[boxhead]. Darren O'Donnell

Hogg, there were no clearly defined roles; there were simply a bunch of skills, aesthetics and experiments that everybody was involved in before, during and after any involvement with Instant Coffee. As much as we created work together, our individual work did not become meaningless if detached from Instant Coffee; it would just attract some other meaning. DeLanda cites Gilles Deleuze’s theory of assemblages to account for these kinds of relations of exteriority, where ‘part of an assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a different assemblage in which its interactions are different.’³

      This notion frees up the collaborators and leads to flexible, surprising results. Instant Coffee projects like, for example, Jon’s BassBed, the subwoofer that also functioned as a bed, or Cecilia’s Afghan blanket sculptures or even, for that matter, the listserv that Kate Monro maintains announcing other people’s work, can all function easily on their own but, taken together as an assemblage, created a very flexible and dynamic collaborative environment and produced unexpected artistic products. My incorporation into the collective occurred because they liked my spin-the-bottle performance, swallowed it whole without diminishing any of my autonomy and seamlessly incorporated it into a series of their events, which became, for a moment, our events.

      It’s difficult to imagine applying this model to theatre, with its strict adherence to prefabricated scripts, hierarchical chains of command and narrowly defined roles, but the model offers insights that could pull us through to new and more contemporary and socially meaningful currents. Some Canadian artists seem to be experimenting with aspects of this approach, but a very clear example is Europe’s Rimini Protocol. They often work with experts from a variety of other fields, building shows with these people, who collaborate as writers and performers. The individuals involved in their shows are not actors who, without lines to speak, become out-of-work actors, but are instead model-train enthusiasts, Indian call-centre workers, female road construction workers – all of whom, when they are not in the show, retain their identity, continuing to do what they did all along. These are exciting ideas and theatre needs to incorporate them; the traditional well-made play process is so clearly and rapidly becoming an antiquated approach, unable to respond to contemporary social realities, while this model offers a way to incorporate current artistic developments: relational aesthetics, participation and civic engagement.

      The final collaborative relationship, and a constant bane to the poor theatre practitioner, is that between the artist and the critic. There’s something about the proximity of theatre – it’s always a local experience – that often generates vitriolic bitchiness on the part of the critic. This is a symptom of narcissism of small differences. And maybe Canada, being, essentially, a small town masquerading as a country, generates a small-town criticism born simply of the embarrassment of being Canadian: not quite Europe, with all its state-subsidized culture, and not quite America, with its abundant private capital generating plenty of cultural innovation. No, we’re Canada – middling state funding and a capitalist class no more interested in Canadian culture than is the beaver that is our symbol.

      There are two schools of thought on the whole critic question: read’em vs. avoid’em. Many artists proudly assert their independence from the critical voice by claiming not to read them. But although criticism doesn’t make it to my reading list when the subject is other people’s work, when the show being reviewed is mine, I wake up at four in the morning to obsessively check the internet and then fire back a response while in as raw a state as possible. It’s fun! Many people caution against this, claiming that kind of behaviour gives the critics too much power. But responding in a raw state is exactly what is demanded from a productive relationship. A frantic and anguished response is an honest one – why bother to take time to chill out and deal with things in a more level-headed way? When challenged by a collaborator in a rehearsal, working through the discomfort is the only way to go. Here too! And, like I said, it’s fun. A raw, honest and even rude attack can generate a fruitful and productive antagonism.

      Truthfully, it’s been my experience that critics are rarely wrong in many of their specific criticisms; rather, they fail to consider wider contexts, other aspects or personal taste. This is no more apparent than when they’re trying to deal with a silly show. And if you can say one thing about [boxhead], it’s that it’s a fucking ridiculous show – thanks, again, to Alex Poch-Goldin. It’s also confusing and thematically all over the map – my efforts to keep the meaning of the show beyond my grasp managed to hit the target.

      I’ll let critical collaborator Meg Walker, who reviewed the show for www.plankmagazine.com, explain, in a better way than I have never been able to, what the show is all about: ‘Clearly, we humans are earnest in our desire for meaning, but also a bit silly in how far we’ll take our explorations… [boxhead] lays out what’s become a throughline to much of O’Donnell’s work: if different divisions of “we” just talk to each other, we might actually like each other.’

      Yeah, right, that’s what I was trying to say. Thanks, Meg!

      Darren O’Donnell

       [boxhead]

      Darren O’Donnell

       for Paul Fauteux, the original boxhead

      PRODUCTION HISTORY

      Originally presented as a solo cabaret piece at Theatre Columbus’s Mayhem and the Naked Muse in 1999, [boxhead] was first produced by Go-Chicken-Go at Factory Theatre in 2000, remounted at Theatre Passe Muraille in 2002 and then coproduced by Crow’s Theatre and Mammalian Diving Reflex at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Vancouver and at Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto in 2008.

      It has always been directed by Chris Abraham.

      The original cast featured Paul Fauteux as Dr. Thoughtless Actions and Darren O’Donnell as Dr. Wishful Thinking, with Jim Jones stepping in to play Dr. Wishful Thinking in 2002 and Andrew Shaver and Adam Lazarus (Wishful and Thoughtless respectively) taking over in 2008.

      The music was composed by Romano Di Nillo; set designed by Naomi Campbell, Darren O’Donnell and Chris Abraham; lighting designed by Steve Lucas with Sandra Marcroft; sound effects by Henry Monteforte and Tyler Devine and costumes by Nina Okens; production management by Trevor Schwellnus and orginally stage managed by the late, great Stephen Souter and subsequently by Beth Kates.

      CHARACTERS

      Dr. Thoughtless Actions, a young geneticist

      Narrator Actions, an incorporeal being

      Dr. Wishful Thinking, a young geneticist

      Narrator Thinking, an incorporeal being

      TIME

      The year 8888.

      STAGE

      The set is pure black box, with curtains on either side, running upstage-downstage. Across the upstage border, curtains are also used to box things in. Behind the curtains on a platform stands the percussionist, whose hands, clad in white gloves and illuminated by black light, can be seen through a window in the otherwise solid black field. A scrim forms the fourth wall between the stage and the audience. A rope hangs on the audience side of the scrim, just to the side of the proscenium. A lit border frames the whole proscenium, mostly serving to mask the actors moving around in the dark, something they frequently do.

      LIGHTS

      We’ve always used nine top-lit spots, which reference petri dishes, arranged in a tic-tac-toe-like square on the whole stage, with other specials here and there. The lights, for the most part, function to isolate the actors in the space so that, as much as possible, they appear to be floating in darkness.

      COSTUMES

      Each doctor wears too-short beige polyester pants, a beige short-sleeve shirt, a brown bow-tie, black sneakers and a square brown box on his head. Dr. Thinking wears a purple