In 1916 a disillusioned group of eccentric artists came together in a Zurich bar to stand on chairs, make loud noises, and wear strange costumes. Their collaborations would solidify as the Dada movement, which spread throughout Europe and paved the way for the many art experiments of the 20th century. By nature, Dada resists definition, but some of its defining performance methods include the use of glossolalia, found objects, collage, and satire. Many Dada performance events were organized as cabarets, which created space for artists to experiment with snippets of material, making little to no attempt to unify their acts under any sort of narrative throughline. Dada was far more than an aesthetic; it was a grassroots response to governmental corruption and the devastation wrought by World War I. The chaos of the cabaret montage mirrored the disorder of contemporary society; Dada’s existential themes were symptomatic of a historical moment in which “life as usual” was under threat. A similar claim could be made about performances exploring the meaning (or meaninglessness) of human existence in the year 2020.
One such production is This Is Not a Theatre Company’s Readymade Cabaret 2.0, which took place via the virtual chat platform Shindig (a scaled-up alternative to Zoom) from 14 November through 8 December 2020. Although some of the vignettes are unified by reappearing themes and characters, the ever-changing order of the scenes — determined by the audience — evokes the unpredictability essential to Dada cabarets.
Formed in 2013, This Is Not a Theatre Company (TINATC) has lived up to its name by staging work not in traditional theatres but in subways, ferries, swimming pools, and apartments. Readymade Cabaret 2.0 was conceived and directed by Artistic Director Erin B. Mee with scenes by playwright and TINATC cofounder Jessie Bear. Much like Tristan Tzara’s “Dada Manifesto 1918,” from which the show draws inspiration, TINATC operates under its own manifesto, which calls for multisensorial theatre productions that foster communitas and offer “an exercise in creativity for everyone who partakes” (Mee and Bear Reference Mee and Bearn.d.). These are tall orders for virtual theatre in the time of Covid-19, but Readymade Cabaret’s Dada-inspired design delivers a strangely engaging online experience, one example of the resourcefulness we’ve seen during the pandemic lockdown of live theatre.
Adapted from TINATC’s in-person performance from 2015, Readymade Cabaret 2.0 comprises a series of short virtual vignettes, some that stand alone while others are tied together by repeating themes or characters. Another feature that Readymade Cabaret inherits from the live cabaret tradition is the audience interaction that decides the order of the scenes. The roughly 75-minute show is different every night. Many characters reappear, including Amy (played by Marisa LaRuffa), whose dialogues address a range of topics, from the fate (or lack thereof) of her romantic relationship with Peter (Chris Morriss), to her job as a scientist performing experiments on rats. In other scenes, Amy appears with an other worldly Judge (Lipica Shah) in a powdered wig, with whom Amy debates the existence of free will versus fate. In another offshoot of Amy’s universe, her group of experimental lab rats (played by ensemble members in rubber mice masks) discuss their inexplicable addiction to Amy’s daily feedings of “Yum Drink.” Rather than connecting in a linear narrative, the random ordering of these scenes proposes alternate universes of possibility, leaving the viewer in a dialectical lurch.
From left: Marisa LaRuffa as Amy and Chris Morriss as Peter in Readymade Cabaret 2.0, directed by Erin B. Mee. Shindig, 2020. (Screenshot by Erin B. Mee)
Still other scenes are readymade in design, including computer-generated poetry as well as art and video installations designed by TINATC members Brent Bailey, Beatrice Antonie Martino, and Dyan Jong. One readymade film entitled “Dinner Time” features Martino’s dance interpretation of a giant preparing for dinner. Using filmic cuts, the dancer alternates between embodying the giant person, who licks their lips in anticipation, and the meal itself — a piece of food helplessly trapped on an oversized plate. Evoking the Dada spirit, this grotesque dance film functions as a non sequitur amongst the more literal dialogue scenes, puncturing any sense of thematic unity and contributing to an overall sense of aesthetic pandemonium. Of course, like all the other scenes in Readymade Cabaret 2.0, its very appearance depends on whether an audience member selects it; on some occasions, it might not appear at all.
Finally, the most participatory scenes of the cabaret ask the audience to cocompose a musical piece or cochoreograph an interpretive dance. Participants achieve this by typing directives into a group chat box, and the artists respond accordingly in real time. Here Readymade Cabaret 2.0 reproduces Dada’s legacy of decentering language in favor of task-based choreography. In the “Chance Dances,” audience members receive a set of choices (for example: an element such as air, earth, fire, water, honey, or lava; a verb such as twirl, leap, flick, punch, or collapse; and a direction such as up, down, left, or right) to type into a field. These directives appear intermittently in the order of their submission, on the home screen for all to see. Once received, the performers (Martino and Jonathan Matthews) respond kinesthetically in a split-screen duo dance performance that can never be the same twice. Matthews and Martino appear in different rooms with black backgrounds, both wearing jester hats. Whether they are instructed to “honey flick up” or “air leap right,” each dancer responds uniquely to the same set of commands. Both revert to a childlike state by moving playfully within the edges of their virtual screens, their microphones capturing incidental sounds of breath and movement. Between short spurts of dance lasting only a few seconds, they revisit their computer screens for the next set of audience directives.
Similarly, a series of scenes entitled “Aleatory Compositions” ask audience members to select a cheese grater or a coffee percolator, then type an action and quality into the group chat. In response, Matthews plays a readymade composition. At the 5 December performance, he was asked to “softly strike,” then “loudly tap” the cheese grater; at another performance, however, he may be asked to do the same with the percolator. As in the “Chance Dances,” Matthews is given a few seconds to respond musically to one set of directives before moving on to the next. The result is not necessarily a virtuosic musical performance, but the “Chance Dances” and “Aleatory Compositions” enable audience members to interact playfully with live performers. Like many live cabaret artists who create a sense of intimacy by flirting and interacting with their audiences, these online exchanges similarly rely on an audience’s energy and input in a virtual setting, sustaining the feedback loop between art maker and consumer in a new way.
From top: Beatrice Antonie Martino and Jonathan Matthews perform a “Chance Dance” in Readymade Cabaret 2.0, directed by Erin B. Mee. Shindig, 2020. (Screenshot by Erin B. Mee)
In addition to interacting with audiences, Dada cabaret artists celebrated the disorder of human existence. One famous example is the Dada collage poems: a performer would select, arrange, and recite newspaper clippings to form a one-of-a-kind nonsense poem (see Tzara [1920] Reference Tzara2011). To engender its own sense of randomness, Readymade Cabaret 2.0 charges participants with rolling a (virtual) dice to decide the order of the show. Volunteers were called upon by the emcee to open a random-number generator app embedded in their home screen. With a click, the volunteer draws a number and reports it to the audience. Then, the emcee announces the corresponding title, leading us into the next scene.
Uniquely, Readymade Cabaret 2.0 utilizes Shindig, a video chat platform equipped with special features to enhance audience experience and interaction. As the production emcee, Mee introduces the various buttons embedded in the interface, which allow users to do things like raise their hand, roll the virtual dice, generate a random Dada poem, or chat with other participants. Mee encourages participants to use the chat button to form “pods” or to ping their fellow audience members. As the production stills demonstrate, the home page of Readymade Cabaret 2.0 features two virtual spaces when viewed on a computer screen — one space for the performers and another for the audience. The background is a black and white illustration of a long gallery littered with random objects, including a shopping cart, a satellite, and a toilet. The top half of the screen -functions as the stage: this is where the livestream feed of featured performers and audience members is pinned. For example, when an audience member volunteers to roll the next scene number, their video is spotlighted in this area. In the bottom, there is a secondary space for the observers, where offstage participants appear as gently undulating thumbnails. The slight dynamism of participant squares floating at the screen’s lower margin improves upon the static boxes of a typical Zoom conference; this detail serves to steadily remind participants of the sentient humans behind each avatar. More interestingly, unless a user opts into a blurred “privacy mode,” their webcam periodically updates their avatar image with a refreshed screen capture of them watching the performance. This is a nifty feature, if not slightly paranoia-inducing for users who usually cover their webcam. Due to the random nature of the screen capture, spectators are occasionally caught while yawning unflatteringly, scolding an errant pet or child, or even in absentia if they have momentarily left their computer. In this small way, the virtual cabaret format is a dramaturgical solution in the context of social distancing and Shindig restores a small shred of the awkwardness of being together at a performance.
If, as Peter Eckersall suggests, dramaturgy is a “transformative artistic practice that bridges ideas, themes and politics” (Reference Eckersall2018), this production bridges the “readymade” and “cabaret” aesthetics of Dada with our current sociopolitical reality. As dramaturg Ezra Brain indicates in their program note, Dada was “born out of the wreckage of World War I” and thus embraced “randomness, chance, and full artistic freedom” (Brain Reference Brain2020). Though we’re not enduring a world war — unless you see the virus as our enemy — we can assume history books will note the year 2020 as a remarkable one. In the United States, 2020 was defined not only by a global pandemic claiming millions of lives, but also by an unhinged US president who refused to acknowledge the results of a democratic election, as well as rampant wildfires and an invigorated social justice movement against systemic racism the scope of which had not been seen since the civil rights movement. In cities like New York, the spread of Covid-19 darkened theatres, shuttered restaurants, and caused many businesses to close their doors forever. Stripped of so much that is normally mundane — touching, visiting family and friends in person, going to work (or for countless people, having work) — many of us are scrambling to remember what, if anything, matters in this earthly life. To be sure, the year 2020 is ripe for a Dada worldview, which asks the existential question: “how can anyone hope to order the chaos that constitutes that infinite, formless variation: man?” (Tzara [1918] Reference Tzara and Wright2011).
From left: Lipica Shah as the Judge and Marisa LaRuffa as Amy in Readymade Cabaret 2.0, directed by Erin B. Mee. Shindig, 2020. (Screenshot by Erin B. Mee)
Indeed, Readymade Cabaret 2.0 refuses to “order the chaos,” and instead takes up issues such as randomness, fate, perception, and the effects of technology and medical science on the body. Still, each scene only lasts a few minutes, and Mee’s direction combines with the verve of the ensemble to steer some scenes (like Amy and Peter’s dialogues) away from self-seriousness. Many of the actors play against the headier dialogue by leaning in toward jocular and lively considerations of, for instance, whether or not humans possess any true agency in determining the course of their lives. Shah particularly embodies the tension between slapstick and dark comedy in her caricature of the Judge — a gum-cracking, pencil-pushing bureaucrat from New Jersey who gravely sentences Amy to a lifetime of misery. Shah’s performance is a profane rendering of a Christian’s ultimate judgment after death. Another constellation of philosophical scenes includes “Why You Shouldn’t Study the Brain” and “Why the Greeks Had It So Easy,” written in the style of academic lectures. In her delivery of these talks, the Professor (Kara F. Green) provokes the audience to question, for example, the ability of the human brain to accurately perceive reality, and whether the ancient Greeks were liberated by their devotion to the idea of Fate. Green’s depiction satirizes the circularity of academic debate while contributing to the production’s balance between the gravity of life’s unanswerable questions and the levity of satire, sensual pleasure, and laughter.
Inasmuch as it pontificates and probes, Readymade Cabaret 2.0 is also reliably silly. Between each scene Mee as emcee greets the next volunteer to join her on the main screen and roll the dice. In each appearance, Mee dons yet another ridiculous hat fashioned from household objects: a colander, a rubber glove, a mop head, and most notably, a lit candle. Created with guidance from costume designer Karina Gutierrez, Mee dons her assemblage of weird hats with as much deadpan commitment as RBG sported her rebellious collars. Her lack of reference to the absurd headwear draws us deeper into the topsy-turvy world of Readymade Cabaret, where colanders are hats, and what’s so funny about that? Like Marcel Duchamp’s infamous urinal Fountain (1917), Readymade Cabaret makes art out of seemingly ordinary objects, challenging distinctions between artful and artless and who gets to make these distinctions. Under the rubric of Dada, which eschews labels, any person can make art at any time. Creativity is democratized. This notion is especially prescient in the Covid-19 era, when — in addition to losing lives on a massive scale — we have seen a renewal of humankind’s unflappable ability to be creative and resourceful. From bathtub ballet on YouTube to political comedy via TikTok, the humans of 2020 have invented an astonishing array of online performances and art objects while stuck at home. In this light, “readymade” is not an art history concept but a salient, restorative aesthetic. Similarly, the cabaret format creates space for the messy, the collaborative, the rushed, and the unfinished. We are called to wonder: what can we make right now, with whomever and whatever is at our fingertips?
There are a few other tactics employed by Readymade Cabaret 2.0 to simulate the participatory audience experiences of pre-2020 live performance. The engagement begins 24 hours before the show via an email featuring instructions on how to make your own “Readymade Hat” and “Readymade Cocktail.” With signature Dada irreverence, the cocktail instructions direct participants to “choose two liquids to which you are aesthetically indifferent” and “garnish randomly” (TINATC 2020). This cheeky approach to at-home bartending was all too familiar for those of us who had been working at home for nine months with only our liquor cabinets for inspiration. I did not make a cocktail for my matinee performance, but I did help myself to a spontaneous beer from my fridge during the show. I was inspired by a few more spirited audience members, who appeared in silly hats with highball glasses in hand. In retrospect, despite my usual Zoom fatigue, I wish I had played along by at least wearing a salad bowl on my head.
Overall, Readymade Cabaret 2.0’s most effective device for engaging audiences might be the virtual dice roll. This feature dramaturgically weaves an element of chance into the show’s very structure: there can be no production without the audience’s influence. Employing one’s audience to determine the direction of a show is not an original concept. Indeed, audience interaction was foundational to the Cabaret Voltaire. More recently in history, the Neo-Futurists employed a “menu” format for audiences to order the sketches in their recurring shows Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (1988–2016) and Infinite Wrench (2016–present). In Readymade Cabaret, the element of involvement occurs virtually, but with a similar effect of randomizing the collective experience.
I had the opportunity to try my hand at the virtual dice roll when I attended Readymade Cabaret 2.0 on 5 December 2020. Despite my preference for the anonymity of passive spectating, I politely acquiesced when the production’s stage manager private-messaged me. I knew my webcam would go “live” as a featured video while I clicked the virtual dice link. It was a simple process, requiring only a few clicks. However, audience members who also dread being “picked” in participatory performances will understand how I felt in the duration between “volunteering” and performing the simple task. Palms sweating, I worried over all the ways I could catastrophically foil my one small task and ruin the show. Would the app work? Would my computer crash? Should I leave my mic on? When the moment arrived, I fumbled my way to the pop-up window, called out the number with a nervous giggle, and the show progressed without a hitch. Back in the safe space behind my avatar, my face flushed like a child who had just been selected to draw a card from magician’s deck. Why was I so worked up?
A few hours later, I realized how long it had been since I last felt the adrenaline rush of participating in a live performance: 11 months since I was herded between the rooms of Fefu’s house at Theatre for a New Audience’s production of Fefu and Her Friends (December 2019); 18 months since the inimitable Ann Liv Young locked eyes with me in her crowded apartment performance of Antigone (May 2019); nearly 2 years since I witnessed a stranger shampoo Siobhan O’Loughlin’s hair in Broken Bone Bathtub (January 2019). Much time had passed since I had last experienced that (once familiar) thrill of transgressing the invisible but very real threshold between actor and audience. I realized that my discomfort at being picked to roll the virtual dice was indeed a gift to relish. While the “silver linings” rhetoric of pandemic outcomes can be nauseating, it is worth recognizing the intrinsic value of audience interaction and cocreation, and how difficult these things are to simulate online, even in very small ways. Perhaps one reason why cabaret performance seems to resurge during times of strife — between the world wars, during prohibition and segregation, and in moments of increased government censorship (see for example McNamara [Reference McNamara2002]; Brown [Reference Brown2008]; Vogel [Reference Vogel2009]) — is because of the genre’s innate intimacy and spontaneity. It seems only fitting that an online cabaret would rise to the occasion of a virus pandemic.
While the cabaret format might be ideal for the times, the technical requirements for an online cabaret create a new set of demands for practitioners. Considering the great aesthetic challenges of simulating copresence in virtual spaces, it is important to recognize the technical artists who invisibly facilitate these experiences. In the case of Readymade Cabaret 2.0, stage manager Evangeline Whitlock and assistant stage managers Bradley Costa and Kelly Kirby were tasked with calling a show constantly in flux (apparently, the scenes have over 1 million possible configurations). Some vignettes required several actors’ screens to be highlighted and pinned at once, while others required full-screen mode or the integration of interactive apps such as the Dada Poetry Generator. Additionally, between each scene, a new audience member’s screen must be pinned to the virtual stage space for the dice roll. Rather than managing lighting cues and entrances as they would in a traditionally staged show, stage managers have had to retrain and reapply their skills to manage videos and virtual scene transitions within new platforms like Shindig. We have yet to behold how these new skills and challenges will impact the stage management profession, and theatre more generally, in a postpandemic future. One thing is certain: the stage manager’s backstage presence is as essential to the success of virtual performances as it was to live theatre of the “before times” — arguably even more so.
Like the Dada performances of the past, Readymade Cabaret 2.0 raises more questions around the quandary of life’s meaning than it answers. Yet it offers the oddly comforting reminder that we are not alone in feeling alone. Could there be something beautiful in the fact that we are all hurtling towards an unknown destiny, predetermined or not? Can we find any solace in the fact that the human condition inevitably entails loss, loneliness, and existential insecurity? If we cannot share a hug, a meal, or a theatre production together, we might as well share in these random ponderings in new online spaces.
