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".

On Exponential Curves

We started a bit early tonight.    

We started at one o’clock. We felt normal.   

Two. Lightheaded by this point. We were able to make plans. We could still do tongue twisters.  

At three o’clock we got that mild feeling of floatation, or gliding. Vodafone told us to make the most of now.  

Four. We knocked over objects, we spilled drinks. Cosmopolitan declared it the Summer of You.  We played truth or dare.   

We got to five. We were unusually confident. We got bolder, more flirtatious. In sports cars, green became the new red. Someone suggested strip poker.  

Six. Our speech got pretty slurred. MacDonalds used climate change to sell us coffee. People’s first names became interchangeable. Bad hangovers became likely. Nostalgia. Nationalism. Spin the bottle.  

Seven. We saw lines of large trucks filling Lambton quay. We had sex with randoms.  Ex partners received incoherent text messages. Somewhere around here we reached a sort of point of no return.   

Eight. We hit a spike. The gulf turned to shit. We had breakdowns on the footpath outside Shooters. We gave up on empathy.

At nine o’clock we basically said fuck it, lets make a night of it.
 

By Ralph (with a nod to Don Patterson). This was written for Wellington theatre collective Binge Culture’s last show, Drowning Bird, Plummeting Fish, but wasn’t in the final version. 

Feedback the Judges have given us:

  “I wish you’d sing something about my problems.” 

    “I’d like you to do that again, on fire.” 

  “I’d like to see you do that again, but with some tigers.” 

  “Are you aware of the snipers on the upper balcony?”

“You have a luminous soul. You are a voice in a billion. Fix your breasts.” 

  “We don’t have time for another version of Memory. For god’s sake, the ice caps are melting.” 

  “You need to relax, be proud of who you are. Just act natural.” 

  “I don’t think you know who you are. I don’t know who you are. Who are you? How did you get in here? Security!” 

  “Je ne parle pas anglais.” 
 
“You’re good, but there are far too many famous people.” 

  “Do you have an eating disorder, because you should consider getting one.” 

   “You need to believe in yourself.” 

  “You believe in yourself too much.”  

“I’ll give $1000,000 to the audience member who brings me your head in a bag.”  

“I think that you are what this competition is all about.”

In Defence of Humanity

 Without coming across all defensive, we thought we should remind readers that there are, despite what people have been saying, some pretty clear differences between humans and animals. 

Including:   


  a) We will not tricked by basic traps- ie flowers that look like other bees so that they mate with them, or eyes on butterflies that look like predators.

b) We are (usually) less hairy. We wear eyeliner. 

c) Time, clocks and watches. We understand about death, and that the sun is a very, very long way away. 

 d) We make tools, like hammers and water blasters. 

 e) We outthink our instincts. We tell lies. 

f) Art. No apes make art and if they do it looks like a Jackson Pollock, which doesn’t count. 

 g) We went to the moon. And no, the dogs and apes that went into space first don’t really count because who put them in the rockets in the first place? 

  h) Shakespeare. And especially Hamlet, though I haven’t read it.

i) We fall in actual love and only kill when there are wars or a good reason.