Week One: Writing Prompt 1

In Oral Power and the Europhone Glory, N'gugi Wa Thiong'o discusses how performance art, storytelling, and theater possess the power to demonstrate theoretical, or invisible, concepts. He writes that the core presentation of orature rejects “the boundaries between the written and the oral” and serves as a “potent” silence (115). In other words, spoken word and performance highlight and uncover themes that surround the culture from which they originate. Furthermore, Thiong’o presents Richard Schechner’s argument in Performance Theory, stating, “it is more fruitful to see theatre alongside other related activities of play, games, sports, dance, music, and ritual than alongside literature” (118). The provoking, poignant art piece Couple in a Cage illustrates these concepts through several different theatrical elements, revealing human ignorance and the harmful outcomes of colonialism.

One prominent element that Couple In A Cage employs is dance. In the exhibit, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco play music from a boombox and move in a “tribal-esque” dance. Clad in animal-print patterns, the artists choreograph stereotypical movements to play into preconceived colonialist notions surrounding indigenous culture. Just as Bets exclaims, “I just love when they dance!” (Act 2, pp. 38) in Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, the exhibit attendees garner perverse enjoyment from watching two foreign “specimen” fulfill their expectations. Bets and Mack chant, “Yesss, they love to dance. Yeess, black people sing, black people dance” (Act 2, pp. 38), reveling in racial generalization. Both Couple In A Cage and Fairview reveal how powerful regimes, such as colonialism or racial imbalance, depend upon performances to maintain stereotypes. These stereotypes fuel expectations and emphasize differences, further solidifying power imbalances.

Additionally, Couple in a Cage heavily incorporates audience interaction into the exhibit. Fairview, too, invites members of the audience up to the stage, simultaneously including and alienating them. Unbeknownst to them, the viewers themselves become an integral element of the performance art. In both the play and the performance art, attendees pay for entertainment; they want to see a show. In Couple in a Cage specifically, visitors, kept safe by the bars of a cage, procure cash to witness their white privilege and first world power in the act. Just as colonialism depends upon the economic exploitation of weaker bodies, the performance art depends upon its performers and audience.