Tag: Golden Book 6

Welcome to the fall 2019 iteration of Performance Club where three queer artists take you into the heart of their processes, practices, and deepest fears. Through performance gatherings, readings, discussions and one workshop, these experimental forays into a hybrid form—somewhere between the academy and the studio—seek to provide an opportunity for you to contribute to, reflect on, and shine in the light of three innovative interventions into performance and being. 

In order to enhance the experiential proceedings that define Performance Club, we provide you, here, with this syllabus and course pack (even though this is technically not a course). All will become clear soon enough. 

Club Objectives

This Performance Club will increase your ability to:


• Compare and contrast various styles of performance
• Discuss art with strangers
• Critically engage with original live performance
• Formalize the space between performance and learning
• Enhance your conceptual understanding of performance
• Enhance your conceptual understanding of clubs
• Gain a deeper understanding of process and its centrality to performance
• Develop confidence in your ability to communicate in a club setting
• Understand the ways that performance is in conversation with the social and political forces that surround it
• Laugh and then cry 
• Retreat and then rejoin
• Eat snacks and then eat more snacks
• Embrace your inner queer

Required Reading: A Script, A Story, A Score

These Performance Club events are self-referential insomuch as each refers back to a previous performance, gestures toward a future performance, or imagines a related performance. 

Research, creative engagement and hands-on learning intersect in this multi-pronged approach to develop spectatorship that is aesthetically, socially, and formally engaged. As clubs, these events necessarily rely on collective meaning-making and shared interest in specific topics. Assembled here, in one handy volume, are all the printed materials required for your fully informed club experience. 

Take this syllabus home with you. Read it, review it, and come prepared to discuss its contents in an open and friendly environment. Extra points will not be given for talking at length. 

Club Structure

Attend Performance: September 10
Performance Club begins in week one with Book Club: snowflakes in the echo chamber by Moe Angelos. Moe’s performance contemplation of fragility, fear, and the flattening of knowledge in contemporary society is performed as a “sort of” sequel to her previous Performance Club contribution, entitled Queer/Play, which you will find published in this volume. Moe wants you to know that: “When you arrive, you should be aware that performance will take place and you may be a performer and/or in the audience. And there will be snacks.” 

Readings: September 6–11
Participants must read this introduction, plus the entry by Moe Angelos entitled Queer/Play, as well as the entry by Cornell Woolrich entitled Three O’Clock in preparation for the coming week’s club performance. 

Attend Performance: September 12
In week two Hope Thompson performs a conjectural interaction with the ghost of Cornell Woolrich to dissect the trans-historical connection between queerness and mystery. This conjuring is inspired by Hope’s work-in-progress play inspired Woolrich’s Three O’Clock, which is included in this volume. Hope hopes you know that: “You will be watching an interview with a deceased writer. I don’t expect you, necessarily, to know much about the writer.” 

Reading: September 13–18
Participants must read the entry by David Bateman entitled I Wanted To Be Bisexual But My Father Wouldn’t Let Me in preparation for the following week’s club performance. 

Workshop: September 14
Attend Death, Sex, & Macrame where there will be some macramé weaving. The workshop is not mandatory, but it is compulsory. 

Attend Performance: September 19
For the third and final performance of this series, David Bateman, who wants you to know that he is “trying to configure new and current work as aspects of 35 years of creating performance, and the influences that continue to affect [his] ongoing performance work,” will delve into the ambiguities of gender and performativity to either enrich or confuse your previous views, depending on his current state of gender/mind. 

Participation

Each event happens only once, and while the events are connected they are not the same—interlinked, but unique. Participants are strongly encouraged to attend all Performance Club events related to the materials in this syllabus. Extra points will be given for initiating discussions that draw on material covered across the entire series. 

Grading

The grading scheme for participants will be fully self-regulated. If, however, you prefer to be graded by an experienced professional, please feel free to approach me at the final event. But, be advised, once you have been graded by me that grade will be considered final. 

This Is Not A Course, Nor A Show

How do we define the spaces between learning and viewing, between art and politics, between being and performing? These clubs seek to extend the reach of performance to find new forms with which to answer these questions and to pose many more questions along the way. The club format, likened to the traditional salon, can be seen as a default space of education, or as an open forum for creative expression. The club is always about engagement and in this club we hope you will find yourself engaged and embraced in a series of performances that are not just for show.

USA
www.thebuildersassocation.org

Moe Angelos is a theatre artist and writer. She is a core member of The Builders Association, an internationally touring, New York-based theatre company that has been making innovative large-scale, media infused performance work since 1994. Recent Builders projects include the critically acclaimed SONTAG: Reborn and Elements of Oz. She’s one of The Five Lesbian Brothers, an Obie-Award winning theatre company whose works include, Oedipus at Palm Springs, Brave Smiles and The Secretaries, and she has been a member of the Wow Café Theater since 1981. She has collaborated with many downtown New York City luminaries including Lisa Kron, Carmelita Tropicana, Anne Bogart, Holly Hughes, Lois Weaver, Kate Stafford, Brooke O’Harra, Half Straddle and The Ridiculous Theatrical Company. She is a Mentor in the Queer/Arts/Mentorship Program in New York City.

Photo David Hawe.

Canada

Originally from East Farnham, Québec, Moynan King is a Toronto-based performer, director, curator, writer and scholar. As an actor she has over forty professional film, theatre and TV credits, most recently roles in the hit CBC series Baroness von Sketch Show, and John Greyson’s silent subway thriller Murder in Passing and his upcoming feature Last Car. She is the author of six plays, the creator of performance installations, including the The Beauty Salon and Mothering, and was the co-creator and director of trace, which toured across Canada in 2015. She has been an artist-in-residence at Studio 303 in Montreal, and Nakai Theatre in Whitehorse. Moynan was co-founder and director of the Hysteria Festival (2003–2009), co-director of the Rhubarb! Festival (2003–2005), and has curated many a cabaret (Cheap Queers; Explain Yourself; Anne Made Me Gay; City of Freaks; Strange Sisters; Hysteria @ Edgy Women). 

King holds a PhD from York University. Her academic writing has been published in journals (Canadian Theatre Review; nomorepotlucks; Canadian Literature), and books (More Caught in the Act; Once More, With Feeling; Compulsive Acts; Toronto Theatre and Performance). She was the editor of Canadian Theatre Review, issue 149, Queer Performance: Women and Trans Artists. 

© David Bateman, Art Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, subtitle; Does This Giacometti Make Me Look Fat?, 2019. Photo Ignacio Pérez Pérez.

Canada
https://batemanreviews.blogspot.com/

David Bateman is an arts journalist and performance poet currently based in Toronto. He was born in Peterborough, Ontario and holds a PhD in English Literature with a specialization in Creative Writing (University of Calgary), and an MA in Drama (University of Toronto). He has taught at a number of post-secondary institutions including Trent University (Peterborough), Thompson Rivers University (Kamloops), University of Calgary, and Emily Carr Institute for Art and Design (Vancouver). His performance work has been presented in Canada, the United States, and Europe He has four collections of poetry published by Frontenac House Press (Calgary), as well as collaborative poetry manuscripts with Hiromi Goto (Wait Until Late Afternoon) and Naomi Beth Wakan (pause)—also from Frontenac. His collection of short stories and creative non-fiction (A Mad Bent Diva) was published by Hidden Brook Press in 2017. His arts reviews can be seen online at Bateman Reviews.

The sixth in the Golden Book series and essential reading for the performances presented in FADO’s Performance Club series, Performance Club: The Syllabus contains everything you need for your Performance Club 4–6 experience (including that pesky homework).

Designed by Lisa Kiss Design
72 pages

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. This is a Queer Series
Introduction by Moynan King

2. Queer/Play
By Moe Angelos

3. Three O’Clock
By Cornell Woolrich

4. I Wanted To Be Bisexual But My Father Wouldn’t Let Me
By David Bateman

Golden Book 6: Performance Club 4-6; The Syllabus (2019)
Authors: Intro by Moynan King; texts by Moe Angelos, Cornell Woolrich, David Bateman
Design: Lisa Kiss
Publisher: FADO Performance Art Centre
Series: Golden Books, 6th
72 pages; 8.5 x 11 inches ; Print Book, English