Mixed Media and Mixed Messages: Big Art Group’s Exploration of the Sign

Spring 2008 119 Marvin Carlson is Sidney E. Cohn Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The author of over one hundred scholarly articles in the areas of theatre history, theatre theory, and dramatic literature, his work has been translated into thirteen languages. His latest book is Speaking in Tongues (2006). Mixed Media and Mixed Messages: Big Art Group’s Exploration of the Sign Marvin Carlson One of the most useful services that semiotic theory of the late twentieth century provided to the field of theatre studies was a critical approach that allowed the analysis of the extremely complex event of the theatre experience, wherein the spectator simultaneously receives a very wide variety of messages and stimuli on a number of channels, predominantly visual and aural, but potentially involving all five senses. Semiotic analysis offered a methodology dealing with the operations of these stimuli both individually and collectively, as they reinforced each other, in the tradition of the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk; worked in opposition to each other, as recommended by Brecht in epic performance; or operated in an openended and free-form manner, as became common in much postmodern experimental performance. One such contemporary group that provides both a particular challenge to semiotic analysis as well as a useful illustration of the insights such analysis can bring to current experimental production is the Big Art Group, founded in New York in 1998 by Caden Manson, but now well known across America and in Germany. In this essay, I will consider the five productions so far created by this Group, their evolving aesthetic, and how this aesthetic opens itself to semiotic analysis. Big Art Group was founded with the stated aim of using “the language of media and blended states of performance in a unique form to build culturally transgressive and challenging new works.”1 They have so far (until 2007) produced seven original works, several of which have toured widely both within the United States and abroad. Following their goal of expanding the formal boundaries of theatre, film, language, and the visual arts, these works may be seen as a series of challenging experiments, each one building upon and expanding the techniques previously developed. The Group’s first two works, Clearcut Catastrophe (1999) and The Balladeer (2000), were concerned with creating and developing an ensemble trained in physically rigorous presentational skills and dedicated to exploring new performance vocabularies. From the beginning BigArt Group, like its predecessor, America’s best-known experimental company, the Wooster Group, built work out of improvisation, experimental structure, task-based choreography, and quotations 120 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism from previous dramatic and filmic material. All these techniques may be seen operating in Clearcut Catastrophe, the Group’s first production, which established many of its basic performance devices. It also combined original material with material taken from Chekhov’s Three Sisters and the Maysles Brothers’ cult documentary film Grey Gardens, which has since inspired a highly successful and much more conventional Off-Broadway and Broadway musical. An ever-present ticking sound by sound designer Jemma Nelson imposed a strong rhythm on the wildly varied material including monologues, handstands in buckets, digressions on the abolition of the color pink, and show-stopping chorus lines. Although the entire ensemble of Clearcut Catastrophe was warmly praised by such Off-Off Broadway reviewers as Citysearch and Backstage, Justin Bond as Masha was particularly noted. His drag performance, as individualistic as those of his fellows, combined Stanislavskian realism, hyper-feminine B-grade movie acting, and task-driven biomechanic actions. Big Art’s second production, The Balladeer, turned from high to pop culture, presenting six dysfunctional high school freshmen performing the clichés of contemporary youth culture as seen in films and on TV, with scenery provided by photo boxes and a complex plot constantly interrupted by senior-band ballads, snatches of amateur verse, a random French ballerina, and a tiny puppet show performed in a light box. (The audience was provided with plastic opera glasses so as to enjoy the varied visual scales of the performance.) The conscious exploration of dance and theatre forms intermixed with filmic and televisual motifs led...