Reality, Performed

Reading responses are below the assignment.

Reality at Marco’s bar. 45 mins. One-time performance, 8:00pm on 9/15/19.

Reality is a tough performance to describe. This one-time show, in the backyard of Marco’s bar in Bushwick, takes the form of a series of dissonant conversations, none privileged over the other. While frustrating at times, these fragments (aided greatly by the stage direction and design) ultimately combine to create an experience that’s near-impossible to look away from.

The theater and staging of this show are impeccably done. Shortly after the sun sets, you enter the backyard of Marco’s. Our setting is a warm night, right on the cusp between summer and fall. The backyard captures a space known perfectly to a certain breed of 20-something: scuffed concrete, graffitied walls, a mishmash of unmatched plastic and wood furniture, and a few sad-looking, undernourished plants. Cheap drinks are, of course, plentiful. It’s illuminated by string lights that have seen better days. The only thing separating this from any other backyard, in any other dive bar in Brooklyn, is the scale: it’s much larger than your average black-box theater. The one thing that stands out is a bright-magenta statue of a lion, surrounded by ashtrays and trashcans.

The first half of the show is soundtracked throughout, making it hard to zero in on any specific sound (you can hear the soundtrack here). At 8:00 sharp, the sound begins with Pinegrove’s “Sunday.” As the curtains rise, we’re introduced to our motley cast of characters. Again, it’s a visual experience familiar to any Brooklynite. A few couples, with varying degrees of interest in one another. Two young male hipsters to my right, drinking beers, deep in conversation about culture. Two pairs of girls, one dressed for going out, one dressed for laundry, both discussing love and sex. A group of hipsters aging out of the target market, complaining and looking despairing. A solitary man, smoking cigarettes and hoping someone asks him for one.

The music, combined with the multiple conversations going on at once, makes for a cacophony of fragments. It’s like putting together a puzzle, trying to isolate each storyline. It takes almost five minutes just to settle in. Suddenly, Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good” comes on. On cue, the intensity of each conversation begins to rise. The two men to my right’s voices are suddenly isolated.

“She was fine, it’s just… the road is never straight.”

Meanwhile, the two well-dressed girls begin to discuss jealousy. The picture becomes clearer. Are these two sides of the same story? Or do we all just have the same stories to tell?

Special attention must be paid to the performances of the well-dressed girls — the righteous anger on the part of each draws the viewer in expertly.

“It’s character building!”

Without giving too much of the first act away, it soon becomes clear that all our characters are having the same conversation: sex, love, and work. Each conversation is a separate mode of discourse expressing one of the same universal truths. One drains a shot, shouting that “HE NEEDED TO SEE IT!” The smoking man tries to strike up a conversation, but after a few polite exchanges he quickly strikes out. He goes back to observing, as though he represents the viewer.

“Where you from? Why you here?”

“I know I have it all written down — we’re all fucked up.”

As a reviewer, the first act makes me infinitely self-aware. My note-taking takes me out of this performance meant fully for immersion, so at intermission I resolve to stop my note-taking and simply experience the second act. After the intermission, it begins.

The further it goes, the more I feel I’m stuck listening to a set of variations on a universal theme. It’s conversational Bach. I keep seeking out messages meant just for me, but the personal and the universal are losing their distinction.

“It’s all marketing.”

As the act comes to a close, our characters begin to leave. Both pairs of girls leave — the well-dressed in a hurry, the laundry-dressed dancing on their way out. I’m left, intentionally or not, with the characters perhaps the closest to myself: the aging group of hipsters, and the two young white dudes. Was I meant to be confronted with my own replaceability — the two groups least interesting to me were also the ones closest to myself? Or is it a mere happy accident?

There’s no satisfying answer at the end of the show, but it left me with a feeling I haven’t gotten from a show in a while: I had to talk to someone about it immediately. That alone is worth the trip.

4/5 Stars.

Reading Response

The readings (“Simulation Argument” and excerpts from “Sum”), reminded me, respectively, of two theories that have interested me for a while. “Simulation Argument” shares a number of characteristics with Fermi’s Paradox, the theory that one of three things must be true if we have not made contact with alien civilizations in the context of an infinite universe:

1. We are alone in the universe.
2. No society can survive long enough to invent intergalactic travel.
3. Intergalactic travel is impossible.

Simulation Argument seems to follow the same pattern but using time and “civilization simulations” for space and intergalactic travel. It’s interesting to me because both basically track if you accept their assumptions, but I find the simulation argument to be much less interesting. Ultimately, it doesn’t change anything about how I perceive the universe: unless you’re religious or a strict materialist, it makes about as much sense as anything else. My concept of self, as a physical being or digital one, doesn’t change: the phenomena that I experience are real to me, and I have some emergent form of consciousness, no matter whether I’m data on a server or carbon. Assuming I can’t break out of the simulation, what difference does it make to know that I’m in it? Descartes basically got us here three hundred years ago: we’re still selves, and all we can know is ourselves, not our material conditions. (I’m choosing to ignore all the weird “proof of god” stuff he got to later in the Meditations).

I think this is particularly interesting when you take the popularity of this idea in the tech world. I think “we all live in a simulation” is a pretty easy excuse to abdicate responsibility to others, to treat others as if they don’t matter. Elon Musk is a simulation theorist, and while he could easily feed millions of people with his fortune he’s instead working on making wildly inefficient Tesla tunnels and selling flamethrowers. If you’re willing to accept that we live in a simulation — but you simultaneously have experiences — it stands to reason that, even in a simulation, we all experience life, good and bad. If we accept this, and we aren’t sadists, then it follows that we should try our best to create the best possible world for everyone. Clearly whoever made it — God, nature, or programmer — isn’t going to do it for us.

The second reading got me thinking of the theory (I wasn’t able to find a specific source) that reincarnation is real, but 1) there are a finite number of souls and 2) reincarnation is not necessarily chronological. Basically, imagine there are 18 souls in the universe. They are each reincarnated as every living thing/18. This means that at any given time, any person or creature you meet may well have your soul.

The scenarios described by “Sum” seem to mirror this — we go on living lives after our deaths, knowing ourselves that we’ve done it before. There are also some strong Cartesian themes here: what difference does it make to our concept of self when we suddenly realize that many or even all others we encounter are experiencing reality differently. Do we all become actors in each other’s plays? In each other’s dreams?

What happens to our souls when we die? Can they be continued, just in different roles?

I’ve been really curious about this in terms of technology: how both our digital selves, and technologies that can mirror our behavior, might succeed or fail in creating a life after death for us.