Tourist trade trash, and other still performances

Mulvey, Marianne

Abstract

Associated with proper performance only by the undiscerning spectator, living statues are perhaps the lowest form of theatre. Literally on the street, they are a trashy by-product of a higher art, popular with tourists and those with time and money to waste. Their value (if any) seems only as a means to an end: to make a quick quid with the merest of gestures. But might there be more to these poor performances than meets the unimpressed eye? I tell a story about a performance that did not move, or, a sculpture that performed, revisiting an encounter with a living statue on London’s South Bank to articulate a peculiar experience of watching nothing happen that moved me.

This text is an exploration of stillness in performance, the economics of street theatre, and curious productivity of inaction. Thinking through a malfunctioning living statue, what might the value of such tourist-trade trash performance be, and what can it tell us about time and the experience of duration?

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 4, 2011
• Publication Date: Oct 3, 2011
• Deposit Date: Feb 26, 2024
• Journal: Dance Theatre Journal
• Print ISSN: 0264-9160
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: 4
• Pages: 11-14
• Series ISSN: 0264-9160
• Keywords: Street Theatre, Living Statue, Performance, Duration
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11748411
• Publisher URL: www.laban.org
• Additional Information: This article appears in the special edition 'Trashing Dance Theatre Journal'. The special edition was an output of two year seminar series on themes of cultural taste, value and marginal performance practices organised by Prof Gavin Butt as part of Trashing Performance, the second year of Performance Matters, a three-year AHRC-funded research project 2009-12.