In famed director Peter Brook’s book “The Empty Space” he describes four types of theater experience – Raw, Dead, (one I can’t remember), and Holy. “Dead” is what we mostly get. From dead Shakespeare to dead avant-garde Yesterday I witnessed “Holy” (and a little raw) at its best. Bluebeard at the Neo-Futurarium — a must see for anyone remotely connected to theater in Chicago.

Funny, outrageous, mystical, poignant, expertly crafted, brilliant writing, and dazzling acting.

This has become an annoying question that I have to answer over and over in interviews.

How did the slam movement which has, by intention, embraced so many different styles, themes, people, forms, and cultures get pigeon holed as a synonym for rap?

Was it Def Jam Poetry and their Broadway show? Is it media folk like Jon Stewart who conduct silly debates over rappers “poetry slammin’” at the White House? Is it the goodhearted teachers who use the slam as a vehicle to interest kids in poetry but reward “main stream” rap over other poetic forms?

Here’s an answer to the question. I posted it to a high school student doing a paper on slam just a few minutes ago.

“There are at least two distinctions between rap and slam. 1) Rap evolved out of music, and it has been driven to international status by the commercial music industry. Slam started as, and remains, a grass roots community based movement that evolved out of the world of poetry. 2) Slam poetry is open to all forms of poetry, people. themes, cultures, and styles of performance from haiku to sonnets to Cowboy poetry. Rappers looking for a place to expanded their writing beyond musical lyrics entered into the slam world during the early/mid nineties. They are one part of a big family of poets who have found a home in slam.”

Rap, and the entertainment industry behind it, is certainly one of the most important worldwide lyrical art forms of our time. It has influenced millions. It has given voice to many. It has created oceans of celebrities and stars. I has made alot of people alot of money.

Slam by contrast is small potatoes in a big bag. It has created with little or no money communities of performers, poets, fans, organizers, activists, and educators across the globe who speak their truths on modest platforms for modest reward. It has created stages where grandpas and grandmas “spit” alongside teenagers and tots. Where Cowboys poets can rhyme away the night while LA divas rant on the street corners outside the club.

For all the brilliant people at the top of our society leading the world faithfully from one man-made catastrophe to another, the distinctions between the rap industry and the slam movement may serve as a good on-air joke. But for me (the guy who started it) and those folks who have served their slam communities with little thought of material gain, the distinction is clear and critical … hope it’s clear to you.

Thankfully none of my slam visits (so far) have been marred by excessive screaming. As I’ve preached in the past to many slammers, young and old, volume is an element of performance that should be used judiciously and with restraint.

Screaming is not the equivalent of passion. Many audiences stop hearing and believing the words when the poet is screaming at levels inappropriate to the text. Why judges don’t chastise the screamers with minus tens and twenties is beyond me. Maybe they’re afraid that the screaming poets might follow them home and scream outside their windows all night.

Staged teardrops are another performance question mark. I’m not referring to those transcendent theatrical moments when actors or performers become so deeply committed to their roles or poems that they unwilling transport themselves back to a vulnerable space and time and present to their audiences an authentic dramatic experience and shared catharsis.

No the tears I’m questioning are the conjured up crocodile tears calculated to gain sympathy from judges and audiences with a maudlin mediocre text. How many convulses sobs are needed to score a perfect 10? Is the breakdown timed precisely to fall within the three minute limit? Are coaches and captains managing these emotional strategies to gain ultimate victory? Be sure to cry a little, you’ll gain an extra point or two.

When I teach performance I challenge students to become vulnerable by exploring and exposing remembrances and emotions they may have kept buried for years, decades, even a lifetime. Sometimes they are moved to tears when they do so. Tears they fight back trying to regain composure. Such emotional and psychological exploration has its basis in the Stanislavski and Mesmer methods, technique that leads to more authentic portrayals of a character or text.

I’ve been told that at some slam competitions large numbers of participants are sobbing out their words. That seems odd to me. In twenty-five years of hosting the show at the Green Mill I can think of no more than a couple dozen occasions (hardly ever more than one in a night) when poets have broke down into tears.

One night a woman well past her forties made all of us cry with a tale of her recently deceased son. Her mascara ran dark down her puffed cheeks. Her chest heaved. The next week her mascara ran again as she read a poem about her dying husband. On week three her uncle died, and after that I dubbed her the Grand Dame of Doom.

Turns out none of these personal tragedies were true. It wasn’t her son who died; it was a friend of a friend’s son. Her husband wasn’t on his deathbed, a neighbor’s was. And the uncle was a distant one she hadn’t seen since childhood.

Fakers in all categories of tragically confessional verbiage (often passed off as poetry) insult and diminish the tragedies of those who have truly suffered great misery and sorrow. I think that when we sense a con job we should muster up the courage to question it. And if there’s a bandwagon of sobbing slammers on stage dominating a night, I think maybe … maybe it might be a bandwagon filled with bullshit.

MAY 21

9:30 AM TIL NOON AT THE CHOPIN THEATRE
1543 W. Division Chicago, IL 60642

To celebrate 25 years of slammin’ performance poetry Chicago Slam Works will be hosting the third in a series of Slam History Video Salons to record slam stories recounted by some of Chicago finest performance poets and organizers.

On Saturday morning May 21 Members of the Original CHICAOGO POETRY ENSEMBLE ROB VAN TUYLE, DAVID COOPER, ANNA BROWN, MIKE BARRET, & KAREN NYSTROM along with Members of the SPEAK’EASY ENSEMBLE will tell tales OF THE EARLY YEARS AND HOW IT IS NOW as the cameras roll.

You are invited to come by and listen to these historic interviews and enjoy a tasty Brunch courtesy of Ziggy & Lela at the Chopin Theatre downstairs.

A $12 donation for the food and fun is requested.

Chopin’s Brunch Concept
“Chopin’s Brunch” continues the great tradition of European salons presenting new artistic and intellectual ideas as well as being centers for social exchange. “Chopin’s Brunch” will take place in the salon-like setting of Chopin Theatre’s Lounge. The elegant buffet brunch will start around 930am. At some time during brunch, the conversation starts. This may be in the form of lecture, round table discussion, multi-media presentation, etc. Around noon the brunch concludes with a short presentation of Fryderk Chopin’s music.
www.ChopinTheatre.com

Early this year I began visiting slams throughout the Midwest, and more recently on tour out to California. My intent was to check on the growth and stature of the American apparition of the movement I started 25 years ago. Along the way I jotted down impressions, thoughts, praises, and criticisms about what I was experiencing. One distressing element noted was that many slams don’t start on time. In fact, some lumbered to life hours after the advertised moment of first spit.

Is this a good practice?

Not by my judgment. One of the failures of poetry readings in the ‘70s and ‘80s (before Chicago’s Uptown Poetry Slam changed the staid course of poetry events) was that none of them started on time and consequently extended late into the nighttime early morning, usually on a week night when most working folks couldn’t afford staying up past midnight to listen to self-indulgent poets rambling.

One of my absolutes at Green Mill was to start on time or close to it.

There is a tradition in theater (which I believe had something to do with train schedules in New York City) that curtain goes up at 8:08 or something like that. A musical overture filling the wait-time space as the late arrivals are seated.

I may have this all wrong but the point is that over the decades (and maybe the centuries) stage presentations have started as close to the advertised start time as possible. Why should poetry shows be any different?

The dire consequence for starting late is that newcomers (who expect shows to start when the fliers say they will) wait … and wait … and wait … and wait some more, all the while grumbling in their minds, “What the fuck is wrong with these people, these poets. Let’s go! Let’s go! My time is valuable. Don’t these people give a damn about that?”

Expectations rise … and rise … and rise. And when the slam finally does start it’s burdened with the task of overcoming the huge volcano of resentment fuming in the newcomers’ heads.

And of course, the way out is no better. Delaying a show places the endgame far beyond what’s reasonable.
Three hours is considered a breaking point for any stage presentation — theatrical, poetical, or even musical. Sure some festivals rock on day and night deep into the wee hours, but think back on the concerts and plays you’ve attend. Two or three hours is the standard.

Advertising a show for 8pm, not starting until 9:30 and then trudging on until 2 am to finish – Egads! Six hours! How many people eagerly sign up for six hours of anything, let alone six hours of amateur poetry presentation. You’d have to be thoroughly stoned to survive it, which maybe the organizers of such fiascos are.

Newcomers hardly ever return after being burnt out by delay, and most likely spread the word, “I tried that poetry slam thing and oh man! It started so late and ended so late I couldn’t hang with it. It’s not something I’d recommend to anyone.”

Slam organizers owe it to themselves and to the slam community in general to start shows on time. It’s one of the principles that helped the original show in Chicago (and the successful shows that followed it) thrive and continue to thrive garnering new audiences every month, every year, swelling the population of slam enthusiasts to numbers envied by other fine art disciplines.

If you find numbers dwindling at your slam, maybe you should get back its roots and start on time.

Most poetry readings are episodic. Poet after poet reading one, two, or more poems, and where there may be an arc in the poem that stirs interest and creates suspense — in the collective performance there is none. After an hour (or less) of episodic presentation an audience usually has had enough. Long before the poetry reading reaches its final stanza, they’ve asked themselves several times: “How many more poems is this guy going to read? How many more poets do I have to listen to?”

Using competition as a theatrical device to create suspense and provide an arc enabled slam organizers to transform episodic presentations into dramatic journeys. Interjecting judges and scoring and the question, Who will win? makes slam competitions far more interesting than the run of mill open mics.

However, competition is not the only way to achieve drama in the presentation of performance poetry. Throughout the twenty-five year history of slam there have been countless innovations and experiments in providing dramatic arc to poetry events that did not rely upon a competitive structure.

From the Chicago Poetry Ensemble’s verse plays about the “White Chapel Club” to the Mark Messing’s and Cin Salach’s “Loofah Method’ shows to the “Swordsmen of Verse” slammers have been using the techniques of story-telling and drama to break out the staid patterns of ordinary poetry readings.

The challenge for slam poets and organizers in the up-coming years is to find more and more ways of creating interest, drama, and suspense during their slam events without leaning on the too familiar and over-used 3-minute, no props, no music, 1 to 10, poetry slam competitions. Get creative and take us on some new adventures in words. Blow our minds and rock the house of Slam like the early slammers rock the house of Poetry.

Another question for slam organizers to ask is: Is your slam show mostly poets reading to poets?

If so, you are guilty of creating the same environment I (and those who follow my lead) reacted against back in 1984 when most poetry readings, deadly and boring to be sure, were attended by ganders of self-absorbed poets who waited unattentivey for their moment to honk their wares and then leave. If you were an unfortunate new-comer to the brood your moment usually came at the end of the evening (or far into the wee hours of the next morning) when you finally poke your words to one or two fellow unfortuanates.

Slam poets are generally super supportive of each other — maybe all participants at slams stick around to the end of the night — but if its only slammers performing to slammers something’s missing.

And what would that be?

Maybe an honest, objective, and discriminating general audience — people who
care enough about the art form to call the slammers on their bullshit, and demand surprise and genuine truth in the words they hear. The people who love to listen to good poetry performed with passion and precision.