Conversations on Art & Performance
- Conversations on Art & Performance
Conversations on Art & Performance: Process and Performance
Four of New York’s most prominent young actors and directors met with PAJ assistant editor Joseph Cermatori on June 20 and 27, 2011 for a conversation about the current state of downtown theatre. Aiming to focus on the question “How are you working now?”—particularly with regard to the development of new performance vocabularies—the participants spoke at length about their approaches to acting, the rise of the ensemble, new perspectives of narrative and text, and the impact of media technologies on live performance. As the conversation ranged broadly, they also discussed their formal development as theatremakers, respective influences and legacies, and the working conditions of the contemporary theatre in New York.
Yehuda Duenyas works as an actor, director, designer, and producer. He is a founding member and co-artistic director of the multi-award–winning theatre collaborative, the National Theater of the United States of America (NTUSA). His NTUSA credits include Chautauqua!, Abacus Black Strikes NOW! The Rampant Justice of Abacus Black, What’s That on My Head!?!, and the Episode 17 of our Fathers Garvey and Superpant$: Placebo Sunrise, and Garvey and Superpant$!: Episode 23. He has an MFA in electronic arts from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Ari Fliakos joined The Wooster Group as a performer in 1996, originating roles in the group’s productions House/Lights, To You, the Birdie! (Phèdre), Poor Theater, Who’s Your Dada?!, There is Still Time..Brother, Hamlet, La Didone, and Vieux Carré. He has also performed in the remounting of Fish Story, The Hairy Ape, Brace Up!, North Atlantic, and The Emperor Jones.
Pavol Liska is one of the directors of Nature Theater of Oklahoma. Together with his partner, Kelly Copper, he was awarded the Young Directors Prize at the 2008 Salzburg Festival for Romeo and Juliet. The duo’s latest project, Life and Times: Episode 1, was selected for the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2010. Other works with Nature Theater of Oklahoma include Poetics: a ballet brut, No Dice, and Rambo Solo. Liska is a 2010 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant recipient. He has an MFA from Columbia University, and has taught at PARTS in Brussels and the Norwegian Academy for Scenekunst. [End Page 148]
Victoria Vazquez has been a member of Elevator Repair Service (ERS) since 1996, and has performed in ERS’s productions The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928), Gatz, Total Fictional Lie, Cab Legs, as well as with the New York City Players/ Richard Maxwell in Caveman and People Without History. She has also appeared in productions of Pullman, WA, The Voices, Wrench, Songs and Monologues, Mean Rich White Ladies, and Pre-Paradise Sorry Now. Her writing and directing credits include Wrestling Ladies, The Florida Project, and Isabel.
I want to begin by having each of you speak about the approaches to acting you work with in your respective companies. What do you feel are the values most important to the work, and how do they influence or respond to performance?
It’s hard for me to talk on behalf of my company because many of us approach performing differently. I don’t think that consistency among what people are doing is of interest. A really important value for us, however, is humor. For example, a lot of what we do is sound-based, and the humor is often built upon a lot of different cues stacking up, but the tech works some nights and doesn’t work other nights. I think the most interesting nights are when things fail: what do you do within this failure?
For me, as a director, I have never felt that anything I’ve made is so impressive. I try to convince the actors that it’s impressive so that they try really hard to execute it, but I am really looking for that failure and that pathos. It is always going to feel pathetic. That’s where the humor is for me, in absolute pathetic-ness. But, actually executing an idea, I am not so impressed with that. It...
