Trail Art
I was part of the Trail Art performance put on by the Inner Fish Theatre Society, and not to dump on the project, but the performance itself meant absolutely nothing to me.
That’s part of what was interesting about the experience, because the experience had a lot of value, and I wonder how many people felt the same way. It might be a perspective that I’m very late to the party on.
Of course audiences, and in fact us actors ourselves really want to to derive meaning from a performance, and it’s not uncommon for auteurs and those adjacent to circumvent textual meaning, but the actual performance of this event seemed to be irrelevant compared to its construction and delivery.
We were letters on a hillside, we had a direct message to convey in literal text, and the director had an artistic vision on how to express that text, but it was very flexible and constantly evolved right up until the formal delivery. Each of us amateaur, volunteer performers brought a unique aspect to the development and deployment of the scene, and I’m sure every audience member took away an interpretation just as unique and derivitive.
Regardless of what the formal intentions were for anyone there, I can’t imagine the grand message of it all being anything other than “community”. I’m very grateful, and derived a lot of meaning from having met and worked with all these different people, even if I personally thought the project was in structure rather meaningless. That’s not a critique, I just wonder how intentional that take away is from a director standpoint, and how many other experiences in my life have been missing this insight.
Post by: saturdayxiii