Adler & Gibb

Tim Crouch

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783195916
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre européen

'You'd like that, would you, your most private, pinkest, tenderest – small bird, small bird, small fragile – stolen from you, slammed down onto the slab, the block, poked at and paraded.' The children swing their legs on the chairs. The student delivers the presentation. The older woman stands with the gun. The young couple arrives at the house. The house is returning to nature. A movie is being made. The truth is being plundered. But the house is still lived in and the spirit to resist is strong. Janet Adler and Margaret Gibb were conceptual artists working in New York at the end of the last century. They were described by art critic Dave Hickey as the 'most ferociously uncompromising voice of their generation'. With Adler's death in 2004, however, the compromise began. Adler & Gibb tells the story of a raid – on a house, a life, a reality and a legacy. The play takes Tim Crouch's fascination with form and marries it to a thrilling story of misappropriation. Also includes what happens to the hope at the end of the evening by Tim Crouch and Andy Smith, a facsimile of the text as used in performance.

ACT ONE

The stage is almost empty.

As the audience enter, two children (approx 8 years old) are somewhere on the stage. They are doing colouring books or just hanging out. Throughout the play, they will be directed in their actions by a live voice which they hear through headphones that they wear at all times – a kind and attentive voice – the voice of someone rehearsed in the role. When the language in the play becomes too adult, they can listen to music through the headphones.

There is a freedom to the quality of this empty stage. An unformed sense, an open sense in which anything is allowed. A playful sense.

With the audience in, the children sit on chairs at the back of the stage.

A young female STUDENT enters and stands centre stage. She is dressed individually – ‘freely’ – a canvas satchel with badges and slogans on, for example, a women’s movement symbol on her jacket, for example.

The STUDENT takes her place at a lectern.

The STUDENT is a younger version of the character LOUISE.

The STUDENT reads from a formal-looking paper.

The STUDENT speaks into a microphone throughout.

STUDENT	Thank you. Um.
	Candidate name: Louise Elizabeth Mane – as in lion.
	Candidate number: 07523 New Jersey, Eastern Region.
	Date: May 19th twenty oh four. Is that how you say it? Twenty oh four? Twenty-four? Two thousand and four?
	Um, the declared principles of grading for this paper are taken from the exam board’s Eastern Region directive found in their October 1997 guidelines. The scoring rubric referenced includes the score scale descriptor from Appendix 2c – “an accurate and thorough explanation of how an artist or artifact represents the culture in which it was produced”.
	First slide, please.

SAM and LOUISE enter, in robes, facing out.

The children approach SAM and LOUISE. SAM and LOUISE remove their robes and hand them to the children. The children sit back down.

SAM and LOUISE are in underwear.

	This presentation is about the late American artist Janet Adler.
	In 1996 Janet Adler was described by the art critic Dave Hickey as the most ‘ferociously talented and uncompromising voice of her generation’. She died last year – in May twenty oh three – the exact date is unknown – and there have been questio...