-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
Copy pathlevineshabit.html
506 lines (482 loc) · 33.2 KB
/
levineshabit.html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" dir="ltr">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Making Theatre Art: David Levine's "Habit"</title>
<link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<link rel="schema.DCTERMS" href="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
<link href="manuzio.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="//db.onlinewebfonts.com/c/f8957658fd5b54672505d49c1f859bcd?family=1584PragmaticaLimaW01-It" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<link href="//db.onlinewebfonts.com/c/e90bad7eca8a7239a1e12c72a9868723?family=1651AlchemyW00-Normal" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<link href="//db.onlinewebfonts.com/c/92b12c0610cd214836a85033ec416777?family=1592+GLC+Garamond" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<link href="//db.onlinewebfonts.com/c/a08f197a0e97b0bcd02ad671e33d253a?family=P22MayflowerSmoothW00-SC" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="javascript.js"></script>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<meta name="DC.title" lang="en" content="Making Theatre Art: David Levine's 'Habit'">
<meta name="DC.creator" content="Sarah Kozinn">
<meta name="DCTERMS.issued" scheme="DCTERMS.W3CDTF" content="2014"> <!--Summer-->
<meta name="DC.publisher" content="The MIT Press">
<meta name="DC.identifier" scheme="DCTERMS.URI" content="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24584876">
<meta name="DC.format" scheme="DCTERMS.IMT" content="text/html">
<meta name="DC.type" scheme="DCTERMS.DCMIType" content="Text">
<meta name="DCTERMS.bibliographicCitation" content="Kozinn, Sarah. “Making Theatre Art: David Levine's ‘Habit.’” TDR (1988-), vol. 58, no. 2, 2014, pp. 171–176., www.jstor.org/stable/24584876. Accessed 29 Dec. 2020.">
</head>
<body>
<section id="Cover">
<h1>Making Theatre Art</h1>
<p class="subtitle"><span class="person">David Levine</span> 's <span class="entity">Habit</span></p>
<p class="byline"><a href="#author"><span class="person">Sarah Kozinn</span></a></p>
</section>
<section id="Introduction">
<p>Director and performance-based visual artist <span class="person">David Levine</span> opened his <time datetime="2006">2006</time> essay "<span class="entity">Bad Art and Objecthood</span>" (a response to <span class="person">Michael Fried</span>'s
<time datetime="1967">1967</time> essay "<span class="entity">Art and Objecthood</span>") with
this quote from <span class="person">Chris Burden</span>: "It seems that
bad art is theatre...Getting shot is for real...
there's no element of pretense or make-believe
in it" (in <span class="person">Levine</span> <time datetime="2006">2006</time>:22).<a class="biblioRef" href="#b01">1</a>
In his <time datetime="2012">2012</time> production, <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>, <span class="person">Levine</span> continued his engagement
with <span class="person">Burden</span>'s provocative assertion that "bad
art is theatre" but this time with a full-scale
production of <span class="person">Jason Grote</span>'s 90-minute play, <em><span class="entity">The Children of Kings</span></em>,
staged inside a replica
of a suburban ranch house built within
<span class="place">New York City</span>'s <span class="place">Essex Street Market</span>. The performance was part of the <span class="entity">French Institute Alliance
Frangaise</span>'s <em><span class="entity">Crossing the Line Festival</span></em> (coproduced with <span class="entity">PS122</span> and funded in part by a <!--Cosa è Li?ie-->
<span class="entity">Kickstarter</span> campaign), and it was free and open
to the public. No tickets were required. Two
rotating casts of three characters performed the
play on alternating days, nonstop, eight hours a
day for ten days straight. For the performance's
duration, the actors never left the set, which
meant they had to take care of their emotional
and biological needs while also attending to the
circumstances of the written drama.</p>
<p>With this production, as in his <time datetime="2006">2006</time> essay,
<span class="person">Levine</span> seems to be challenging the same
notion of theatre that compelled <span class="person">Burden</span> to
make his famous and provocative <time datetime="1971">1971</time> performance piece,<em><span class="entity">Shoot</span></em>, in which <span class="person">Burden</span>'s assistant
shot him in the left arm. Theatre is pretense.
Getting shot is real. But to limit the questions <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> poses to how events framed as theatre
can simultaneously be real and authentic would
be too reductive, and, more importantly, it
would overlook the range of additional questions <span class="person">Levine</span> puts into play, such as: Is this a
work of art about theatre, about experimenting and violating its rituals? Or is this theatre
grappling with its objectness, its refusal of the
conditions that make theatre, as <span class="person">Michael Fried</span>
wrote, "bad art"?</p>
</section>
<section id="Habits_of_theatre_making">
<h2>Habits of Theatre-Making</h2>
<figure>
<img src="f1.jpg" id="img1">
<figcaption> Figure 1. The rough exterior of the <span class="entity">Habit</span> set designed by <span class="person">Marsha Ginsberg</span> with the audience gathering in the open area surrounding it.
<span class="place">Essex Street Market</span>, <span class="place">New York City</span>, <time datetime="2012-09">September 2012</time>. (<span class="credit">Photo by <span class="person">Marsha Ginsberg</span></span>)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><span class="person">Levine</span> first conceived <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> in <time datetime="2005">2005</time> as he
began his move away from theatre and into
visual arts performance. The questions <span class="entity">Habit</span>
asks seem to come from <span class="person">Levine</span>'s desire to
complicate habits of theatre-making by experimenting with form and ritual. He explores
the essence of theatre by removing the signs
that help define it as such by, for example,
enclosing actors within a plywood box (<em><span class="entity">'Night,
Motherfucker</span></em> [<time datetime="2004">2004</time>])<a class="biblioRef" href="#b02">2</a> or, as in <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>, by staging
the performance in a museum, gallery, or
warehouse and not in a conventional theatre
space (<em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> was developed at <span class="person">Robert Wilson</span>'s
<span class="entity">Watermill Center</span> in <time datetime="2010">2010</time> and at <span class="entity">MASS MoCA</span>
in <time datetime="2011">2011</time>). This removing and relocating asks us
to consider if what is left is indeed still theatre.
In <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>, <span class="person">Levine</span> thinks through "habits of realism, or what our habitual mode of realism is,
or American theatre's habit of producing the
same play over and over again" (in <span class="person">Katz</span> <time datetime="2012">2012</time>).
He commissioned downtown playwright <span class="person">Jason
Grote</span> (who was also a television writer for the
first season of <em><span class="entity">Smash</span></em>) to compose a script that
employed standard tropes and formulas of contemporary American realism exemplified in the
works of playwrights such as <span class="person">Adam Rapp</span>,
<span class="person">Neil LaBute</span>, and <span class="person">Sam Shepard</span>: a suburban setting,
a small cast of working-class characters, drug/
alcohol abuse, and a secret that when revealed
has catastrophic consequences. <span class="person">Grote</span>'s play,
initially named <em>Half-Moon Mirror</em>, a
title that <span class="person">Levine</span> says recalls in style,
theme, and title <span class="person">Adam Rapp</span>'s play
<em><span class="entity">Red Light Winter</span></em>, and then changed
to <em><span class="entity">The Children of Kings</span></em>, is about
two drug-addled brothers, <span class="person">Mitch</span>
and <span class="person">Doug</span>, who harbor a dark secret
that, until the end of the play, they
hide from their roommate, <span class="person">Viv</span>,
a failed sociology grad student
turned-stripper (<span class="person">Holzapfel</span> <time datetime="2012">2012</time>).</p>
<p>In addition to examining genre,
<span class="person">Levine</span> also experiments with acting as both a job and a craft.
Prior to <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>, <span class="person">Levine</span> composed
a <time datetime="2007">2007</time> piece called <em><span class="entity">Actors at Work</span></em>
in which he hired actors under
Actors' Equity contracts to continue working at their day jobs in
order to reframe these jobs as theatrical employment. In his <time datetime="2007">2007</time>
<em><span class="entity">Bauerntheater</span></em> (<span class="entity">Farmers' Theatre</span>)
project, <span class="person">Levine</span> and actor <span class="person">David Barlow</span>
rehearsed <span class="person">Heiner Miiller</span>'s play <em><span class="entity">Die
Umsiedlerin</span></em> (<time datetime="1961">1961</time>), but instead of performing
the play, <span class="person">Levine</span> invited audiences to a field two
hours outside of <span class="place">Berlin</span>, in the <span class="place">East German
region of Brandenburg</span>, to watch <span class="person">Barlow</span>—who
played the leading role, a communist farmer
named "<span class="person">Flint</span>"—tend potatoes using traditional
methods taught to him by <span class="person">Eckhardt Schlestein</span>,
an actual potato farmer. When describing this
performance in a <time datetime="2008">2008</time> <span class="entity">TDR</span> article, <span class="person">Marvin Carlson</span>
invoked <span class="person">Michael Kirby</span>'s theories of
matrixed and nonmatrixed performance. He
wrote that <span class="person">Levine</span>'s intention with the piece
short-circuited "the distinction between the
real-life action of the Happening and the
matrixed action of the theatre," an objective
that is also at play in <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> (<time datetime="2008">2008</time>:36).</p>
<p><span class="person">Levine</span> complicates the ways the audience
reads the signs (the matrixes) that help viewers
determine what is or is not theatre. In <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>,
<span class="person">Levine</span> worked with two rotating casts of three
actors who performed for the duration of the
performance (eight hours) within the set and
without ever leaving. During that time the
actors had to negotiate their own needs with
those of the characters. As <span class="person">Levine</span> put it, "I'm
more interested in the job of being in character and the solutions you find to that" (in <span class="person">Katz</span>
<time datetime="2012">2012</time>). This postulation draws attention to the
conciliations actors are always making between
their own needs or wants (hunger, sleepiness,
the desire to impress a cast mate or an audi
ence member...etc.) with the performance's
needs. <span class="person">Levine</span>'s set-up
made these negotiations all the more central, because
in addition to their emotional needs/wants, the actors
also had to contend with their biological ones.
<span class="person">Levine</span> described this layering of the actors'
experiences with those of the characters — also
a tenet of <span class="person">Lee Strasberg</span>'s acting method — as
"not so much rejecting realism as wanting to
provide actors with a platform to rock the fuck
out on a style" (in <span class="person">Holzapfel</span> <time datetime="2012">2012</time>).</p>
</section>
<section id="My_habits">
<h2>My Habits</h2>
<p>I went to <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> on Tuesday afternoon <time datetime="2012-09-25">September 25th</time> at around 3:30 p.m. I read on the
<span class="entity">Crossing the Line Festival</span>'s website that the
performance ran from 1:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.,
and I knew from the description that the actors
would be performing the same text over and
over during the allotted time: "Within a four
walled, fully furnished and functional American
ranch house (stocked refrigerator, working
stove, plumbing, running water), three actors
perform a 90-minute drama on a continuous
loop for eight hours a day" (<span class="entity">FIAF</span> <time datetime="2012">2012</time>). When
I arrived, the door to the <span class="place">Essex Street Market
Building B</span> was open. The only indication that
a performance was going on was a small sign
advertising the festival standing on the side
walk outside the entrance. Just inside a woman
was stationed at an information table covered
with pamphlets detailing the other festival performances, and just beyond her, in the center of
the cavernous industrial space, was the set.</p>
<p>From the outside, the set looked like a construction site, and I had the feeling of being
inside a television studio. The only parts of
television studio sets that are decorated are
the ones that appear on camera, so the exteriors and backsides of the walls are left raw
and unfinished. The same went for <span class="person">Marsha
Ginsberg</span>'s design. Only the inside of the set
resembled a home, so the incoming audience
was first confronted by the rough exterior, a
persistent reminder that the barriers separating the actors' world and the audience's were
built by designers for this performance event,
not by a construction crew building a home.
<span class="person">Ginsberg</span>'s design immediately helped frame
the events inside as theatrical.</p>
<p>To see inside, visitors gathered by the windows like moths towards light. The interior
of the four-walled structure was the actors'
domain, and the space outside of it, the audience's. The actors never left their quarters, and
from what I observed, the audiences always
stayed outside in theirs. The area surrounding the set was a between-zone (between the
street outside and the playing space) where visitors could talk to each other, make phone calls,
eat, sit on a bench, read, tend to their children, peer in through windows—whatever they
wanted to do. This space was unstructured,
open, and unchoreographed. Inside, the actors
spoke <span class="person">Grote</span>'s text,
but they were free to wander from room to room,
eat, cook, piss, shower,
shit, nap — as long as these actions also worked
to advance the plot. While there was action
going on outside the set, the kind of action akin
to the behavior of museumgoers — meandering,
chatting, texting, children crying—the dramatic
action took place within it. The structure's
central location, like the nucleus of a
cell, demarcated the playing space as the center
of this performance universe. Concurrently,
the area surrounding the set was like the margin
on a piece of lined paper, and the audience
was the doodles and jottings that were
not critical to the content, but evidenced the
wandering thoughts, the needed time-outs, and
the creative explorations that existed simultaneously—
sometimes distracting from the content
and sometimes complementing it.</p>
<figure class="figure">
<img src="f2.jpg" id="img2">
<figcaption> Figure 2. Audience observers looking on through the window at a scene from <span class="person">David Levine</span>'s <span class="entity">Habit</span>,
featuring (from left) <span class="person">Quintan Corbett</span>, <span class="person">Matthew Stadelmann</span>, and <span class="person">Stephanie Wright Thompson</span>.
<span class="place">Essex Street Market</span>, <span class="place">New York City</span>, <time datetime="2012-09">September 2012</time>. (<span class="credit">Photo by<span class="person">Julieta Cervantes</span></span>)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The staging also brought to mind another
analogy: While peering through the kitchen
window at the character <span class="person">Viv</span> giving <span class="person">Mitch</span> a lap
dance, I had the memory of standing in front of
the Bonobo monkey habitat at the <span class="place">San Diego
Zoo</span>. Visitors wandered at will up to the window
to watch the animals in captivity have
sex, eat bananas, climb trees, fight, and go to
the bathroom all while caged inside a space
designed to resemble their natural habitat, the
lowland rainforest in the <span class="place">Democratic Republic
of Congo</span>. <span class="person">Ginsberg</span>'s
set was a kind of habitat for realism's stock characters
(two sparring, drug addicted brothers harboring a secret
and the young, sexually charged woman who
pits the brothers against each other), and we,
the audience/visitors/tourists/curious wanderers
were free to study these characters at no
charge. During that time, the actors performed
<span class="person">Grote</span>'s text and went through their routines,
whether or not anyone was watching—just like
animals at the zoo.</p>
<p>This design produced a greater-than
normal distance between actors and audience,
even though, on its face, the concept seemed
akin to the kind of immersive theatre experiences
that have recently become fashionable in
<span class="place">New York City</span> such as <span class="person">Punchdrunk</span>'s <em><span class="entity">Sleep No
More</span></em> (<time datetime="2011">2011</time>-ongoing), <span class="person">Dave Malloy</span>'s <em><span class="entity">Natasha,
Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812</span></em> (<time datetime="2012">2012</time>-<time datetime="2014">2014</time>),
and <span class="entity">Third Rail Projects</span>' <em><span class="entity">Then She Fell</span></em> (<time datetime="2012">2012</time>-
ongoing). However, while these shows bring
the audiences into the performance, <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>
excluded the audience from it. The way the
actors seemed unaffected by the audience, even
when they were only inches from their faces,
and the way they roamed from room to room
and sometimes to areas beyond the audience's
sight lines as if it did not matter what the audience
could or could not see, magnified the separation
between audience and performer—and
not just geographically, but also psychologically.
Being ignored and physically blocked from
them was alienating, and, in my experience,
the staging compromised the give and take
so essential to the theatrical experience. <span class="person">Jerzy Grotowski</span>
wrote that theatre can exist with
out makeup, costumes, stage lights, and sets,
but the one thing it cannot "live" without is
"the actor-spectator relationship of perceptual,
direct, 'live' communion" ([<time datetime="1968">1968</time>] <time datetime="2012">2012</time>:19). The
absence of this "communion" felt very much
a part of <span class="person">Levine</span>'s experiment in non-theatre
theatre. <span class="person">Levine</span> described this as the anti-the
atrical part of the performance: "I finally man
aged to create this anti-<span class="person">Fried</span> piece of theatre,
which actually doesn't need you to complete it
because it'll do its own thing no matter what
[...] It's like, 'Oh yeah, it'll run...it's a machine...
it turns, we don't have to be there...It'll just
keep going in there all day'" (in <span class="person">Holzapfel</span>
<time datetime="2012">2012</time>:107). So if, as <span class="person">Fried</span> believed, bad art is
theatre because it panders to and depends on
an audience, then <span class="person">Levine</span> resists this interpretation by trying to make a performance that goes
on (and on) with or without one.</p>
</section>
<section id="Habits_of_viewing">
<h2>Habits of Viewing</h2>
<p>When I arrived at <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>, the actors had already
completed a quarter of the script. Of course,
I would not discover this until the
play came to its end. I knew it was
the end because all the characters
had been shot—but not like when
<span class="person">Burden</span> was shot. The actors had
succumbed to the pretense of being
shot, to a fake gun jerked up and a
loud bang, and were hunched over
themselves on the bedroom floor,
on the bathroom floor, and on the
bed. They stayed like this for several minutes until
<span class="person">Mitch</span> "woke up," the first action at the beginning
of the play, as if nothing had
happened, and began the run again.
After about 15 minutes the play
felt familiar, and I knew the actors
had reached the same place in the
text as when I arrived. At this point
the experience shifted to one layered
with my memory of that first
watching, and I stayed a few more
minutes before taking a break on one of the
benches.</p>
<p>Though the audience had to move around
the set in order to follow the action, <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> was
less about the exchange of space, and more
about the exchange of attention from the
actors' actions to the audiences'. In the same
way one can only watch the Bonobo monkeys
for so long before staring instead at the reflection
of the other visitors watching the monkeys,
during <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> my interest wandered from
the inside of the set to a young man resting
against the kitchen door entrance. He looked
exhausted, and he struggled to keep his eyes
open. They would close, and then he would
jerk awake, then his eyes would droop, his body
would sway, his eyes would close, and he would
jerk awake, and so on and so forth. Framed by
the doorway, this young man's performance
marked a stark contrast to the actors' behavior.</p>
<figure>
<img src="f3.jpg" id="img3">
<figcaption> Figure 3. <span class="person">Eliza Baldi Costabile</span> and <span class="person">Ben Mehl</span>. <span class="entity">Habit</span>. <span class="place">Essex Street Market</span>,
<span class="place">New York City</span>, <time datetime="2012-09">September 2012</time>. (<span class="credit">Photo by<span class="person">Marsha Ginsberg</span></span>)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the actors performed snorting
cocaine, sleeping, and dying this young man
was actually falling asleep, teetering forward
and back, threatening to fall over into the
set. I never once felt concern for the actors,
even as they pointed a gun at each other, but
as the young man swayed forward I felt the
urge to rush across the warehouse to keep him
upright. <span class="person">Levine</span>'s project
created an environment in which audiences became voyeurs who
watched actors, confined within a set,
coping with performing the same drama over and
over again for eight hours. However, this configuration made the performers' actions feel
more hyperreal than real—always mediated
through the lens of "this is for show." Intended
or not, the performance succumbed to what I
call the "Reality TV effect," a skeptical frame
of reference through which viewers consider the
"authentic" as staged, much like reality
TV—scripted, but not totally. (It is quite
apropos that on the <span class="entity">Kickstarter</span> page the show
was billed as "<em>The Real World</em> meets <em>No Exit</em>"
[<span class="entity">Kickstarter</span> <time datetime="2012">2012</time>].) So when looking for performances
with consequence, performances
that could threaten or disrupt the flow of the
piece because of their inescapable realness, I
located the young man against the doorframe
who might have, at any point, tumbled into
the house. He was not one of <span class="person">Levine</span>'s hired
actors, but in that moment he was as much a
part of <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> as they were. The conditions of
the performance invited this analysis, so I feel
at liberty to discuss the slumbering man's per
formance alongside those of <span class="person">Mitch</span>, <span class="person">Viv</span>, and
<span class="person">Doug</span>. I would like to think that this impulse
to study other audience members as one would
the characters is part of <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>'s challenge. In
other words, the piece makes us consider our
habits of viewing and spectatorship. It also con
fronts our habits of perception—how we perceive
and interpret something to be or not to
be theatre.</p>
</section>
<section id="Habits_of_perceiving">
<h2>Habits of Perceiving</h2>
<p>How do I understand my experience of <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>?
In many ways, the signs point to theatre: The
performance had a script, a creative staff, hired
actors, publicity, a set, a time frame, and a
glowing <span class="person">Ben Brantley</span> review in the <em><span class="entity">New York
Times</span></em> theatre section. However, <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> was
void of many elements I love to experience
when attending a theatre event: the live communion
between actors and audiences and its
transportive potential. <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> was cold theatre,
cut off from the heat generated when people
share a space in order to <em>do</em> theatre together.
In "<span class="entity">Dramaturgy of the Spectator</span>", <span class="person">Marco De
Marinis</span> wrote: "Through its actions, by putting
to work a range of definite semiotic strategies, the performance seeks to induce in
each spectator a range of definite transformations,
both intellectual (cognitive) and affective
(ideas, beliefs, emotions, fantasies, values,
etc.)" (<time datetime="1987">1987</time>:101). Watching <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em>, I didn't feel
like the objective of the director and performers
was to do anything <em>with</em> me. This is not to
say <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> was not affective; I certainly experienced
a range of emotions and thoughts while
at the performance. But the impact was almost
in spite of the insularity of the performance.
As such, I felt encouraged to back away, to stay
outside the house and study the performance
from a distance, much like I would a sculpture
at a museum or gallery.</p>
<p>Perhaps this is why the pleasure I derived
from <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> has grown in the days since seeing
it. During this period of reflection I have
not only enjoyed grappling with the conceptual
questions <span class="person">Levine</span> set in motion, but I have
also been able to project myself inside the walls
of <span class="person">Ginsberg</span>'s set, where
I imaginatively experience the intimacy I sought while in the <span class="place">Essex Street Market</span>. In other words, <span class="person">Levine</span>'s piece
has made me consider the fundamental reasons
why I love theatre—my own habits of enjoyment.
So while <em><span class="entity">Habit</span></em> may have pushed against
several of these by insisting on its self-sufficiency,
an appreciation for these elements has
been lit anew.</p>
</section>
<section id="References">
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Carlson, Marvin. 2008. "David Levine's Bauern
theater: The Return of the Matrix." <em>TDR</em> 52, 3
(T199):34~43.</p>
<p>De Marinis, Marco. 1987. "Dramaturgy of the
Spectator." <em>TDR</em> 31, 2 (T114): 100-14.</p>
<p>FIAF. 2012. "Crossing the Line Festival: Habit."
www.fiaf.org/crossingtheline/2 012/2 012-ctl
-david-levine.shtml (2 May 2013).</p>
<p>Fried, Michael. 1998. <em>Art and Objecthood: Essays and
Reviews.</em> Chicago: University of Chicago Press.</p>
<p>Grotowski, Jerzy. (1968) 2012. <em>Towards a Poor Theatre.</em>
New York: Routledge.</p>
<p>Holzapfel, Amy, et al. 2012. "The Habit of Realism."
<em>Theater</em> 42, 1:95-107.</p>
<p>Katz, Jordan. 2012. "Interview: David Levine,
director of Habit." http://jordankatz.wordpress
.com/2 012/10/02/interview-david-levine-director
-of-habit/ (2 May 2013).</p>
<p>Kickstarter. 2012. "Habit by David Levine." www
.kickstarter.com/projects/2 859867 00/habit
(2 May 2013).</p>
<p>Levine, David. 2006. "Bad Art & Objecthood." ArtUS
13:22-25.</p>
</section>
<br>
<section id="Footnotes">
<p class="biblioItem" id="b01"><span class="biblioMarker">1. </span><span class="person">David Levine</span> took <span class="person">Chris Burden</span>'s quote from an interview conducted in <time datetime="1973">1973</time> by <span class="person">Willoughby Sharp</span> and <span class="person">Liza Bear</span>,
which appeared in <span class="entity">Avalanche</span> 8 (<time datetime="1973">1973</time>):61.</p>
<p class="biblioItem" id="b02"><span class="biblioMarker">2. </span>Excerpts from this performance are available on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/48589026</p>
</section>
<br>
<p class="pubnote"><em><span class="entity">TDR</span>: <span class="entity">The Drama Review</span> 58:2 (T222) Summer <time datetime="2014">2014</time>.<!--Summer?-->
©<time datetime="2014">2014</time> <span class="entity">New York University</span> and the <span class="entity">Massachusetts Institute of Technology</span></em></p>
<br>
<p class="bio"><em><a name="author"><span class="person">Sarah Kozinn</span> is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the
<span class="entity">Theater Department</span> at <span class="entity">Occidental College</span> and an actor working in film, theatre, and television.
She received her PhD in <span class="entity">Performance Studies</span> from <span class="entity">New York University</span>'s <span class="entity">Tisch School of the Arts</span>,
and her dissertation on judge TV shows won the <span class="entity"><span class="person">Brooks McNamara</span> Memorial Award</span> . She was also the
recipient of the <span class="entity">NYU Performance Studies Award</span> and the <span class="entity"><span class="person">Paula Goddard</span> Award</span> in performance scholarship,
flavors.me/sarahkozinn sarah.kozinn@gmail.com</a></em></p>
</body>
</html>