…which I wrote in 1996, when Brooklyn was barely still Brooklyn, not too long after the Mother of All Battles, just before Skewed Visions was formed. There are so many things I would talk more about now, but that’s probably why it remains interesting to me now. It’s all lies but it is all deeply true. (Of course, Skewed Visions performances are refined and delicate flowers and no comparison ought to be made between this tasteless effrontery and our own theatrical wizardry.)
Fountain of Youth, 1996
In a small garage in Brooklyn, New York, a group of young people have been putting on shows since 1993 for whomever will show up. The shows seem confused, anarchic, and sophomoric; they are called things like Barf, and Fuck Off! and usually they last for no more than half an hour. They have received little attention and operate without a budget for publicity. To all intents and purposes, the company (called, at various stages: Poop, Snotrag, Pisspoor, Ralph Mutt, and now Mother of All Theatre Companies (MATC)) seems like one of those adolescent fountains of juvenile expression. However, despite this – or maybe because of it – MATC (in whatever incarnation they happen to find themselves) has been doing shows for almost three years and are attracting a great deal of only local attention (I have been told that the shows “sell out” without advertisement). Having seen two of these shows myself, I would like to pass on the knowledge of their existence because I believe the company embodies a mode of functioning that is an effective model for performing groups.The artistic force behind this young company is a young woman who calls herself Anita Break. Her real name is Anita Swanson and she grew up in Northfield, Minnesota, my home town. I went to visit friends in New York over winter break, ran into Anita, and saw her company’s productions of Fuck Off! and Barf. The shows ran on consecutive nights in the garage of a friend’s parent.
Barf consisted of a series of skits strung together mainly by the fact that it was the same three actors in each of them. In the first skit three actors sat in a row of chairs, one behind another, facing stage right. At a silent cue all three began doing complicated hand gestures that resembled from what I could see slapping flies, scratching, and masturbation. The gestures grew in proportion and speed until they resembled nothing other than a dance. This level of exertion and complicated choreography continued beyond the point where it became excruciatingly boring and then petered out, until a sort of hostile stillness reigned.
This led directly into the second skit. One of the actors slid off his chair, another slowly stood up and the third continued to sit. This actor began a long theoretical speech but acted as if she were going into a bathroom in an elementary school as a child, complete with asking the teacher, walking down the hall, and all the more explicit associated activities, performed explicitly. The third actor continued to stay on the floor but began licking everything in sight including an audience member.
The third skit began when the third actor began to actually wretch. The other two slowly stopped what they were doing and watched in alternating boredom and fascination. Barf ended abruptly when an alarm clock went off. The actors stopped “acting” and stood where they were.
Fuck Off! was less formal. It consisted of a line of actors rushing in and out of the garage, around the yard, and from the roof of the house screaming obscenities and gibberish at each other, the audience, passersby on the street, and then at various objects in the garage, including a television screen that showed first various sitcoms, news, and a pornographic video. When the pornography had been on for some time, the actors slowly became distracted by it, then absorbed by it, then bored by it, then angry with it until they began to shout Fuck Off! at the television.
These shows were attended by probably twenty to thirty people which was quite a crowd for the garage space. The audience, mostly teenagers and young adults (although somebody’s parents were there and seemed to accept what was happening without qualms), reacted positively. Some laughed, some applauded, some gasped; but all seemed to enjoy it and no one objected to the immaturity as far as I could see. It is difficult to reconstruct the elaborate and careful structure and design of these pieces in words. The rough edges are easier to describe. But in this combination I found a parallel to a true beauty. Somewhere beyond prettiness or cleanliness there is a beating heart and it is bloody.
The work done by MATC is youthful: immature, puerile and silly, but its youth is its strongest point. Like youth, the shows MATC puts on are straightforward yet complicate what they come into contact with. It is flexible, raw, playful and rough. Most of all the company claims the joy and play inherent in obscenity and puerility: an adolescent pimply insight into the inextricable ugliness and beauty of passion.
MATC shows get done regularly, attract a consistent following, and the company manages to support itself through donations at the door. No one makes any money, but then no one expects to. The two shows I witnessed were fascinating because they seemed to open a door to performance that restructured certain rules of theatre. In a way that is theoretically astute and cohesive with much work in performance historically and being done today, Anita and her crew of unruly teenagers acted as a catalyst for work that I am doing, both in writing and performance.
To this end, I asked Anita to write something for me so that I would have a resource to refer to in writing about MATC’s shows. This is what she sent me (hers was handwritten):Mother of All Theatre Companies: A Manifesto
Hurry up please it’s time. Of expansion: viral, creeping, shambling, disorganized and weedy. Of a dog about to vomit: before the habit sets in, before the indifferent beak could let her drop. Off the top of the rollercoaster before the plunge where climbing is falling is not moving at all. The scratch of the rat making another hole in the nest. The crackling of highspeed photography. Of explosive decompression. Of internal combustion. Into the heart of an immense darkness. Crawling under fingernails, leaving a trail of regurgitated dust. The worms crawl in the worms crawl out the worms play pinochle on your snout. When “snot” and “poop” are meaningful words filled with insidious intent. Saying, “What a beautiful pussy you are, you are.” And meaning it. Obscenity, queen of the sophomoric heart, come to me. I will cry your adolescent tantrum to beat at the hearts of the sane and mature. Puerility, inanity, obesity, our time has come. What happens when an immovable force meets an unstoppable object? A silent rate of motion, where stillness is absolute speed in a room without air. A space of location where stasis is absolute direction. The space between events where nothing happens again. Personnel without personality. I am. I are. I is.
Just thought I’d been sounding crankier than usual lately so I’d say this: I’m getting excited about having a bunch of people singing.
In my salad days when I was 
