Eric Bogosian’s performance work participates in this genre. In both his solo performances and his plays he isolates and re-presents media clichés, especially those that come to us from television, using theatrical conventions as a framing device. The New World was presented as a play, but it was really a grouping of some fifteen scenes of what could instantly be recognized as “American life,” structured by means of association rather than by a narrative. The evening was introduced by a host, eerily reminiscent of Rod Serling, who creepily insinuated an easy familiarity as he offered his viewers a privileged preview of what he was pleased to call reality.
The scenes themselves were varied. Some depicted domestic life, some public; a few showed instantly recognizable aspects of a clandestine life known more from movies than from experience. All had the feel of soap opera—a heightened emotional tone, acted in a broad, theatrical style. Each scene was presented as a tableau, a figure grouping pared down to essentials, isolated against a blank expanse of colored light.
One of Bogosian’s more interesting breaks with the conventions of performance art, in fact, a break that indicates his position more succinctly than anything else, is his use of professional actors. The stylized performances of these actors, with their vocal tricks and mannerisms, their stagy postures and movements, run counter to the current wisdom, which has it that the greater directness made possible by using untrained performers is somehow more truthful. But Bogosian is after a different sort of truth, one which can only be approached by being kept at a distance. And everything about The New World confirms this, from the placement of the tableaux toward the back of the very wide stage, to the arbitrary-seeming lighting, which kept the stage fairly dim while throwing walls of saturated pinks and pale blues against an empty background, to the insistently rhythmic guitar music of Glen Branca that fed through the sound system.
—Thomas Lawson
