Fletch Betch

When I was in London for a semester I was lucky enough to take a class that bombarded us with live theatre. For 5 nights a week for 12 weeks we saw a show every. single. night. Some of these shows were amazing, some of these shows were Jerry Springer The Opera. One particular style of theatre that I had not experienced before and that left a lasting impression on me was what has now become known as Promenaded style theatre. In a promenade show, the experience is immersive. The action takes place all around a space and the audience moves with the action. A current example that goes to the extreme of this style is Punch Drunk's 'Sleep No More'- however Punch Drunk doesn't attempt linear narrative structure- the audience chooses their own adventure and most of the action is movement based as opposed to dialogue heavy.  One evening in London we went to a warehouse on the banks of the Thames for a production of 'Macbeth'. Walking up to the steel structure that did...

America. What a country. Am I right? It's so damn free (for white straight males) that it's easy to forget how the myth of American exceptionalism is bought sold and distributed en masse. In the main stream American media landscape it's downright rare to encounter a true skewering of what it is we get up to here and abroad. (I'm looking at you Operation Iraqi Freedom)   With this in mind I thought it apropos to post for your viewing pleasure a scene from the brilliant gonzo documentary Borat. If you are not familiar with Borat allow me to give you a little backstory. The character of Borat is played Andy Kaufman style by the talented Sasha Baron Cohen. His character is purportedly from Kazakhstan (thank God he's not an Uzbek asshole) and most of the schtick is him travelling around the world, lampooning various cultures and celebrities who think that he is truly a misguided Kazakh reporter. Through this guise he exposes many of his subjects as racist, misogynistic...

Performance and Theatre. Theatre and Performance. On first consideration the two concepts seem almost synonymous. For one can not have theatre without performance- but can one have performance without theatre? I would answer yes.   Theatre is a very specific type of performance that must include certain things that distinguish it from other forms of performance. For one it must be the live performance of a script that is memorized and interpreted by the actors/performers. This distinguishes it from almost all other forms of performance in that it necessitates the learning of lines of dialogue or speech with the direct goal of furthering a plot or story through some sort of dramatic arc and denouement. The only other type of performance that comes close to this would be stand up comedy. However, stand up comedy lacks what Richard Schechner referred to as 'restored behavior'. Restored behavior is a title in which he 'groups actions consciously separated from th...