Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-02T20:50:03.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf: Simulacral Performance and the Deconstruction of Orientalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2013

Steve Luber
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf's production of Drum of the Waves of Horikawa, Jess Barbagallo plays the curiously named Eesogay Yougayman, bedecked in a flowing black coat, a wig fit for Ziggy Stardust, and a badgerlike streak of black makeup across her face. The live music falls somewhere between the rhythmic, repetitive structures of kabuki and the more chaotic yet just as percussive style of punk rock, allowing Yougayman (implied to be a traditionally male character) to strut and plunge with violent swagger. She stalks the stage and falls to her knees before the object of her affection, Otane, played by Heidi Shreck, who wears a blood-red kimono and combat boots. Yougayman stares lasciviously into the audience, describing how she abandoned her studies as a samurai to see Otane: “My sickness was a ruse and yet not entirely so, for I was suffering from the malady called love. And you were the cause, Otane!” An exaggerated, almost parodic struggle ensues, in which Otane is caught by Yougayman, whose tongue wags in rhapsodic anticipation of the sexual conquest she is about to force upon Otane as the music and guttural “huhs” from the musicians heighten to a rough, almost unbearable climax.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 87 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Endnotes

1. Witkiewicz, Stanisław, “A Few Words about the Role of the Actor in the Theatre of Pure Form,” in Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz: Seven Plays, trans. and ed. Gerould, Daniel (New York: Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications, 2004), 383–8, at 388Google Scholar.

2. The departure from identity or community politics further separates 2HC from other New York–based contemporaries, such as the Civilians, International WOW, Young Jean Lee, or Troika Ranch. Many experimental companies are working with simulacral performance, such as the patron saint The Wooster Group and Radiohole, The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, and Temporary Distortion; but 2HC has thus far been the company saddled with the responsibility for interculturalism.

3. Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Glaser, Sheila Faria (1982; reprint, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 2, 6Google Scholar; Baudrillard's italics.

4. Harding, James M. and Rouse, John, eds., Not the Other Avant-Garde: The Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 3Google Scholar.

6. Baudrillard, 7.

7. Trilling, Lionel, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 99–100; my italicsGoogle Scholar.

8. See Poggioli, Renato, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Fitzgerald, Gerald (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Bürger, Peter, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Shaw, Michael (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 51Google Scholar.

9. See Jochen Schulte-Sasse's “Foreword: Theory of Modernism versus Theory of the Avant-Garde” in Bürger, vii–xlvii, at xiii.

10. Bürger, 87.

11. Tillis, Steve, “East, West, and World Theatre,” Asian Theatre Journal 20.1 (2003): 71–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. From here, since I am in agreement with Tillis, I self-consciously use terms such as East and West for the practical purposes of common vocabulary, particularly critical vocabulary, and for an understanding that East and West in simulacral performances follow the lines of postmodern pastiche.

12. Lei, Daphne P., “Interruption, Intervention, Interculturalism: Robert Wilson's HIT Productions in Taiwan,” Theatre Journal 63.4 (2011): 571–86, at 571CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Ibid., 584.

14. Ibid., 586–7.

15. Ibid., 574; Lei's italics.

16. Baudrillard, 2.

17. Derrida, Jacques, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Prenowitz, Eric ([French orig., 1995] Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 36Google Scholar.

18. David Cote, “Drum of the Waves of Horikawa,” Time Out New York, 1–7 November 2007; Robin Reed, “Drum of the Waves of Horikawa,” nytheatre.com, 27 October 2007; Helen Shaw, “A ‘Major’ Achievement,” New York Sun, 17 January 2006; Andrea Stevens, “Shaw's Skewers, Kabuki-Style,” New York Times, 18 January 2006; Daniel Mufson, “All Thumbs: Henry Fielding's Tom Thumb, Fried and with Lots of Butter,” Village Voice, 18 May 2004; Steve Luber, “My Kingdom for a Potato!” OffOffOnline.com, 13 May 2004; Rachel Saltz, “Adultery, Blood, Guts and Samurai,” New York Times, 1 November 2007.

19. For invaluable work on interculturalism, aesthetics, and the problems of modernity, see Appadurai, Arjun, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Bharucha, Rustom, The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking through Theatre in an Age of Globalization (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press [Hanover, NH: UPNE], 2000)Google Scholar; and Canclini, Néstor García, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity, trans. Chiappari, Christopher L. and López, Silvia L. ([Spanish orig., 1989] Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

20. George Hunka, “Shaw, Kabuki, Eva Peron: The Usual Mix,” New York Times, 25 June 2006.

21. Marranca, Bonnie, The Theatre of Images (1977; reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

22. Giter, Inna, “From Thermodynamics to Theater,” Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf's Narrow Sheet #1 (March 2003): 1Google Scholar.

23. Yasujirō Ozu (1903–63) has been called “the most Japanese of Japanese directors” because of his aesthetic of shomin-geki, or “home drama,” which emphasizes the everyday life of the Japanese lower middle class. Examples include films such as Banshun (Late Spring, 1949) and Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953). See Richie, Donald, The Major Works of Yasujiro Ozu (New York: New Yorker Films, 1974), 5Google Scholar.

24. See Pronko, Leonard C., “Kabuki: Signs, Symbols, and the Hieroglyphic Actor,” in A Kabuki Reader: History and Performance, ed. Leiter, Samuel L. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), 238–52Google Scholar.

25. Artaud, Antonin, The Theatre and Its Double, trans. Richards, Mary Caroline ([French orig., 1938] New York: Grove Press, 1958), 85Google Scholar.

26. Leiter, Samuel L., Frozen Moments: Writings on Kabuki, 1966–2001 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asia Program, 2002), 110Google Scholar.

27. Artaud, Antonin, “No More Masterpieces,” in Theatre and Its Double, 74–83Google Scholar.

28. Witkiewicz, Stanisław, The Witkiewicz Reader, trans. and ed. Gerould, Daniel (London: Quartet Books, 1992), 148Google Scholar.

29. Ibid., 149–50; emphasis added.

30. The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theatre, ed. Brandon, James R. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 148Google Scholar.

31. Pronko, 241, 243.

32. Helen Shaw, “Pretty in Punk,” Time Out New York, 25–31 October 2007.

33. Reed; Saltz.

34. See Stevens.

35. Robert Simonson, “Major Barbara,” Time Out New York, 19–25 January 2006.

36. Shaw, George Bernard, Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, Major Barbara, Androcles and the Lion (New York: The Modern Library, 1956), 193Google Scholar.

37. Shaw, George Bernard, George Bernard Shaw on Language, ed. and annot. Tauber, Abraham (New York: Philosophical Library, 1963), 23Google Scholar.

38. Brandon, 147.

39. Bürger, 11.

40. Reed.

41. McNeil, Legs and McCain, Gillian, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 74Google Scholar.

42. See Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia [2], trans. Massumi, Brian ([French orig., 1980] Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Derrida, Jacques, Writing and Difference, trans. Bass, Alan ([French orig., 1967] Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian ([French orig., 1979] Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984)Google Scholar.