Attacking the audience?

The Conway Corner

The staged readings of Aurolac Blues by Saviana Stanescu and Self at Hand by Jack Hanley on Monday night at Manhattan Repertory Theatre went well...except that an audience member fainted and an ambulance had to be called in the middle of the performance. During the second part of Self at Hand called Tastes Like Robot, I was reading a particularly gruesome passage involving a man refilling with peanut butter a section of his leg that he had cut out, when I heard the rustle of a metal chair from the audience. Unsure of what happened in the dark in front of me I continued reading for a moment. Then I heard a voice say we had to stop. We brought up the house lights and indeed someone had collapsed from their seat.

The audience member is fine, don't worry. But we were all quite concerned at the time. After regaining consciousness, he dry heaved into a bucket for a while, so it was hard to tell exactly what had happened to him. He was then moved to the hallway, where his condition worsened, and it was determined that it was necessary to call an ambulance.

Self at Hand is a play that makes the most callous listener squeamish. Its vivid poetic language is as outright gross as it is deeply metaphoric. I perhaps expected a few audience members to leave during this play, but I certainly did not expect it to overwhelm someone's capacity to remain conscious.

After a discussion between Martin Denton and the two playwrights to distract attention from the emergency situation, we continued the reading where we left off, with the peanut butter. Ryan was accompanying the audience member onto the ambulance, so I jumped into his role in the final part of Self at Hand.

Since No. 11 is beginning its next endeavor, Jet of Blood or the Ball of Glass by Antonin Artaud, an advocate of the audience's visceral involvement in the work of theatre, a Theatre of Cruelty, often interrupted and implemented as attacking the audience, the real question at hand for me is when an audience ought to be attacked and to what extent. Certainly, aiming to make an audience member faint on its own is not a worthwhile objective, but when would it be justified to make an audience faint? Outside of New York City, there are possibly those who, as an audience to the way Ryan cradled his boyfriend in his arms after he fainted, would themselves faint. Should such a scene be presented to such an audience? Women wearing corsets used to faint whenever they ascend a flight of stairs. Ought one to make such a women ascend many flights of stairs in order to make clear the absurdity of the device restricting their breathing? Artaud does not have a social agenda such as these examples present, rather more of a spiritual and cultural agenda. But, the question reapplied to the context of the Self at Hand reading bares asking, and of course one would respond, "well, people should see what they want to see, but not be made to see anything they aren't interested in seeing." Of course I can't force all of New York City to come see No. 11's plays. Although if I had the means...

I guess we are banking on those unsuspecting few, who stumble into the theatre for a night of fun, and wind up having an experience they were not interested in having. They will be most affected. I cannot help but wonder whether theatre that pushes boundaries isn't aimed at those accidental few, rather than those who are accustomed to its ideas. Maybe theatre isn't for theatre-goers? Ought one's gag reflex to be jostled by an unfamiliar stimulus, such as a description of peanut butter spread into a wound? I don't think the audience member wanted to faint. Nor would most. But nor does the corset wearing woman at the stop of the stairs, yet she will faint following her routine ascension of the staircase. It requires our proposed incessant ascension for her to remove her corset out of fear of death. Will she love her protruding stomach because it is her savior, or maintain the attitude she bore towards it when she wore the corset? She would most likely only adopt the attitude of acceptance if the experience of multiple ascensions was prompted by her own interest in being involved in it. But there remains a possibility she will love her stomach after the multiple ascensions, were she to accidentally be required to ascend many a' stair. So, ought Self at Hand to be performed for an audience member, given that it will make him faint and he'll have to leave in an ambulance? I think it may be contingent upon the coinciding objective of the performance...

But I've run into some difficulty here, and I think you'll see why. There is a collision between someone's free choice what is good for them. I would not necessary say that Self at Hand was good for the audience member who fainted. He would most likely say it was gross and he wishes he hadn't gone to the reading. But what would the audience member say to the hypothetical woman who faint when she saw him and Ryan embracing, and wishes she hadn't gone to the reading? I'm not saying the audience member ought to become accustomed to descriptions of bodily mutilation by enduring many evenings of fainting. But, should the visceral experience of violence lead to a new discovery, then it may be justified. Not actual violence...we won't go there. In the realm of art, is revolution possible and justifiable? The vicarious investment in an affective experience, by the accidental few who do not expect it, may lead to an unpleasant public loss of consciousness, but there is also the possibility it could lead to a woman accepting her belly fat. Hmm...is it worth the fall? To be honest, I'm not sure yet. A definitive component of our current culture is prevention: insurance, preemptive war, enhanced security, etc. So, especially in the context of such emphasis on surety, I think the theatre could use a little of the unexpected.

Written by Mitchell Conway