User:Eleanorg/1.2/RWR/Lecture notes 8 Feb

Wed 8 Feb 2012 RWR

Dramatized enactment of prisoners dilemma with Spalding Grey.
Performed in front of an audience, then two audience members are picked to re-play it themselves.
They also betray each other.
Use of theatre in television - live audience, also being filmed. Actors also speak direct to camera
First half is like a cop show; then moves to gameshow form - observes that psychology experiments (eg Milgram's 'obedience to authority) closely resemble conditions of reality TV.

Based in Wooster St, NY, in the Performing Garage.
Linked TV & performance
Pioneered use of 'Surveillance image' in art - parallel images; recorded TV alongside other live image
'Root 1 and 9' - actors make real phonecalls from the stage. Live performance vs mediated performance
In trad theatre, information is passed directly from one character to another. Wooster group tried to reflect modern reality - info is transmitted by various media, not directly from other people
Talking about experience of viewing TV - clicking thru channels; echoes what ppl say now about interwebs; simultaneity
"LSD" - rehearsed the Crucible while on LSD; filmed it, then reconstructed it in minute detail (using video timeline) into a stage performance. Paradox of messy vs. minutely timed. References W Borroughs; also a theorist of technology.
Performances take as a given that viewers will take the various images offered and piece them together into something comprehensible themselves; mirrors contemporary media environment.

Discussion:

Wooster-group style performances have become an orthodoxy - see Forced Entertainment etc.
Why is this kind of work still made, and still considered new & radical?
Wooster group not fetishing technology; including it to be 'hip' - actually the opposite, showing that we're naturalised to pervasive media
When does theatre (read - 'live') become TV (read - performed for camera)? What about plays written for TV?