Post from Henry!

A Brief History of The Plague

Or what we write when the contemporary world gets F-ed

             Hey hey! We’re back! Kind of! I’m so happy to engage with you all again! You can tell this by my exclamation points! There are so many! Yay!!!!

             So, here we are. Metaphorical shit has metaphorically gotten weird.  None of us are allowed to congregate in public spaces, the theatres are dark, the federal government is a rudderless ship of ineptitude, our neighbors are dying of disease like its 1605 and King Lear is being written (or pirated, depending on who you ask), and my asthmatic bahookie is afraid to go outside. The state of the planet is, in a word, terrifying. At least, it is for us Democrats, ‘cause apparently believing in the horrifying destructive power of respiratory illness is uniquely a liberal prerogative (see Liberty University attempting to reopen last week: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/us/politics/coronavirus-liberty-university-falwell.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage).

Ahem.  #WorldWarC

             Fear. That is broadly what I would like us to meditate on this week when it comes to the corona crisis. But hopefully not in a terribly anxiety generating way. Hopefully just a cathartic way. Fear is one of the most fundamental of human’s instinctual responses, and it drives us to all forms of self-preservation. Without diving too deeply into definitions (yalls know what fear is), I would loosely classify fear into two categories. I would say there are big F fears that generate an immediate fight or flight response and little f fears that wheedle away at you, generating anxieties and stress over the long term. I would also argue that we are in a period where both are highly acute right now. Just two weeks ago I had a big-time fight or flight response to the way Louisiana was handling Covid-19 and drove 18 straight hours back to MN. Now every night I fight the little f fears of catching this disease, wondering what it will do to my asthma, wondering how much of a pain in the ass it’ll be to study acting over Zoom, wondering when we will be able to get to campus, wondering if my parents will get it, etc. I assume you are familiar with these fears and face your own versions of them as well.

Just as there are many types of fear, there are many responses to fear. My own personal favorite is sardonic humor. I’ve generated some of my best one-liners before going under the knife, after getting violently beaten and left in the street, being on the receiving end of three car crashes, etc. But there are many other responses to fear as well that we have seen in the last couple weeks in response to the Covid-19 crisis. Like all the assholes hording toilet paper and chicken. An increase in the purchasing of guns. That one NBA player, Rudy Gobert, coughing deliberately over reporters microphones https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/rudy-gobert-touched-every-microphone-at-jazz-media-availability-monday-now-reportedly-has-coronavirus/.

I think it is safe to say that fear brings out the absolute damned worst in some people. I think it’s safe to say that fear brings out the best in others. These are not new thoughts. I am just bringing them up because right here, right now, in this time, there is a metric forkload of fear going around and it is generating some really interesting responses in people.

And so, without further ado, your subject matter for this week’s critical-theory blogosphere:

Performing Quarantine.

Look around you, whatever that means to you, and find ways that quarantine is being “performed” right now.  If you were a theatre historian, fervently taking notes on the zeitgeist, the mood of the times, the pulse of the people, in what ways do you see performance coming to light right now? What are the boundaries of performance spaces in this quarantine? Is the internet, for example, a vast and metaphorically infinite space where one can be ceaselessly entertained? Or is it a trap where people brag about quarantine productivity? Over what mediums do you see performance? Performed actions? Performed citizenry? Society Performed? What is the relationship between the personal and the collective? How does fear play into how we perform the Self? You can grapple with some of these questions, you can grapple with none of these questions.

But we are still in the early days of this crisis in the United States, and I want you to be the historiographer of these plague-times. When it comes to crafting the historical narrative or performance during Covid-19?

Some images, articles, and memes to get your brain in gear:

1)      John posted an interesting Foucault piece that talks about heterotopias of crisis. Could be one route to examine these questions. Check Moodle under “Space” week.

2)      https://secretnyc.co/empire-state-building-shine-red-covid/?fbclid=IwAR0FPjhQzxxd243xnwz1Z6ZBWAQFINXfAdK-_PI9D50tgxBB9IoeRobu5TU

3)    

4)    

5)      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0-2XxgHIXk&feature=emb_share&fbclid=IwAR3jwQp2k-SQrKKDI7SyIUcgqBlpk_j6Ar0vjP8CuKgP2jQm4VZBcjVHyQU

6)    

7)      https://www.timeout.com/london/news/the-national-theatre-is-going-to-stream-a-free-play-every-thursday-night-032620?fbclid=IwAR0c9k-m7hik7L02hrxB6oVWcy6sppal6RXe_5KLO9nmxXJIm4vrYdcSl0o

8)    

9)      https://www.edutopia.org/article/why-learning-home-should-more-self-directed-and-less-structured?fbclid=IwAR1TL3UdJNMZrjt7Jxhpm6gqjfQhIWY12EAO9TmATJnyGv5xfDgEUt11Zb4

10)  https://www.mamamia.com.au/coronavirus-scientist-heroes/

11)  And My Personal Favorite https://www.facebook.com/MarybethVitaEdwards/videos/10220574127777488

Post 7 from Tiffany--Behind the Scenes: Hidden vs Public Transcripts

Hey y'all.

What stuck with me this week was the idea of Public vs. Hidden Transcripts. 

"If subordinate discourse in the presence of the dominant is a public transcript, I shall use the term hidden transcript to characterize discourse that takes place "offstage," beyond direct observation by powerholders. The hidden transcript is thus derivative in the sense that it consists of those offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what appears in the public transcript. We do not wish to prejudge, by definition, the relation between what is said in the face of power and what is said behind its back. Power relations are not, alas, so straightforward that we can call what is said in power-laden contexts false and what is said offstage true... What is certainly the case, however, is that the hidden transcript is produced for a different audience and under different constraints of power than the public transcript."¹ 

What happens when you think you're speaking hidden transcript, but in reality you're speaking public transcript, and what you say was intentioned for one audience, but was heard by the other? This is also playing lightly with the idea of incongruity. Incongruity means out of place — something that doesn't fit in its location or situation. In this context, it's an unexpected shift in audience and power.

In The Fox On the Fairway by Ken Ludwig, the playwright plays with this idea by causing a microphone to go on unexpectedly while one of the characters, Henry Bingham, confesses their love for another, Pamela Peabody. His impassioned, love-sick confession meant only for Mrs. Peabody, is broadcast for the entire country club where he is in charge, leading to an embarrassing aftermath and reputation amongst his fellow golfers. What Mr. Bingham intends to share privately with Mrs. Peabody is heard by the entire country club. If the microphone hadn't worked, as was always the case with this particular mic, the speech would have been private and the embarrassing aftermath would not have happened. Bingham and Peabody may have even begun a sexy affair and handled their relationship with more control and on their own terms.

The Fox on the Fairway, by Ken Ludwig | Theatre Baton Rouge | Photo by Megan Voiselle Collins

A good real life example is when news anchors think they're still off camera and say things they think only the studio can hear. Below is a short video of a news anchor who appears to fart off camera, believing the gesture of his fart is not heard or noticed by viewers, but in the video clearly appears to be heard. It could be a sound in the room of the people videotaping, but we'll suspend our imaginations for the sake of the subject discussion. I like this example because it's a gesture/action rather than spoken transcript.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE9yTJx1pdE

News anchor tried to fart off camera Me at work www.youtube.com

For this week's post, share a time you experienced or a time in history when someone speaking, gesturing, or practicing something that they meant to be hidden transcript, but ended up delivering it as a public transcript. A time you didn't know you were on speaker phone and said something private, a time someone flipped another person off thinking they couldn't see, but they could, or a time when you heard a microphone left on backstage during a show and heard more than you probably wanted to in the audience, and so on. What happened as a result? What would have happened if this transcript had remained hidden?

¹Scott, James. From Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, Yale UP, 1990.