Megan Terry, "AVB," "FFWS" and "SNM"

Production still from SNM, the ballroom

I recently found out that I am considered the 'weird stuff' director among my college students in the theatre department I chair. It is ironic, however considering where I began.

When I was in high school theatre, I happened upon a scene book with a scene from Megan Terry’s CALM DOWN MOTHER.  I was attracted to it, not because I understood or even liked it, but because it was, for lack of a better word, weird.  I enlisted a partner in crime, and we set out to prepare this scene for our next assignment in acting class.  We explored, we experimented, we did things that were fun, we did things that didn’t even make sense to us, but we rationalized to ourselves that the teacher and our classmates couldn’t criticize because we were making genuine ART.  Who were they to presume they could fathom, much less attack, the humblest offering of our most creative souls? 

Well, as you could guess, it was not well-received.  We didn’t get a bad grade on it as we’d completed all the basics: made specific decisions in the staging, memorized all our lines, even brought props and costume bits, and were ready at the appropriated time.  But what we ended up with was a mish-mosh that no one, us included (I will admit now though I was arrogantly miffed at the time), understood or was moved by.

The lesson I took from this: weird is bad.  No one gets it, even the artists themselves.  It’s an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ scenario where you pretend to get it so you won’t look foolish in front of others who, unbeknownst to you, are also merely pretending to get it. The artists who create it know that it has less substance than cotton candy, but they throw it out there anyway, laughing derisively and equally at those who truthfully admit confusion or distaste, and those who lie and pretentiously wax rhapsodic about it. 

My father coined a term I still giggle at today: AVB, which is an acronym for, depending on who you’re talking to, either “Ah! Very Brilliant!” or “Avant-garde Bullshit.”  I never wanted to be accused of making ‘bullshit’ instead of art again, so I spent the early years of my theatrical life avoiding what I perceived to be AVB like the proverbial plague.  The bulk of my undergraduate training was in Stanislavski-based approaches, which gave me an excellent foundation.  I don’t think any of my professors were totally comfortable with directing or even trying to teach the radical theatrical avant-garde. This further cemented my notion that ‘weird is bad.’

Fast-forward up to graduate school, where my naturalistic self was confronted by a host of professors who loved ONLY (it seemed) the avant-garde.  I balked.  I remember, as the acting professor lectured and worked with a couple class members and we watched, looking down at the notebook of a peer who sat on the floor at my feet.  She was doing her best to take copious notes that encapsulated what was happening and the reasons for it, but ultimately she gave up and wrote “FFWS” in big, capital letters.  I asked her later what FFWS stood for, and she replied, “Freakin’ Fuckin’ Weird Shit.”  I laughed, but couldn’t disagree with her.  That’s what this class was feeling like to me too, and AVB had been replaced with FFWS as my acronym of choice.

The next year in grad school, the Theatre Department somehow got a grant to host the Omaha Magic Theater, for which, ironically, Megan Terry was the playwright in residence.  I had come full circle, it seemed.  I attended a performance, and was utterly unimpressed.  I had hoped that seeing Terry’s work performed by a company who presumably understood it would open the doors of enlightenment for me.  No such luck.  It seemed just as big a miasma of disconnected elements as my high school scene from CALM DOWN, MOTHER had been.  I didn’t get it.  I didn’t get a sense that the actors did either, or that they knew how or were even really trying to communicate what they thought was important to the audience. It was just thrown out (or thrown up *wink*) there, when I needed them to throw me a line, a Rosetta stone, SOMEthing!

The only thing I enjoyed were all the lay-people (all residents of that huge art-Mecca of the world: Lubbock, Texas) who left at intermission, furious that they hadn’t seen a single rabbit come out of a hat when they’d paid good money for their Omaha MAGIC Theater tickets.  Not to castigate these Lubbock-ians too much, because I was a theatre grad student, and I would have enjoyed card tricks more too!

Then fast-forward to another graduate acting class with “Professor FFWS.”  Early in the semester, I walked him from class back to his office and told him of my discomfort with what we were doing.  I told him I was a Stanislavski Method kind of girl.  He smiled and pointed out that it wasn’t the Stanislavski ‘Method.’  There was a huge difference between what Stanislavski taught and Lee Strasberg’s ‘Method’ interpretation of it, he told me. It was the Stanislavski System, and he encouraged me to read past AN ACTOR PREPARES, which I did.  He also encouraged me not to stand on the sidelines in acting class, but to participate fully with a principle of genuine inquiry toward the exercises on a given day.

I took him up on his challenge, and I must admit that there’s ‘something to it’ with many of the things he had us do.  Emotions were, ironically, often more easily accessible and potent when you bypassed the intellect or the traditional and explored the physical.  Dancers probably already know this, but it can take actors a while to “get out of their heads” and into their bodies.  I began to see my classmates do some very compelling things, things that worked on me at a primitive and very potent level. 

I emerged from my grad school experience grateful for the chance to delve into unknown and uncomfortable things. ‘Weird’ wasn’t necessarily bad.  In fact it could be quite gripping if done well. But as I have gone about my theatrical life, I have remained primarily unimpressed with the supposedly avant-garde offerings that have come my way.  Some seek only to be ‘shocking,’ which is usually dull and quite pedestrian after the first five seconds. Some wanted desperately to be ground-breaking and profound, but they were clumsy and unremarkable in almost every respect. The creators didn’t have a clue what they were doing, what signs/significations they were (or were NOT) evoking by not making and refining their choices more deliberately, and nothing hung together.  A director might have known some of what s/he meant, but it was obvious they had not conveyed their vision sufficiently to the cast, who flopped and foundered on stage, desperately trying to please the director. And everyone was as defensive as my high school self if their offering was met with dislike.

As a lover of theatre, you know its potential power.  You make it, but you also yearn for experiences that can touch even your knowledgeable, jaded heart.  So much of it, you’ve seen done better before, and there isn’t anything that’s both unique and effective.  There are valiant efforts, and repugnantly bad ones to which you try to be charitable when your friends are involved, but ultimately you’re left kind of wanting. Still, you search, actively or passively, but you’re always looking. That’s how I came to be aware of SLEEP NO MORE.

I had expected SNM to be just another mostly unsuccessful attempt, perhaps slicker than most, at doing something different and profound.  From what I had seen on SHAKESPEARE UNCOVERED, however, I had hope that they might be on to something.  I sensed a stripping away of textual over-thinking, and bold steps toward a more primal, visceral experience. 

When I saw SNM live, among other things I felt I was being both seduced and punched HARD in the gut.  I freely interfaced with the piece’s depiction of raw, feral, often not pretty but genuine human passion.  The intellect’s censors were somehow bypassed, and emotions flowed freely. I cried, I got angry, I felt violently protective, I was aroused, I was disgusted, I despaired, I was joyful. It was all somehow much more ‘real’ done this way than actual realism would have been.  It’s HYPER-realism, primal and unmistakable.  

It is the first time in my theatrical life to have experienced a totally satisfying, expertly crafted ‘weird’ thing. I have done what I consider to be good work, but never anything like this. Do I understand it? Not fully, but I am still intrigued--a week later. And when I sift, I find more and more jewels below the surface. That's 'weird' with a purpose, 'weird' with substance, 'weird' with intent, and that is VERY rare, indeed! I don't know that I can ever reach those lofty heights, but I can guarantee I will set my bar higher when I tackle 'weird' stuff. I have felt, first-hand, the magnificence of 'weird.'