What is Pancake Time?

Editorial
pancaketime.jpg

Photo credit: John Bueche

Untitled Document

I/You/We do not know what I/You/We have done. Good.

Samantha Johns and Paige Collette respond to prompts* from Alan Berks.

*Prompts are in quotation marks.

SECTION 1:

Informal blog post that talks about what actually happened at the Pancake breakfast”:

The following maybe happened:

  1. Saturday, August 25th, 2012 at 10am, we gathered for Pancake Time1

  2. There were chairs, and benches, and small tables, and tall tables, and a small toy riding horse. There were pancakes2 and coffee [donated my Equal Exchange].

  3. Around 11am we3 gathered in a circle and introduced ourselves – in the form of: name, role with art, and why we came to Pancake Time. This was no-response zone – just a place to let everyone know who was in the room.

  4. People were encouraged to do what they needed/wanted with the time and space set forth4

  5. There was a mid-day run for more pancake batter.

  6. The event ended somewhere around 3pm5

Footnotes:

1 Pancake Time was spawned from some recent online conversations about theater.
It was set up purely as an event to gather and eat pancakes. With little promise of anything else.
A concrete food + a conceptual idea = Pancake Time. 2 Gluten-free/ Vegan / Classic.
3 We, was a culmination of about 60 people throughout the day, from ages 19 to 60-something – artists and administrators from the following communities: Theatre, Dance, Circus, Film, Journalism, Performance Art, Puppetry, Visual Art, etc.
4 There were small groups of talking. There were large groups of talking. Some people left.
5 Two hours after its stated end time.

SECTION 2:

What did people want to talk about, what did they talk about?”

Toward the end of Pancake Time a group of around 20 people gathered organically.

We discussed and questioned the following Issues/Solutions/Ideas/Feelings/Thoughts/Wants/Needs.

Try this at home.
[Please match the letters in Column B, to the correct corresponding numbers in Column A. Feel free to use letters from Column B more than once.]

 

COLUMN A COLUMN B
___ 1. Performance in warehouses A. Live and breath this.
___ 2. Large audiences B. Is this preferred? Or is it just okay?
___ 3. Performance with a message for the audience C. Taking it to the next level.
___ 4. Commercial art D. If you build it, they will come.
___ 5. Health insurance for artists E. Irrelevant. Who cares?
___ 6. Mud and angels F. The rules of the game have shifted.
___ 7. Marketing G. This is a reality that is not going away.
___ 8. Insular communities H. We want to be liked.
___ 9. Wanting to be liked I. Vital and necessary.
___ 10. Showing the whole world J. Destroy it.
___ 11. Artist subsidies from the government K. Doesn't actually affect us.
___ 12. The Guthrie L. Bane of our existence.
___ 13. Art as laboratory M. The only way.
___ 14. Critics and critique N. I wish this would magically happen.
___ 15. Being a parent and being an artist O. Yes, there must be more. Always.
___ 16. Melodrama P. Not why I make art.
___ 17. Experimental performance Q. Raises the bar.
___ 18. 100 % unification R. I'm tired of this.
___ 19. Depth in art S. Desirable.
___ 20. Standards of quality T. All forms are deadly.
___ 21. Taking it to the next level U. Needs new vocabulary.
___ 22. Accountability V. It takes a village.
___ 23. Theatre hierarchy W. Chicken or the egg?
___ 24. Manifestos X. Take action. Start fixing.
___ 25. Formal recognition Y. In a perfect world.
___ 26. If you build it, they will come. Z. Our duty and responsibility.

SECTION 3:

What was a surprise?”:

  • One person came in, handed out postcards for a show, and left.
  • Donations covered the cost of pancakes.
  • Some people took notes.
  • Some people said, “We're just here for the pancakes.”
  • Many people wore purple.
  • Many different manifestations of Shyness/Leadership/Personal Initiative.
  • Wow, applesauce can be an ingredient in pancakes.
  • Wow, someone brought orange juice and champagne.

What was not a surprise?”:

What if we allowed everything to be a surprise?

How many people? How many pancakes? How long did you spend?”

60 ish people. 200 ish pancakes. 10am-3pm.

SECTION 4:

Closing Thoughts:

How do we gauge what happened when there was no common goal set forth?

It seems like some people want to know: what's the exact purpose/form/future of Pancake Time.

We wonder about the desire to define things so quickly and concretely – because we don't entirely know what Pancake Time is – or what theater is, really. Instead of placing an outside definition or value on top of Pancake Time, we can let Pancake Time reveal itself to us.

The future of Pancake Time...

May or may not exist. It's up to the people to decide.
This as an invitation to anyone, at anytime, to organize a gathering of artists.
You can host it and structure it however you desire.
The only requirements are: Pancakes and Coffee.

Headshot of Sam Johns and Paige Collette
Sam Johns and Paige Collette
Paige Collette is writer, performer, and collaborator who earned her BFA from the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU/Tisch. Samantha Johns divides her time between directing, acting, choreography, scenic designing and scenic painting. She is a graduate from the University of Minnesota with a BA in Theater Arts. They recently collaborated to create Man Show [What We Want to See] for Bedlam's 10-Minute Play Fesitval. They are currently trying to find a future for this thing we call Theatre.