Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

In an era when the boundaries between arts institutions, performers and audiences are crumbling, multi-dimensional performer Ralph Lemon wonders if artists need traditional venues.

With that in mind, Lemon recently issued a provocative challenge to Philip Bither, performing arts curator at the Walker Performing Art Center in Minneapolis.

"If I build my own, like, container-space-theater-moviehouse-interrogation room-bed: a place to live in, perform in," Lemon asked, "what do you and I then have to talk about?"

Their ensuing debate led to Lemon's new work, "Scaffold Room" — an in-your-face piece about race, gender, pop culture, and love. Formal performances begin tonight and run at the Walker through Saturday.

For Lemon, it was a philosophical proposal: "Can performers go it alone? In today's world, he said, new technology, artistic practices, and public expectations blur the lines between arts institutions and those they serve.

Bither heard Lemon put it more directly. 

"He said why do a need the Walker any more, when I can build my own Scaffold Room theater and put it anywhere?" 

A Minneapolis native, Lemon has made a name for himself in New York. He and Bither trust each other after working together for years.

Still, Bither responded with pages and pages of rebuttal. The resulting discussion led to what has unfolded in the Walker galleries over the last two weeks. Rather than roll up on the night with a show ready to go, Lemon and his cast and crew have been rehearsing in the galleries as visitors drift by.

The performances include an extended dance by performer Okwui Okpokwasili. Late, on the same platform, singer April Matthis delivers a rendition of the Beyonce song "Partition."

"I just want to be the girl you like," Matthis sings. "The kind of girl you like."  

The Scaffold Room is a platform on wheels with a movie screen in back. There's a ladder on one side climbing up to a bed on an upper level. 

While artistic exploration at the Walker is nothing new, the work is pushing many boundaries.

Lemon's piece includes video shot in Mississippi, but much of the performance is readings, pieces about life, love, and the nature of existence. Much of the text is very graphic. Watching the performance can be uncomfortable, but it's also hard to look away.

In one moment, Lemon will recite a list of what the piece is about. In another, he will say it's not about anything.

"It's trying to create a space where one can sit down and listen to two women be inside a kind of visceral attitude about what it means to kind of be alive right now," he said." 

The experiment already has produced results. Early on its open rehearsal process faltered because the performers felt too exposed. But after a couple of closed rehearsals they opened up again. Lemon said he liked the tension it produced.

At a recent afternoon rehearsal, a few people stopped and watched, but then moved on after a short while, looking a little mystified.

There's yet another experiment going on at the same time, involving another hot issue in the art world: owning a performance. The Walker has purchased the production of "The Scaffold Room."

But Bither said it's not about trying to gain control of the work. 

"We just want to own the memories and the experience and heavily document the whole 'in the moment' real time experiences of audiences, artists, technicians, others who come into contact with this experience."  

That explains the two cameras taping in the galleries. Bither, who describes Lemon's residence as a great adventure, said the Scaffold Room is going to be a historic moment for the Walker, and the performance world in general -- however much he may have wrestled with Lemon over the concept.

"He is one of the most brilliant pioneers of fusing forms together and re-inventing how we think about live performance," Bither said

Arts and Culture

Euan Kerr

Author

In his new performance "Scaffold Room," Ralph Lemon uses a platform on wheels at the Walker Art Center to show that artists can connect to audiences without a venue.

Ralph Lemon: Does art need the establishment to thrive?

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox