REVIEWS 1997 - "There Be Monsters!" (Excerpts)

Goodin Worsted’s Video Ventures
Originally published in 1997 by Big Empire.com

There Be Monsters (1997)
A performance art piece by Dan Carbone

My Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

The most amazing, pretense-shattering performance I've ever seen.

Bitable Bytes:
"I wish more people could view this!"
"Ten minutes of brilliance!"
"Dada clowning!"
"The pig is thinkin'!"

What to do while watching:
Go ahead and laugh.

What to eat while watching:
It's only 10 minutes--geez! are you starving to death?!

I wish so much for more people to view these ten minutes of brilliance that I will offer to screen it for you if you ever have a chance to visit me. I make this promise, and I don't even own a copy. But if you are in the neighborhood, or can make the pilgrimage, I will borrow the tape from my friend who owns it and show it to you.

Dan Carbone was a performance artist in the San Francisco Bay Area. His day job was in some service industry, and he was nothing like the black-clad, beret-wearing artistes that dominate the performing arts in this locale. I say "was" because I don't know where Dan is now.

Despite lip service to rugged individualism, 95% of performance art follows the formula of wry theatrics just cryptic enough to veil a heavy message, delivered in small, funky spaces for bright, enthusiastic and malleable audiences. Carbone, on the other hand, comes onto the stage in khaki slacks and a loose-fitting shirt. He is balding, 40ish, with a paunch and a rubbery face. And he delivers a piece so unlike anything one typically sees in San Francisco theaters that the audience is likely to have a reaction of complete flabbergastation. Discomfort is a by-product of this. The piece may end to sympathy applause with Carbone distraught that yet another audience has failed to play with him.

On the other hand, put just one person into the audience who is loose enough to laugh at a man being silly (what else are we supposed to do in this situation?) and the laughter becomes infectious. Carbone is clearly doing something funny. The awkwardness of his body and motions achieves a certain child-like grace, like when kids flop around on a playground: their motions may be sloppy, but each gesture has a full commitment. No hesitation, full confidence. That's what I call grace.

And when all of this is over, the audience has either laughed or not. But having caught a copy on video, my friend Terence has enabled me to view it repeatedly and find a very heavy and universal motif beneath the dada clowning. Carbone is doing a piece about the loss of innocence, to put it very generally and gracelessly. I can't get much further into it than that without diving into a full dissertation. I'd like to discuss how Carbone's meta-monologue parallels the moment when a child suddenly looks at the swing-set and thinks, "this isn't for me any more."