Hi Alison,

well i'm going to continue to seem to be stubborn and hope that you do too
until someone else enters this conversation. We're sort of having a glass
half full glass half empty exchange i think.

I also know marginalised theatre practices. And yes there might be seen to
be an issue of reinventing the wheel. But i hope not. Poetry might want to
claim work that Aaron Williamson, Caroline Bergvall, Tertia Longmire, Larry
Lynch, Odilia Jarman, Debs Gorman, Gregg Whelan, Fiona Templeton, Brian
Catling, Alaric Sumner . . .are making. It might want to claim all of their
work or only part of it. Indeed Robert Sheppard wrote something to that
effect, of not wanting to let it go beyond the bounds of where poetry can
stretch to last year for the Politics of Presence conference  -  it's up on
How2 in the context of a rumination on Levinas' 'the saying' and 'the said'.

But Performance has histories other than theatre. I feel that a useful
interdisciplinary wedge has been shoved between big categories and i want to
nourish that wedge. Sure, the practitioners in that wedge might owe a
tremendous allegiance of conversation to big older art form categories. But
is that any reason not to try to see what other distances might not
productively be opened between said wedge and said bastions?

Where do we put the whole history of 'happenings' and 'performance art' and
now 'live art'? They all have elements in common with theatre.

The edition of The Paper  -  'Additional Apparitions'  -  that has sparked
this exchange is explicit about its interests in 'poetry, performance and
site specificity'. That strikes me as interesting. I'd ask, why bring
theatre into it? A discussion around theatre, performance and site
specificity would also be interesting, but that wasn't the focus. Perhaps,
nd i say this with an impish grin, theatre has not engaged in such
intriguing ways with issues of site specificity as have sound and visual and
performance arts over the past 20-30 years. Yes, there is the occasional
attempt at a site-specific piece. Yes theatre goes into schools and
community halls and so forth. But that's model of extended touring. It's not
at all the kind of ideas around stie-specificity with which Caroline
Bergvall is grappling  -  for example, or Brian Catling for that matter.

These issue make a substantial difference. What can theatrical discourses
bring to such a discussion?

Again if we talk about the term 'performance' and positioning performace and
performativity at the heart of writing, not after the fact of the 'writing'
then how can theatre, which has largely tended to treat a text as set before
the audience turns up  -  yes there are exceptions, further that discussion?

To switch back there are texts with a theatrical derivation that are also
intriguing in-betweens. For example Fiona Templeton's 'You : The City',
Caroline Bergvall's 'Strange Passage', Jackson MacLow's 'The Marrying
Maiden', Carla Harryman's 'There Is Nothing Better Than A Theory', Steve
Benson's 'Narcissus' . . .

Let's take 'The Marrying Maiden'. It 'has only been produced once - by The
Living Theatre in the loft playhouse it occupied at 14th St. and the Avenue
of the Americas in Manhattan in the late 1950s and early 1960s - opening in
June 1960 and continuing once a week thereafter for about a year. Judith
Malina directed it; Julian Beck designed sets and costumes; Nicola Cernovich
lighted it; and John Cage, assisted by the late Richard Maxfield, composed
music for it in the form of audiotapes made by submitting a tape of a
rehearsal to various chancve operations.' I'm quoting from 'Representative
Works: 1938-1985' Jackson MacLow (New York: Roof Books, 1986)  -  a fabulous
fabulous book btw.

Here's a speech (what appears in brackets here is in italics in the edition
and what appears in double brackets is in both brackets and italics in the
'original')

        A MERCHANT AND A STRANGER:

         (fast)
/((poetically))/tongue/(as if reading a letter aloud)/eye form heaven a
kettle
              (p)
        ((fast))                                (very fast)
         hard and salty / (quarrelsomely) / soil frugality hard and salty
soil
((p))
                   ((very fast))
/(lispingly)/ the middle daughter
              ((p))

I remember reading this stuff and cracking up. It's pretty funny in any
case. But imagine trying to do it, with all of those instructions. I had a
chat with Jackson about this one and he laughed, "you know i realised that I
could achieve indeterminacy through over-determination".

Just though you might appreciate that story:)

love and love
cris