Workshop: Playing with the Rules: A Studio Exploration of the Trickster Spirit

Transcription

1 Workshop: Playing with the Rules: A Studio Exploration of the Trickster Spirit Eric Weitz, Dublin The workshop, held by Eric Weitz, dealt with the trickster in different traditions, its dramaturgical appearance, and how it is put into practice. Each half-day started out with physical explorations, games and warming ups which involved a lot of laughter. The workshop further explored the links between play, laughter and humour and the way trickster figures blend these dimensions. As tricksters are michievious creatures, the group was asked to illuminate their colleagues on any trickery they have performed. Some of the participants showed how cleverly they would deceive an audience, drawing from memories of their past. In this way, the workshop mapped out how in laughing, we suddenly and playfully recreate our identities (Norman Holland). The stories recreated were put into short narrative scenes, attesting to the trickery nature of human beings and gave an insight into codes and attitudes within different cultures. Theory of the trickster figure The trickster figure is a universal phenomenon present in mythology. The trickster represents creation and destruction and is often accompanied by teasing and laughter. He/She stands for all kinds of instinctive behaviour and interests that are usually not approved by the conscious, 'civilized' mind. John Towson defines the Trickster further as a mythological clown figure appearing in legends of most cultures. He is often seen as an amoral schemer but also as a visionary. Some well-known trickster figures are: Coyote Native American (also, Hare, Raven, Mink), Monkey Chinese, Hermes Greek, Eshu Yoruba, Loki Norse, Till Eulenspiegel German, Anansi West African, Br er Rabbit African-American. Also: Puck A Midsummer Night s Dream, Mosca Volpone, Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes, Stewie Griffin Family Guy. Trickster-like traits are: Deception, trickery, rule-breaking,

2 alternative logic and problem-solving, foolishness, crudeness, sex, scatology, transformation and shape-shifting, creation and how things came about. Tricksters contrive social situations in their own favour. Sometimes they win the contest, sometimes they lose, but invariably they cheat. Gerald Vizenor has already coined the term trickster discourse in which he discusses an avowedly comic impulse to disrupt, counter and subvert dominant and dominating cultural narratives. Links between play laughter humour Laughter literally rocks the body. And if you believe, like twentieth-century philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, that there exists a reversible link between one s inner life and its outer traces, a performer who has an audience rolling in the aisles will have reached inside those laughing bodies to exert a formidable effect. Viewed in such a way, the performer brings about this sudden bodyquake by rumpling the spectator s fabric of bodied knowledge, the full measure of which includes a complex weave of thought, feeling, social codes, cultural conceits and anything else that comprises the psycho-physical activity of a human life. For embodied practices that prioritise the laughter response, there can be little doubt about their potential as effective techniques for deep-tissue persuasion. Failure as Success: On clowns and laughing bodies Performance Research (2012) 17:1, Gerald Vizenor suggests the invisible ease with which concrete cultural information is siphoned from fluid tribal performance through transcription, maintaining that, what is seen and published is not a representation of what is heard or remembered in oral cultures. The fabric of experience at the site of an event and through their diachronic accumulation clearly does leave psycho-emotional deposits that become part and parcel of any cultural information being imparted. There are even more insistent implications for the participating

3 bodies when laughter attends a group of texts in a conventional role, hence the reference in later passages of this study to trickster and clown performances as acts of transfer. If trickster tales and clown performances can be identified with a propensity to amuse, they sneak an advantage from the start in the bodily reward they offer for the mere price of paying attention. Trickster tales and their comic strategies should be considered as what Diana Taylor calls, acts of transfer in her book of the same name and what Julie Pearson-Little Thunder in Steve Wilmer s book of essays on Native American Performance and Representation refers to as embodied practices : performance functioning to transmit social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity. They are serious texts, within which the use of comic agency merits analysis. Outside of western drama the connection has been quite direct between storytelling traditions and dramatic embodiment: Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins observe how the African trickster, Ananse, can be seen in a play like Efua Sutherland s The Marriage of Anansewa (1975), which draws directly upon local storytelling tradition. Derek Walcott s Ti- Jean and His Brothers employs a trickster figure in dramatising a Caribbean folk tale. The indigenous Canadian playwright Tomson Highway has used Nanabush in The Rez Sisters as a shape-shifting embodiment for theatrically inventive effect as well as political intervention.

4 Warming up / Games We stood in a circle and started walking with different pictures in mind: having one s head filled with helium, carrying a 10 pounds weight on one s shoulders, being pulled forward either by one s chin or belly button. Every part of the body was affected, creating various qualities of movement, speech and mood.

5 By varying one s voice in different ways (talking in high or low pitch, in an overarticulated way, or with relaxed jaw bones), we experienced the effects of modulating vocal tone on the whole body. Busy, happy, and excited creatures appeared, as well as arrogant and depressed ones. Thus, we caught a glimpse of staging stereotypical characters or stage clowns. We tried out different characteristics of voice, gestures, posture etc. (from rather naturalistic to grotesque uses of the body), and explored the possibilities of how to represent a trickster physically on stage.

6 Trickster Narratives Magical power backfiring The trickster figure often uses magic in his deceptions - however, as is also the case, his appropriation of the magic powers of others frequently backfires. This exercise called for the performance of some type of magic by a magical entity, to a particular effect, and for the trickster to attempt to reproduce this magic, but with disastrous consequences. We decided that one actor would represent the magical entity, one actor would represent the trickster, and the other two actors would represent inanimate objects - in this case, trees. The trees were represented by having the actors hold two open umbrellas each, to symbolise their branches and leaves. The magical entity enters this 'forest' playing a magical flute. The tune he plays is so powerful that when the trees hear it, they come to life, and start dancing and whistling in the wind. When the magical flute player stops playing, leaving his flute between the trees, the trees return to their quiet state. The trickster, who has been watching this, attempts to wield the power of the flute, by playing it like the magical entity. However, the trickster cannot play the flute well, and so when the trees hear the terrible music they awaken again, but this time trapping the trickster in their branches. The trickster's attempt to seize the power of the flute backfires, and it is only the sweet music of the magical entity that releases the trickster from the trees at the end. Representing fantastic acts On the second day of our workshop, one of the exercises involved the physical performance onstage of an act of 'stage trickery', or the enactment of something fantastical that would otherwise be impossible to represent using the human body. For this, we struggled to imagine how we might simulate such things as 'flying' or 'death' on stage in a simple movement. In the end, we decided to perform 'the aging process', and to show how a character might age on stage in moments. To do this, we positioned four actors in a row, one behind the other. To the side, a fifth actor, the narrator, opened the performance with the words "Time passes in the blink of an eye", following which he proceeded to click his

7 fingers. On each click, the actor at the front of the line would say "I'm a big boy now", and fall down to the floor, revealing the next actor standing in line, who would follow the same procedure. The idea was that each actor would adopt the characteristics of a boy at different stages of his development - from baby, to teenager, to adult, and finally to an elderly person, who would fall down leaving the stage bare, as if to suggest that the blank space and the silence left behind was representative of the emptiness of death itself. Tricksters attempting to outdo one another In one skit, one actor (presenting herself as a princess) was choosing between two suitors, princes from Java and Poland. The rivals are required to complete a series of tasks to prove that they are worthy of her love by imitating a more or less noble bird, by drinking as much as possible, and by fighting each other. "The last man standing" shall be marry the princess. The Javanese prince turns out to be the trickster and uses his wits and his competitor's own strength against him. The trickster flatters him, telling him that he is certainly strong enough to (probably) knock himself out. The strong Polish prince punches himself and does indeed knock himself out. Because of this, the trickster wins the princess's affections in the end.

8 In another skit, two actors are writing an exam. They are both trying to cheat and pull answer sheets from random places on their person during the exam. Their answer sheets are placed in their pockets, underwear, hair and even under one leg of the desk they are writing on. This is all done to no avail. The invigilator takes away their answer sheets at every turn. Finally, the trickster outwits the other actor by slipping the invigilator a 20 note. To the other's disappointment, the invigilator proceeds to give the trickster an answer sheet in return. In these examples, the trickster figure used a variety of things, whether or not it was simply their own wits, objects or even money to achieve their own ends. This magnified the amoral-ness of the trickster in that they will go to whatever lengths, no matter how ridiculous, to achieve their own aims.

9 Tricksters getting their come-uppance These examples highlight how the trickster sometimes fails when attempting to achieve their own aims. In one skit, three women are all performing tasks in their respective homes. A trickster walks by and decides to wreak havoc on these three ladies. He knocks on the first woman's door and quickly finds an alternate entrance into her house. Unknowingly, she opens her front door and sees that no one is there. As she is doing this, the trickster steals some ingredients and dough that the woman was in the middle of preparing. He leaves without her realizing and she then gets back to work. The trickster proceeds to enter the other two women's homes in the same manner: he sabotages the second woman's sewing project and contaminates the third woman's cleaning supplies. All three women eventually realize what he s been up to and plot a nasty revenge against the trickster. They pour needles and string, as well as cleaning supplies into the first woman's cake mix. They bake this cake, now full of these contaminants, and when it is cooked, they purposefully leave it on the open windowsill to cool. The unsuspecting and hungry trickster passes by and steals the cake. He then eats it, chokes, and presumably dies. The three women are delighted; the successfully outwitted the trickster and, in the process, became tricksters themselves. Ultimately, this example emphasizes how a trickster s failed attempt to trick others can produce a rather sinister and humorous result.

10 The workshop has given the partipants an opportunity to use the trickster character and trickster characteritistics in a scholarly setting. It has opened the possiblity for a Collective Encouraging the Trickster Lifestyle in Contemporary Art (CETLA), via online and virtual communities (blogs, websites).