and now, a fun filled essay to read, because school is fun!

When thoughts inciting change occur, society must make space in their thinking patterns to accept the initiation of those thoughts. As Marshal McLuhan often quoted Ezra Pound; “the artist is the antennae of the race” detecting the evolution that is to come (source unknown). These thoughts of change are presented through the artist’s view and most powerfully as a collective. The collective formed by theatre is one that can be insightful, as they present a language to relay thoughts of change to their audience of society. Within theatre, the juice that aims to inform the taste buds of our brains, is the performer giving a performance. It is in this enlivened state that, like Saturday morning cartoons informing young minds, the performers reach and touch; breathing life into being, refreshing what was once alive and what has grown tired with age. To introduce change, there must be a leap off the page because, metaphorically speaking, there is no room between the already set wordings. What has leapt up is not black and white, it is neon; it is the cartoon that bubbles out of our world of “reality”. Performers revitalize thought, making it have a new, enlivened presentation. They push past our everyday that has faded into black and white, and they introduce the new evolution, that is in contrast to the old a bright bubbling cartoon.

Collectives, whether they be groups of artists, theatre companies or audience and performer, are needed to identify the new, and to transmit it through their language and make it recognizable to their audience. Lady Gregory, W.B. Yeats, John Millington Synge and the National Irish Theatre, Marinetti the Futurists and their cookbook, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara and Superflat, Peter Sellars, and Gomez PeÒa and performance art are some examples where this transaction has successfully occurred. In each case, these people have lassoed oncoming waves of change. Harnessing this energy, they attract others of like minds to converge and form a voice of greater strength to be heard across great terrain. As Marshal McLuhan stated in ‘Challenge and Collapse: The Nemesis of Creativity’: “The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs. He, then, builds models or Noah’s arks for facing the change that is at hand.” (p. 39, coursepack) The recognizers of new evolution form a language to brightly careen the old, overturning perceptions of how the onlooker once thought.

W. B. Yates and Lady Gregory rode the waves of progress of their time, the industrial revolution and the printing press being major contributors. They harnessed change to shape a space for their own progress, by founding The Irish Dramatic Movement that was housed at the Abbey Theatre in the first decade of the twentieth century (p. 423, Wilson and Goldfarb). The Irish Dramatic Movement brought poetry back into drama. As their preliminary announcement described, The Abbey Theatre lived up to their claim that; “The Irish Literary Drama will appeal rather to the intellect and spirit than to the senses. It will eventually, it is hoped, furnish a vehicle for the literary expression of the national thought and ideals of Ireland such as has not hitherto been in existence. (p.37, Ellis-Fermor). Lady Gregory wrote: “Our movement is a return to the people… The play that is to give them a quite natural pleasure should tell them either of their own life, or of that life of poetry where every man can see his own image, because there alone does human nature escape from arbitrary conditions…” (p.67, Ellis-Fermor). It was in this bright ‘escape’ that the Irish people were made aware of their own fading culture, by way of a new radiant language that embellished the old so as to understand the new.
W. B. Yeats, having met John Millington Synge in Paris in the late 1890’s, advised the latter to go to the remote Aran Islands of Ireland. Synge was a cultured and literary man, having studied in Paris and traveled throughout Europe extensively. In the druidical beliefs in natural magic and in the simplicity of primitive Celtic life on the Aran Islands, he was able to recognize the colour needed to express the new language of theatre that the Irish Dramatic Movement was expounding. Through the Irish Dramatic Movement, its founders understood the importance of poetry, and how it contained the essence of the “common” people since it carried the language of their heritage. “It is a flaming exaltation of that vision which is the symbol of all spiritual knowledge and the gift of the spirit beside which all other values are disvalued. Poetry is either the root of life or it is nothing. And so no compromise, however seemingly honorable, can be considered, whether from kings or counselors, lover or disciples.” (p.63, Ellis-Fermor)
Synge, however, is described as “the only great poetic dramatist of the movement; the only one, that is, for whom poetry and drama were inseparable, in whose work dramatic intensity invariably finds poetic expression and the poetic mood its only full expression in dramatic form” (p. 59, Ellis-Fermor). In contrast to theatre of realism, which he was opposed to, Synge wrote symbolist plays that illustrated Irish myth and history. Synge was able to capture these with the most vivid intensity, drawing from his stays in the Aran Islands. When Synge “began to draw his characters from the Aran Islands he had found, the people who alone could stimulate his imagination and offer him something on which this strange combination of dramatist and nature-mystic could work. They were the human theme which drama must have and yet they were in part a least nature itself” (p.70, Ellis-Fermor). For him “nature is a protagonist in The Shadow Of The Glen and Riders To The Sea, so filling the minds of the characters as to shape their actions, moods and fates’ it is the ever-present setting, genially familiar, of The Well of the Saints and The Tinker Wedding” (p.91, Ellis-Fermor). Synge’s plays were so colourful that they created great controversy, and riots often occurred.
The Irish Dramatic Movement created a vibrant language in the plays that they presented at the Abbey Theatre by collecting “the interest in the ancient civilization of Ireland and in the body of history, poetry, legend or saga that survived from it was there from the first” (p.68, Ellis-Fermor). The collective at the Abbey Theatre preserved the magic of the lower class’ beliefs, by instilling it within the drama. They presented it by harnessing the voice of ancient peoples, and by combining poetry and symbolist theatre. Expounding the extreme colour made by reviving beliefs, their theatre leapt off the page. They enlivened old black and white concepts that were fading into the forgotten. They collided their bright lights into the then usual theatre of realism and were heard and understood by the people of Ireland, and later marked the rest of the world.

The Futurists, led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, believed as did the Irish Dramatic Movement in combining poetry (the essence of life) and theatre (its canvas). Art and life were inseparable. “Indeed it meant everything to futurism that art and life were no longer separate. The futurists believed –and they at times described their views as a religion-that all human experience was liberated by the availability of art in everyday life, the synthesis of arte-vita” (p. 9, Chamberlain).
Marinetti was dissatisfied with the sluggish qualities of the Italian people. “As a poet he wanted to breathe new life into the language; as a patriot he desired the re-invigoration of the country’s stultified cultural forces” (p. 9 Chamberlain). Futurism was the language created to harness the changes created by the transition from Romanticism into the new age of the twentieth century’s enlivened technological evolution.
“The transition from romantic to Futurist was by way of a pose: a way of confronting the twentieth century, and its mass media and public, with a sustained artistic performance of ‘life” (p.14 Chamberlain).
Laurie Anderson explored the romanticisation of war, and juxtaposed a quote from poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of Italian Futurist, with her untitled show that toured nationwide in the fall of 1994: “War is the highest form of modern art.” She “had one song built on a maxim from (Marinetti)… Part of the show is preoccupied with these images of power and its misuse.” (p.347, coursepack) Anderson was playing with the quote, and juxtaposing it with images of power being used wrongly. In this way, she was also using the favorite techniques used by the futurists: novelty and shock.
The futurists jumped off the page read by the early twentieth century Italians: “Futurism was devoted to novelty and shock. ...Marinetti was not adverse to using his fists as the real-life complement to the manifesto…”(p.9, Chamberlain). Out of these attitudes, in the second wave of Futurism and after the first World War, The Futurist Cookbook was written by Marinetti and painter Luigi Colombo FillÏa. As Marinetti proclaims in the introduction:
…the Futurist culinary revolution described in this book has the lofty, noble, and universally expedient aim of changing radically the eating habits of our race, strengthening it, dynamizing it and spiritualizing it with brand-new food combinations in which experiment, intelligence and imagination will economically take the place of quantity, banality, repetition and expense…its ultimate aim, is to create a harmony between man’s palate and his life today and tomorrow…until now men have fed themselves like ants, rats, cats, or oxen. Now with the Futurists the first human way of eating is born. We mean the art of self-nourishment. Like all the arts, it eschews plagiarism and demands creative originality…It is not by chance that this work is published during a time of world economic crisis, which has clearly inspired a dangerous depressing panic, though its future direction remains unclear. We propose as an antidote to this panic a Futurist way of cooking, that is: optimism at the table.

The Futurist dishes were made up “…to evoke and provoke essential states of mind which cannot otherwise be evoked or provoked” (p. 101, Marinetti). These ideas were the basis of the Futurist Banquets that first happened at the Holy Palate Restaurant in Turin, Italy. The first Futurist dinner occurred on the 8th of March 1931 (p. 70, Marinetti). Some of the dishes served include; Intuitive Antipasto, Sunshine Soup, Tatlrice With Wine And Beer, Aerofood-Tactile-With Wounds And Smells, Ultravirale, Sculpted Meat, Edible Landscape, Equator and North Pole, Elasticake and Network In The Sky (p. 72, Marinetti). By creating manifestos, they renounced pasta and promoted the rice industry, and the Futurist’s language grew. They came up with scenarios; “The Dinner That Stopped A Suicide” (p. 15, Marinetti), where food was sculptural, its ingredients used as medium purely for their texture and colour. They later introduced sets of rules for what the perfect meal required. Introducing food sculptures where every ingredient represented something, their rules included the abolishing of the knife and fork for eating, and the use of the art of perfumes to enhance tasting. “Every dish must be preceded by a perfume which will be driven from the table with the help of electric fans. The use of music limited to the intervals between courses so as not to distract the sensitivity of the tongue and palate but to help annul the last taste enjoyed by re-establishing gustatory virginity” (p. 39, Marinetti). They abolished speech making and politics at the table and replaced it with “the use in prescribed doses of poetry and music as surprise ingredients to accentuate the flavors of a given dish with their sensual intensity” (p. 39, Marinetti). “The rapid presentation, between courses under the eyes and nostrils of the guests, of some dishes they will eat and others they will not, to increase their curiosity, surprise and imagination. The reaction of simultaneous changing canapÈs, which contain ten, twenty flavors, is to be tasted in a few seconds. In Futurist cooking these canapÈs given taste of something can sum up an entire area of life, the history of an amorous passion or an entire voyage to the Far East. Using a battery of scientific instruments in the Kitchen; ozonizers give liquids and food the perfume of ozone” (p. 40, Marinetti).
Marinetti was “the father of Futurist art, literature and drama” (p. 56, Marinetti), and his children of futurism were the painter Luigi Colombo FillÏa and the architect Diulgheroff to name a few, who made up a family that grew together and breathed life into being, refreshing the stodgy Italian people from a world torn apart from war and filled with pasta. They revitalized the way people thought about art, life and food, and brought them through a sensationary evolution. The Futurists threw people off their plates, predicted the suggestion of “green eggs and ham” (Dr. Seuss).

By contrasting Yoshitomo Nara, Peter Sellars, and Guillermo Gomez-PeÒa, one can see how these artists contributed to the idea of breathing life into old traditions and boundaries. Peter Sellars enlivened Mozart’s Don Giovanni by giving the opera a contemporary setting; in so doing he made the meaning of the dialogue more contemporary without changing the original words and music. As Robert Gifford pointed out in his lecture on opera: “…sacred are the text and music- changed are the subtitles and translation. The music and words are exactly as Mozart wrote them. Set in Little Italy, in New York- obviously there are major issues in what Peter Sellars is doing with his staging” (documentary of Peter Sellars’ Don Giovanni). The Japanese visual artist Yoshitomo Nara, who is part of the collective SuperFlat created by Takashi Murakami, is one to use contemporary make up to revitalize old traditional images. Nara does however change the meaning of the original painting/woodblock print and gives the characters already present a new look, thereby challenging what they represent. Nara uses the old images as a backdrop to stage new ideas by painting on top of them, and by enhancing and provoking traditional beauty.
As Guillermo Gomez-PeÒa illustrates about performance art; “Rather than seeking answers, we raise impertinent questions…open Pandora’s box of our times…and let loose the Demons, we hope our performances trigger reflection in perplexed psyches.
…identity does not straitjacket us. Using props, make-up, accessories and costumes, we can reinvent ourselves in the eyes of others, and we love to experiment with this unique knowledge (p.353, coursepack).
Yoshitomo Nara raises impertinent questions by writing directly on his canvas; for example the slogan “No Fun!” was written on a cloth that a Geisha is holding after presumably washing herself. Nara embellished her; he took advantage of her open kimono, gave her nipple, ear and nose piercings, a spiked collar, a horn tooting out of her mouth, and a worm-like ghost wearing a beanie hat, raising itself out of her elaborate traditional coif. Gomez-PeÒa points out that “our tattoos, piercings, body paint, adornments, performance prosthetics and/or robotic accessories are de-li-be-rate phrases” (p.352, coursepack). Using these “de-li-be-rate phrases” of adornment, Nara is speaking of the restraints imposed on the youth culture of Japan by its deep traditional roots. “Fuck ’bout everything!!” is exclaimed beneath a woodblock print of three Geishas. Over the third is painted a cartoon-style evil eyed girl holding a knife pointed at the Geishas. In other pieces Nara writes; “What’s going on?, Punk, Cup Kid, Slash with a Knife, No Nukes-Love and peace” (p.5-15. Nara). In a separate piece all his own Nara writes: “a perfect government- EVEN IF IT’S EASY TO BE FREE WHAT’S YOUR DEFINITION OF FREEDOM? AND WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU ANYWAY? WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY? WHO THE FUCK AM I TO SAY? WHAT THE FUCK IS REALL GOIN’ ON” (p.20, Nara).
According to Gomez-PeÒa, performance artists “are what others aren’t, say what others don’t and occupy cultural spaces that are often overlooked or dismiss” (p. 351, coursepack). “Performance art is a conceptual “territory” with fluctuating weather and boundaries, it tolerates, even encourages, contradiction, ambiguity and paradox…“Here”…rules are probable, laws and structures change constantly…
-the only social contract is…the expansion of cultural identity. We feel more comfortable in the sharpened borders of cultures, genders mÈtiers, languages and art forms, where we recognize and befriend our colleagues. We are interstitial creatures and border citizens-insiders and outsiders simultaneously-and we embrace this paradox. Crossing boarders temporarily sets us free” (p.351-352, coursepack).
Yoshitomo Nara is living on the border town that is the two-dimensional unmoving performance artist. Nara is so because the scenarios presented are the stories of the outcome of impact. They are brought forth out of the changing territory of the Japanese as its youth grow out of the surrounding ancient traditions. Through the dialogue of the modernized characters’ actions, Nara is probing the rules of tradition, and changing the previous laws and structures; it was by breaking these rules that he was conferring with Murakami’s concept of ‘Superflatness’.
As Takashi Murakami defines in his notes when writing about his work: “In Japan, the mushroom cloud is a symbol of the war, as it is a symbol of defeat. In the context of contemporary art, Japan has been expected to fulfill its duty as a producer of art that fits the ‘Asia=time=transmigratory worldview’ stereotype. This was a straight jacket I had to get out of, no matter what I dislocated in the process. Take your sentimentalism and stuff it! Our wounds aren’t that shallow!” (p. 136, Murakami).

In conclusion, as Marshal McLuhan puts it “…the artist can show us how to ‘ride with the punch,’ instead of ‘taking it on the chin’” (p. 40, coursepack). The colours that the artist dances into being are so bright that they shock whoever is experiencing them. They need to have this intensity to bring the effect of change. If they weren’t so colourific they might be missed by the senses and thus the change would not be felt. The collective brings these hyper-as-sugar-colours together to form a sort of fluorescent rainbow. As Peter Sellars said in a video “These operas are about ensemble, the notion that people can accomplish more by working together. Is it possible to work with others? Is it possible to work with others human beings without killing them? Can you not only work with others without killing them but without being indifferent to them? Can you work with and exist in fact with them in a way that you are working together with them with a degree of fineness; nuance and delicacy that says that human interaction can be the most refined and exquisite art for life?” (class lecture, Gifford)
To experience art and life simultaneously is to be on such a highly intuitive path that all the senses are acute. This experience, as Wagner’s theory of Gesamtkunstwerk proclaims, is when every aspect of the senses are represented, or collected to act as an ensemble and they become a total work of art. Gomez-PeÒa states that: “Performance, an inward journey, once projected outwardly captures all dimensions. Onstage, I overcome my metaphysical orphanhood and psychological fragility and become larger than life.” (p. 355, coursepack). When the artist’s senses are put through an ultimate thriving existence, they create a total living cartoon world to inhabit. When others that sense similarly, see that this world exists, the cartoon world grows to accommodate them. Once inside this intimate bubble, dialogue can be established and then expressed outside of the cartoon world. This puts the outside world in shock, as people are used to seeing only the adapted regularity of black and white. The outside world is at first stung when hit by the vibrant colours of new thought. Once they get used to the sting, and their eyes adjust, it is no longer new, and it is time for another sting. The artist can see the new because they have cartoon eyes.



















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