The title The Attitudes is derived from the Emma Lyon’s late 18^th century art form, Les Attitudes, which evolved into Tableau Vivant and was also known as Mimoplastic Art: a mixture of postures, dance and acting. While it was unusual in Europe (Lyon edified the expatriate community in Naples with Les Attitudes, exciting the interest of stage theorist and practitioner Johan Wolfgang Goethe)* it could be said that other cultural performance conventions have blended posture, dance and acting for millennia – kapa haka, for example.

But it is, significantly, the European form that co-creators Madeline McNamara (performer) and Jade Eriksen (director) play with to explore attitudes to, and of those who have, the privilege of being white; to “throw shade on whiteness” as their publicity puts it. They bill their work as a “macabre and hysterical human flick book of white resistance to ongoing challenges about unearned power and privilege.” It is also described as “a meditation on whether it is possible to be a ‘good’ white.”  

The meaning of the subtitle, Refusing Performance, is not so clear, initially. Before I saw the show I thought it may refer to the refusal of mainstream theatres to produce this sort of work. But in a prologue video McNamara, seated in a cluttered room subjected to the noise of outside disturbance, wrestles in semi-formed sentences with the question of how to explore white colonial privilege/ terrorism/ domination in Aotearoa without perpetuating the privileged voice.

That her ‘thinking aloud’ is semi-articulate is very much the point: she is not pronouncing, pontificating or proselytising; she is inviting us to share her search for the right words. (I could attempt the same thing here but I don’t think it would work, so please understand that whatever reads like a pronouncement is simply my subjective observation/ opinion, offered as a contribution to the wider conversation about theatre practice.)

A sketch show satirising white privilege, Monty Python-style, for example, would be highly articulate and have us laughing at the syndrome, each other and ourselves. But McNamara and Eriksen refuse to use the standard conventions of performance and instead adopt a form that draws us more profoundly into recognising – and, for the whites in the audience especially, vicariously embodying – white privileged behaviour, mostly by depicting resistance to the very idea.

Having applied white powder to her face, McNamara treats us to a series of vestigial representations of women and men refusing to accept that they are privileged just because they are white. It is a more literal form of theatrical sketching that encourages us to complete the picture in light of our own very personal position, experience and perspective. I sense that (for us whites, especially) our desire to laugh often freezes into a rictus grin as we confront our own resistance to the charge of privilege.

It’s important to note The Attitudes – Refusing Performance is not a guilt-trip. It is an extremely engaging opportunity to recognise the reality of white privilege and how it is resisted. Although everyone will respond subjectively, our bearing witness together while engaged in private thoughts and feelings enriches the experience profoundly.

The (optional) post-show discussion reveals the less-is-more physicality of McNamara’s utterly compelling performance has provoked physical as well as emotional feelings within many audience members, transcending our natural desire to verbally interpret the actions and imagery. We also gain insights, this night, on what provokes the desire to laugh in some, but not in others – and how the group dynamic can affect an individual reaction.

(Much could be written about the laughter response but all I’d suggest at this point is it’s a complex and very subjective thing, and best not taken as simply meaning something is thought to be funny in a light-hearted way. It may signify the release of pent-up tension, the shock of being confronted with an inescapable truth or being caught out at an unconscious level over something you’ve never acknowledged.)

The Attitudes – Refusing Performance offers an innovatively classical way of “speaking unspeakable things” and “being the unspeakable” (oxymorons intended).
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
*Afterthought:
Those wanting to learn more about the theatrical conventions informing this work should request permission to read Volken Schachenmayr: Emma Lyon – The Attitude and Goethean Performance Theory.

It occurs to me that Emma Lyon’s own story is ripe for theatrical exploration, exploiting similar conventions.  She is better known to history as Lady Hamilton, the consort then second wife of British Envoy and keen archaeologist and art collector Sir William Hamilton, as muse of the portrait artist George Romney and as mistress of Lord Nelson (with whom she had a daughter: Horatia). 

Given her childhood poverty and the probability that she earned money as a child prostitute, there is an investigation to be made into the evolution of her Attitudes performances. Were they a bold expression of feminine power or was she at the effect of the male gaze and surviving by exploiting it?

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer