Have you ever walked through campus with your iPod blaring and eyes glued to the ground, or pretended to be texting, to avoid meeting someone’s eye? Maybe you’ve even crossed the street to avoid the girl you met at the bar on Saturday, or completely stopped smiling at that guy who lived down the hall from you in first year. On some level, we are all guilty of that social anxiety, even though a tight-knit community was what drew many of us to Queen’s in the first place.
Qtopia, a new art group on campus, has set out to explore this odd reality amongst peers. Its inaugural event, The Talking Creature, took place on Tuesday. The experimental performance piece challenged a handful of Queen’s students to communicate with the people they share space with every day, but have never even seen.
Adam Wray, ArtSci ’09 and the brain behind the operation, said he was inspired by the work of Toronto-based actor Daniel O’Donnell while researching his fourth-year drama thesis.
“I came across Darren’s work at a time when I was really disenchanted with art in general,” he explained over coffee on Tuesday afternoon.
It had been difficult to find meaning in art that served a purpose in his life, Wray said. O’Donnell’s progressive efforts to generate real encounters in theatre and society embodied the practicality that Wray was yearning for.
“There is a fear that theatre is now culturally irrelevant in an advanced society,” Wray said.
Although most art forms have adjusted to the omnipotent internet, Wray said, theatre has remained unchanged. It’s restricted by its need to have everyone in the same place at the same time, and has acquired—to its detriment—a remote characteristic. Wray empathized with O’Donnell’s fear that, without some kind of metamorphosis, it might die out.
The solution? Something called social acupuncture.
O’Donnell started this movement in order to drag theatre out into society. Just as the practice of acupuncture uses pin pricks to relieve tension and enable the natural flow of energy through the body, his innovative art intends to stop the blockades that inhibit society from operating smoothly.
“It is a hybrid of performance art, social work and group therapy, based on the idea that social materials mould the fabric of civic life,” Wray said.
The Talking Creature was first attempted in 2003. O’Donnell released a group of people out into Kensington market in Toronto. He asked them to approach strangers on the street, just to talk—it’s that simple. Since then, the projects have been attempted across the world and, with Wray’s Qtopia, now Queen’s.
“Queen’s seemed like a pretty interesting place to try [social acupuncture] out,” Wray said. “We have a pretty insular community here. It often seems like there is no desire to meet other people. But, in reality it is not easy talking to people you don’t know.
“We live in a pretty me-oriented age.
“The banal details of everyone’s life are plastered over the internet, and we enjoy soaking them in,” he said. “We’re social animals.”
So, on Tuesday afternoon, a group of friendly strangers awkwardly correlated in a small room in the JDUC. A mixture of nervous laughter and shifty eyes darted around the room as Wray explained the mission of The Talking Creature: go to the Lower Ceiligh, introduce yourself to someone you’ve never met and bring them up here.
Wray, calm and collected, understood the apprehension some might have had in anticipation of discomforting the people we approached.
“The idea is to make people feel uncomfortable,” he explained, adding that the discomfort is created in the hopes of provoking learning and change.
“Just tell them ‘It’s art, don’t worry.’ They can stay for five minutes, or two hours if they want.”
The group was released into the buzz of student life. Some people approached strangers smoothly; most were initially shut down with mumbles of mid ruling their lives. I, personally, wandered around like a lost puppy dog, lost my nerve and snagged a friend in line for pizza. We returned to the room where new faces timidly made introductions. But the tension quickly eased, and before I knew it an hour had gone by. I had lost track of time talking about quantum physics for half an hour with a girl I had just met, and made myself 10 minutes late for class. Not that I know a single thing about quantum physics, but it didn’t matter what we were talking about—the comfortable atmosphere that was provided to meet someone knew was refreshing and uplifting.
Qtopia plans to continue moulding our community into art with more events after reading week. Wray joked about an Alfie’s-wide game of spin the bottle, on the pretence that we’re all there to make-out with each other anyway—why not avoid the alcohol and cut to the chase?
But Wray’s light hearted, artistic touch also resonates deeply with a truth that we spend too much time occupying the same space without sharing it. Amidst the complaints of mid, essays, labs and presentations, and as it becomes increasingly more tempting to ignore that alarm in the morning, Qtopia’s philanthropic innovation of theatre is a sweet reminder. The temporary pain of social acupuncture was well worth it and, with future events, will ideally grow to have a larger impact on the Queen’s community.
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