In Defense of Pittsburgh

Abstract

I can understand Steve Pellegrino's frustration with performing nontraditional forms, but he is wrong about Pittsburgh (TDR 31, no. 1:28-29). He simply does not know the city's history of support of experimental theatre work during the '70s. The University of Pittsburgh's 99? Floating Theatre brought most major avant-garde companies to perform here, including the Living Theatre, the Iowa Theatre Lab, Mabou Mines, and Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatre Co. During the same period, Anne Wyma and I opened our Lion Walk Performing Arts Center to these groups and other performing artists, including Carolee Schneeman, for workshops and residencies. The audiences were small (elite?), but involved and supportive. We received funding from the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as private funding within the city. Pittsburgh, like other cities including New York, has retrenched in the '80s and supports expensive entertainment rather than experimental performances. In such an atmosphere, Pellegrino's work, including the recent Monstrous Spider (September 1987), receives surprisingly good support from audiences (small but devoted), and has more sympathetic media coverage than Judith Malina, Julian Beck, Charles Ludlam, or even Bill Ball and the American Conservatory Theatre ever enjoyed here. Part of Pellegrino's petulance with theatre audiences in Pittsburgh may be a historical misperception of his own work. It is not new to those of us who remember the '70s. The younger members of his audience may be astounded, but his work is certainly not on the edge. The problem may be defining, as well as finding, the cutting edge these retrogressive days. Many techniques used by the avant-garde have now been absorbed into mainstream production values. It is hard to see the most conservative Broadway production or outlandish music video that is not indebted to the work of the experimentalists of the late '60s and early '70s. At that time, practice preceded theory. Now, I believe the opposite is true. The truly interesting and daring work in performance is theoreticalin particular, feminist theory. Feminist performance theorists in theatre, film, dance, and video are questioning the foundations of Western performance aesthetics, questioning the function of performance in providing a mirror of women's reality, questioning public display as a mode of reinforcing women's values. These are important and valuable explorations and experiments that will change performance practice at fundamental levels. Until the power base shifts in favor of women, feminist work will remain on the fringe, not even recognized much less acknowledged as the avant-garde of the '80s.