefore any intent or meaning described in their website blog or in their program is lost. There are moments of dynamic action and text that conjure meaningful sensation but they do not survive the incongruity of stylistic choice.
The shows sound track is an incessant repetitive thumping of a beat that splinters the work into what could almost be called chapters, but not really. There is the constant of media in the show, a video projection that is meant to mimic sporting footages live close-ups that “…magnifies the detail of physical actions and offers new perspectives on fine emotional detail, shedding new light on the minutiae of these human behaviours.”[iii] The media, in this case really only highlights the lack of cohesion between the chosen imagery of sexual violence and what the work claims to explore.
The set for the show is a bubble wrap curtain that divides the space parallel to the audience, as performers disappear behind it and create ghostly figures reminiscent of alcohol-fuelled bleariness. Throughout the work a heavy red curtain of the theatre stage is drawn across the space bringing the performers to the edge of the stage where they sit and participate in storytelling of run ins with the police, a rape and their own interpersonal relationships. These moments are offensive as they seem to serve no purpose but to attempt to bring humour to these parts of the show without irony.
The artists do not discuss the ‘recent spate of sexual assault scandals in the sporting arena…’. Merely presenting actions and text without cross-examination is not discussion. There is an opening and shutting of two worlds (the theatre curtain) that is incongruous, considering there has been no solid definition between the two spaces and their meaning. Time that is spent in front of the main curtain also includes the audience, where two of the female performers point and converse; “…imagine fucking 12 of these guys in a row…. you haven’t got the balls.”
The three female and two male performers continuously swap roles in abstracted scenes of violence. (Always heterosexual and always with the man in power.) These ‘power plays’ are presented but never shift, violent action is placed in front of the audience and, then, it’s almost as if the performers creep away from it.
Gender is split painfully into traditional roles, without this choice being made ironically. The two men are given all the power and, if this is a deliberate reflection of a patriarchal society then, it wasn’t clear. This isn’t successful political work, because I didn’t believe the performers really knew what they were questioning and whom they were pointing a finger to. Is this also what political performance must do? By ‘pointing a finger’ perhaps I mean addressing clear targets (eg. The footballers, the media, the sporting industry etc. ) in which to question and essentially give some responsibility to. TKOR as a theatre work had ideas that were in their beginning stages, and, because of the style of the work; a mix of task-based action and realism, actions became immature and contrived.
“…Perhaps unsurprisingly , it’s been a dark and difficult work to make. The question we keep having to grapple with is why this and why now? Didn’t 70s feminist theatre comprehensively address sexual violence? Does this work need to be revisited by Version 1.0? Looking in the newspaper on a daily basis, with the ever-multiplying number of awful events, has demonstrated the urgent need for performance to return these themes.”[iv]
If Version 1.0 is asking ‘why this and why now?’ Then TKOR didn’t answer, its lack of narrative failed to open up a forum for further discussion because they did not make clear who and what exactly the show is analysing. Of course there is an urgent need for performance to return to these themes and it is, slowly.
This work fails because it gets lost in the performance of the action instead of keeping in mind, and in energy, the greater purpose of a political work, striving for affect, change and the creation of forums, both actual and artistic. A collective might start with an agenda and then lose it in the process of making a work of this nature. It is shows like this that ride the importance of the voice they are claiming to give to women and victims of violence.
As a community of Australian art makers we need to stop making work that is elitist and unapproachable. Stylistic choice is imperative for a work to be successful and its political intentions clear. As a stylistic choice perhaps realism has produced an actor-centric work unable to generate critical inquiry. For a show describing itself as politically innovative it did not take any real risks.
It felt like a work performed by much older players using some stories that belonged to a younger generation that wasn’t acknowledged. And aren’t we, the youth, the ones who can change the socio-political climate? I feel it isn’t effective to perform your bird’s eye view of contemporary mainstream violence; I became confused by the work using realism to perform highly common experiences, in it’s abstraction, V.1.0 has made the violence of their work foreign.
There was no real cohesion about an argument, no through line or gesture for betterment. Actions are thrown out and repeat themselves without building or changing. We, the audience, don’t need answers spelt out for us, it is in what questions are posed and how. I am left asking myself what this show is really about. Wondering, if this is really ‘a political work’ therefore a ‘show for the masses’. How can you charge $40 a ticket?
If, to quote Australian’s Sydney theatre critic John McCallum in that the growing power ofdocumentary theatre is to do with “the power of bearing witness and testimony” then This Kind Of Ruckus falls short. I just can’t help but come to the conclusion that This Kind of Ruckus is a work that had already given up the fight before opening night.
[i] From flyer for TKOR Adelaide Fringe Season 2010
[iii] http://www.versiononepointzero.com/Online program note by David Williams and Sean 2009
[iv] From program for TKOR Adelaide Fringe Season 2010
certainly an engaged response in the terms of the piece itself... but the lack of any theoretical position on the political is a major shortcoming of this review given the forcefulness of the views you are expressing. Your expectations are clearly stated and it would be goods to unpack the performance in those terms... your language tends towards the statement of offence taken rather than the analysis of the work in theoretical terms...you need to say something about how theorists such as Baz Kershaw or Jill Dolan (see Liz Goodman's two collections with Routledge) have analysed performance and mobilised political readings... CR
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