The Tragic Spectator: Pig Iron Theatre Company’s Pay Up

Abstract

Tragedy revolves around primary contract of man and nature, contract fulfilled by man's death, death being, as we say, debt he owes to nature. --Northrop Frye, Fools of Time (1) The situation is an appeal: it surrounds us, offering us solutions which it's up to us to choose. --Jean-Paul Sartre, For a Theater of Situations (2) Pig Iron Theatre Company's Pay Up, (3) originally produced for Philadelphia Live Arts Festival in 2005 and most recently revived in September 2013, is not so much a piece of interactive theater as an interactive situation, in which theater, radically abbreviated, is offered. (4) I wrote text for Pay Up in collaboration with company, and my hope in this essay is to examine some of ways in which experience of making Pay Up invites reflection into pleasures and discomforts of interactive performance. (5) In particular, I would like to consider how a raucous performance piece marked by everyday victories and disappointments of simple consumer choices might somehow also open out onto something as unlikely as tragedy--how existentialist dramaturgy of Sartre as well as classical poetics of tragedy might be mobilized to treat an interactive performance in which spectator has become protagonist. Finally, I want to offer proposition that an emancipated spectator (in frequently cited formulation of political philosopher Jacques Ranciere) might also be a tragic spectator, following Sartres observation that the chief source of great tragedy--the tragedy of Aeschylus and Sophocles, of Corneille--is human freedom. (6) At first glance Pay Up does not appear to adhere to any traditional understanding of tragedy. When an audience member enters all-white, brightly lit warehouse space that houses Pay Up, he or she is given white elastic booties to wear (to preserve white floor), a map, and five crisp green dollar bills. Throughout space, immaculately designed by Anna Kiraly, are eight small performance cubicles, and at designated times audience members are invited to spend their money to gain entrance to these cubicles to witness short scenes. These scenes are about handling money, primarily concerning (real-life) Yale economist Keith Chens efforts to teach capuchin monkeys to use currency. (7) In addition to eight cubicles, there are several black market scenes, performed in unfinished hallways and dimly lit bathrooms, and two large musical-theater-style dance numbers that are offered to audience as a whole at no charge. Although scenes connect to one another, they are not segments of one coherent linear narrative, nor is it possible for any single audience member to see them all without attending show more than once. The inspiration for this configuration of piece came early in creative process, when Dan Rothenberg, director of show and one of artistic directors of Pig Iron, brought in psychologist Barry Schwartzs book The Paradox of Choice, which argues that increased consumer choice tends to produce anxiety. (8) We wanted to see if we could establish rules of play, modeled on ordinary consumer experience, that would provoke that kind of anxiety in theater. Indeed, Pay Up feels like a game, perhaps more so than a piece like Punchdrunk's immersive hit Sleep No More, in part because certain individual choices are raised to status of moves, isolated into quanta of irreversible financial transactions. (9) This invites spectator to adopt a strategic mentality--how can I maximize my experience? But in its finale Pay Up directs its attention to each audience members real-life decision to attend Pay Up, and inevitable opportunity costs of that decision, not just in terms of money, but in terms of time. Self-determination always comes at a price--as Terry Eagleton writes about tragedy: term self-determination also suggests setting limits to ones liberty in act of exercising it, diminishing self in process of realizing it. …