Interview: Shawn Sides on Dionysus in 69 [theater]
Like every other aspect of American culture, theater was radicalized in the late 60's. Music had Dylan, Hendrix, the MC5, and more. Film had Nicholson and Hopper. Theatre had The Performance Group, and its signature piece, Dionysus in 69, directed by Richard Schechner. While a true permanent record of theatrical work never really exists—the nature of the medium is fleeting—Dionysus in 69 endured better than most, thanks to a film documentary that told its story, sharing its name and directed by Brian DePalma.
But while musicians inspired by the late 60's who seek to trace their roots are able to drop the needle on a copy of Funhouse, and there's a Blu-Ray version of Easy Rider available, watching a movie about a play isn't really good enough for theater artists. To that end, Shawn Sides and the Rude Mechanicals are staging a re-enactment of Dionysus in 69 (the first of its kind) in order to give contemporary theater audiences the opportunity to see the production as it was. We caught up with Sides—who's joined in this production by Schechner, who guest-directed several rehearsals—to talk about creating a re-enactment, working with an inspiration, and whether the Rude Mechs are living in the past.
In some ways, working with Richard Schechner on Dionysus in 69 is sort of like working with Bob Dylan to play Blonde on Blonde—do you feel a larger pressure to get it right than you might when working on, say, The Method Gun?
We do feel an enormous responsibility to the audience—and to the piece, too. We are not approaching this with irony. There's the distance of time—and the fact that it isn't the sort of play we would normally do, since we're fairly allergic to audience interaction—but we're really trying to get inside the piece and live it. And when we have changed anything, it's been in the spirit of trying to make the feeling of the piece closer to the original feeling. There are people coming to our show who saw the original production, and that is such an honor. I hope that the new audience will try to get inside the mindset of audiences from the era to the best of their abilities, and try to play their role, as well. They have a responsibility in this one, too. It's okay to dance and get a total caress—you're from the past!
The goal of the project is to re-create something that, by its nature, is ephemeral. A performance differs from night-to-night, so how does that apply to a re-enactment? How do you know, in rehearsal, when you've got it right, and how do you maintain that consistently?
It's impossible to know how accurate we are. Re-enactments always differ from the original to varying degrees, of course, and we'll just never know how close or far our version really, really is. Not even Richard can tell us, because memory is such a funny thing. We studied blocking, and gestures and inflection, and the way the original actors carried themselves—their personal physical habits—from the film. We would call it karaoke— we’d play the film and perform along with it. But we've also added scenes that were cut from the film, and put the nudity back into the birth and death rituals. The moments that we've 'put back in', or tweaked, are inaccurate in terms of the film, but more accurate in terms of the original performance. And then there's all that audience interaction. The accuracy comes not only from the technical work but also from the spirit of the thing. We've made compromises in both areas to try and find a happy medium.
Does working on a re-creation feel less like a creative process?
The process has felt very creative, but it depends on how you define that. Most theatre people aren't making new work all the time and are considered “interpretive” artists, anyway—but they are still working creatively. This process has been more analogous to mounting a play that already exists in the world than our usual work. And I've found it incredibly freeing and fun, actually, because there's hardly any aesthetic pressure. If people don't like it, well, they'll just have to blame the past. I think part of the creative challenge that the actors are digging into is riding the line between technically re-tracing the original cast's physicality and being alive and present as themselves in the room. It's really hard and they're really good at it.
Following up The Method Gun, which was largely about the shadow cast by the radical theater that emerged after Dionysus in 69, with this project, it seems the Rude Mechs could be seen to be looking backwards.
Point taken: We'll definitely set our next play in the future. I think we are looking backwards a little bit. Temporarily. The whole Re-enacting the Classics project—and The Method Gun, too, to a certain extent—came up in part to figure out what the hell we are ever doing. As a company, everyone expects that we'll have a suite of exercises we've developed, or, like, our secret techniques. But instead what we have is a long tradition—a long history that we draw from. And so these productions have been a way of sharing that with everyone.
Dionysus in 69 runs December 3 - 20 at the Off Center. For more information, visit http://rudemechs.com.
