One Piece at a Time

Shaughnessy opens by recalling Johnny Cash's "One Piece at a Time", detailing a factory worker putting together a Cadillac using stolen parts one piece of a time, creating a new chimera of a vehicle "one piece at a time". He maps this process onto the 'practices of watching and writing about performance', drawing a similarity between Cash's poacher and the contemporary theatre maker. The article identifies that first generation theatre critics tended to attempt to find an unbroken tether between the current performance and the original text, citing the original text as the 'dream car' that Cash's poacher aspired towards. Shaughnessy initially engages with Michael Dobson's notion that we are encouraged to deal with the live performance. However, Shaughnessy notes the issue with this: live performance is discussed only in retrospect, and is subject to the limitations of recalling human memory. Thus he turns to the act of note taking: equivalent to taking a piece of the Shakespearean 'dream-Cadillac' away in a lunch-box. His notes display an audience subjectivity that shapes the meaning of the play to create a production that becomes "the only one there is around".