Offstage and into the real world with Mark Sussman
Theatre teacher from New York has worked with giant puppets, miniature toys, performing objects
Performance is an element of everyday life, and everyday life is an integral part of performance, according to theatre artist and scholar Mark Sussman.
This motto has inspired him throughout years of studies, research and teaching in performing arts, most recently in the Theatre Department, which he joined as an assistant professor in January.
Born and raised in New York City, Sussman was strongly influenced by the Big Apple’s effervescent avant-garde movement, which rejected texts and sought to create plays out of real-life elements.
A further aspect of experimental plays caught Sussman’s attention. The avant-garde’s wide use of mechanical devices on stage awoke his interest in the role of performing objects and lighting, which he researched for his PhD thesis on 18th and 19th century staging using the then-new technology of electricity.
“I have always been interested in the backstage, in the invisible people that make a performance happen,” Sussman said in an interview.
He did not limit himself to studying these elements. His fascination for inanimate objects led him to found, together with other artists, the Great Small Works collective, which in 1995 started producing giant puppet shows and miniature toy theatre spectacles in New York City.
Sussman’s teaching method draws on this mixture of theory and practice, which he believes is an essential element of theatre. This appears clearly in his History of Theatre course, which goes beyond the standard reading of texts.
He explained that in order to fully grasp a performance, one has to understand the socio-cultural aspects of the period in which the play was born.
“A performance can’t be recovered, I tell my students. A performance is live, and then it dies,” he said. “But if you study the social history of that period, you can recuperate part of its meaning.”
Sussman believes that performing arts didn’t start with the ancient Greeks, but at earlier stages of civilization.
During their festivals, the ancient Greeks did indeed establish rules and words that are still valid, but performing arts per se first emerged from religious rituals, during which shamans used role-playing and masks to invoke the gods.
“Shamanism is a form of oral performance that predates the Greek written plays,” he said.
Sussman is one of three new staff members who are revitalizing the department. Robert Reid, a Montreal native, started teaching full-time last year, and Sarah Stanley, guest director of the current student production of Henry IV, Part I, will start teaching full-time in January.
Sussman is currently working on an alphabetical dictionary of performing objects. The anthology, now in its initial phase, will ultimately include definitions of dolls, automatons and optical tricks examined from a performing arts perspective.
The goal is to put objects used in performances in a larger context, relating them to social theories as well as performing arts studies.
Sussman is working on this project with Susan Simpson, a teacher at CalArts, the Los Angeles-based art institute.
Object performance and puppet theatre have so far been marginal in performing arts studies, but Sussman hopes to be able to start puppetry classes at Concordia soon.
“Puppet theatre is often considered as children’s theatre, but it contains elements that are very serious and deeply disturbing,” he said. “It is a reflection of society.”
Sussman is giving a lecture next week at Montreal’s Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). “Lighting Urban Spectacle: Electric Interventions in Everyday Life” will focus on the spectacular application of lighting in everyday urban settings.
The lecture is part of the Sensing the City series, which explores urban landscapes through different senses.
“Lighting Urban Spectacle: Electric Interventions in Everyday Life” will take place Thursday, Nov. 3, at 7 p.m., at the CCA, 1920 Baile St. For more information: http://www.cca.qc.ca