| The History of Glass | Bright Edge |
| Written by Simonne Michelle-Wells |
| Saturday, 01 November 2008 01:33 |
 Left - Mar Bucknell. Cover - Allan BoydThe media promotion for The History of Glass begins with: ‘One day a whole lot of people wake to find they've been imprisoned in a huge cube of yellow glass. How did they get there? Who has imprisoned them? Why? And why them?’ I suppose because these questions were raised I presumed that they’d be answered during the show. They weren’t. Perhaps this is just a lesson for me – that one must never presume, especially when one is dealing with the subjectiveness of art. That said, The History of Glass is an intriguing piece of installation art. The idea of it is brilliant, in fact; it’s just the execution that leaves a little to be desired. The piece is set up in one of the smaller, square rehearsal rooms downstairs at the Blue Room. It’s a good venue for a show about people stuck in a cube, and sitting on the floor on cushions was doable for that amount of time (an hour). The show is hinged on a cycle of eighty short prose poems, written and performed by Mar Bucknell, accompanied by soundscapes by Allan Boyd and live drawing by Stuart Reid. This concept of performance poetry married with live drawing is utterly wonderful. The artist, Stuart Reid, sits at the back of the room with a graphics tablet (allowing him to draw with a digital pen instead of a mouse) and the drawing is projected in real time on a large screen in front of the audience. Projected onto the adjacent wall are block colours (mostly yellow) and primary shapes. So, the idea is terrific, but that’s where the intrigue stopped for me. The entire piece is very abstract and repetitive and needs a stronger performance from Bucknell to overcome the monotony of it. Considering that the text comprises of fragments taken from songs and adaptations from various texts and quotes, along with the 80 original short poems, Bucknell manages to create a reasonably coherent flow of ideas through the show. His performance, however, lets the text down, which is a shame. Perhaps the monotone is intended, but if so, I missed the point of it. The show is about a group of people trapped in a yellow glass cube. They can’t remember how they got there, who they are, or why suddenly people seem to be disappearing. They’re not sure how big the cube is, they are somehow never able to measure it. The text dips and swings, but ultimately seems to be a simple metaphor about the alienation and globalization of modern society and an age-old beckoning of a source of light and solace deeper than ourselves. It’s peppered with repetition and paradox: The glass contains us but we cannot mark it. We are here and we are not here. Ultimately, the people escape the glass cube as if it never was. We looked sideways and stepped through the glass and we stepped into the light. We will find ourselves. We will be. The live art is abstract indeed. And the performance itself – with the audience stuck in a cubed space – is a metaphor for the piece and vice versa. It’s interesting to watch it take shape in front of you over the duration of the show, but the artistic techniques themselves are rather repetitious and monotonous – lots of loops and circles. I suppose I was expecting an exotic (but on some level, conventional) landscape or cube of some description to be revealed, à la Mr. Squiggle style, at the end. The art, however, remained abstract, and I was left feeling none the wiser about those initial questions of how, why and who of the yellow glass cube. I realise that art doesn’t have to provide answers to its own questions, but I really wasn’t moved on any level by anything presented to me across the entire hour. Allan Boyd’s ‘soundscape’, with its broken, apocalyptic noises and the discordant and oddly timed live electric guitar was distracting and at times left Bucknell inaudible under its volume. I assumed that the disjointed nature of the sound was intentional, while my partner did not, so one could safely assume from this that at least half of the audience thought there was a significant problem with the sound on opening night. While The History of Glass will not appeal to everybody, it does offer a very different experience and has at its core a wonderful, innovative idea. Bright Edge The History of Glass Venue: The Blue Room, Kaos Room Dates: 29 October - 8 November Times: 7:15pm Wednesday - Saturday Tickets: $20/ $10 conc. Blue Room Members: $18 / $8 conc. Bookings: blueroom.org.au
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Now that the show is done and dusted, I think a few comments on the review might be useful. I have no idea who the reviewer is or what her background is, but I find it interesting that a person who sets themselves up as a reviewer can fail to notice that the show was about the city it was written and performed in. I also have no idea why she expected a metaphorical question to be answered literally. My biggest worry in writing the show was that I was going to write it so obviously that I would be rubbing the audiences' noses in it. Even half-way through the season, I was still worried that we were lecturing the audience about what we were doing. Apparently the constant repetition by all three performers of, 'I don't believe it,' is not a clue about metaphor.
It's also interesting that she is excited about the innovation of the format, when it was a direct copy of the show to which it was a sequel. When we presented 'Unawares' for Artrage 2000 and then again at the Fringe 2001, we combined a cycle of poems about Perth with live manipulated soundscapes, projected live drawing and slides. In 'Unawares' I did the live drawing while performing the poetry; in 'The History of Glass' Stuart Reid did the drawing. Other than that, our 'innovative' format was one we used eight years ago. I had used a similar format in 1998 when I directed Garrick Tippett's 'Reinventing Silence', though that didn't have live drawing: just projections of abstract paintings combined with a cycle of poems. (And that was Garrick Tippett's idea, not mine.) I haven't bothered looking it up, but I would be astonished if I were to discover that Unawares was the first show ever to combine live drawing, poetry and soundscapes. People have been putting different bits of art together since Adam was a boy. We have prettier tools now, but I don't think I'm doing anything new. Maybe I am. The other comment I have to make is that I find it interesting that the only people who consistently don't understand what I'm saying, are reviewers. Let me be clear: this is the opposite of the complaint of populist artists who complain that reviewers are snobs. Reviewers have frequently complained that they couldn't see what my shows were about. Audiences at THOG hung around for up to an hour after the show to talk to us about what they thought we had done. This is a common experience for me. I hope this is of some use to Simmone, or anyone else.
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November 26, 2008
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