We're used to new productions of old texts, but what about resuscitations? By which I mean old productions restaged as faithfully as possible, either by the original artists or by others working from documentary evidence.
Culturebot's Jeremy M Barker raises this fascinating topic with two significant productions at the moment. First, the UK premiere of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach; second a "faithful to [the] original" restaging of The Performance Group's seminal Dionysus in '69 by a Texas-based ensemble called Rude Mechs. Barker describes the original Dionysus as "arguably the very birth … of the very concept of performance as a distinct practice". The piece is notorious for one audience kidnapping the lead actor mid-performance and a sequence in which the audience are invited on stage for what the New York Times called "an esoteric group grope".
"There's a certain irony in restaging seminal performances," Barker says. "The fact that they're tied fundamentally to the moment in which they happened runs the risk of turning them into museum piece, since, at first blush, our goal in engaging with them is to understand what it was like to see it back then."
Picking up the topic at the 2AM Theatre blog, Travis Bedard argues that this just shows healthy respect: "If you want to break new ground anywhere," he writes, "it's imperative to know (really know) how others have done it." He saw the Rude Mechs' first restaging of Dionysus in '69 four years ago and found it "mindblowing". His point is that history has a habit of reducing things to their most groundbreaking or taboo-busting moments. To see what they were really like, we need to watch them for ourselves.
There's a similar warning from Nigel Barrett at Broadcast magazine's blog. Last week, the Shunt founder member shot to fame as "the transvestite that knighted Tess Daley during the Queen's jubilee flotilla". The clip was picked up on Have I Got News for You and came to symbolise the BBC's dumbed-down approach. However Bartlett provides a rather sweet account of what really happened. "Kids, families and adult Americans were having a lovely, silly time being made dames and knights by a bearded Welsh man," he writes. There was a trumpeter for added pomp and a black knight for some action, all totally tongue-in-cheek. None of which really comes across on camera. Barrett's blog suggests the problem of switching media and the inherent selectivity of the camera compared to the honest simplicity of live performance. "It was all just a bit of fun," he says.
On which note, Exeunt magazine has compiled its annual whistlestop tour of the Edinburgh Fringe programme composed entirely from show blurbs within. By turns hilarious and horrifying, it somehow manages to be a more accurate reflection of the festival's spirit than most. "Cross dressing, heartbreak and time travel. Some light puking. Straight from Weimar Germany. Starring Les Dennis." Who'll join me in booking? Anyone?
