Statesman Article on Dionysus in 69

ARTS

Fleshing out innovative '60s theater

With help from 'Dionysus in 69' director, Rude Mechanicals tackle free-form production.

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Thursday, December 03, 2009

For 'Dionysus in 69,' actors let the audience be part of the production. Richard Schechner, the original director of the 1960s production, will give a pre-show talk on Friday.

Time was when a stage with no boundary between audience and actors — and a play that changed each night according to how the audience might react — seemed all so terribly new.

It was in 1968 when theater pioneer Richard Schechner led the collective known as The Performance Group in a radical new version of the Greek tragedy, 'The Bacchae,' which Schechner called 'Dionysus in 69.' In a converted garage in New York City's Soho, Schechner and his troupe explored the limits of audience participation, kept the focus of the action always variable and flexible and even moved the show out to the street at times. Actors shed their clothes and spent most of the play naked. They switched characters and invited the audience to dance. In response, audiences staged spontaneous sit-ins or other group actions.

'Dionysus in 69' gave a 1960s spin to Euripides' tale of the struggle — to the death — between self-control and collective passion.

Click here to keep reading.

The Method Gun Fires Off to 2010 Humana Festival of New American Plays

Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > November > 18 > Entry

‘The Method Gun’ heads to Humana Festival

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin | Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 11:42 AM

The Rude Mechanicals are getting ready to hit the road to the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

For 34 years, the best of new American theater has been showcased at the Humana Festival. And the Rudes will take their wonderous ‘The Method Gun’ to ATL’s Victor Jory Theatre for a run March 16-28, 2010.

A valentine to the process of art-making, ‘The Method Gun’ impressed when it opened the Long Center’s Rollins Studio Theatre in 2008.

Then last season, the Rudes’ offered a slightly re-tweaked version at the Off Center. And as I said then, ‘The Method Gun’ ranks as one of the best productions to grace the Austin theater scene in the past few years.

See a slide show of the production here.

The Rudes next production, ‘Dionysus in ‘69’ opens Dec. 3.

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Austin Chronicle Feature Article on Dionysus in 69!

'Bacchae' to the Future

How in (a Greek) god's name can the Rude Mechs re-create 'Dionysus in 69' in '09?

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Excerpt:
"...Now, four decades after Dionysus in 69 rattled the cages of the American theatre, Schechner has come to Austin much as the titular god came to Thebes: a much-lauded figure out of the East seeking new participants in his revels. The key difference here is that Schechner doesn't need to bring a band of dancing, drinking, true-believing maenads with him; they're already here. Local theatrical mavericks the Rude Mechanicals have been carrying the torch of the Performance Group and incorporating many of its tradition-busting practices into their own productions for 13 years now. In fact, within the company, Dionysus in 69 has been the stuff of legend, a production revered for its innovation and daring and impact on audiences. So esteemed is the work by the Rudes that they are taking on their shoulders the ambitious, audacious task of re-creating the production four decades after the fact, something almost no one has attempted in all the years since."

Click here to read entire feature article.

Dionysus in 69

If you were sitting in the audience seating in the Off Center and you got up and headed down the hall, as if you were going to go to the restrooms you would pass by a velvet curtain. Behind that curtain another hallway branches off to the South. Down that hallway is the ladder up to the light and sound "booth," the enormous air-conditioning unit which was gifted to the Off Center almost a decade ago and at the very end of this hallway there is a door. The door never used to be there. It used to be a wall. On the other side of the wall was an anarchist collective that used to hold raves. We had to ask them to be quiet while we were trying to have a show. The anarchist collective eventually packed up and moved on. They were replaced by a furniture showroom and warehouse, mostly specializing in raw wood furniture. The furniture warehouse eventually packed up and moved on. And the Rude Mechs moved in.

Our first task was to transform the wall into a door. We did this by enacting some ritual magic with hammers and saws and hinges. It is a ritual that people do all over the world all day long. But sometimes when theatre artists do it something weird happens. When theatre artists make a door, the building you enter becomes a theatre. For now we're calling it the Center Center. We are now in charge of three connected buildings. Our main home, the Off Center, is the shabby old theatre you know and love on the west side, on the east side is what we are calling The Off Shoot, this is the classroom we are building for our Grrl Action program. And right in the middle of the two is the Center Center. The Rude Mechs now have a compound.

The beautiful thing about the Center Center is that when you pass through the door, you not only enter another building, you enter another time. The Center Center is going to be exposed to the public when we share our recreation of Dionysus in 69. Dionysus in 69 is the first performance in what we imagine will be a series of performances over the next few years as a part of our Contemporary Classics Series. We are going to recreate classic performances from the 60s, 70s and 80s that we feel are essential part of the American Theatre. These will be shows which we have heard about, read about, watched on DVD, and longed to see live for many years. We are starting with Dionysus in 69 because it is so near and dear to our own experience. A group of artists trying to make work collectively and enduring all the emotional and societal difficulties that come along with that, as well as reaping the benefits of having a close-knit group of friends with whom you can practice your craft.

I attended rehearsals the other night and watched Shawn and Madge lead the actors through scenes, including my favorite, Dionysus' first appearance in which the Performance Group transforms Euripides dialog into an off the cuff the bit of absurdist banter of which Groucho Marx would be proud. The actors also sang and chanted. They rolled around on the floor and screamed. Dionysus was even thrown in the pit, but he did not suffer there, because as the god himself says, "that's not how this happens." Throughout rehearsal the performers and the directors referenced scripts, photos, and DVD footage—attempting to recreate the event that was Dionysus in 69 as truly as possible. But the most important reference material of all was invisible. There was a sense in the room of a spirit from another time. Whether that was the spirit of 69 or of some more ancient era, I don't know. But there was a gentleness in the way the Rude Mechs touched one another, an earnestness to their chants and singing that could not be faked.

Dionysus in 69 was created by the Performance Group in 1968 . In 1968, Schechner himself had been transformed after working with Grotowski, the Polish director whose “Poor Theatre” sought to create “the greatest possible effect from the least possible means,” which means (in part) an acting company that focuses on the body and its training rather than working with elaborate sets or ornate costumes. Inspired, Richard Schechner and 48 men and women began a series of unstructured “explorations” in a free room in the Welfare Center on the east side of Tompkins Square Park. “We exchanged touches, places, ideas, anxieties, words, gestures, hostilities, rages, smells, glances, sounds, loves,” Schechner explains. They also began working on scenes from William Arrowsmith's translation of Euripides 'The Bacchae" When the 48 people who began these explorations under Schechner’s direction had winnowed themselves down to 13, they gave themselves the name “the Performance Group,” and prepared to invite audiences to “Dionysus in 69.”

They found a garage they could convert into a performance space. They decided not to wear costumes. Street clothes would suffice. When “Dionysus in 69” opened there was no nudity in the performance. It was only after several more weeks of the ongoing explorations that the company decided to share their birth and death rituals with the audience as they practiced them in private. The set for the performance was also the audience seating, giant wooden towers, which are doubly dangerous given the fact that they were built by the actors. The carpet that covers the floor is from the Kelly Carpet Company where one of the actors worked. A manager said that for $150 dollars they could have as much scrap as they could carry, never imagining that the Performance Group would show up the next day with a flatbed truck. The company also decided there would be no apostrophe in the title to facilitate the double entendre.

A hundred small decisions. No corner of the space, no movement, no word spoken without an awful lot of discussion and thinking and exploration. The walls of the performance space are painted white rather than the traditional black, Schechner says, “I wanted the audience to see one another.” But not right away. The audience is only allowed into the space one at a time. “Good evening, may I take you to your seat?” is in many ways the first line of “Dionysus in 69.” The plan was for each audience member to find their own place in and among the actors as they chanted and sang.

That's what will be said to you, if you decide you wanna see this one. If you want to risk being led through a door to a whole other world.

Statesman Review: I've Never Been So Happy

“I’ve Never Been So Happy” is one big smart 21st-century theatrical valentine to the Lone Star State... tender, funny, super-intelligent, super-odd..." – Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

Production Photos for I've Never Been So Happy are up on Flickr

Get Rude Two Ways: Join The Oyster Club & See I've Never Been So Happy

1. Join The Oyster Club!
2. Don't miss I've Never Been So Happy!

1. The Oyster Club
Join the club for invitations to monthly events September - April.

The first event is September 10th!

Membership Tickets
Membership website

Eight shots of off-beat culture hosted by Rude Mechs! Meeting once in every month whose name contains an "r" (September-April), the Oyster Club is a new way to find pearls of art, architecture, music, film, food, and performance in the oceans of culture in Austin and Central Texas. The Rude Mechs will lead this renegade culture club to backstage access, private tours, secret after-parties, and once-in-a-lifetime spectacles. The Oyster Club will keep you active without making you busy. The first event is September 10th - a special night with our new show "I've Never Been So Happy."

2. I've Never Been So Happy
a new western operetta performance experiment
September 10 - 20, 2009
Show Tickets
Show website

Come see musical theatre for a new breed of Texan! And stay to for a western adventure where you will be plied with soothing adult elixirs, taught how to use a lasso to capture your love, and boot scoot on our authentic Texas dance floor to the greatest music in the West.

I've Never Been So Happy, with music and lyrics by Austin Experimental Punk Grand Wizard Peter Stopschinski, and book and lyrics by Austin Experimental Theatre Mascot Kirk Lynn, fluctuates freely between high art and Hee-Haw, treating both with respect. The music pits a “Grand Ole Opry” style West against an “El Topo” style West. The writing butts lyric poetry up against bar jokes with finesse. The evening challenges what it means to “go to the theater” in 2009. In the olden days of face-to-face interaction, folks sauntered down Main Street kickin' up a trail o' dust and hollerin’ at the barber, "How's Jolene?" Now it's all checking out a video of a dude from Buenos Aires, remixing it, then posting it for others to chop and screw. This post-operetta (g)host town is the best of both worlds. The immediate participatory horizontal cultural production, but without all the emoticons because you are standing in the yard of The Off Center with all your Facebook friends gettin’ drunk, makin’ rope, bustin’ imaginary mutton and drawin’ maps of Texas land use in real time.