The texture of daily life: Brace Up!
Note: this essay, previously unpublished, was written in 1992. Before I became a filmmaker in 2000, I spent 20 years making performance works, so, to me, the connection between experimental performance and experimental film is perfectly clear. I’m including it here for those readers who are also interested in live performance.)
The Wooster Group’s Brace Up! is one of the most contrapuntal theater pieces ever made. Throughout its duration there is continuous and simultaneous music, dialog, video, and usually several areas of stage action, all coordinated into a carefully controlled texture, so that even the sparsest moments have at least three or four elements in them. This constant juxtaposition of layers is gradually revealed as a textural depiction of the rhythms and textures of daily family life, in which several different things are generally occurring simultaneously throughout a household.
Director Elizabeth LeCompte, who typically bases her work with the Wooster Group on two or more disparate texts, has created Brace Up! largely from Chekov’s The Three Sisters. Chekov tried to give his drama the inconclusive, decentralized shape of real life, which appealed to Stanislavsky with his new, radically naturalistic style (although reportedly not naturalistic enough for Chekov’s taste). LeCompte treats the text in a totally non-naturalistic manner, with almost nothing seen on the stage having a direct reference to the world of the play. The set consists of a large rectangular platform covered by kitchen linoleum, flanked by entrance ramps reminiscent of the Noh stage. Behind and below this platform is a long table where most of the performers sit during the play, reading, talking and writing. The upstage corners contain glass screens, behind which performers speak to video cameras, and we see their images on large monitors which are placed center stage. The sides of the stage have tall panels of florescent lights. But, despite this nonliteral setting, LeCompte creates an even more radical kind of naturalism, orchestrating the complex counterpoint of sounds and images to capture the rhythms and textures of ordinary middle-class life, in a manner which doesn’t violate Chekov’s intentions but rather takes them to a new level.
Brace Up! begins with a breezy, tongue-in-cheek tone. The Narrator, played by Kate Valk, introduces the play’s translator, Paul Schmidt, and dramaturge, Marianne Weems, both of whom are on the periphery of the stage. She introduces some of the actors, and chats with the sound board operator, asking him if it is time for the bells to chime. These theatricalist elements continue throughout. At times, the Narrator announces that they will skip sections of the play and asks Mr. Schmidt to give the audience a summary. She supplies lines to actors who have ‘forgotten’ them. Actors make their entrances ‘at the wrong time’ and consult the script. These jokes about the artificiality of theater in general and the non-naturalism of Brace Up! in particular are so obvious and broad they they are not meant to be funny nor illuminating, and at first I wondered why they were included. I knew that LeCompte, whose work has never been naturalistic, and who satirized Thornton Wilder’s experiments with theatricalism in Routes One and Nine, was not getting her kicks by pointing out that theater is an artificial medium. It was only as the play went on and I began to perceive the subtler, musical level of radical naturalism that she was aiming for that I started to read these theatricalist jokes as themselves a kind of joke, a ruse. They announce Brace Up!’s concern with theatrical realism vs. artifice, and at the same time they signal that whatever the piece is saying about the subject, it is not as simple and obvious as these jokes about actors looking up lines in the script.
The character of the Narrator, which does not exist in The Three Sisters, but which is the central role in Brace Up!, is a major theatrical creation on the part of LeCompte and Valk. Wearing a short black wig, zoot suit, and sneakers (and later a more Russian-looking coat), Valk looks like a Vaudeville EmCee. She runs the entire production like a well-oiled machine, supplying the verbal cues, segues, explanations of the plot, props, sound effects, and playing minor characters. She moves long monologs along by prompting the actors with questions like “And what about you, Doctor?” Then, in the play’s relentlessly contrapuntal style, as the Doctor is answering her she prepares the next character’s entrance by miming a knock on the door (making the sound with her foot). “Is that the door?” she asks in response to her own knocking. When she claps her hands a needed prop is instantly tossed to her from the sidelines. She literally conducts and orchestrates the laughter which the actors at the upstage table use to punctuate the dialog. Her performance contains elements of Noh drama as well as of circus clowning. (At one point she squirts a bottle of seltzer on stage, which, naturally, she herself must immediately clean up.) She leads the cast in their dance numbers, and has a wild dance solo herself in the third act, her loose limbs swinging like semaphore flags, a kind or riotous yet controlled flinging of symbols which embodies the style of Brace Up!. All of the other characters more or less accept the circumstances of The Three Sisters as real, but the Narrator, whose job is to keep things rolling and to interpret the text for us, shares our perspective of The Three Sisters as an object which is being examined, and she becomes our friend and guide in the sometimes overwhelming multiple textures of the performance.
More than half of the action of the play consists of watching the Narrator setting up the stage for whatever scene comes next, while the text of the current scene is being spoken upstage, behind the screens, or on the video monitors. These ‘setting up’ routines are always placed squarely center stage. She brings props on and off, brings in the wheelchair covered in fake fur which Irina sits in, moves the microphones, etc. These seemingly utilitarian actions are often de-realized, as when she prepares the fur on the wheelchair for Irina by ‘vacuuming’ it with a microphone. (The amplified sound of the mic rubbing on the fur actually does sound like a vacuum cleaner.) This stylization of her activity shows that it is not simply showing-the-stage-hands-in-plain-view like Wilder or the Noh drama, but it is the central part of the mise-en-scène itself, representing not only theatrical artifice but also the notion of ‘work’ which characters in The Three Sisters continually argue about. Her activity contributes its own fussy, busy texture to the ongoing contrapuntal composition, emphasizing the sheer amount of preparation and cleaning up which must accompany the simplest kind of middle class activity, work which is largely performed by women.
The text of The Three Sisters is recited by the actors more or less continuously throughout the performance, but it is always only one of several centers of activity, sometimes in the foreground, often far in the background. The Narrator moves props, actors lounge at the upstage table, or else they swarm over the stage in migrating patterns, a large, complex family seen from above, seen as pure movement. Someone unwraps a package, someone else is snoring. “Good night,” someone says. The images focus on the detailed, preparatory activity, not on the text, spoken by actors behind screens. The texture and rhythm of domestic living comes to occupy the foreground, and the details of the story recede. At the upstage table, the actors silently follow the script and react with laughter to what other characters are saying, a continual, diffuse, low-level activity which is carefully orchestrated to fit into the texture of each moment. Are they in character? Are they playing ‘actors relaxing offstage?’ It scarcely matters, as both embody the same low-key domestic rhythm.
Ron Vawter as Vershinin has a series of deep, dark, depressed philosophical monologs. While he speaks, the Narrator frantically looks around for a place to put down a coffee urn from the previous scene, but every time she tries to put it down the Doctor tells her not to. This trivial game is at odds with Vawter’s solemnity, but absolutely every tone struck in the performance has an opposing tone playing against it, every hysteria is placed with something slow and relaxed, everything lyrical is juxtaposed against something ridiculous.
LeCompte modulates the focus of the performance from passages centered on the text to moments of crisis and general chaos which at times reach a pitch of utter madness, to extremely diffuse, quiet moments where the action doesn’t seem to have a center any more than an ordinary middle class household does at mid-afternoon. The doorbell rings; frantic, repetitive trumpet music begins to swell, actors run all over the stage without exactly going anywhere or doing anything. Performers literally vibrate the air with large fans, from the edges of the stage. The ringing of the doorbell has precipitated a minor household crisis in the middle of an afternoon stupor, exactly as it might in real life, but here is is depicted through a crisis rhythm, rather than through literal action. The music is much louder now; the actors have to shout at the top of their lungs to be heard. Then the crisis vanishes, dissipates, melts into thin air, leaving a texture so empty it almost seems as if there is nothing in it. Actually, there is a lot of activity: Paul Schmidt is summarizing part of the plot, droning on and on with a dullness that emphasizes the relative unimportance of the story at this point. Irina is elaborately polishing the glass on a new painting she’s received as a gift, actors are lounging at the upstage table, there is a sound of birds, and Olga is visible on the monitors. Nevertheless, it feels like one of those in-between-things moments which make up most of life but which are rarely depicted on stage, particularly with such exactitude.
These changing textures often evoke a specific time of day. A boisterous group dance feels like a social evening activity. Later, a pale yellow light and hushed voices seems like one or two in the morning. We hear two men from off-stage: “There’s nobody here. Where did everybody go?” “They went home.” Onstage, the Narrator is violently manipulating Irina’s neck, each twist accompanied by an absurd creaking sound effect, and a quiet Japanese children’s song is playing. Once again, time has passed and the atmosphere has changed, without us quite knowing how.
Even moments with a strong central focus, such as the waltz which almost the entire cast dances, are highly contrapuntal. During the waltz, Natasha’s baby cries loudly, and she comforts him (on the monitor). When uptempo jazz music is added, the dancing changes with it, but the waltz music continues to play at the same time. Later, when the jazz goes out and the waltz is heard again by itself, the dancers at the upstage table are still doing the faster steps from the jazz number, against the tempo of the music.
The musical form of the performance is highly organic, with changes in texture that follow patterns, but never repeat exactly. Even the constant recitation of the text stops at one point, leaving only the sound of howling wind while the Narrator sets up for the next scene. Usually a loud texture coasts down to a quiet texture over several minutes, but sometimes the loudness evaporates instantly. A few times it seems as if a dance or a crisis section is about to begin but then aborts itself before it really gets started. Usually, when something loud fades away, it reveals something quieter which has been going on all along. For example, when the loud stick-clacking dance that the whole cast performs at the upstage table begins to fade, we are able to hear the electronic whine of a toy top (the Narrator has been holding her mic to it), mixed with a quiet song in Japanese, which, together with the newly muted lighting, creates a strange, breathtaking transition. The one or two moments when the texture does pull down to (almost) a single element, it has tremendous impact, such as the scene in Act Three when the only sound is Vershinin, with his deepest, darkest, most depressed monolog of all (plus the sound of someone snoring). After the constant din, the effect of hearing a single voice is tremendous, and also amusing, since Vershinin’s depression seems both weighty and ridiculous, capable of putting everyone else on stage to sleep.
Often, in the complex interplay of elements, one activity picks up the qualities of others. For example, while the men are singing a rousing Russian drinking song at the upstage table, the Narrator, center stage, makes the gesture of throwing down a glass, and sound of glass smashing is played. She pretends to look for the broken glass, then acts out discovering that every time she makes the gesture of flinging the glass, the sound is played. This becomes a silly dance and game of glass-flinging, which rapidly picks up on all the energy of the drinking song which has been continuing all this time.
Much of the actors’ activity consists of creating this rhythm of household life, often without literally doing anything. Actors enter and leave, stand and sit, not in character or out of character, but with the same vagueness of purpose that ordinary people have, wandering from the living room to the kitchen. There is a lot of this kind of wandering on the stage, this looking for the appropriate spot to do something in. There is a lot of standing around on the stage looking fairly aimless, then suddenly rushing off as if remembering something important. The actors do not follow the stage convention of paying attention to whatever activity is supposed to be central. When Olga announces from the upstage table “Ladies and gentlemen, lunch is served!” no one immediately reacts or even pays attention, yet over the next minute the texture gradually shifts to a more lively and lunch-like one, just as might happen in life.
The delivery of the text, too, is treated musically, using the speed and sound of speech to emphasize ideas, rather than using inflection to reveal an individual character’s thought process. The opening dialog between Olga and Irina sets the tone for the production. It is said very rapidly and flung out as if the performers were giving dictation, not speaking as the characters so much as telling the audience what the characters say. Soon the dialog acquires some of the inflections of conversation, but continues to be said rapidly and with a casual, chatty tone that calls more attention to conversation as an ongoing social activity than it does to the content. When the actors whirl through sections of dialog at top speed, it gives the impression of bustling social activity. Vershinin’s philosophical ruminations, which are extremely slow, depict a period of stagnation. The female characters laugh and chat throughout them, making them seem not important philosophical statements but a rather silly male social activity, a point of view not far from Chekov’s.
Key lines, or rather lines which LeCompte wishes us to listen to critically, are effectively highlighted by the momentary cessation of counterpoint, the few times in the play in which the music, sound effects, laughter, coughing, etc., all stop and we hear only a single line of text: “When a man talks philosophy, you get philosophy, or at least sophistry. But when a woman talks philosophy, or two women, all you get is wee wee wee all the way home.” “Wee wee wee” becomes a shorthand, inserted throughout whenever assertions made by female characters are being ignored. All sound stops when Vershinin says very loudly “Life here must be very good,” and one gets the immediate impression of how untrue his statement is. The few lines which are delivered in an exaggeratedly stagey, actorish manner are made to seem unusually light and inconsequential. The actors almost never look directly at the person they are addressing. Either the actor sits behind the screen and we see her image on the monitor, or else speaks into the mic, directly to the house, or sometimes directly upstage, which doesn’t feel that different, given the general detachment of speakers from listeners. This all adds to the emphasis on the text as an object being interpreted, and as a texture, rather than as real conversation. Sometimes the speed, as in Irina and Olga’s top speed discussion of marriage possibilities, gives the impression that the subject matter is vitally important, but that as women they are forced to discuss these things in the marginal parts of the house, quickly, before anyone hears them.
The orchestrated counterpoint is used to present an interpretation of the text, particularly of its sexual politics. The constant laughter and comments by the men when the women are talking and by the women when the men are talking emphasizes how different the interests and concerns of these two groups are. During Andre’s impassioned speech about his life’s failure, shouted facing upstage, (even Chekov wanted this speech to be delivered histrionically) we hear loud cool jazz music and the women ignore him, running around and setting up the next scene. As he cries like a baby, off the mic, Irina and Olga earnestly discuss the serious business of their plans for moving. Schmidt, the (male) translator, argues for the importance of including the play’s poetry and philosophy. Valk, the (female) Narrator, wants instead to skip ahead to ‘the action.’ Schmidt complains that the 93 year old actress playing Anfisa on videotape doesn’t know her lines, but Valk defends her, saying that she is doing “great” for her age.
This way of viewing the piece, listening to its shifting sound textures and watching the swirling patterns of movement on stage as an almost abstract evocation of the flow and rhythm of ordinary domestic life, is not something I began doing immediately. Throughout the first third of the play, I struggled to follow the story of The Three Sisters as if this were an ordinary production. But then, the new way of watching and listening suddenly broke on me, and continued throughout. There are several aspects of the staging which made following the story in the ordinary way frustrating and unrewarding, and which encouraged me to observe it differently. It is a play which teaches you how to watch it while you are watching it.
One aspect of the staging which discourages an ordinary way of following the story is the sense that the play The Three Sisters is being presented off-center, or as if viewed from the back or side. The fact that almost all of the actors are at the upstage table or behind the upstage screens, while the vast linoleum expanse of the stage is taken up with the Narrator setting up, or with characters we see on monitors, creates the feeling that Chekov’s play has been crushed into a narrow space upstage while the foreground is preoccupied with a backstage arena of preparation (the women’s arena). The video images are skewed by being shown with a stop-time effect. The frequent speeches directed upstage add to the feeling that we are seeing a rear view of the play. This sense of off-centeredness culminates in a scene near the end, when Andre, entirely off stage, is dramatically shouting his last big speech, but the sound is so low that we can barely hear him. Downstage center, the Narrator, listening as if on headphones, makes little comments on the mic, summarizing what he is saying. The actual text of the play is completely in the background. In the foreground is the Narrator’s involvement with the text, her thinking, listening, and her comments. This sense that everything is being viewed from behind or from backstage encourages us to look not at the text, but at what is behind and inside of the text, and at how the text is being taken apart.
The richly detailed, musical sound of the piece itself encourages us to focus on texture rather than text. The sound, besides the text, contains other household sounds, such as the unwrapping of packages or tapping, often mixed in louder than the voices, plus effects such as birds or howling wind, and music, such as serene harp music or frantic jazz. During speeches, other characters cough, sneeze, giggle, and sometimes talk quietly amongst themselves.
Finally, the independence of image from sound in Brace Up! reveals one of the basic properties of human language. Except for a few costume elements and stray props, there is almost no visual reference to the text in Brace Up! The linoleum, the microphone stands, the panels of bright florescent lights, the long reading table, all present a different world from the Prozorov’s household. One feels that the visual compositions would work perfectly well as an independent performance. This vividly embodies the two tracked consciousness which language creates for us, the juggling act which enables us, while sitting in a bar filled with smoke, bottles, people, and noise, to describe our memories of a morning in the Alaskan wilderness with its silence, bright light and solitude, our two feet firmly planted in two worlds, feeling their strangeness juxtaposed. This multi-tracked stage production, then, is a kind of ultimate naturalism, not of life’s outward appearances, but of its structure and texture.
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