A response to /twelv/ -- the subversive critique in action

'Just who is watching who here?'- this question classifies my response to the work of the group known as /twelv/last Friday night at Fall Forward. The piece collapses the notion of performance into a new entity, dramatic examination, social and communal as it aggresses the spectator to reshape our collective passive presence into a self-conscious field of shaken individuals. /twelv/'s members bite back and what was the 'audience' becomes an obliterated communal identity. Response to the work occurs in form of individual minds responding in a variety of modes; an attenuation brought on by the shock (maybe the fear) of actors who speak to you instead of for you.

/twelv/'s work is difficult to classify as a performance, my role as part of the audience challenged simultaneously causing me to question the role of the performer. The members of /twelv/ enabled a field of observation around the audience- we are reminded of the fact that as part of the audience we are a coherent and immediate force of influence on the performers; we are reminded that the performer is watching us as well.

Perhaps, the work is obvious and perhaps not even innovative in the tradition of "Performance Art, but this is not what is at stake here, not its innovation or lack thereof, but its mere presence in the public community at large. This was not good theater, this was excellent critique. /twelv/'s members, like Achaens concealed a critique in the guise of a dance piece for fall Forward, or was it really a 'Horse'?

Was it uncomfortable? Yes.

Finally, daunted to ask questions beyond: "Like...was it good?"-It was not about appreciation but about examination and risk.

Was it meaningful? Yes.

The moves this group made this night shook it up. Their actions can be classified as subversive; challenging the normative assumptive form of theater. I see the work as an aggressive critique allowing me to finally get a look at the performer's true craft, itself based within the realm of self-conscious examination. Self-consciousness is projected into the audience, the fourth wall crashes, and we are left questioning each other, performer and spectator, simultaneously.

Moments of the kind that night are rare - seldom do I find myself forced to question in this manner, these labors are waning day by day. The narrow casting of our identities and reality brought on by our appeasement of the normative and the politically correct is characteristic of our day and age. Perhaps it is the result of an energetic pluralism, or maybe it's the weather. The cause is nebulous, but the condition exists nevertheless. The subversive critique as a form is honest, direct, misguided and chaotic, in other words it is essential.

Please understand, the subversive is not defined by the ostensive but rather, the challenge to the normative. Perhaps this is merely a first step, the critique itself, not specific, but it is a first step and valuable as such.

One last word on the /twelv/:

The ending of the piece puzzles me: over the course of the examination I found myself reckoning with the very notion of theater, spectatorship and performance; miraculously the lines become blurry, but this process instead of continuing was halted, the lights dimmed and my former identity was called into action. The ending of the piece defined my identity, not as an active participant of what I just saw, but once again as an element of the passive audience. I wish it hadn't happened, it seemed like we were on to something.

-Frank Ruy, College junior