Your tweets will never sound this good!
CHENNAI: Imagine you’re given an anonymous Twitter account, put in a room filled with people with similar accounts, and are told that whatever you tweet will be read out loud by a performer in the garb of a character known as ‘txt’? Sounds like a creative, yet sufficiently evil platform to say whatever you want? “I’ve had to say some really awful things, but when people bring their A-game, I’ve said some of the funniest things ever,” laughs Brian Feldman, creator of #txtshow, a unique interactive performance piece, probably the only one that urges you to leave your phone on during the show! In the city for the India premiere, the American artiste opens up to City Express about bringing performance art to India and his eccentric projects.
Washington DC-based Brian is one of America’s most popular performance artistes, having received the 2017 Arts and Humanities Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. With a background rooted in theatre, Brians admits that performance art was never on the radar while he was growing up. “I wanted to be a theatre artiste, a director actually. I often made short films when I was a kid and even used to charge a small admission fee to those who'd agree to see them!” he chuckles. While starting out as a theatre performer, Brian came up with an idea for a show where he would sit down with his entire family on stage, in front of a paying audience and just have dinner, giving viewers an insight into their relationship through their conversation.
“I initially called it Dinner, and later named it the Feldman Dynamic. It took a decade to realise because everyone except my sister agreed to it — she never wanted to be on stage! It was only after her struggle with breast cancer that she used the stage to conquer her fears. That’s when people started noticing and said it was a good piece of performance art, and I was baffled because I had intended it as reality theatre!” Brian agrees that it is inherently Truman Show-esque.
He embarked on solo performance art, one of which was called Leap Year Day. “I spent the entire leap year day in 2008 scaling a ladder and leaping off it every four minutes — it was to signify a leap of faith; to use this extra day to do anything you really wanted to do. As the hours passed, there was a massive sea of people looking forward to the last leap,” he smiles. Other projects he’s undertaken include Dishwasher (where he washes dishes and performs a monologue for a fee), Fresh Squeezed (where he made 1,443 cups of freshly squeezed orange juice) and The Skill Crane Kid (where he remained inside an arcade game for 16 hours).
#txtshow is one of his signature projects, also one of the longest running independent theatre productions in the history of Washington DC. “I play a character called txt and the entire show will revolve around me dramatically enacting tweets from the audience! And because all the accounts are anonymous, they can tweet whatever they want!” Though a simple concept, he adds that no one has ever done or reproduced it.
What are the most outrageously funny tweets he has read out? “It’s really funny when people insert non-sequiturs and then everyone in the audience ends up laughing!” he smiles. “When they're anonymous, people also make fun of someone else in the room — through me. But on the other hand, some have asked people out on dates through me, and they’ve accepted.”
Though he tips his hat to the greats of performance art like Marina Abramovic and Andy Kaufman, he adds that he is inspired by movies and theatre. He also lists The Art Guys, a Houston-based duo as one of his favourites. And he has also been compared to David Blaine and Shia LeBouf, because of the acting background and proclivity for endurance pieces.
He was also one of the final participants for renowned performance artiste Marina Abramovic's The Artist is Present, where she shared a bond of silence and stared into the eyes of every stranger who sat in front of her. “It was extremely liberating to form a mental bond with Marina. I would like to think that we had a mental connection and did have exchanges, but when I was tapped out, I remember thinking that I could spend eight hours in front of her!”
Brian Feldman will be performing the India premiere of #txtshow today at Backyard, from 7 pm onwards. Tickets cost `200, for details, call: 7358458117
WHEN HE WASHES YOUR DISHES
In Dishwasher, he goes to people's house who booked it at a mutually agreed time, and for the first act he washes their dishes. “Sometimes it takes 10 minutes, but sometimes it’s taken more than 2 hours!” For the second act, the host presents him with a script — but don’t be deceived because it can be anything. “It can be a book, poetry, or a play — I’ve even read out bus schedules and restaurant menus as a dramatic monologue! And then, I ask them if I'm a better actor or dishwasher!” he winks. The sequel show to Dishwasher, called Dishwasher: I Pay You, is in the works.