"A lot of people say that Jack only had about twelve ideas, but that
they were the most important 12 ideas of the last 25 years. He created
a theatrical universe that no one had ever seen before, with himself at
the center."
-Ron Vawter
Jack Smith’s 12 Great Ideas:
1. Time: Time may be cultivated to flow at different rates through
each stratum of reality contained in a piece of theatre. For example,
time seems to quicken when Vawter plays with props and engages the other
performer in set and lighting changes. These activities are void of fiction.
They exist in the most daily strata of reality. Each layer of character, in
contrast, is contained within a unique fictive reality that maintains a
slower temporal quality. The reality of the film images being presented on
the wall requires yet another temporal engagement.
2. Plot: Plot-as-structure is replaced by a sensibility more
akin to the work of visual artist or a music composer. The theatre
is a visceral canvas – a visual symphony / cacophony.
3. Collage: Theatre takes hold of the current media-induced anarchy.
No object – the boombox, image – the slide show, or sound – Arabian Nights,
does not belong. Collage creates a sensory disorientation that jars spectators
out of their habitual way of perceiving and conceiving. Serendipitous collisions
of elements are use by theatre artists and their spectators to develop unique and
personal interpretations of the performance.
6. Pastiche: Elements of the performance imitate and homage some previous
work. The most blatant example of this is Vawter’s imitation of Smith. It is not
satire but a way of discussing / creating contemporary culture in art with
historical reference.
5. Object as character; character as thing: With no subtext to flesh out
in text or action, all character elements
are given a certain freedom and unpredictability. An actress
can not state, “My character wouldn’t do that.” Without a need to integrate
back-story, there becomes little distinction between actors and objects as characters.
Objects, such as
Vawter’s onion, take on a character role because they no longer require
careful introduction in order to be meaningful.
6. Scored Improvisation: One can never quite tell what is scored and what is improvised. In addition, the score becomes mostly a choreography of mundane gestures more than a dramatic script for character. Smith’s physical scores flawlessly improvised with
ever-changing media. Spontaneity was a perfect illusion built in to
his scores while he edited and reedited media clips throughout the performance.
7. Repetitive Gesture: Meaning emerges from a repetitive gesture through
a process of disorientation and habituation. Vawter picks at his costume and adjusts his scarf. At first, the gesture is thought to represent a character trait. For example, one might extrapolate from the picking gesture that Vawter’s character is obsessed with cleanliness. But through repetition, the gesture looses this application and becomes a more abstract element. It is as if the spectator’s thinking
has moved from literal and representative to symbolic; relating the gesture
to a unified conception of the piece.
8. Simultaneous Action, Non-action and Deintellectualization: Theatre
uses the polar extremes of stimulation to free the spectator from their
intellect. Silence, long pauses, and even boredom are used to frustrate
the audience’s need to understand the action in a traditional way.
Likewise, total sensory overload - sound, image, gestural repetition, symbols
and cultivated anarchy shocks the audience out of a cerebral experience
and into a corporeal experience.
9. Alienation of Group; Empowerment of Individual: Stratified realities replace linear narrative. Layers of character replace a clear antagonist / protagonist structure. Collage is used to juxtapose historical and contemporary symbols. Repetitive gesture is closed to simple interpretation. Combined, these elements
provide great fodder for the individual intellect but greatly complicate a shared intellectual experience. In this way, the group nature of spectatorship is replaced by individual relativism. Post-show banter will
be as varied as the stimulation provided in the piece.
10. Text: Text conveys some meaning in a given context and as
sound in space produced by a performer. The meaning of the text itself,
in a literary sense, may be lost. Thus, source text may be nonsensical
or it may be rendered nonsensical but will carry meaning in the over-all
perception of the piece.
11. Fictive Reality: What is really going on here? Theatre shows
its "underwire" because: 1. Underwire is beautiful and meaningful. 2. Everyone
knows the underwire is there. 3. The stakes of engagement are
raised for both the artist and spectator when we collectively engage in
"what is really going on."
12. Cult of Personality: The performer may act out a character. That is to say, a performer may pretend that he is someone who he is not. That layer of pretend
is a viable reality, albeit fictive, that is unique and separate from other strata of reality contained within the theatre piece.
Consider Jack Smith pretending that he is Maria Montez or Ron Vawter pretending that he is Jack Smith. Two or three personalities are at play here. One does not supersede another. The performer can never be masked
by a character and, likewise, a character can not exist in the absence of the performer’s personality.