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Notes

¹ These principles have also animated the organization of many societies outside of (and often in resistance to) this European tradition since long before Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin and others began to espouse them. A non-Western tradition of anarchism is prevalent in practice and philosophy of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico as well as in activist movements throughout Latin America (Conant 2010, Marcos 2001, Sitrin and Azzellinni 2014).

² Prefigurative politics have emerged as a central feature of contemporary justice movements – where organizational practice and governance become a site for enacting egalitarian practices. As Marianne Maeckelbergh puts it, ‘Prefiguration is a practice through which movement actors create a conflation of their ends and their means. It is an enactment of the ultimate values of an ideal society within the very means of struggle for that society’ (Maeckelbergh 2009, 67).

³ Exemplary of Viewpoints as merely a mechanics of training is Scott Cummings' Remaking American Theater. (Cummings 2006). Julia Whitworth, on the other hand, addresses the way such trainings refashion practices of subjection. However, her incisive essay does not address any particular political struggles. (Whitworth 2003). Notably, both of these studies focus on the work of SITI Company, rather than that of Mary Overlie.

⁴ Rupture has also emerged as a signal characteristic of contemporary social movements. ‘A rupture is a break that can come from many places, always shifting the way people organize, including power relationships, and the ways people see. … Many movement participants around the world in 2012 used the same language to describe what took place with the Plaza and Park occupations – the same word even, translated everywhere as “rupture.” From ruptura in Spanish (literally “rupture”) to kefaya (“enough”) in Arabic’ (Sitrin and Azzellini 2014, 16). For more on rupture as radical performance see my ‘What the fuck is that?: The poetics of ruptural performance’ (Perucci 2009) and ‘Guilty as sin: The trial of Reverend Billy and the exorcism of the sacred cash register’ (Perucci 2008).

⁵ The political potential and limitations of Lehmann's conceptualization can be found in Jürs-Munby. Carroll and Giles' Postdramatic Theatre and the Political (Jürs-Munby, Carroll, and Giles 2013).

⁶ I first came to the Viewpoints as an actor/director, participating in a two-week course at California State University, Fresno in 2004. The first week was led by Mary Overlie and dancer Nina Martin, while the second week was led Anne Bogart and SITI Company members Will Bond and Barney O'Hanlon. I have since trained numerous times with SITI Company, including at the summer intensive at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York in 2006.

⁷ The politics of method acting are most certainly disputed. The debate is well captured in David Krasner's Method Acting Reconsidered (Krasner 2000).

⁸ Long a point of contention between Bogart and Overlie, Bogart has taken to embracing this accusation, as she acknowledges having appropriated Overlie's conceptualization and remade it as her own.

⁹ In her reformulation, Bogart recalibrates the Viewpoints as nine variations on time (tempo, duration, kinesthetic response, repetition) and space (shape, gesture, architecture, spatial relatinonship, topography) (Bogart and Landau 2005, 8-12).

¹⁰ This notion echoes the Zapatista concept of mandar obediciendo – to lead by obeying (Conant 2010, 232-6).

¹¹ Barthes defines the “grain” not only of the voice but in the materiality of the act of any performance: ‘The “grain” is the body in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs.’ (Barthes 1977, 188)

¹² Consider also how presence is pronounced in the Zapatista slogan: ‘Aqui estamos! Resistimos!’ (‘We are here! We resist!’). As Jeff Conant characterizes this declaration: ‘We are here because we resist, they are telling us; our being here means resistance; if we didn't resist, we couldn't be here’ (Conant 2010)