THE POETIC THEATRE PROJECT
The Poetic Theatre Project, not unlike last fall’s “Poetry Under the Lights” by City Lit, features words and performances by six local poets, including readings of work by Cyn. Zarco, Anna L. Barbould, and Nikki Giovanni. There’s also a reading of literary criticism by T.S. Eliot. The local poets include Marc Smith, who founded the Uptown Poetry Slam and gave performance poetry a weekly forum at the Green Mill, and Cindy Salach, who often performs with the Loofah Method, a group that bases its work on Salach’s writing but whose shows usually fall more into the mold of performance art than performance poetry.
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Since performance poetry as a genre is so new, it’s hard to define its parameters and to some extent even its purpose. Still, certain constants do emerge: It’s often populist, even a little anti-intellectual (when Smith reads from Eliot’s criticism in this piece, he’s met by an angry Dean Hacker, posing as a regular Joe who tears the essay page by page from Smith’s book). It’s perversely democratic, to the point where it’s hard to say if there are any standards at all. It involves reading from memory. Its emphasis is on language, and it takes certain liberties associated only with poetry. The staging is minimal, involving virtually no sets or props. There’s limited movement on the part of the performers. And there’s virtually no characterization, as the performers usually play themselves.
On her own, Salach performs her writing well within this definition of performance poetry. But Smith is the master. Although it may still be fashionable among certain writers’ circles to bash Smith, his commitment to the idea of performance poetry can hardly be questioned. He continues to serve as master of ceremonies at the Green Mill, he conned the city into sponsoring a poetry contest that sent a local wordsmith to Japan, he was instrumental in establishing a national “slam” competition, and he’s performing his heart out in The Poetic Theatre Project. (But he’s hardly getting rich from all this.)
For the most part, Tate used his voice in compelling fashion, but the material he presented was often shockingly flat and familiar. Most of what he read about has already been done better by others, notably Amiri Baraka and John Oliver Killens. Particularly striking was the total lack of irony in Tate’s delivery of “Who Sold Soul?” in which he pointed the finger at everybody from James Brown’s jailers to James Brown, for selling soul to a mostly white, middle-class audience. Perhaps Tate still lacks confidence in his material; he played for laughs on almost every piece, not for substance.
