A digital missive from Jamie Peterson, one of the actors in Wake Up Mr. Sleepy! Your Unconscious Mind Is Dead!


El Generalisimo of his theater, I am one of Richard Foreman's soldiers. More specifically I am a fighter pilot. The problem is that I don't have a plane. So instead I deliver things. I bring the main performers the property they need to wake up Mr. Sleepy (and he is such a sound sleeper).

I feel as though we're chasing after something. What we're chasing is a feeling, and Richard has the binoculars. He can see it running in the distance and it's our job to go out and get it. Now when we bring it back, it may not be what he wanted after all, so we sortie yet again to go get something new. Maybe after we bring enough feelings back, we can cut them up and sew the pieces back together in different combinations. Frankenfeeling, AHA!

But then again, I just got that all wrong. It's not really that we're hunting "feelings" for him, because that implies some level of surface psychological content. We're performing actions onstage, and when we perform we try not to act. Acting falsely induces the feeling of content. There is content but it's not from us acting, it potentially derives from the audience. Our actions, not acting, activate a part of your (the audience's) brain that you're probably not using right now reading this nonsense. Therein lies the content.

At least that's what I think, but what do I really know? I'm just as asleep as anybody.