Chloreen d'Booty

Hiya, Booty Bumpers!

This is Chloreen d’Booty, the bubbly theme camp leader for Bordello d’Booty.  AKA Chloe Rae Edmonson who is getting her MA in Performance Studies from NYU.  The Playa Traveling Cirkus was a liquidy, vivacious, and mind-altering experience for me.  Lemme tell ya why.

When Dr. Schechner asked us to teach a class on Burning Man for our class on Ritual, Play, and Performance, we were kinda thinking we'd do a powerpoint and a lecture.  Video clips.  Maybe a small performance.  But as I began working with Liza, Shannon and Utam -- my Performance Studies colleagues and fellow baby-burners at NYU -- I knew we could do something more.  What we all agreed upon is that the experience of Burning Man can never be recreated anywhere except Black Rock City.  That was clear from what we'd all read and heard.  But, using the Principles of Burning Man and the information we gathered through extensive research, we felt we could invoke the spirit of the playa for our classmates.  All we needed was a space, some costumes, and a hell of a lot of time and creativity.

[The research process was incredible.  Everything I knew about Burning Man seemed to be a myth, or just secondhand.  But every book, documentary, website, photo, personal story made me feel closer to an experience that I had yet to have.] 

Putting together this installation took a lot of collaboration and resourcefulness.  We were able to, by some miracle, secure the entire 6th floor of Tisch (Performance Studies) for the night of December 5, 2011.  Then it came down to deciding what we wanted to do in each room.  We wanted people to be able to meander in and out of rooms like they would the different theme camps and art installations at Burning Man.  We decided to map out our space with:

• Center Camp (PS studio): a space to set up camp and to perform the opening/closing ceremonies -- this later became occupied, and made into a dance room
• Temple of Tears (PS study room): a sacred space for the performance of rituals and prayer
• La Lounge (PS lounge): a space to eat and drink
• Photo Booth (small hallway): instant photos!
• Sensorium (classroom 611):  dance floor rave room
• Irrational Geographic's Museum of Burning Man (classroom 613): a museum with exhibits and video archive of Burning Man history
• Fortune Teller's lair (locker area): exactly what it sounds like
• Photo Phlush Gallery (men's bathroom):  gallery of photos from Burning Man past

We would call ourselves the Playa Traveling Cirkus.  We became the Playa Traveling Cirkus.  We began sending emails from our devised playa.cirkus@gmail.com account to the class to assign their camps, tell them what to bring, and to get them a little freaked out.   Or excited.  Or both!

When our classmates arrived on 12.05.2011 we had them meet in the lobby.  Sir Loves-a-Lot met them and had them walk up the stairs to the 6th floor.  At the top of the stairwell (my apologies, classmates, for making you walk...but wasn't it worth it for what comes next?)...at the top of the stairwell, each person had to step through a vagina slit that birthed them onto the Playita.  People looked stunned when a fairy handed them their map and ticket, and at the sight of a man playing cello in a plastic mask, christmas lights, dancing furry girls with neon string, and an empty banquet table.  That was only the beginning.

It took a while for people to warm up.  There was a "privacy screen" for people to change into costume, and to make a physical transformation.  We played some drums, encouraged them to spruce up their costumes with some of the costume pieces we provided.  Loosening up.  Loooosening up.

There was ritual.  The Temple of Tears was especially for that.  People were offered a commnion of Jameson and peanuts upon entering Center Camp.  The opening ceremony was a devised ritual wherein Lt. Yomabitch stabbed a stuffed Rudolf with a kitchen knife and made him bleed.  The ritual slab that poor Rudolf was put to death upon was a copy of "How to Do Things With Words," which is a pivotal Performance Studies text.

There was play.  Especially in the form of dancing our asses off.  I have not mentioned yet that December 5th is at the peak of stress time for PS Master's students.  We were all in the middle of finals and feeling pretty strung out.  So once we got past the awkward loosening up, we cut loose and blew off some major steam.

Between the play and the ritual, which ebbed and flowed into each other with such fluidity that it was unclear which was which at times, I personally became intoxicated by the feeling of communitas that was circulating.  I was beholding them as humans, not as people I see once a week or more in class.  To be a human being without doing anything "productive" in an economic sense might be a surplus value activity for some; but for me, the Playita NYU experience proved the necessity of play, performance, collaboration and free-creativity within any social group.  Especially academics.

Til later,

Burn babies, Burn!