How can you produce a brand new controversial American play in Mumbai?  I thought India would be an excellent place to produce and direct my new play, The Terrorist, a timely commentary on the US government policy of detention of South Asians and Muslims and the initiation of the war in Iraq.   The political climate in India was in some ways similar to the US, where the government had passed and implemented, The Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), which was modeled on the USA Patriot Act passed after 9/11.  In India as well as the US many “terrorists” were imprisoned without proper charges, access to legal counsel or a fair trial.  When the Congress party returned to power in India several years ago the act was rescinded.                                                                         

            The play is about Frank, who claims to be in security, his girlfriend, Claire, her boss, Roger, and a government agent, Paula, who is trying to find a terrorist conspiracy at all costs. The play explores each character’s particular view of terrorism.  Frank is a self-proclaimed fighter against terrorism, Claire is Frank’s supporter, Roger believes wholeheartedly in the US government’s fight against terrorism and Paula sees a terrorist conspiracy everywhere. Frank, Claire and Roger are ordinary Americans victimized by the US government.  In the end, the persecuted turn on their persecutor, Paula, in a bold reversal of roles.  Some people in the audience felt my ending did not take the terrorist threat seriously enough, while many others applauded the ending as a powerful protest against US government policies.

The Terrorist was presented at the Little Theatre of the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai for two performances, May 8^th and 10^th, 2003.  The play with a cast of four Indian actors, had a live tabla (an Indian percussion instrument) composed and performed by a young American musician, Daniel L. Scholnick.

The Terrorist was started at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois in August 2002.   I read an excerpt to a group of the other artistic residents and several people said “it would stir things up.”  I knew I was on the right track and completed the play in the fall of 2002 before I left for India.    Some revisions and additions were made during the rehearsals for the premiere production in Mumbai.

My liaison at the NCPA, Arundhathi Subramaniam, poet and administrator, whose husband is active in the Mumbai English theatre, read the play with excitement and approved it for production.  She arranged for me to have the Little Theatre for two performances and rehearsal space as needed and available and introduced me to the key staff people.

In my first few weeks in Mumbai, I went to see every new play in English that I could, to meet the writers, directors and actors.   Indian plays written in English are being presented with greater frequency by a growing number of Indian theatre artists.   Writers are finding their voices, writing in English that is neither British nor American, but Mumbai-English, inflected by the rhythms and words of the Hindi and Marathi languages.  And many actors are performing plays in English.

I cast Radhika da Cunha, appearing in a play, Class of ‘84, as the government agent, Paula.  I auditioned a number of actors for the part of Frank, finally selecting Darshan Jariwala, who not only performs Indian plays in English, but in Hindi and Marathi.  After I chose him for the part, he was worried about his accent and I told him, “it would be an asset for the part.”   Avantika Akerkar, who was appearing in the Indian premiere of the Vagina Monologues, was cast as Claire.   As Claire’s boss, Roger, I cast Denzil Smith, a Mumbai actor with a wonderful voice who plays contemporary and classical parts.

I developed a production concept for the play that included a live tabla player on stage.  The stage at the Little Theatre was much deeper than it was wide.  I divided the stage into five playing areas: Frank’s workshop, where he is creating his “security” device, Claire and Roger’s office, a street area, a park area and a café.  Other transitional places were spun off from these locations.  The four actors remained seated at the back of the stage in a darkened area when not in a scene, along with the tabla player who performed live throughout the play.  The actors were able to move smoothly from one scene to the other underscored by the tabla.  All the playing areas had shadowy illumination which highlighted the ambiguity of the situations in the play.  The final scene of the play, where the characters are interrogated, was lit by a powerful flashlight, which was aimed at each actor’s face as he or she was questioned.

The fifth actor in the play was a musical instrument, the tabla.  It became a live musical presence.  I had listened to Indian vocal and instrumental music in a number of  Mumbai’s venues before I began rehearsing The Terrorist..   Every type of musical performance I heard used the tabla.  I thought, why not create a contemporary tabla score to emphasize theatrical elements in the scenes and link the scenes in the play.  I would use a traditional Indian instrument in a non-traditional way.  It would be a wonderful way to propel the action.   The composer, Daniel L. Scholnick, was excited by the concept and developed the score while watching the rehearsals.  After the performances, audience members commented how effective the music was in moving the plot along.

During the first few rehearsals, the actors thought the characters were simple because my dialogue is so spare, but as we worked they became challenged by the characters’ interactions.  As we explored their roles and improvised some scenes, the actors began to dig into their parts and complex characters began to emerge who defined their conflicting attitudes towards terrorism.  One of the actresses, Radhika da Cunha, had never done animal exercises in her acting classes, and we worked on her developing dog-like characteristics (listening for and smelling out terrorists) which she seamlessly incorporated into her performance as a government agent.  In the scene, which I dubbed “the discovery of the weapons of mass destruction” scene, Roger, played by Denzil Smith, did a brilliant improvisation underscored by tabla sounds, in which everyday tools: a screwdriver, a pair of scissors and a plastic hair band became extraordinary objects of terrorist menace.

My stage manager, Vijayalaxmi Londhe, went with me to the Chor Bazaar (Thieves Bazaar) in Mumbai to purchase props.  She bargained in Hindi and we bought everything from a powerful flashlight to an electrical switch that was the “security” device Frank was working on.  Going to the Chor Bazaar with its crowded streets and hundreds of shops of Muslim vendors was a theatrical experience in itself.  And I thought about the hundreds of Muslim detainees in the US imprisoned after 9/11.

To publicize the play, I obtained a list of the half dozen writers/editors who covered cultural activities in the Indian English language press and phoned each one personally.  Unlike in New York or other major American cities, it was not necessary to write a press release, but in each case when I spoke to a journalist, I pitched the basic idea of the play and the unusual circumstances of its production.  The Asian Age did a feature with a photo, “The Terrorist Strikes in May”, with a face-to-face interview about me as a playwright/director working in Mumbai, which appeared two weeks before the opening of the play.  The other press pieces were published around the time of the performance.  Midday ran an article, entitled, “Staging a Terrorist” about the subject of the play with a photo of two of the actors.  Afternoon did a feature, “The Terrorist Hits the Marquee” with a photo of me and the cast posed in the rehearsal space.  Briefer articles appeared in The Times of India and The Indian Express, which had profiled me earlier in the year.

To create further interest in the play, three scenes were performed by the actors on the tiny stage of the Tea Centre as part of the COHO Arts Festival in Mumbai to an audience of eighty people who crowded into the space the Saturday before the premiere.   The scenes were well received and this helped to produce a buzz about the play.

On a shoestring budget with great help from Indian theatre people, who worked in the English Indian theatre, the play was rehearsed for five weeks.  I focused on getting the Indian actors to perform as an ensemble and give an American feel to their performances.  Their training in Indian traditional theatre performance techniques helped them to create the stylized feel for the play that I was seeking.  It was a challenge for me to work with the actors to incorporate their techniques into my production but in the end it was greatly enhanced.

A few weeks before the production opened I was told by the director of the American Center, a career diplomat, that they would give me money to produce any other play during this time of the Iraq invasion.  I refused.  I was then asked not to mention the American Center or the Fulbright program as assisting this production in the program and publicity.  The play was officially produced by an Indian foundation under the auspices of the National Center for the Performing Arts where I was a visiting artist.

The Terrorist was performed twice to packed houses.  All the officials from the American consulate turned out including the director of the American Center.   And the Indian Fulbright newsletter did a brief article with a photo about how I had directed a production of The Terrorist with some of Mumbai’s leading actors about “the psychological effects of terrorism” which the play was clearly not about. After each performance there were questions and a discussion of the politics of the play.  Most of the Indian audience members shared my concern about American policies in Iraq and towards the detainees.  I did another short performance piece, Surveillance, which was thematically related to the play.  The Terrorist was documented through photos and a video. After the performances were over, I found out there had never been a premiere of a new American play in Mumbai before.  It seems I had made theatre history way Off-Off Broadway.

Howard Pflanzer was a Fulbright Scholar in India during the spring of 2003.   The Terrorist was given its   American Premiere at the Laurie Beechman Theatre of the West Bank      Café NYC by the Unofficial New York Yale Cabaret (UNYYC) in June 2006.

I feel not conscious enough of how I’m mimicking Tao Lin’s Style. Tao Lin’s Style is infectious and hypnotic. Writing about Tao Lin in Tao Lin’s style, as The Observer, or rather Christian Lorentzen, did, is hard to resist. I think the Observer was lazy. I approve of that laziness. Of course, as with Hemingway, another “bad” writer whose parody comes easy, and whom Tao Lin namechecks as much as Yates, and includes in the index, the style slips in anyway. While reading Tao Lin I find myself becoming much drier and flatter. I lose my obligation to feel strongly about anything, especially about how I feel about anything.

Tao Lin is indeed kind of a hipster writer. He’s easy to hate. I think when people say something is “polarizing” that thing often itself has an intense focus on neutrality. Some of the key phrases to use in a Tao Lin parody are “neutral facial expression” and “I feel neutral” and “said in Gmail Chat”. If you use these phrases you will be immediately parodying Tao Lin, and you don’t need anything else. Everything he writes is autobiography, or so it seems. Everything is exactly as it seems. It’s just one damn thing after another but there are some interesting elisions and refillings of previous story that are perhaps occuring more in Richard Yates.

There are more changes in Richard Yates from his previous style. Someone must have commented on the names of his characters, like how obvious it is that the main character is always Tao Lin but named like Sam or something. So he named the Tao Lin character Haley Joel Osment and the teenage Jersey girl he met on the internet Dakota Fanning. The ages are about right but the great thing about it is you still can’t actually picture the actors as the characters. I now see “Haley Joel Osment” and that represents a Taiwanese-American hipster writer to me. I wonder whether any kind of defamation charges could be brought but it’s too obviously a stunt. I am willing to honestly believe Haley Joel Osment crossed state borders to statutory rape Dakota Fanning, who is variously self-destructive. I do because those are the characters. There’s really a lot of name-dropping in this, which brings up that issue of how much writers have to be literary historians, or just more culturally aware, or whatever.

I’m afraid that it’s almost a homage to the novel’s namesake that Richard Yates has a pretty clear structure and plot, and particularly that it’s about someone simultaneously epitomizing and feeling alienated from contemporary American society. The story is most of the arc of a codependent relationship. In case you don’t know what that is, it’s when someone stays romantically involved because they feel the other person needs them and the other person (who often has some compulsion or addiction the first person enables) does more of that to get more from the first person. Neither person involved is very good and both are very depressed. What I like about depression in Tao Lin is that it’s not necessarily pathological. Halfway through the book I totally thought he’d impregnated her.

At first it seems like he just emotional abuses her and then it turns out Dakota Fanning’s been secretly binging and purging. I don’t think the “spoiler” concept is relevant here. “Haley Joel Osment” comes across as a total dick even though he does sort of know what to do. I like that Tao Lin does that with not-himself. I like the realism about this couple creating their own little world. I want to use the terms “party girl” and “cheese beast” and have someone understand them. I think Tao Lin is a party girl. I am a party girl. It’s easy to say the attitude is immature and neurotic, and I want to shrug that off as harmless and ubiquitous but the impact on “Dakota Fanning” makes it actually more morally conscious than a parody of Tao Lin. But “Shoplifting” already kind of had that underlying moral message. I think a lot of the couple’s professions of need actually sound kind of weird to me because I feel like every time I’ve said anything like that it was very very self-aware.

I don’t know. A lot of what they, and Tao Lin, do say is self-aware, but so dry that there’s no difference. I always feel like the manuscript was written with a lot less capitalization and punctuation, so it’s gone through that transformation already. Tao Lin definitely is being about neutrality in representation as a direction with an impossible goal. That’s too figurative for a Tao Lin parody. I don’t want to tell you what to do with these books but I do think Tao Lin is important to be able to parody.

I wanted to include some quotes from the book but it lost all the highlights I put in before about 2/3 of the way through and I didn’t want to be biased.

Anyway, I guess I like him because he’s familiar. He steals from places near the place where I work, but doesn’t mention stealing from us, which I appreciate. We have a similar social anxiety and detachment, and have our most emotionally intense experiences through internet chatting. He makes me think “I could do that” but this review was my chance to and I don’t think I could, or want to, and neither could that Observer guy.

285 E 3^rd St. Second Floor New York 10009

LES/East Village, between Aves C and D near the F, L and 6 lines

Preview images on Flickr!

Works will be available for silent auction, prices based on whatever information was kept with the piece.  Some pieces are free or $0 first bid, with $10 bid increments.  Come help them reclaim their history and give them a loving home.  Includes work by Chris Twomey, Hilary Maslon, Gulsen Calik, Liz N Val, Lina Pallotta, Nikki Johnson, P. Skiff, and Emilio Cruz. Sales benefit Tribes.

Curated by Janet (Janet@Bruesselbach.com) and Ana (ambezanilla@yahoo.com)

Hyde Park, a strikingly gentrified bubble of academia nestled amongst unsafe territory, may have appeared on the country’s radar solely from its Barack Obama fame, but from its empty streets and desolate parks, local neighborhood kids created a dream. Shawn Bullen and Christopher Gary, along with several other childhood friends, came to be known throughout the city as IDC. What started as a crew of friends developed into a brotherhood of talent. Gary and Bullen, already natural artists, started writing graffiti in high school, surrounded by an urban landscape waiting to be claimed. Indirect Disrespect, I Define Creative, I’m Damn Cool, Intergalactic Drug Club, and I Destroy Chicago are only a handful of acronyms that came to define them and what they stood for. Over the years, the IDC family, nurtured by its founders unconditional acceptance of others and willingness to venture into any territory, grew exponentially. With this the dream grew and grew, and IDC members represented the crew through participating in commission murals, inner-city art programs for kids, and curating various art shows featuring work from friends and newcomers alike.

On August 5, 2010, Gary and three others went on a late night boat ride on Lake Michigan to see the northern lights. Early in the morning they went for a swim, including the captain, consequently leaving the boat behind. By the time all four surfaced, the boat had traveled thirty feet away, and none of them could see each other. Two of the friends treaded water for five hours desperately hoping for a rescue from the chilling water and the unbelievably strong current which pulled them apart. Once the sun rose, the two girls, very close friends of Gary, were found by a fisherman. The body of the captain surfaced, and the boat was traced to a harbor six miles away. Christopher Gary was not found, and even upon days of searching, he remains missing in the water.

Not enough can be said to acknowledge his life, love, and influence. He shone on everyone around him, regardless of others’ criticism. Gary not only excelled in drawing and painting both in the graffiti and fine art realms, but was a talented rapper who was working on various collaborations with fellow musicians from Chicago and beyond. No one could ignore that he was in the prime of his life. At 21 years old the entire city knew him. Graffiti writers across Chicagoland honored his life through tags and pieces, and this past Sunday, Hyde Park locals, IDC family members, and anyone Chris ever touched came to the 53rd street graffiti wall to pay tribute. The wall, a frequent hangout spot for the crew, constantly evolves with new works from artists every week, but at the end of that day from end to end it bore the thoughts, messages, and souls of everyone who ever loved him, and has never been more beautiful.

A couple days before Chris died he told me I was the person he respected the most. I became a part of the IDC family in a very dark time. They treated me like a sister while the rest of the world looked right through me. On a personal level IDC saved my life, and through the combined influences of all my best friends I learned to love myself and others equally. This is what the dream was. Chris, through his own quirky language, spontaneity and undying swagger represented it for all. He had many tattoos, but the one that meant the most to him was a burning candle on his chest, representing the lingering dream of IDC Arthouse, a plan incorporating the vast talents of our members, from teaching to cooking and everything in between. His loss has put our lives in perspective, and with open hearts we carry so much of his vibrancy in us. It is now our duty to make his dream, our dream, come true in ways he could have never imagined. We as a family want all to experience what we have to say, and join us in our quest to make the world fair, accessible, enjoyable, and enriching for all. As Chris would have wanted, beautiful, unimaginable ideas are about to manifest, and life begins anew.

Inspiring Dreaming Creating. RIP.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 10, 2010   

UNPOP           curated by Janet Bruesselbach

September 4 – 30, 2010

Opening Reception with refreshments Saturday, September 4, 8 pm

A Gathering of the Tribes Gallery

285 E 3^rd St. #2 New York, NY 10009 (F to 2^nd Ave, 5 blocks east, between Ave C & D)

No artist avoids status anxiety from the judgments of polymarkets, and it often seems the only ideology defining art remains anti-Capitalist antagonism, despite pop art’s ubiquitous ironic recombination of fine and commercial art. Myths that art is just who you know are both true and devalue the complex interplay of measures of value. A Gathering of the Tribes, Unpop’s natal location, as of September 2010, is a nearly broke non-profit, non-commercial, arts organization run out of an old blind guy’s apartment. Its mission of diversity is as easily aimed towards unexpected conjunctions of art from the many splintered tribes of art practice, or that fronts at freedom from market constraints. Contemporary pop art rules the market because it is self-consciously and self-righteously a commodity. In Unpop, we show that spaces peripheral to the art market are all the more market-obsessed.Unpop involves artists who either use pop tropes or engage commodification in entirely different ways. The aesthetic of high-saturation solid colors, forms simplified to communicate and ideas spun positive, sarcastically or not, pervade, from the attention-seeking demands of advertising.

Jenny Bhatt has sent paintings from India that fuse cartoon Western popism with the well-established philosophical conversation of Hindu Buddhist mythology, featuring a cast of conceptual deities in consumerist narratives. She makes interactive work and comic strips at her site
Washington Chavez went to every gallery in New York City asking them to look at his paintings, and filmed all of it. The result is a queasy litany of rejection, the dying profession of door-to-door salesman multiplied by the eternal buyer’s market of art, emotional sadomasochism intensified by raw documentary recording.
Rita Alves’s anamorphic installation paintings are more engaged with the national politics of U.S. human rights violations than directly with consumer politics. The use of funhouse optics to undistort image evidence of atrocities questions the tension artists feel between the obligations to be both sensitizing activists and entertainers. It makes the whole commodity issue look selfish.
Lauren Hoffen paints commercial parodies that literalize ironic double-speak through blacklight-sensitive paint.
James Mercer assembles ephemeral cardboard and paint installations (as well as digital and ink drawings) resembling video game levels. They are idiosyncratic, generative rewarders of attention from Millenial observers trained by extremely creative-labor-intensive products.

Inquire Janet@Bruesselbach.com and view online catalog at http://www.tribes.org/web/unpop/