2011-2012 Lab residency

Ain Gordon – Not What Happened

VPL and Southern Vermont will be the laboratory for writer/director/performer Ain Gordon as he researches and develops "Not What Happened" – a new work that is rooted in Vermont history and examines the politics of re-enacting the past for the present as it relates to the preservation and interpretation of history.  VPL is delighted to be partnering with Marlboro College and the Center for Creative Research at New York University to bring additional resources to deepen this year-long residency with Gordon.

As a theater artist, Gordon has gained national recognition for his works inspired by forgotten or marginalized histories – particularly as those histories reside in geographic “place.” For this new work, Gordon turns to rural Vermont for a source of inspiration, he writes:

"I am particularly interested in historical re-enactment as it relates to the ‘preservation and interpretation’ of rural, farming, and pre-industrial America (a nation of fewer artifacts). I want to research the historic re-enactment field; the training of the workers/guides, the costuming, ‘character and narrative development,’ and the individuals attracted to this work. Something is resonating for me between this non-theater but performance-related mode of fictionalizing fact and my own questions about ‘naturalism’ on stage."

Gordon will begin his VPL residency in the fall 2011 by taking an almost forensic approach to finding the traces of colonial history in the rural landscapes of Vermont. Central to this research into rural Vermont is his collaboration with Forrest Holzapfel and members of the Marlboro College faculty in Marlboro, Vermont. Forrest Holzapfel is both the Marlboro Town Lister, a native Vermonter and a historian focused on rural photography practices of the 19th century and vernacular architecture. Specific to this project’s exploration of the rural environ is Holzapfel’s skill at “reading” the present natural landscape for clues to the past man-made landscape. In Gordon’s words, “I am trained to read the urban landscape for constant clues to previous incarnations; an altered doorway or a bricked up window – I have now spent time with a man who reads the gnarl of a tree-stump and finds the same brand of information.” Throughout the fall Gordon and Holzapfel will be taking monthly walks - primarily in once cleared and inhabited tracts that have reforested. Donned in body mic’s the pair examine cellar holes, stone foundations, abandoned grave yards and the re-assertive landscape.  As the project reaches draft form, Holzpafel will design, create and source images from his photography practice framing the “hardscrabble” landscape and obscured ruins of America’s increasingly eradicated farm life.

Following a planning visit with VPL to Marlboro College in the winter 2010, three professors Kate Ratcliff (American Studies), Carol Hendrickson (Anthropology), and Brenda Foley (Theater) responded to Gordon’s research interest by creating an interdisciplinary advanced-level seminar course “The Presence of the Past.” The course focuses on questions of memory, commemoration and historic preservation in rural (or once rural) America. Gordon will participate in the class, and together with faculty and students, will investigate the questions of how rural American history still resides in the natural environ waiting to be found and how communities, institutions and individuals re-enact, commemorate and remember history. 

In April 2012, Gordon will be joined by two actors and Holzapfel for a development workshop and work-in progress showing at Marlboro College. This research process and the culminating workshop will yield Gordon’s first complete draft of the script for what he envisions as a two-character piece: “a battling duet between two people who could never meet – the historical re-enactor and the actual historic figure they re-enact.”

Follow Gordon’s collaboration and process through VPL’s blog and posted videos on the website and on VPL’s facebook page.