Fringe Lab: Experimental Performance 08/09/2011 4:30am

Editorial
Experimental design is the way in which a scientist creates artificial conditions in which to isolate and study a hypothesis. It’s an important part of the scientific method. If the hypothesis is proven correct the first time around, scientists will repeat the experiment many times, each time looking for different results, testing for the possibility of error in the experimental design. The more times the hypothesis is proven true, the more likely it is that the scientific community will accept it as part of the accumulated body of scientific knowledge. As this body of knowledge grows, it deepens humanity’s understanding of the nature of existence in some specific way—the life cycle of butterflies, let’s say, or the movement of stars. (Yes, stars do move.) So the only reason why we repeat the same experiments over and over is to reassure ourselves about what we already know. There is certainly value in this—for one, human beings need a few constants in order to orient themselves to their world and make decisions. If we couldn’t trust that gravity would always work or that the sun would always rise, we’d probably drive ourselves mad with indecision. But sometimes, instead of finding reassurance, we uncover doubt. Sometimes hypotheses are wrong—and were wrong for a long time before anyone figured out that, somewhere along the line, someone might have made a mistake. And the only way to find out whether or not a long-accepted hypothesis is true is to test the experimental design itself by questioning the artificial conditions in which the hypothesis was first isolated and studied. It sounds radical, but in fact, it is all part of the scientific method. Questioning assumptions and artificial structures has led humanity to its most important discoveries. The Earth is not the center of the universe, nor is it flat. Our veins are not filled with air. And the law of inertia—the core of Newtonian physics, long considered unassailable enough to be called a “law”—may not be so unassailable after all. Until recently, the scientific community thought it had uncovered all, or nearly all, of the natural processes that governed all of existence, known and unknown. Then along came quantum theory, which shook the very foundation of all we thought we knew. We don’t understand 90% of how the universe operates. Not even close. We can only measure about 4% of everything that exists—the rest is dark matter. And that’s just the universe we live in—we have no idea how things might work in an infinite number of other possible universes. So if we look to art as a kind of experiment, what we’re really testing are the limits of what we know about human nature and the ways we attempt to make sense of our world. Like science, art also relies on artificial structures. Scene, plot, line, form—all of these are agreed-upon conventions, created long ago by mostly male Greeks and Romans, and to a certain extent, we have begun to recognize—and by “we” I mean Western culture—that we have nearly, perhaps entirely, exhausted the possibility for these conventions to tell us anything about ourselves that we don’t already know. There is value in continuing to re-create the great works of the past—every generation will relate to them, and to the important truths they contain, in a different way. But if art is to continue to reveal new ideas, new aspects of human nature that we couldn’t see before—or ancient ideas of human nature that the Greeks and Romans didn’t know about—then we need to continue to experiment. The Minnesota Fringe Festival is not only the world’s largest unjuried theater festival—it’s the biggest annual theater event in the state, drawing people from all walks of life and all backgrounds, from dedicated professionals to the merely curious. So the conversations we have throughout the Fringe community about what we see this week are informed by a wide variety of influences. Community theater, the Guthrie, the Walker, television—for better or worse, they all play their part. This blog examines shows in the Fringe as “cultural experiments.” Its purpose is to demystify experimental performance for those who have never seen it before—to help them find a way to approach it without getting scared, confused, or annoyed before they’ve even tried to understand it. Each review takes the form of a scientific paper—it presents a show’s premise, as described by its creators, as a hypothesis, and then carefully examines what appeared on the stage to determine whether or not the creators were able to prove the truth of their hypothesis. The reason I am doing this is because a great performance that tells us something new about ourselves and our world will not look like anything else that came before it. It might not look anything like Romeo and Juliet, or Cats, or Glee. It might not even look like Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead, or Rumspringa: The Musical, or Fotis, or any of the other excellent and entertaining performances we enjoyed in the Fringes of yore. It will just look like itself, which is the only thing it can be. I can’t promise you’ll enjoy it. I’m not even sure if I’ll enjoy it. (Heck, maybe by the time Fringe is over I’ll be so sick of experimental performance that I’ll be longing for an episode of Bob’s Burgers or a monster truck rally.) But I can promise you one thing: you will never forget it.
Headshot of Sarah Wash
Sarah Wash
Fringe Lab: Experimental Performance : All art is an experiment. But some experiments are more…well, experimental…than others. With some, you know pretty well what the results will be. With others, you can't be sure. What do you get when you mix baking soda with vinegar? Carbon dioxide (and, on occasion, an enthused five-year-old). What do you get when you put on a show and there's no one to see it?