Working-in-Common
and Cross-Cultural Art Practices

Mario Ontiveros

The ever-present risk of convening performance artists, musicians, dancers, writers, and dramaturges to create cross-cultural art is that the resulting performance (and typically there is a final performance) simply places one form next to another without investigating the terms and approaches to artistic exchange.2 Bringing artists together with the expressed aim to create a public performance often mends the rents in the collaborative fabric for the guarantee of a picture perfect grand finale; such a presentable end product usually satisfies funders more than advancing critical thinking about collaborative practices. Further, such a forced ensemble raises an important question asked by the writer and dramaturge Rustom Bharucha in Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture: “[W]hat are the ethics of representation underlying any cross-cultural exchange and the social relationships that constitute it?”3

Mario Ontiveros with Josefina Baez
PHOTO: EKO SUPRIYANTO

APPEX was not one of these programs. In this paper, I focus on how APPEX avoided merely placing disciplines, forms, traditions, etc. next to one another. APPEX’s methodology included the necessary presentations of each artist’s practice, daily workshops comparing and contrasting form and technique, and breakout sessions where artists experiment with working together. APPEX added two important dimensions to these procedures. First, it used an inductive approach towards its daily and weekly activities. By offering a general and flexible framework, APPEX encouraged and nurtured sustained dialogue as a central element in its workshops, exercises, and breakout sessions. This forum provided artists the opportunity to shape the issues discussed and approaches taken throughout the six weeks.

Second, as a forum APPEX allowed artists to examine —individually and collectively— the very idea of cross-cultural collaboration. I am primarily concerned with how this environment encouraged collaboration as a process, or allowed it to remain in process. I consider how collaboration as process allowed artists to scrutinize constructively the intricacies of working with various disciplines, forms, traditions, etc. Collaboration as a process highlights what I refer to as “working-in-common.” By linking the words working-in-common, I draw attention to the social aspects of collaborative work. I emphasize the precarious links between exposure and strength; negotiation and compromise; bonding and vulnerability; and confrontation and resolution that are crucial to any sustained, collaborative program. I underline the tenuousness as much as the potential force of a process-based rather than product-based collaboration.4 Thus, this forum provided a chance for artists to generate and configure culturally specific/sensitive models that, when situated in relation to the growing interest in cross-cultural art making, provide a rigorous template that effectively dislodges the proposed problem of the forced ensemble.

Denise Uyehara, Ettumanoor P. Kannan, and Josefina Baez in “Voices”
PHOTO: LARRY LOEHER

I center my analysis on a performance called “Voices” created by Josefina Baez (La Romana, Dominican Republic), Ettumanoor Parameswaran Kannan (“Kannan”; Kerala, India), and Denise Uyehara (Los Angeles, U.S.), which premiered on the final night of APPEX’s public performances.5 As a potent example of the APPEX method, this performance serves as a case study to explore in depth one of the central problematics of APPEX: What terms of artistic collaboration allow artists to retain the integrity of their cultural production and uphold their artistic responsibility, which for many artists means adhering to and/or preserving traditions? In both the conceptualization and the realization of the piece, the performers emphasized the processes of exchange between disciplines, forms, languages, and traditions.

The stage lights dim. From the back of the stage, three performers walk silently in a diagonal line. Baez leads the procession with her arms outstretched like wings, followed closely by Uyehara spinning a children’s toy that makes a whirling sound, then Kannan, with his arms stretched over his head and his hands interlocked. They begin moving more quickly as their arms rise in unison. Maintaining their diagonal line, they stop center stage. Breaking the silence, they say aloud, “Namaste.” Uyehara says loudly, “Seatbelts.” Each visually provides instructions on how to fasten a seatbelt. Baez continues with the instructions: “The exits…” Each point in various directions to indicate exit locations, and suddenly, what was once an obscure linear formation is revealed as a plane in flight. Miming their instructions, each continues in a manner characteristic of flight attendants demonstrating safety procedures. One says, “Oxygen masks will fall,” but Kannan’s imaginary one fails to fall, and as he gasps for air, Uyehara helps him secure his mask. Then all pause to take a breath. Again, they say, “Namaste.”

Denise Uyehara and Josefina Baez
PHOTO: LARRY LOEHER

In a different language, each begins to sing a lullaby: Baez sings a personal rendition of a traditional Afro-Cuban lullaby, “Drumete Negrito”; Uyehara sings in Japanese about the adventures of Momotaro, the Peach Boy; and Kannan sings a story about Lord Krishna’s childhood in Malayalam. While their voices remain distinct, at times they aurally overlap into a chorus that produces a sonorous tension within and alongside their singing. Baez breaks from her lullaby, stating, “You are not here to translate! You are here to speak Spanish!” Then, Uyehara pleads verbally and in American Sign Language, “STOP, Stop, stop…” Her voice trails off and picks up again: “A story about the dead.” As a narrative begins to take shape, it is disrupted by Baez saying, “My friend is powerful… Very powerful—Very, very powerful. He changed the sky from blue to orange—bright, bright, bright orange.” Concurrently, Uyehara uses sign language and Kannan, Kathakali, to repeat Baez’s story. Again the story shifts. Kannan exclaims, “I was riding in a car, riding and riding and the car crashes….”

I sat in the audience that night, watching “Voices” unfold in front of the packed theater. I looked around and wondered if the audience was able to sense the delicate contours and sharp edges of the collaborative process. Had the audience read the stated goal of APPEX, printed in their program that evening? It characterized APPEX as “an international artists and writers program that promotes cross-cultural and interdisciplinary understanding; develops rigorous strategies for art-making that reflect the nuances of cultural differences; and fosters new ways to experiment, collaborate, and interpret artistic expression.” To understand how the artists in “Voices” engaged these goals, I discuss APPEX’s methodology.

Proactive from the beginning concerning its conception of cross-cultural art, APPEX’s fellowship application states that “when we speak of ‘intercultural performance,’ we refer not to established sets of artistic principles, but rather to a site of cultural convergence and collision, of expression and reception, of argument and synthesis, of creation and declaration.”6 In practice, the program includes numerous exercises, workshops, discussions, and forum sessions that encourage participants to abandon typical dichotomies and destabilize the boundaries between performing and writing, practice and theory, production and evaluation. I hasten to add that APPEX did not ask artists to forsake their tradition. Instead, it created a forum for them to work in and outside one’s discipline simultaneously.

This forum of exchange began with the first week’s “Artists’ Introductions.” Everyone gave a demonstration of their work, talked about their tradition/discipline, and shared general information about themselves.7 These introductions offered APPEX participants a lens through which to view a discursive range of artistic practices and sociocultural issues. For example, in Baez’s introduction she talked about her life in her country—La Romana, Dominican Republic—and how she had to migrate to the United States, stating , “I come from a place that no longer exists.” Focusing on issues of migration, memory, and loss, she asked a central question: “When you leave a place, or when your sense of place has been taken from you, what do you take with you?” Her poignant words echo those of cultural theorist Stuart Hall: “Migration is a one way trip. There is no ‘home’ to go back to.”8

Baez now lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been staged internationally and in various locations in New York City. For her, performance functions as a vehicle 910to tell a story. In her introduction, she talked about taking theatre into people’s homes around her neighborhood. In these performances, she connects issues of migration, ethnicity, class, gender, and spirit—what she calls her “constants”—to the conditions she sees around her. Commenting on her relationship with community members, she says, “It is not ‘me,’ the artist, and ‘them,’ the community—there is no separation. I am not the voice of the community but [I am] part of the community…. We don’t go to the theater, so I go to their homes.” For Baez, the purpose of such performances is not simply to entertain but to use storytelling as a means “to start a dialogue, to find points of connection.”

Stimulating sociocultural dialogue through performance has its roots in her training and research. She incorporates a range of techniques from Kuchipudi (Southeast Indian dance), Hatha yoga, and contemporary performance art. Together, these practices inform her view of tradition, which she defines as “…words, deeds, thoughts—said and done—and [how they] continue being experienced in their form (as thought, words, or action).”11 She also points out, “…migration by its definition is inclusive, [and] thus collaboration is part of its essence,” to which storytelling serves as a performative link.12

Storytelling and tradition are equally important for Kannan, a performer of Kathakali. Originating in Kerala, South India, Kathakali is a dance-drama that tells stories from the Hindu epics, the Mahabharatha and the Ramayana. As Kannan explained in his introduction, the actor enacts these stories without ever saying a word. Through years of disciplined training, he has learned the art of Kathakali. With Kathakali, tradition is very important, and he defines it as “…a collective memory of the past, which passes from generation to generation in the form of cultural activities.”13 He has performed extensively both within Kerala and internationally, and he has attempted to work with Kathakali techniques in different creative contexts. APPEX’s six-week residency provided him a unique opportunity to elaborate one of his primary concerns “to do creative presentations with artists from other countries,” as he expressed in a letter predating APPEX and distributed to all participants.14 For Kannan, this chance was significant because Kathakali does not encourage collaboration: “The mere idea of collaboration is against tradition. Through collaboration a tradition can be ‘polluted.’ In our tradition, collaboration is not advisable (those who stand out of tradition admit that collaboration helps to know [more] about the tradition.).”15 For Kannan, APPEX allowed him to hold in tension the idea of collaboration and the responsibility toward tradition.

Uyehara was also able to extend and think through her relationship to collaboration and artistic tradition. She is both a solo performance artist and a founding member of the “culturally-diverse, experimental performance collective,”16 Sacred Naked Nature Girls. During her introduction, she addressed issues of historical recovery, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, employing a range of contemporary performance art techniques—dance movement, drawing, storytelling, as well as incorporated props and assumed various characters—to demonstrate how these concerns underline her artistic inquires.

Uyehara’s artistic tradition derives from performance art informed by 1970s–1990s feminist theory and identity politics, both of which critically examined issues of gender, race, class, and sexual marginalization to create a counter discourse and engender new subjectivities. Uyehara states, “Everyone has a tradition, and I honor that as a contemporary artist, but also because performance artists do create their own tradition. As a woman, I feel that women over the centuries have created their own traditions—sometime these traditions are very secret, because women have been written out of history.”17

For Uyehara, performance is a social process, a way to raise sociopolitical issues, create “meaning,” and elicit conversations. In her letter to APPEX artists, Uyehara, similar to Kannan, expresses her enthusiasm to collaborate and exchange stories during the residency. In the form of a prose-poem letter, she writes:

At APPEX I hope to:
Listen.
Let go of preconceptions.
Learn from each of you.
Respect the traditional art forms:
Dance, music, writing, performance, story-telling
Share from the heart.
Share what I have learned in my discipline:
performance based on individual and collective memory.
Find new ways to collaborate.
Create a new language to create new work.
Allow for spontaneity.
Perhaps create work together. Small steps. Process.
---
How does your culture create?
How do you create?
How shall we create together?

How can I be of service?18

Uyehara’s letter reflects the “hope” that was made clear in each APPEX artists’ introductions. The final question posed by Uyehara, “How can I be of service?” underscores the willingness to embrace the possibility of working together and develop models for cross-cultural art making.

APPEX invited artists to experiment with the terms of artistic exchange. Together became, to use Baez’s word, a “constant” and a form of perpetual praxis, not only formally working in studio but also living and creating in the APPEX House—in the kitchen, courtyard, backyard, upstairs, downstairs.19 Referencing the ongoing workshop environment, Uyehara points out, “Collaboration takes place while eating together, and later while in the studio.”20 Here, I return to “Voices” to discuss the ways Baez, Kannan, and Uyehara brought to the fore this constant intertwining.

As “Voices” continues on the dimly lit stage, a diagonal swatch of bright light rakes against the performers. Separately, Baez, Kannan, and Uyehara begin to tell a story. The other performers use movement and gesture to reiterate it; thus, telling the same story across three different languages. The frenetic and choppy pace parallels the fragmented rhythm of each story. Baez’s says, “You are not here to translate! You are here to speak Spanish!” While in the process of telling her story, she is interrupted by one of the artists beginning another story, and then the third, creating a stream of unresolved stories.

Kannan begins, “I was riding in a car, riding and riding and the car crashes…” and then falls to the ground, clutching his throat. Uyehara and Baez, who have moved out of the spotlight, use various instruments to create buzzing sounds, like electrical drills and saws. Mixing Kathakali and improvisational movements, he stands up, breathing heavily and gaping for air. “Don’t make holes in my throat! Don’t make holes in my throat!” He struggles to find his voice, now lost, and as if we are listening to his thoughts, he yells, “Where is my sound? I am looking for my sound, where is it? My sound?”

We hear the sound of a baby’s cry. Kannan looks into his folded arms, and says, “Like a small sound coming from a newborn baby, my sound comes to me.” Without allowing the audience to linger on this moment of resolution, Uyehara proclaims, “I had a dream about ‘Big D’ and ‘little d’….‘Big D’ was standing on the beach, and she said, ‘Go! Gooooo!’ She said, ‘Go! Gooooo!’ So I went to the beach and there I found a body wrapped in a white cloth.” While Uyehara is speaking, Kannan plays the role of the dead body, and Baez continues to make sounds with the instruments. “In the event of an emergency landing,” Uyehara says, “the dead speak the truth. She said ‘Go!’ She said, ‘Go!’”

Ettumanoor P. Kannan
PHOTO: LARRY LOEHER

The three performers reform into their diagonal line. Baez calls out, “My friend is powerful…very powerful—very, very powerful. He changed the sky from blue to orange—bright, bright, bright orange.” Looking at Uyehara and Kannan, she continues, “You do not understand me? Well, I will say it again in Spanish.” As she recounts the story, all three begin to run in place, together. They make visual contact with each other and Baez departs from this story, and yells in English, “You are not here to translate! You are here to speak Spanish! You are not here to translate! You are here to speak English! You are not here to translate…” Her voice trails off, pausing momentarily. “…you are here to feel!” She repeats, “You are not here to translate. You are here to feel!” Pause. Breaking their diagonal line, Baez, Kannan, and Uyehara cluster together and look up and out to the audience. Their arms wrap around each other’s shoulders as they point toward an imaginary horizon, smile, and take a bow. The light fades.

Arguably, one criticism of the performance might be that its seemingly obtuse theme and fractured narrative simply deploys modern Western performance aesthetics. Further, it might be seen less an artistic exchange than an example of a kind of artistic juxtaposition that I mentioned above. These concerns bring up a question about the criteria for judgment. Here, again I turn to Bharucha, who writes, “One of the 2122challenges in intercultural experiments is to find a method of work that reflects larger principles of ‘exchange.’” After working together repeatedly during the residency, one such principle for Baez, Kannan, and Uyehara was storytelling. Storytelling formed the core to their respective traditions and provided a framework to explore ways to create in a common language that artistically and respectfully integrated their practices.

It was during the first “Project” session, when “Voices” was not even a whisper, that Uyehara and Kannan first started working together.23 Uyehara was interested in investigating the processes involved in bringing together different traditions and formal strategies of storytelling. Kannan wanted to interweave Kathakali storytelling techniques with structural improvisation used by several American artists like Uyehara. For both artists, Uyehara says:

We wanted to share our individual art processes. We started with physical improvisation—one exercise from Simone Forte, a dancer based in Los Angeles—in which we concentrate on a shape in a room, like a pipe or a corner, and you become that shape. Another performer joins in with you and then you add energy and movement. I was the director in these early stages—the group was a mix of many different types of performers and writers…. We also worked on gestures, such as waving. We stood in a line and waved as a way to see the uniqueness of the individual approaches and interpretations.24

Denise Uyehara and Ettumanoor P. Kannan
PHOTO: LARRY LOEHER

APPEX’s workshop atmosphere provided the time for them to think through and then try various modes of working together. Kannan points out that, “The processes developed and developed and developed. In a particular stage, [Denise] asked me to write a small story [about] when I first found my voice, my sound—a particular moment when I felt that my sound was very important. I wrote my story and…then read [it] on stage.”25 Baez joined after Kannan and Uyehara had already started working and together they revisited the movement and writing exercises. Baez noted, “It was important to go through these processes as a group to have a common experience. I had a chance to write and develop my first voice story. Kannan and Denise had already developed the piece from beginning to end. Together we worked and worked on integrating our levels—in terms of the organization of working materials.”26

Each of their stories draws upon a personal event concerning something that hindered or silenced their voice, literally and figuratively. Kannan said, “I was in an accident, and after the accident, I lost my voice for some time. The doctors made holes in my throat to repair my voice. For four months, I could not speak. The hole was filled and I had to practice speaking again. So, I thought that I would use this [experience]. I wrote a short story, one or two pages.”27 Uyehara’s is based on two events that occurred on the same day. She disclosed,

I wrote a story about my grandmother’s suicide, and some extended family members were upset that I had written a story about her death. On the day that they reacted to my story, I went to the beach and there was a dead body, wrapped in white cloth. My grandmother’s suicide and this anonymous body—that also had a family. When someone dies, the “realities” are gone, so I thought, I should speak the truth.28

Baez’s story integrated two events as well. As a child, she saw a youth leader in her town killed, after which she recalled:

At that moment, I did not know what had happened, the sun became orange in a color, a color that I had never seen before. This color, the killing, they remained in my mind….I used a second story: I was hired as a [court] translator….I was a translator of a very harsh case about a little kid who was raped and the mother did not want to press charges. I was not translating anymore and I was telling her that she had to press charges. I became too passionate about the case, on my first day of the job, and the judge told me, “You are not here to feel! You are here to translate.” I mix both stories together.29

As their stories echoed some of those heard on the first day’s “Artists’ Introductions,” so too were the exercises and movements that formed “Voices”. According to Baez, “We had to simplify our physical sequence…and even our stories. My original story was three to four pages, and I reduced it to three lines. My story is connected to Denise’s story and her physical story is connected to Kannan’s physical story. The stories are layered—movement and stories take place on many levels. We are deconstructing the text and physicality.”30

The performers stressed the processes of exchange between disciplines, forms, languages, and traditions. In practice, this is evinced in the “Voices” performance. While one artist employed core tenets of her or his respective tradition to tell a story, the other two used theirs to retell it. This layering highlighted individual traditions and at the same time was then brought together through storytelling. Watching “Voices” was, in essence, an echo of the various exercises, conversations, and interactions experienced 31throughout APPEX. Working-in-common was a willingness to reach across traditions and forms and to give artistic space and license for each to have input. Uyehara notes, “We had some things in common. I think the three of us found each other at APPEX because we were interested in a certain type of collaboration: one that was non-linear [and] could mix text, image, and movement. We set a landscape, a playing field. We used a line on the stage—which sprung from an exercise I taught [earlier in APPEX], and Kannan kept saying it would be a great idea for the final piece—as a central site for our stories and bodies.”

The collaborative voices in “Voices” are a testament to APPEX’s sustained process-oriented environment, of living and working together. Sustained is the operative word, as this intense time together promoted lines of communication, working relationships, and friendships. It cultivated a sense of accountability toward each artist, mediating but not necessarily resolving competing individual agendas and group dynamics. Part of working-in-collaboration was, in part, working through the responsibility of collaboration as it developed during our weeks together: learning to offer assistance, disagree respectfully, and critique constructively. Responsibility also meant acknowledging when you, or another, could not commit to working through a process.

Several months following APPEX, I wrote to Kannan, Baez, and Uyehara asking: “What are the necessary (or hopeful) conditions for promoting collaboration?” Baez answered, “The conditions: that the parties involved (in a direct collaboration) are ‘on the same page’ technically and spiritually—satisfied with their work…. Spiritually, includes all social/political implication: spiritual = purest ACTION.”32 For Kannan, “Two elements are inevitable. 1. Self knowledge—a correct understanding about one’s own tradition or art form. 2. Mutual respect—One should know that the other form or tradition with which he/she collaborates is as respectable as his/her own form or tradition. And the audience should be ready to accept something new out of collaboration. (i.e., the audience should be free from inhibitions).”33

APPEX’s working process allowed artists to employ various theoretical frameworks and methodological tools to work-in-common. The process-oriented atmosphere loosened the too-often-rigid distinctions between artist and writer, personal and professional, theory and practice. While not abandoning the rigors of our respective fields, artists experimented working within and across disciplines. In practice, APPEX afforded the opportunity to work constructively in a manner of collaborative responsibility. Moreover, by living and working together, artists developed a professional as well as personal responsibility towards each other. Of course, working-in-common does not preclude arguments, and they occurred throughout the six weeks together. Indeed, developing, breaking, and reforming collaborative partnerships and professional relations are both elements of working-in-common.

To work collaboratively is seldom easy. Yet, when collaboration truly occurs, as in “Voices,” it yields powerful and unpredictable work. Because the dynamics of interchange remain complex and difficult to maintain, allowing them adequate time to develop offers the actualization of exceptional and meaningful work. I hope that my analysis and the artists’ testimonials about “Voices” articulate a method of working-in-common in which individual APPEX artists became a loosely associated collaborative community that continues to this day. I echo Uyehara’s summation of our time together:

At APPEX, I was excited to collaborate with other artists. I think it’s understandable that in six weeks we can only begin the process: we share ideas, do some improvisation, discuss how our own traditional form works, figure out simple ways to integrate with one another. Sometimes we were successful, other times not. Being realistic about our expectations, in any project, is important. Plus, we learn to look at the bigger picture: APPEX is just a beginning, a starting point, that could lead to further collaborations.34

The intertwining of aesthetics, disciplines, and cultures encouraged critical, productive dialogues as well as nurtured a dynamic of exchange. As I have suggested, APPEX allowed for sustained collaboration that allowed the process to remain in process. As APPEX continues in other countries with additional performers and writers, perhaps the experiences and exchanges between Baez, Kannan, Uyehara, and me might serve as another flexible template to be used, extended, or discarded. Indeed, it seems necessary to continually unsettle, even challenge, our existing methods of intercultural performance as a means to understand its larger cultural, political, social, and economic significance.

Bringing APPEX artists together required tremendous passion and administrative dexterity. I would like to thank Judy Mitoma for her and her staff’s tireless commitment to the artists. I am deeply indebted to Josefina Baez, Ettumanoor Parameswaran Kannan, and Denise Uyehara for sharing their ideas about their collaborative processes. Similarly, I am grateful to all APPEX artists for frank and open conversations about aesthetics and praxis. I owe a very special debt to Ricardo D. Trimillos, our APPEX mentor/facilitator, for opening up an intellectual and creative space for an art historian concerned with the question of social responsibility and ethical relations to participate in APPEX. I am grateful, too, to the APPEX writers for engaging in many productive exchanges, especially Pattara Danutra for his helpful criticism, long conversations, and friendship. Thank you, Pattara. I owe a special thanks to Sabrina Lynn Motley for encouraging me to apply for the APPEX residency and for her keen insights into how it might contribute to a more nuanced understanding of collaborative processes. Finally, Ricardo D. Trimillos, Kris Kuramitsu, Roberto Bedoya, and Anoosh Jorjorian kindly read early versions of this essay and made excellent editorial and conceptual recommendations.

1 - Audre Lorde, “Frontiers,” interview by Pratibha Parmar and Jackie Kay, in Charting the Journey: Writings by Black and Third World Women, ed. Shabnam Grewal, Jackie Kay, Liliane Landor, Gail Lewis, and Pratibha Parmar (London: Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1988), 130. Lorde makes this statement in relation to a question concerning the development of an international movement of Black and Third World women. In her viewpoint, it is “in the process of being born” (130); but she also stresses that the interview with Pratibha Parmar and Jackie Kay is a testament that “we are doing it…”(130). I begin the essay with Lorde’s quote because, as she discusses the political, personal, and cultural imperative for an international network of Black women, she emphasizes the importance of doing, linking, and balancing both cultural production (i.e., creating art, publishing) and political activism. During APPEX, many artists talked about a similar intertwining in their praxis, to which I think APPEX served as an international forum to discuss such work and think about future endeavors.
2 - Throughout this essay, “artists” designates performance artists, musicians, dancers, writers, and dramaturges.
3 - Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture, (New York: Routledge, 1993), 4.
4 - On a more personal level, I concentrate on Baez, Kannan, and Uyehara’s performance because I worked with each member on numerous occasions, which allowed for a sustained conversation about the notion of collaboration. Indeed, I watched, listened, and at times contributed to, the various voices that came in and out of “Voices.” This essay, then, should not be considered a writing-over, or a final voice-over, of the process. Instead, it is a voice within countless conversations, writings, performances, email exchanges, videos, and other documents (DVDs, DATs, video tapes, and photographs) that have been and continue reverberating because of APPEX.
5 - As I discuss below: Baez is a Dominican writer, educator, and performance artist living in the United States; Kannan is a performer of Kathakali from Kerala, India; and Uyehara is a Japanese-American interdisciplinary performance artist from the United States.
6 - As cited in the Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship Program, 1998 (photocopy).
7 - In addition, for me these introductions elicited a productive tension between the writer’s academic inquiries and the work of arts practitioners because we all had to present on the same stage and under the same light, so to speak. As a writer, asking me to move out from behind my pen and paper to convey my approach to writing publicly began a process of blurring the distinctions between writer and performer.
8 - Stuart Hall, “Minimal Selves,” in Identity: The Real Me: Post-Modernism and the Question of Identity, ed. L. Appignanesi, ICA Documents 6, (London, ICA, 1987), 44.
9 - Interview with the artist, Los Angeles, California, August 9, 2000. For a review of Baez’s theatre in neighborhood homes, please see Ramón Rivera-Servera, “Apartarte/Casarte,” in Theatre Journal 52:1 (2000), 110–112.
10 - Interview with the artist, Los Angeles, California, August 9, 2000.
11 - Interview with the artist, Los Angeles, California, August 9, 2000.
12 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 2, 2001.
13 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 4, 2001.
14 - As stated in the artist’s letter prior to the APPEX residency (photocopy).
15 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 4, 2001.
16 - Information cited in APPEX Fellows Biographies, p.6.
17 - Interview with the artist, Los Angeles, California, August 10, 2000.
18 - Denise Uyehara, “Introduction Letter to APPEX Artists” (photocopy).
19 - Throughout APPEX, artists worked in numerous collaborative capacities. From the beginning, the theme “Homelands” served as an overarching discussion topic. After discussing the theme in smaller groups, artists reconvened to talk about their findings. Other times, they worked together for only brief 30-minute periods, while other projects developed over days as they worked through different ideas and approaches to the theme.
20 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 2001.
21 - Bharucha, Theatre and the World: 6.
22 - During the final weeks of the residency, artists had the opportunity to introduce and collectively discuss ideas and themes that might serve as the basis for possible performances for the final “APPEX Showings.” It was a period of intense experimentation and creativity that allowed artists to work for extended periods in small clusters.
23 - In the early developmental stages of “Voices,” Kannan and Uyehara worked with approximately six additional artists, discussing the parameters of the project and even staging “test” performances; however, these artists decided to direct their efforts to other projects, which was not uncommon in APPEX’s workshop environment.
24 - Uyehara in “Group Interview with Baez, Kannan, Uyehara,” Los Angeles, California, August 12, 2000.
25 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 2001.
26 - Baez in “Group Interview with Baez, Kannan, Uyehara,” Los Angeles, California, August 12, 2000.
27 - Kannan in “Group Interview with Baez, Kannan, Uyehara,” Los Angeles, California, August 12, 2000.
28 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 2001.
29 - Interview with the artist, Los Angeles, California, August 9, 2000.
30 - Interview with the artist, Los Angeles, California, August 9, 2000.
31 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 2001.
32 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 2001.
33 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 2001.
34 - Email correspondence with the artist, February 2001.