A photo my brother took in India

Few of you, I think, will even be aware of the passing on January 1st of one of theatre and performance art's most underappreciated geniuses.  I'm of course a long time admirer of Wyszchi,  so I thought I’d set myself the (daunting) task of listing the works of his which have inspired and touched me the most. So in no particular order:

-His series of Shakespearean "Absence Plays" in which the lead character (or characters as in his Romeo and Juliet (1972)), were removed, meaning that there were extended pauses where the text of their soliloquies "should" be. This cycle reached its artistic zenith with his Hamlet (1981) in which all the speaking roles were excised save for Horatio, who played his part as normal through the four hour play despite having lines in only seven scenes. Audience response was mixed, but Wyszchi countered that they didn't understand the production's "singular, troubling poignancy and cost effectiveness."

-His The Vanishing! trilogy (1973-76) explored in depth the philosophical question, familiar to all rehearsing actors, of where wallets, letters, swords, and other imaginary props "come from" during rehearsal, and where they "go" once given to other actors in the scene while blocking. He effectively asked: "when we, as actors and human beings engaged in imagined acts, give each other imagined pet rabbits onstage, and then release them because in five lines time we have to hug each other and we obviously can't have anything in our hands, where do those rabbits go, and isn't it time we paid attention to them?" 

-After the painful break-up of his marriage to Julia Wyszchi following her decade-long affair with  another man, he immediate cast them all in a three hour piece consisting entirely of the three of them on stage, being awkward and making tea for one another.  Critics praised it as "quite uncomfortable."

He is of course most famous to the public for his year-long full- immersion projects, which included:

-spending all of 1969 on public transport using a single daytripper.

-Living the entire of 1970 darwinistically.

-In 1990 he didn't speak all year and, flattered by repeated calls for an encore, repeated the work three more times. The New York Times called it "a breath of fresh air".

I was fixing chair legs in the cafe down by the gallery atrium in the week before it reopened after its multi-million dollar overhaul. I noticed about a dozen guys in high visability vests congregating, as if something was scheduled to happen in the foyer.

One of them wheeled in a dry ice machine and started pumping haze- while the other guys watched, arms crossed- until the two story space was filled. Then very loud sirens went off, followed by a massive roar as extractor fans sucked the smoke out in a blender-vortex through the ceiling.  

It seemed like I wasn't at work anymore but a chance guest at a performance by someone with a lot of resources to throw around. Like one of those European things Joel likes where they can afford to drop cars from the ceiling and fly cows about on strings. Or a movement of the dreamlike, purposeful Third Horse in Dunedin earlier this year. 

I was grinning, but a bit sheepishly because the guys in vests looked like they were still at work! Their arms-folded, workmanlike attitude added to the effect, like disciplined extras on set. 
 
And then it was over. The guys got onto their cellphones to sort out final paint jobs and wiring and all the rest of the to-do list.

Tim Etchells' latest column, and in particular this quote, reminded me of this experience and made me want to write about it:  "It's one of those sights that makes you wonder why art is needed at all, since the world itself – once you're looking hard enough – is already such a complex and disturbing arrangement of signs and signals." This made me think about the smoke test as a rare co-incidence: I suppose the reason I was looking in that way was because it just happened to occur in an art gallery, and the reason I enjoyed it was because it just happened to occur. More evidence that "its all about context?"

As for the unimpressed vest guys, I'm sure you don't need that many boys to witness a smoke test. I strongly suspect it was the highlight of their day, too. 

-Ralph