Lee Walton
Life/Theatre Project: San Francisco

Lee Walton is a long-time resident of the Bay Area who recently relocated to New York. While living here he built a small following for his rigorous, strenuous and exceedingly odd task-oriented public performances. These usually were performed by himself, on the street, and had to do with rigid rules requiring specific behaviors depending on such outside events as the ebb and flow of a baseball game he would follow on radio. Life/Theatre is a much grander event still involving the street but with a cast of some two dozen actors recruited on Craig’s List. The audience was invited to walk down both sides of Mission Street between Cesar Chavez and 24th Street between 3pm and 4pm to observe people and see if they could identify the actors.

In general, for the typical theatrical performance, the audience and performers know which of the two categories they fall into. In some cases, viewers may become participants, but there is no mystery about who is a performer or a viewer at any given moment. In Life/Theater, the viewers did not know who were performers, performers didn’t know who were the other performers, or who the viewers were (viewers were people who were aware there were performers present and were looking for them), and other people on the street who were not performers or viewers weren’t aware of the specific presence of either category of people. Viewers couldn’t even tell other viewers from civilians.

Because of the absence of clear indicators as to who was an actor and who was a viewer, this standard theatrical division became the focus of the performance. As in a typical performance, actors were assigned specific roles and tasks, and given a time and location in which they were to perform them. Since the viewers did not know who to watch perform, their task became more active than that of the typical audience member: they were forced to decide who was acting and who was not. Psychologically the street became the stage—which it can be argued it always is, as people can always be viewed carrying out a variety of roles and tasks in public---except not all the observed were innocent. The performers became guilty of trying to fool the viewers, and even the innocent, into believing that they were not actors, but in fact belonged on the stage as an innocent. The viewers and the performers cast a secret and invisible net over the quotidian, playing a game of hiding in plain sight. Of course, all actors seek to convince viewers that they are not acting, but in this situation the viewer is not looking to be convinced of veracity but is trying to deduce its opposite, a subtle self-consciousness.

Therefore, the viewer was forced to develop criteria for deciding who was an actor and who was innocent. Since the street was crowded with people, most just walking along, the challenge became deciding who belongs and who is a stealthy intruder. Is it physical characteristics or is it unusual or odd quirks of behavior? What variety of people would be expected to be here on this stretch of Mission Street and what would they be expected to be doing? What are the viewers’ own biases about how assessing people, given any specific neighborhood and its demographics?

I identified a handful of people who later turned out to be some of the 28 actors, but most of the actors, who later assembled at the Southern Exposure space, I did not even remember seeing. The actual actors I identified were:
1. A young blonde woman dressed a little too higher end hip for Mission Street, who was sitting on the sidewalk against a building, her knees pulled up, and her head down on her folded arms.
2. A young man sitting far too long (the entire hour) on a bench listening to a portable radio with headphones.
3. An older man wearing a cowboy hat and boots, who I saw several times in different locations, looking out of place wherever he was.
4. Two men and a woman carrying small cheap worn bookshelves which no one looking like them would ever buy.

People I was sure were actors, who turned out not to be, included: a man who seemed dressed ever-so-slightly too well sitting with what I assumed were homeless people in a small plaza; a young woman with an awful-looking cheap wig topped by a weird hat; and an older, balding man walking quickly down the street in medical greens whom I was certain was an actor as he looked so out of place. I was staring at him for so long that I tripped and fell down right next to him, at which point the man stopped and said, “Are you alright? I’m a doctor. Do you need help?” I still thought he might be an actor, but then wondered if it was unethical to say you were a doctor if you weren’t. A perfect effect of this provocative theatrical game.

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