Ron Vawter's Life In Performance by Theresa Smalec (review)

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• Ron Vawter's Life In Performance by Theresa Smalec
• Sean F. Edgecomb

RON VAWTER'S LIFE IN PERFORMANCE. By Theresa Smalec. London: Seagull Books, 2020; pp. 222.

Relying on impressive archival research and original interviews to present "a social history—and ensemble biography" (3), author Theresa Smalec provides a dynamic new account of US actor Ron Vawter (1948-94) that deftly corrects the claims of previous scholarship. Ron Vawter's Life in Performance decisively traces the career and personal life of the titular artist who rose to fame as a member of downtown New York theatre troupes, The Performance Group and The Wooster Group, from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Over a perhaps too economic [End Page 590] introduction and eight subsequent chapters, Smalec's intervention corroborates Vawter's importance as a performer—one who has been eclipsed by his more famous collaborators like Willem Defoe, Spalding Gray, Elizabeth LeCompte, and Richard Schechner—and challenges the longstanding myth surrounding Vawter's life that he "ostensibly came from nowhere" (9). While the narrative presented is linear, Smalec expertly (and even queerly) writes across time, creating a complex constellation of Vawter's career rather than a chronological biography.

The opening chapter proves Smalec's research prowess, diving into Vawter's previously unrecorded history before he joined The Performance Group in 1972. Relying on original interviews, the author traces Vawter's origins in the theatre back to high school and the period he spent as an undergraduate at Siena College starting in 1967. Directing and acting in queer-themed plays such as Edward Albee's The Zoo Story and John Herbert's Fortune in Men's Eyes, Vawter developed an interest in queer performance, Smalec corroborates, that preceded his work in the Manhattan avant-garde theatre scene. While Smalec's account, like previous biographies, confirms that Vawter was enrolled in a Franciscan training program and commissioned into the National Guard, she argues these experiences have been overblown in other biographical accounts.

Chapters 2 and 3 continue to correct the narrative around Vawter's introduction to The Performance Group, his initial time with the group, and his work as the company's general manager. In addition to her archival research and interviews, Smalec describes her embodied methods in these chapters. For instance, to argue against the myth that Vawter stumbled upon a rehearsal when walking home from a military recruiting station at 80 Center Street in 1972, she takes to the streets in an attempt to recreate Vawter's commute, proving that it most likely never happened. She likewise offers a close reading of Vawter's "stealth" performance style (76), which he engaged in part through the method of undressing to complete nudity before each performance. This ritual would become a trademark of his style. Smalec's fascinating analysis of nudity-as-process reads the act as an embodiment of Vawter's still-hidden queer desire. While these chapters are biographically rich, her analysis of these stealth performance practices in particular could be grounds for a more thorough, extensive theoretical exploration.

Examinations of Vawter's lasting impact on The Performance Group and pivotal role in the formation of The Wooster Group continue in chapters 4 and 5. The former includes detailed readings of performances including Sakonnet Point (1975), Rumstick Road (1977), Nayatt School (1978), and Point Judith (an Epilog) (1979). Beyond recounting Vawter's close working relationship with Gray and LeCompte, Smalec traces how projection work originally experimented with by Vawter at Siena College may have influenced The Performance Group's use of projection on live bodies as part of a Brechtian acting process the author terms "standing in" (97). Chapter 5 begins with the professional split between LeCompte and Gray and the founding of The Wooster Group in 1980, focusing on rehearsal processes in one of the most exciting historical critiques of the book. Returning to a reading of Nayatt School from the previous chapter, Smalec rethinks the method of constructing performance via interviews, archives, and critical response—arguing that Vawter was a key player in developing "ensemble autobiographies" (116)—as a new way to think about repertory performance in a historical context. Beyond these performance analyses, Smalec's richly...