Delusion: modern mystery plays

Kirstie: I guess I was sold on the combination of intimacy and spectacle that Delusion offered. My feeling was "Wow. Why can't I see this every Friday night, instead of going to the latest blockbuster movie or an open mic night?" Anderson seemed wed these unlikely extremes.

 

In particular I enjoyed the way the "vignettes" were put together: the strength of the writing; Laurie Anderson's confident delivery; the way that ideas were layered associatively; and how the technology and sound supported storytelling but also pushed against it, creating strange juxtapositions that broadened the scope of the stories being told.

 

I came out thinking that this a direction that storytelling and poetry need to take in the 21st century. Historically I think that theatre and narrative poetry are very close: until books were common, dramatic performance and oral storytelling were the means by which stories were transmitted. Poetry was the mnemonic device that allowed performers to remember their "lines." Delusion seems to me like a very contemporary take on a very old art: Anderson's stories are in keeping with 21st century poetics -- lyrical and full of strange imagery -- and the video projections seem like a concrete manifestation of the imaginary world that stories conjure. The projections were not a literal interpretation of the stories, but were more like a mental aid, something to invite us deeper into the fantasy of free-association that Anderson was crafting. 

 

The performance was more open ended, more interactive towards the audience, and more suggestive than a traditional play. While the 4th wall wasn't quite open, I had the distinct feeling that Anderson was talking to not at or in spite of the audience. Her work was prepared in advance but did not actually feel scripted.

 

All of these are reasons why I really enjoyed being immersed in the strange environment (like a voluntary visual and auditory hallucination) of Delusion. I would say that I did indeed like the performance, but I do agree with you Megan that it is experiential. Anderson's loose, elliptical style of storytelling means that the audience isn't confronted with a message that they either accept or reject.  Instead we are asked to absorb the images and make our own mental and emotional connections, guided by the tone of the material that she presents.

 

Kirstie: On the other hand, one of our companions mentioned at the show, some people walked out of the show. And some, as you mentioned were giving a standing ovation. I wonder what it was that made the piece so alienating to some and so moving to others?

 

Megan: Narrative and technology. The lack of one and the excess the other either hooked people or turned them right off. I either felt wholly engrossed or absolutely overwhelmed. In some respects, Delusion it was entirely self-indulgent. Experiential art certainly pushes boundaries, but it risks alienating a large part of the audience at least some of the time if they don't relate, find it cacophonous or simply want to be entertained and escape the day's trials. (Could this be escapist for some? I guess it definitely could. Not me. But you, yes, it seems! I kept trying to make connections between tangents and found I was looking too hard for meaning in the symbols and tropes.)

 

Kirstie: I enjoyed the style of presentation offered by Delusion. Where I was less sold on the show was in its overall arc. Anderson opened by raising a lot of questions about how we find meaning in contemporary Western society -- "the land of free speech and sex with strangers."  The stories moved in all kinds of directions from there, some of them were twisted or macabre (being pregnant with her own dog, for example), some were lyrical (dancing nymphs were mentioned once), and many were darkly funny (Hadron Colliders causing time to run backwards because the planet itself is terrified of the future). The connection seems to be that had some kind of question of selfhood at their base -- who am I when I dream? What will my final words be before I die? She closed with an intimate and emotionally raw story about the death of "her" mother (I take the speaker here to be a poetic, fictional self).  With this ending, she asks "did you ever really love me?"

 

As the piece was drawing to a close, I found myself thinking "don't let this be the ending, it's too easy." Was she really trying to say that all the freedom and technological prowess in the world are nothing without love?  I think her intention is more sophisticated than this, but somehow this ending felt heavy-handed, even with a musical segue to soften the delivery and take us out. They edginess and wry cynicism that we started with were not resolved but neither did they quite balance the potential sentimentality of this ending.  I wonder  -- if she had said "could you have ever really loved me" -- if the simple distinction of one word might have been enough to tie the political satire of the opening, the soul-search elements, and the emotionally revealing ending?

 

Megan: A really good point, Kirstie. Although this production was highly creative, some of the ideas were frankly not that original. That Americans didn't actually flood north following the first and then second election of Bush. Or that men can't cry in public, for example. And yet, she followed up the unimaginative trope of men-can't-cry-for-fear-of-emasculation with the surprising statement that she keeps mens' tears in a jar.

 

Kirstie: Yes, exactly. For me that's where the poetry was, in these unexpected side-steps that would transform a cliche into something wonderful and strange. That's where this piece seemed to have the potential to really transform our conversations about politics and gender. That jar of tears was such a weird idea: like she's celebrating those rare moments of vulnerability, but it's also creepy -- a new kind of American psycho, some kind of witch-in-her/his lair hoarding perverse trophies of mysterious Americana.

 

Megan: And as she repeated this refrain, an image of a woman, prone on the floor and draped in a white cloth while being sniffed by a dog and also photographed by a man, put human ideals of grace and liberty and even justice into my mind. The symbol of the Statue of Liberty, fallen and dethroned, as yet another casually of the parallel but dark appetites of greed, ego and selfishness that propel the American Dream. 

 

I also reacted to somber, sometimes sinister and sometimes nostalgic, references to loss. "Another day another dollar, another day in America," Anderson almost chanted as if mourning the country's disillusionment with its own creation stories. If anyone can become a millionaire or grow up to be President, as the dream has it, then the country is at risk of being led by a man such as George W. Bush.

 

Kirstie: I really appreciated that she opened with political inquiry -- as if to say "I'm not going to pull any punches here." But I didn't really feel like she followed up with quite enough exploration. So OK, total political freedom is terrifying, and extreme liberalism can mean that we have to accept all kinds of no-so-enlightened politics in the name of tolerance, and so we're all enslaved to the capitalist machine and not as free as we think -- so what? None of this is new territory for criticism. But I felt like she left us hanging a little, by turning towards the personal at the end.

Megan: So, how do we judge Anderson's inconsistencies (the political to the personal; the highly original to the tired) and what do they say about the piece as a whole?

 

Kirstie: I come out largely in Anderson's favour. For me there was enough going on artistically in Delusion to rearranged my thinking about how stories can be told to make me fee stimulated and excited. And I do think the whole business of confronting death/being unable to love/asking where we go from here is a step in the right direction. If her subject is something like "who am I, as part of this individualistic, materialistic society, with all my dreams, and impulses, and feelings" then it's not inappropriate to look at concepts like a "Mother Meditation" -- love and death are supposed to be our most profound human experiences. My main complaint is that it felt like this idea was presented to quickly -- she was nuanced in some places, and so I craved an ending that was equally complex.

 

Megan: Are you saying that you still longed for some kind of structure: beginning/middle/end that provided a sense of dramatic closure?

 

Kirstie: I think that I felt like the piece reached whatever closure it was going to come to, but that it got there too fast and so some of the subtlety that might have been there was lost.

 

Megan: Kirstie, do you have any advice for viewers like me who were trying but ultimately failed to enjoy this? 

 

Kirstie: I suppose that we can't really force ourselves to find meaning in something that doesn't speak to us. For myself though, I always like to try to unravel the imagery and symbolism that's being thrown my way in a piece like that. And I do that with faith that whatever interpretation I come to is legit -- because for me art should always be open to different readings. I wonder if some of the folks who walked out felt like the piece was inaccessible, if maybe they didn't give themselves enough chance to dig into the images?

 

Megan: A reasonable assessment. I didn't find it inaccessible, I just didn't find it enjoyable. Many of the images, sounds and language not only didn't speak to me, but often failed to resonate in any way. I was even bored. That's harsh, since I have so much admiration for Anderson's risk-taking, inventiveness and bold, creative treatments of spoken word, music and the stage.

 

Kirstie: I suppose that is a real risk in this kind of performance -- we the audience come to someone like Anderson, known and respected as she is, hoping that she has something unique and insightful to say to us.  And so our disappointment is that much greater if the work doesn't connect. And I think it's a legitimate place from which to critique the work: if the audience comes looking to connect, and goes away frustrated, then what kind of conclusions do we draw from the work?

 

Megan: You're right on. My expectations weren't met -- in fact, they were grossly disappointed.

 

Megan: Was Delusion worth doing? Was it worth Anderson's time and was it worth ours? I am not sorry I saw this once, but I wouldn't see this again (okay, I would because I'm curious to see if I have the same disaffected reaction). 

 

Kirstie: I couldn't really speak for Anderson but it did feel like a process-based work. As an artist she seemed to be asking questions for their own sake -- even seemingly clichéd ones -- to see where they would lead her. To me that sounds exciting, because you don't always know what you will get.

 

Megan: A worthy pursuit. But did it require an audience? If she is working through some of these ideas, I wonder where they will take her and what we can expect from her in future performances if she continues to explore -- but focuses!

 

Kirstie: Haha -- I guess if we're willing to be guinea pigs -- and some of us are...On the other hand, it is titled Delusion -- so maybe the implication is "view at your own risk"?

 

Megan: And that explains the mystery of these "mystery plays."