Which Riot?

So last night I was one of five performers who responded to the events of April 23, 1935 when Mayor Gerry McGeer read the Riot Act to the relief camp protesters, their families and supporters gathered at Victory Square. I count Anakana Schofield as one of the performers because she read some texts from the archives of the original event that helped put the works by the rest of us into context and provide the connective tissue that held the live event together.

The event was at the Waldorf hotel which is an old tiki tiki-style building which I'd heard a lot about but had never visited. Just visiting the Waldorf was a bit of an adventure, but of course with the added edge of performing two pieces it promised to be a curious event. It's been a long time since I performed in a cabaret, I used to do at least three or four a year. It's a genre that I love because of the sense of the potluck and the camaraderie among the performers back stage. I've been back stage with "Colonel Sanders," drag queens, women in fetish gear, naked Butoh dancers painting their bodies white, "Sonny and Cher", and more poets, musicians and feminists than you can shake a stick at. I love the surreal quality of the backstage life, crackling with nervous tension and sometimes a frisson of animosity. However, generally because we're all freaks we tend to pull together and root for each other.

I came to the venue in costume, knowing full well there might not be a green room, and I was ushered back into a small venue called "The Hideaway" with at least one black velvet painting of a woman in the process of losing her grass skirt and a shitload of bamboo. It covers walls, posts, bars, and furnishes the place. The odd thing is that none of the other performers chose to hang out "backstage". I guess it's my theatre background coming through here vs. their visual art/music/writer history. So I sat backstage by myself snacking on crackers and baba ganouj, taking in the rather dreary little tiki tiki room and I examined what was hiding behind all the curtains and screens. The answer is nothing really, but those furnishings do create an air of seedy mystery about the place. I enjoyed the focus I was able to achieve by being alone. This is what the big stars must feel like when they are about to go on, except they'd have assistants to fuss around them. I warmed up, snacked and then I waited. I couldn't see or hear what was going on in the cabaret space so I was in a kind of tiki tiki limbo. What could one do but think about one's life in the cabaret?

I remember reading an artist I admire say that she stopped doing cabaret because the costs and time outweighed the fees you are paid. That is true in most cases, except we were paid appropriately last night, maybe the first and last time that will ever happen, but one can dream. Performing is a ritual that makes you face your body in a real way. I find writing the easy part--it's the vulnerability of using my body as the tool as it is very challenging. However, I think it's important to keep at it. It's a glorious form of human expression--raw, direct, and full of potential. Many of the audience are often performers as well, hungry for a good night out with substance, style, humor, and food for thought. It's the kind of challenge you want to keep doing until you feel you master it, even though that goal is ephemeral.

Performing in a cabaret is very rewarding in other ways than the monetary ones. You have to face yourself as an audience of yourself, creating distance in order to be able to create work for the "other". This develops your third eye and helps you face your aging mind and body as you celebrate it (even if you do so ironically). We don't always like what we come up with, but last night I felt very happy with what I was able to do and I really appreciate being given the opportunity to explore the theme.

I didn't reference the subject matter directly--it is the language of the legal manipulation of people that interests me most right now, so I wanted to focus on that. I studied the new age books and lingo that are espousing non violent communication because I wanted to know how we prevent the build up of injury and frustration that leads to violence. Now the events in April 1935 were very specific to that time--extreme hardship and life-threatening poverty. The words created to stop the crowds in this context seem inadequate and impotent. Similarly, one assumes reading the Riot Act last night would mean SFA to that frenzied group of hardcore rioters.

I am intrigued about that moment when an action turns from being legal to illegal. There's that moment when behavior becomes destabilized and then that sets off a chain reaction of words and events that the law is created to stop and turn back. The language created to push back at the darker impulses humans have has to be very potent.

I must commend the cops on taking a non-aggressive approach to the looting and burning that happened last night. It seemed wise to put the values of people's safety over the damage of property. And that seemed to be the main thrust of the action--let's destroy and steal shit.

So I wonder does sport have the potential to provide a safe outlet for pent up energy that can turn aggressive? Maybe we should be spending more money on amateur sport so that instead of being nations of watchers, we are nations of players. Even my son said he researched the last hockey riots in Vancouver and predicted something similar would happen in last night. I had a feeling it would go either way: a bliss-out boostering hooplah or a number from the dark side.

I must say that I will never forget emerging from a dim cabaret and seeing a black plume of smoke against the glow of a June sunset.