What the muck: Agitating boundaries in performance

This text serves as an accompanying document to the performance work Muck, first produced on May 10th, 2007. Muck is both a performance and an installation. Performed by four actors and a pianist, the work runs in a loop, and alternates between a series of gestures and songs. The first performance was set in a small black room within a larger white gallery space; the spectators entered and left the performance space as they desired. The purpose of this document is to examine the production of Muck as it relates to both performance art and theatre. It proceeds to define Muck (and my broader practice) not by the distinctions put upon performance art and theatre but rather by the proximity and relationship of the audience to the work. By destabilizing expected structures of viewer/performance interaction my work attempts to activate the threshold between the two.