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Reality and Performance Collide at The Kitchen
An interview with The Juvenal Players director Pablo Helguera
The Juvenal Players (Photo: Grandarts.com)
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Pablo Helguera, a mind-bogglingly versatile artist who creates work in a seemingly endless variety of formats (installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, performance, music, books…), will present his latest creation, a performance piece called The Juvenal Players, at The Kitchen this weekend.
When he isn’t creating art, Pablo moonlights as the Director of Adult and Academic Programs at the Museum of Modern Art. As an art insider, his work often addresses the unique subculture of the art world. In his recent book The Manual of Contemporary Art Style, he offers an ironic and insightful view into the rarefied world of art creators, collectors, and critics, providing solutions to crucial etiquette dilemmas such as: Should one sleep with an artist whose work one does not like? How can one escape from a never-ending video installation while in the presence of others?
Notorious for art that attempts to blend fantasy with reality, Pablo was reluctant to reveal much about the upcoming play when I spoke with him last week. He explained, “I think a lot of what the piece hinges on is what you know about it… So I’ll just say that, in this play, people are going to come, and there will be a panel discussion, that will be followed by the play.”
Without giving anything away, I can tell you that The Juvenal Players will examine the work of Juvenal Merst, a mysterious and provocative American artist. Since he stopped exhibiting his work publicly some years before his death, his work is for the most part known only by art insiders. In his will, he requested that certain of his art colleagues meet seven years after his death to discuss his work, and this meeting, in the form of a panel discussion, will take place the night of the play.
How did you first become interested in art and the art world?
I have a strange life story. I was born in Mexico City. And actually everyone in my family is an artist, so in a way it was never really a question of whether I was going to be in art. It was like the family business. What’s interesting is most of my family are classical musicians, they’re not visual artists. I had some proclivity for drawing, and people thought, “Oh, he’s going to be a painter.” So I was making paintings and taking art school classes, but I was very frustrated because I didn’t really like it. And I didn’t really get it, painting in general, but I felt that it was my main thing, my destiny—I had to be a painter. Until one day I took a class, a performance art class, at art school. And I thought it was ridiculous and the exercises were silly, oh my god, it was embarrassing. And then I became so obsessed with it that I lost everything else that I was doing except performing.
But what I was attracted to was its ability to do something that would be eternally changeable. You know, a performance can be just a gesture, it can be a play, or it can be something narrative, or it can be many things at the same time…Whether they’re books, whether they’re exhibitions, plays or performances, the commonality between all of them is that they have a script. Whether it’s an implicit or explicit script, that’s what starts the whole project.
As an artist you work in many different formats—you do installations, sculpture, photography, drawing, and performance art, you’ve written books, you’ve even done some music—for you, what are the strengths of working with theater and performance in contrast with the other formats you work in?
There are two primary things that attract me to theater and performance. The first thing is the ethereal nature of what is produced. Even though you might recreate it, what really matters to me is that immediacy with the public. You bond with the audience and you create a relationship with the audience.
The other part is the collaborative nature of performing. Especially when you’re working with an ensemble, collaborating with other people. I used to perform individually a lot, more by necessity than because the work required it. But I get so much out of working with actors, or even non-actors, who are performing with me. It sets up a community that is very special.
What was your vision for the play?
Well, you know I come from the visual arts world. I went to arts school in Chicago. When I graduated, there was really no money anywhere, no art scene, the galleries were closing, it was very hard to show. However, the theater scene was really strong. Chicago has an incredible theater scene—Second City, there’s some improv… and there’s a lot of theaters, and a lot of small theaters. I ended up performing because it was cheap. I mean, it was free! I didn’t require any materials. And you didn’t really have the pressure of needing to sign with a gallery. I ended up in this tiny community theater called The Blue Rider Theater. One day I started doing this performance work that eventually turned into a play. And this was in 1996, so that was my first emergence into the theater, into the possibilities of theater and writing plays. I remember from that first time, just to see my characters, which so far had only been myself, now starting to look like people, other beings, which was incredible exhilarating.
So, to answer your question, having always been interested in performance and theater, right now I feel that there’s a very interesting dialogue going on between the visual arts and theater. In museums in New York today, you’ll see that there’s a lot of interesting theatrical stuff going on: the Marina Abramovich exhibition at the MoMA, the show at the Guggenheim. So, I wanted to write—this was a year ago, when I started this project, more than a year ago—I wanted to write a play about the art world. And I felt that there was no existing material, or existing theater material that was being produced about the visual arts. Nothing really quite descriptive about the sociological aspects of the art world today, which is a subject that has always interested me: how the whole world of art is constituted by these different characters. There’s the curator, artist, lecturer…and how they interact. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes psychology that I have never seen presented in a play. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, just that I’ve never seen it. And I thought it would be a very interesting challenge to attempt it. So I felt that I had a subject matter that was different, that would be interesting to explore, particularly interesting to explore from the perspective of theater.
Without revealing too much, do you have a favorite part of the play?
That’s tough…I think that for me, endings are very important. I think that any work I do, the ending becomes the summary of everything that has happened. Sometimes I think that the only thing that really matters is the ending. But you can never really say what the ending is going to mean without the whole journey before. So in an interesting way it’s only about the ending, but it can’t really exist without everything that comes before. And I think that’s the case with The Juvenal Players.
What’s next for you? Is there anything new that you’re working on now?
I’m working on a project that is a commission of performance and theater, which is going to be for this summer. We’re still working on the entire project, and it’s actually a really exciting project because it’s on Governor’s Island, and it’s just such a magical place that it calls for some sort of invention. I’m now thinking of Governor’s Island as an entire stage, and how you can conceive of a place like that, an island, as this environment where this project can take place.
The Juvenal Players will be performed Friday and Saturday, April 23 and 24, at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street). All performances begin at 8pm and tickets are $10. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit thekitchen.org or call 212-255-5793.