Let's Take a Walk.

March 06, 2018

How many steps does it take to walk around the world? In the spirit of extremes (as with super-short twitter plays and super-slow music), I propose a production of Mother Courage and Her Children across the globe.

There are five performers. Mother Courage, her four children and her canteen wagon. The wagon (which would serve as the stage and the home of the performers), would be representative of the production elements of traditional theatre. Picture it as the magician’s hat in which exist the dove, the endless colorful cloth, the deck of cards and the glass of sherry. The wagon, like the hat, speaks the language of mysterious provision. We all know that the hat is a trick, but the wagon steps up from an appendage to co-player by its relentless presence. The wagon and her fellow players have a single objective; to travel among communities, and always have room for one more. Within reason, of course.

Mother Courage and Her Children would be performed following the map created by Karl Bushby. Out of the many individuals to have attempted to cross the globe on foot, his route offers a path unbroken by sea or ocean. Bushby’s Goliath Expedition started out in Punta Arenas (Chile), and will come to a close in Hull (England). Due to complications with the Russian government and his sponsors, Bushby was unavoidably detained and is set to complete his feat sometime in 2018. I wish him all the best!

After a few quick google searches, it turns out that walking around the entire globe can take anywhere between 4 and 15 years. Yikes. This would be no small commitment. But why? Why doom a group of performers to a never-ending production of a play where everybody but the old lady dies? Put a pin in that.

With regards to the script and its many crucial plot points, I would propose a freedom of play within the company. Perhaps for the first year they are only allowed to communicate with the people they encounter using text from the script. Or perhaps they are to discard the script completely and proceed under the guidance of death. Maybe the actors are permitted to use whatever words they desire, as long as one of the children “dies” every six months. What if characters got shifted around every two months or so, to keep the action alive? Or maybe there are no set characters, and this is literally just a travelling troupe of actors selling their craft in exchange for food. Or perhaps they have “on” and “off” times, during which they set up shop and either perform a scene or sell their wares, then close up at a slated hour.

Here is where I ran into a snag. There are so many variables to grapple with, but none more so than the question of “why”. (Remember the pin?) Funding and feasibility aside, there has to be a real purpose for this piece to actually take place. The stories of some globetrotters included responses to child abuse and cancer to name but a few; these people were motivated to carry their banner across the globe and work their way through more than 50 pairs of shoes. “Plays are produced for all kinds of reasons, rarely because a play exists that “must be done”…One thing is sure: the play is not the thing.” There is no doubt that a project of this undertaking would be cool, but “cool” is the last thing on the mind 2 years into a 7-year long project.

Here, I am reminded of the great walk by Marina Abramovic Ulay (seen above); a 90 day performance during which they walked towards each other from either end of The Great Wall of China. Through this walk, they executed a dramatic end to their romantic and professional relationship. Was it more Performance Art than Environmental Theatre? Definitely. However, one can look to the way in which they transformed the space of the Great Wall from historical landmark to personal platform. We can also look to the divided focus of their audience between both performers in different places, and to the invasion of the space by the audience through the media. Schechner’s axioms can be applied in one way or the other, and thus accommodate performance art under the umbrella of environmental theatre.

We all have some perception of the limitations of the human body, as well as an understanding of what constitutes a play of any kind. With both environmental and traditional theatre, there security that a play has a beginning and an end. And although Epic Theatre may not necessarily fall under tradition, it possesses its own principles that ground it as a recognizable convention. With productions such as Arcadia; the lights came up and the action started signaling the start of the play, then went to black and the action ended, signaling the end of the experience. The Happenings between the 1910’s and 20’s began and ended with fuzzier boundaries, but they started and ended nonetheless. “Art was now defined by the action, activity, occasion, and/or experience that constituted the Happening, which was fundamentally fleeting and immaterial.” (http://www.theartstory.org/movement-happenings.htm)

I would hope for Mother Courage and Her Children, travelling across the world to remain “fleeting and immaterial” for all invited onto the wagon, even as the journey proves arduous and drawn out.

PS: Here are two other maps across the globe on foot.

Dave Kunst’s Route: