forwarder and forwarder and perpendicular as well
Carl(os) Roa
forwarder and forwarder and perpendicular as well
A reflection on forwarder and forwarder and forwarder by Anthony Nikolchev
May 2, 2024
Photo by Gema Galiana
Frequently, I am told that my work is too "difficult" to produce, that I write "impossible" theatre, or that my plays "should be films" instead. With artists like Federico García Lorca and Paula Vogel paving the way for my own sensibilities, I often point to them as examples of why these ideas are inherently untrue. So when I attended a screening of The (un)double at CultureHub this past Thursday, I wasn't expecting to attend a thought experiment on the limitations and boundaries of theatre as a whole. To some extent, this writing can be a seen as a reflection of my experience, as well as how these reflections examine the format of performance or script-driven works.
Anthony Nikolchev, a performance and theatre artist who teaches at CalArts, developed a physical theatre project during his residency at CultureHub. It brought forth a lot of my own ruminations on what it means to blend mediums together in my own work. Taking place in a single set that was actually built inside CultureHub LA's studio, Nikolchev collaborated with a film crew as well, consisting of Brian Hashimoto who filmed the performance and Evan Bluestein who handled the editing. While Nikolchev's residency was intended to develop a meaningful dialogue between technical design and physical performance, I'll be zooming in on the ways in which a theatrical performance can transcend its own medium.
Hashimoto expressed how different the process felt from his usual experience of filming theatre performances as a videographer. Having a background in theatre himself, Hashimoto seemed to enjoy the expansiveness of a process that allowed to him to film multiple takes, when he's used to being told that he only has one opportunity to film a performance. There were also a lot of reflections from the entire creative team about the challenges of adapting a theatrical performance to a film setting, and how to capture the essence of both mediums in a meaningful way.
An extension of some of these ideas can be seen in the way I approached this article. As an art journalist, I've always found the act of watching a show and then going home to write about it to be a passive experience. Lately, I've been creating art in association with the events that I experience, and below is an example of a sketch that I made. It was inspired by a moment of some contact improvisation during the film that stood out to me as evocative.
Image by Carl(os) Roa
Lots of imagery stood out to me - particularly that of the white balloon that served as a visual motif for the project as a whole. The shape of it was quite pleasing to me, and as someone who avoids neutral colors (white, black, gray, brown, etc.) in my aesthetic, I found it an interesting challenge to find ways to incorporate the design sensibilities of The (un)double) with my own. CultureHub LA housed the set for while filming took place, which was a minimalist box that performers played inside and outside of, designed by John Isaac Watters.
Image by Carl(os) Roa
At some point, the talkback part of the event diverged into its own sort of performance art, where Nikolchev was invited to play a game with a volunteer where they told the story of their own life, and completed their story with participation from the audience. There was something about the bouncing conversation between audience members and the volunteer that felt like it was transcending the format. Normally I hate talkbacks, but with my sketchpad and the active performance happening in front of me, I had a lot more to latch onto.
Image by Carl(os) Roa
But collage is a huge part of my aesthetic, and as someone who loves color, I wasn't satisfied with these simple doodles. I was also hungry to create a more visceral composition that reflected my emotional response to a lot of the dialogue that the moderator Stacy Dawson Stearns was having with an audience. Often, as artists, we're asked to place our art into a box for categorization, or to draw an arbitrary binary between theatre and film.
Many artists with an interdisciplinary practice are frustrated by these dynamics, and often find themselves pushing back against a categorization that hinders the creation of alternative work that could exist in containers such as theaters or galleries. For a moment, Nikolchev revealed his own frustrations with the American LORT theatre model of production, which takes creativity and innovation and flattens it into something more palatable for an audience.
And here's the collage I have to show for that frustration.
Collage by Carl(os) Roa
The backdrop itself was a reflection of these ideas - the "blurred lines" of interdisciplinary art with the foreground of everything that's being asked of your art on top of it. A demand for balance and clarity for something as fragmented as interdisciplinary work feels impossible. I am someone who hates to start my sentences with "as a trans non-binary person." But several months ago another artist told me that my writing has a very non-binary perspective. It was actually a comment that I appreciated, and when I call myself non-binary, I mean this in every possible sense of the word: not just with gender, but also racial identity and modes of artistic expression. Even non-binary doesn't feel sufficient to explain myself to other people, and I can only describe my experiences as spiritual.
In a certain sense, these binaries are comforting for some artists, and constraining for others. Part of my own practice involves removing myself as far away from the theatre as possible, and spending more time with visual artists, dancers, and art-technologists. While devised and experimental theatre is a foundational part of who I am, I often reject the tradition of theatre that's been laid before me. The screening and talkback of The (un)double proved to be an interesting exercise in how to transgress boundaries set by the medium as a whole.
Carl(os) Roa [they/them] is an interdisciplinary artist and transmedia storyteller originally based in Philadelphia. (os)' work explores the marginalized within the marginalized and alternative communities living alternative lives. You can learn more about their work by visiting their webpage or following their IG: @carlparenthesisos.