Insurgent Theatre and Alamo Basement will shortly be staging yet another performance in their ongoing BERZERK!!! series.
The premise of the show goes something like this: Alamo Basement co-founder Mike Q. Hanlon contacts a group of writers and gives each of them a line from some bit of text. They then each have ten minutes to write a script for a play incorporating that line. It makes for an interesting evening of theatre expressly designed to chase after that brief moment of inspiration that is the nucleus of all great art. Originally an annual program with performances dating back to December of 2006, Insurgent and Alamo Basement have recently announced monthly BERZERK!!! performances through July.
The poster art for the series is a bit oddposters over the years have come to feature what appears to be an axe wielding gentleman in a monkey suit with ten sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest, usually carrying the axe in one hand and the detonator in another. The ten sticks would seem to represent ten minutes. Precisely why they are strapped to the chest of a guy in a monkey suit is probably anybody’s guess . . . the latest poster features the mascot towering over a cowering Shakespeare with an arm raised to dramatically detonate the dynamite.
The first time I saw that new poster image, I was reminded of the infinite monkey theoreman infinite number of monkeys pounding away at typewriters could theoretically bang out the complete works of Shakespeare if given the right amount of time. Weird as it was, it’s something mathematicians and philosophical-types have been pondering for a long time. Profoundly deep logic has been poured into arguing the specifics of the theory which goes back in some form or other since shortly after Sholes and Glidden developed the first commercial typewriter in our fair city in 1867. Interest in the theory continues today. Just a few years ago England's University of Plymouth spent 2,000 pounds to do an actual version of the experiment with six macaques. The end product that the university paid 2,000 pounds for were: one damaged writing device and a five page document consisting mostly of the letter “S.” (the letters A, J and L also made appearances towards the end.)
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The theory remains a fascinating one, though . . . and it has an interesting connection to BERZERK!!! The idea of the works of Shakespeare (or any other great writer) essentially coming about by chance is part of what makes the program’s parameters so interesting. Taking it for granted that a playwright could completely clear his or her head, be introduced to a line of text from an existing book and then write an entirely improvised script for ten minutes, the result may very well end up being something very close to what another person had written at some point in the past. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that the playlet in question would, if only by chance, end up being something that was originally written by someone else ages ago and staged countless times all over the world sincesomething not altogether unlike Shakespeare. Here, the writer (ideally) doesn’t represent the random force of an infinite number of monkeys. That random element is the meeting between the writer’s psyche and the ten consecutive minutes provided to write the script. The berzerker playwrights may in some way be reaching to the ultimate source of inspirationthe creative impulse, but they may also be reaching right into the heart of chaos to pull something bizarre and inconsistent out of the creative ether. Dadaists and practitioners of Fluxus would be proud . . .
The problem with the "art-by-random-chance" model of perception about BERZERK!!! is that it fails to take into account the human subconscious. Now, I know even mentioning the subconscious in some circles will get you laughed at and ridiculed. (In college I studied under a few behaviorist professors who didn’t even believe in anything as intangible the human mind,) but the fact of the matter is that there is a residue running through the wet clockwork of the brain that finds it easier to tell stories similar to what that brain has already processed. Without getting too bogged-down in the abstract implications of this, the bottom line here is that a writer never really has a blank page. You’re always telling stories with the unheard cacophony of every other story you’ve ever heard. Invariably, when given a blank ten minutes of time, you’ll end up writing something not altogether unlike something you’ve read or seen performed before. Even when you think you’ve got a fresh idea, it can turn out to be something someone else has already written. In the process of writing the acclaimed graphic novel Watchmen, British author Alan Moore came-up with an end to his story that he presumably thought was fresh an original. It wasn’t until some time later that he realized he’d come up with a central conspiracy that had been more or less inadvertently lifted from an old episode of The Outer Limits. Even when you think you’ve got something new, you don’t.
Arguably, berzerker playwrights aren’t even really telling stories in their ten minutes, as most recognizable plot structures would take much longer than that to carve out of a blank page. The parameters of the experiment seem to oddly reminiscent of a projective psychological testlike a thematic apperception test. In such tests, a patient is given a ambiguous picture and asked to tell a story about it that will reveal things about his or her personality. The act of giving a playwright an ambiguous sentence and asking them to tell a story with it seems kind of similar to me . . . albeit an experiment that wouldn’t have any real clinical value. Still--it is an interesting chance for actors and audience to crawl inside the head of a playwright for ten minutesjust long enough to see a fraction of what’s going on without doing any real damage. It sounds like fun and I hope to get a bit of ambiguous text in my email from Mike Hanlon some time soon. The next BERZERK!!! is on February 21st. I’ll be keeping an eye out for a package with the monkey suit, axe and ten sticks of dynamite. It could be delivered any day now . . .
BERZERK!!! will be performed March 22nd, April 26th, May 24th, June 20th and July 19th at the Alchemist Theatre. Tickets are $5.
