78 - Manifesto!

Manifesto!
The Brick Theatre
09 September 2008, 2100

Happenstance Theater presented this piece as part of the NY Clown Theatre Festival. This performance was titillatingly surreal and perfectly artistic. I came away from it having to give my head a shake and ask myself, "what just happened?"

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions. They are usually political, but not always. A perfect example is the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1948. The Communist Manifesto was published to relate the Communist League's principles and is widely considered one of the most important and influential political manuscripts. They aren't all political though. There are several written about Dada for example. Dadaism was a cultural movement which started in Switzerland during World War I. It was a movement that protested the bourgeois and involved art, poetry, theater and other types of demonstrations. It used the absurd to make a point (for example, Man Ray created a flat iron with nails embedded in it). It helped to spawn other styles and movements like surrealism, avant-garde and pop art. Back to the show though...

Manifesto! took segments from various manifestos written in the 19th and 20th centuries and created a show around them. The only lines that were spoken during this performance were direct quotes from these manifestos such as, "Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth." from The Futurist Manifesto written in 1909 by F.T. Marinetti. They took excerpts from several Futurist manifestos, manifestos written about Dadaism, The Communist Manifesto and the Capitalist Manifesto and combined them into a fantastic performance. One of the highlights of the show was the Communist/Capitalist manifesto tango. This scene featured two performers dancing the tango while reciting lines from each manifesto back and forth to each other as if having an argument about which was better. Another popular scene was the "what does Dada do" conga line that had members from the audience parading around the stage with the clowns trying to figure Dadaism out.

Yeah...I don't know what to say either. I can bet that you just shook your head and said to yourself "what just happened?" though, right?

1oo in 6 budget: $990