A Tale of Two Performances

Performance is our post-Halloween treat in New York this year. We get to go places where there's an unusually high number of places to actually sit. We get to slow down and delight in the sublime triumphs or complete fiascoes that only live productions can guarantee.

One performance that a lot of people have been talking about opened Performa 11 (but, unfortunately, last night was the last chance to catch it):

Elmgreen & Dragset Happy Days in the Art World

• Tuesday, November 1, 7:30 pm — 9:30 pm
• Thursday, November 3, 7:30 pm — 9:30 pm

The artists Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset) will present a theatrical performance titled Happy Days in the Art World, a darkly comic self-portrait of the two artists, drawing references from Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days (1961). The play tells the story of two main characters, played by renowned actors Joseph Fiennes and Charles Edwards, as well as actress Kim Criswell, and is directed by Toby Frow. The characters use a droll sensibility to unveil their personal history together, their experience of being a “single work of art,” and their fears about what will happen to their substantial art careers when they break up.

Although I'm a fan of Elmgreen & Dragset's work, we already had plans to see another performance last night, so I missed this.

Now, I realize it's not fair to compare the two productions, given I've only seen the one (and it's not even part of Performa), but Ben Davis saw Elmgreen & Dragset's and his response was fresh in my mind while I watched the one we attended.

So fair or not, I want to share what I was thinking of that Ben noted in his less-than-enthusiastic description of Elmgreen & Dragset's play :

Say what you will about the piece, it did indeed demonstrate the power of performance in at least one way: A team of crack actors — notably Joseph Fiennes of “Shakespeare in Love” fame — almost managed, through sheer talent and force of will, to breathe some life into a project that was essentially a multimillion-dollar inside joke, covering up its hollow, self-congratulatory core with a veneer of class. [...]

[T]he scenario is evidently intended as some kind of allegory of the purgatory that is life as a globe-trotting mid-career artist duo.

Upon waking, one of the men declares that he has had a dream in which they were both successful artists “based in a city where everyone else was an artist — Berlin, I think!” In this dream, we hear, ID and ME had an appointment with a “Ukrainian oligarch” who was driving to meet them in a sports car “covered in butterflies.” The two then realize that they seem to have been deposited overnight in some sort of placeless dungeon, and they get down to investigating their situation. It seems grim — evidently they are not at “a yoga retreat, or a workshop with Marina!” Feeling hunger pangs, a member of the duo later moans, “Where’s that Thai soup kitchen when you need it?” As art-world satire, this is about as toothless as it gets. And it doesn’t get better.

I’ll spare you recounting the rest of the plot. Suffice it to say that it all leads up to a visit from a mysterious messenger who delivers a statement saying that ID and ME will receive a visit from… Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector — though, as with Beckett’s Godot, it is not certain when or if she might come (“Waiting for Spector” does have a nice ring to it, actually). All in all, the production values and direction of “Happy Days in the Art World” are first-rate, and Fiennes and Edwards give it their best, sometimes for whole minutes managing to infuse some sense of wit and human gravity into the material. Elmgreen & Dragset's pastiche of Beckett is credible enough — but mainly it just makes you wish that these talented actors were actually performing Beckett.

Again...I haven't seen it so I'll refrain from adding anything to his take other than to note that that line, "essentially a multimillion-dollar inside joke," stayed with me, while Murat and I watched another performance at The Boiler:

Stations Lost a Theatrical Performance by Tony Fitzpatrick

Remaining Performances:

Nov 3rd-6th

Thurs & Fri 8pm; Sat 7 & 9 pm; Sun 7pm

Tony and Stan took a journey to find the dark heart of America. Stan went to Cleveland. Tony took a detour…to Istanbul. This is their story.

From America’s border-towns to Istanbul’s Taksim Square, Stations Lost is the story of two friends, Tony Fitzpatrick and Stan Klein, and their commonalities and divergent paths in an ever-expanding world. Tony takes us through his childhood as a rebellious Catholic schoolboy obsessed with superheroes, reading MAD Magazine, and meeting Chester Gould through his adult understanding of the superhero mythos that leads him to strike out in search of the everyday superhero in the world via a journey to Istanbul.

[Full disclosure: I'm a huge fan of Tony's work...and have noted as much before on this blog.]

Why I think it is fair to discuss these two works in the same post is they both take a Beckett-esque approach (two actors on a sparse stage, an acutely abstract sense of progressive narrative, themes of global travel, and an intentional sense of Existentialist angst) to exploring themes of feeling rudderless in one's own time.

Where the two diverge, if Ben's assessment is correct, is the socioeconomic realm in which the buddy pairs make their observations. Tony's piece barely mentions the art world, per se. It's more about the world at large. Rather than Ukrainian oligarchs or high-powered curators, Tony and Stan's landscape is populated by disciplinarian nuns, overbearing Uzbek bazaar merchants, and the good people of Cleveland, Ohio (who Tony gives short shrift, I'll note). Moreover, there were no art world insider jokes.

Mind you (as our gallery program will quickly tell you), I am not opposed to insideriness. There are unquestionably issues that can only be well explored from that point of view. And this IS the world I choose to inhabit.

But, Ben's quote in my head, I came away from Tony's performance wondering whether, despite all it's artsiness, it would speak to more people from the heartland than Elmgreen & Dragset's play. Then I began to wonder why I was wondering that. Elmgreen & Dragset clearly know the audience for that piece and made their choices based on that. So I don't think the question of insideriness really matters.

What matters, I concluded, is heart. Tony, I get the sense, wasn't playing to a particular audience (although I understand that quite a list of VIPs have seen it)...but rather just being Tony (who, as I've noted before, is a person I'd happily make king of the art world were the decision mine). Indeed, the arc of Tony's incredibly un-PC narrative led me back to a place that left me feeling more human, more connected than when I walked into the Boiler. I hope the same happened for audience members who got to see Elmgreen & Dragset's piece. There's really no higher marker of success for a performance, in my opinion, than that.