Recently, I started a club at my school. This is one of those cultic, difficult-to-explain type clubs, but I'm going to make an attempt at it anyway.
Sometime through the course of human history, between the Roman Empire and the Spanish American War, art became an institution rather than a mode of creative and evocative expression. Now, in order to see a play, we pay money to sit in a dark theatre where actors only interact with each other while the audience is expected to shut up and maybe laugh on cue. Very much unlike theatre through the 15th century in which audience participation (shouting, jeering, throwing rotten veggies) was not only condoned, but encouraged.
Poetry and stories are now imprisoned by publishing companies into mass-produced texts, orphaned by their authors who only call upon them when the books get famous and the author needs to get out of debt. What ever happened to the street corner reading of poetry, even epic petry, by those such as Homer, Ovid, or Vergil?
Too long, art has been separated from its audience. Too long has art been created in a vacuum. Art is no longer a reaction to society, but a reaction to pretty things. At very best, artists can hope for a "that's nice."
So I started this club in an attempt to change that. The club is called G.A.L.L. which stands for Guerilla Art Liberation Lives. We engage in acts of street theatre, performance poetry, pillow fights, pranks, pseudo-vandalism, and body painting on my college's campus. Did I mention that the events are unannounced? It's pretty fun to have the audience interact with a play that they didn't know that they were a part of.
But that's the point. Artists have been separated as vessals of artistic thought, as if an artist could act independently from society.
Running on this theme, I have created this little club as a social experiment to make art a part of life, since life is necessarily a part of art.
For more information about my club (hopefully, you'll start your own), check out our website:
UMWGuerillaArt.Blogspot.com
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Where can I sign up?
Nicholas Aden
Self-Promotion
Start one at your school. Starting a club is usually remarkably easy.
--Mike
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Aye aye, captain. Though, the last club started at my school was GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) and the students working to start the club had to go all the way to the Superintendent. It was amazing how hard the principal fought against the club.
Nicholas Aden
Self-Promotion
Step 1: Get at least one faculty member for support
Step 2: Get a sizeable number of interested students
Step 3: Do some impromptu poetry readings or other acts of art to gather more interest
Step 4: Explain the club to the administration as promotion of the arts in students' everyday lives. Claim that other clubs may use the club to figure out new and creative ways of advertising. Promise a poetry slam in April to get kids more into the idea of poetry.
Step 5: Lather, rinse, repeat.
--Mike
Check out the ProgU News Feed:
http://www.progressiveu.org/news
Keep an eye out for the new FAQ and Topic of the Week, coming this fall!
I love this idea. I'm homeschooled but maybe I can start something at the local community college.
Love it.
Technical schools like mine need more culture. I'll send a link to this on to our Theater Club and maybe they can get involved...
My gut reaction was "NO!!!"
Reason being, the theatre department at my school has this inane sense of heirarchy so only people who have been in the department for a while get cast, rather than actual talent. That's why I kept the club in the English department.
Regardless, delegation of an idea rarely works. You want it done? Do it yourself. You'll be a hero!
--Mike
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Haha... our theater club has no (will have no) theater.
They're a little bit "different"... Clarkson isn't your typical college.
I was thinking more one or two members of the club in particular that might be interested in "branching out" from their single performance a year. Unfortunately, I'm not around until next semester (Co-Op) so I've got to recruit from afar.