The Activism of Unbounded Stages
Trust & Respect in Blurring the Performer-Audience Relationship
Max Schaffer
December 10th, 2019
When I think back across all my favorite events of the HONK! Festival, I notice one common thread: the lack of a clearly defined stage. The packed corridor of Davis Plaza, the street in front of the Unitarian Church, the overpass next to the detention center in South Boston, and even an unofficial Music 25 event that tested the possibilities of HONK! as a virtual reality festival all stood out to me far more than staged events like those in Harvard Square. I think this preference roots in my general discontent with traditional bounded & raised stages, which I believe fail to create connections by forcing engagement & attention, creating imbalanced dynamics of importance, and promoting more self-conscious audience & performer behavior. Defined stages reinforce a "difference" between attendees of an event, and it's why I think they fail in community festival work. In creating unbounded performance spaces, HONK! engages in truly empathetic activism by trusting its attendees to move freely and interact without oversight--and that is a very special thing.
Saturday in Davis Square was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had at a festival—it was open, fenceless, totally free, devoid of corporate branding, all while maintaining constant entertainment and emphasizing social action at community-scale. The beauty of Saturday (versus Sunday, which took place in Harvard Square) was the personal interaction I experienced as an attendee. For example, the scene of What Cheer? Brigade in Davis Plaza felt completely different than their performance on the Harvard Square stage. The attendees were far more involved, and audience members further back in the crowd were more inclined to interact with one another without a clear visual focus. I also witnessed people helping each other to climb up onto platforms, or walking around to the back of the plaza to take spots behind the performers and fully encircle
them—which felt far more immersive and communal. And to expand on this, the experience I had with the New Orleans-based Young Fellaz Brass Band on stage on Sunday, compared to when they led a small parade down the block towards an empty street corner on Saturday, was vastly different. Attendees came alive to this sudden humanity that became apparent when a performer was close enough to reach out and touch them, or even talk to them or join in on the performance. I remember seeing a guitarist performing on the street; as the band walked by, they joined into the band’s performance, taking a quick solo over the brass arrangement. That level of communal interaction isn’t possible on a static, raised stage. Activist festivals feel much more activist when you are actually on the ground with performers, and not just watching—because you feel like you’re really contributing to collective joy. Even when things like crowd-chants begin, if there is a staged area holding ultimate power and focus, the chant feels directed as opposed to simply expressed. That directionality is what the unbounded stages really nail. I would liken it to my experience with HONK! bands at the Festival-affiliated detention center march, in which we, as a group, were both the performer of the vocalizations as well as (in many ways) the audience for them.
Coming back to this idea of "closeness to performers," trusting an audience to be within arms' reach of you also creates a more intimate environment where people feel their collective humanity is being respected. It makes the prospect of joining in on the pickup band HONK! organizer Ken Field leads each year far less anxiety inducing, since you can just hop into the back row and then dissolve back into the crowd. And on the opposite side, it allows for audience members to become the spectacle of a performance without necessarily “performing”--an almost impossible concept in the context of stage-bounded performances. I personally recall a woman dancing with a small child to the pickup band that almost became like a public dance performance, as well as a stilt-walker rolling through the crowd and just picking up the donation bucket from someone to take around with them. The level of trust that goes along with allowing real fluidity between audience, organizer, and performer is what makes Honk! particularly special.
What these kinds of unbounded events teach us is that being attentive to performers, and being respectful of them, is not necessarily the same thing in public festivals. In my experience, people felt completely fine dropping in and out of different performances, talking to their friends, dancing—just doing whatever—because there was a common understanding of thankfulness and respect for the musicians who were providing both entertainment and the opportunity to gather. Plus, the organizers of the festival make a point to be mostly invisible. After an opening address, it’s actually hard to find any “staff” aside from some volunteers at booths, which contributes to the perception that the Festival is very much community run and not overseen by anyone other than bands and attendees. There is a semblance of organization in the planning of bands and performance areas, but beyond that, very little restraint aside from what attendees give without instruction. The amount of trust that goes into this lack of direct instruction is what makes festivals like HONK! feel intimate and actually communal. To expand on that concept of trust: importantly, there was not a cop to be seen within a wide radius of Davis Square on Saturday, only a couple EMTs—which translates this trust to the crowd while also acknowledging that the presence of police inherently makes a festival less accessible to many people. Comparatively, Harvard Square was full of police which to me put a feeling of surveillance, fear, and distrust into the event. It makes such a massive difference to cede some level of safety and control in order to show attendees trust & respect.
It is critical to understand that having stages on ground-level (rather than raised) is not the same as sanctioning an unbounded stage. What makes a brass festival particularly great for this is the lack of amplification, which means no wires or speakers to cordon off performers from the audience. Interestingly, I continued to think about "unboundness" of space when our class attended a test-event that asked how the logistics, socializations, and norms that drive music festivals would change if HONK! took place in virtual space. Watching organizer Ken Field on saxophone as a stand-in for HONK!--his performance streamed live to our classroom and experienced through headsets as a music festival "in outer space"--I thought about how virtual reality shares this unbounded “wireless” concept, because there are no speaker or cable elements needed inside the digital space. All of this allows for more fluidity & access in planning & mobility, which contributes to the organic and very human feelings of the events. One conflict I can't quite reckon with, though, is that of access & mobility: while it is far more accessible for performers with limited mobility to access unbounded & non-raised stages (like those on Saturday in Davis Square), it is likely more difficult for audience members past the front row to see performers when they utilize wheelchairs, cannot stand for long periods, or are not as tall as someone further ahead of them in the crowd. In some senses, VR gets around this by negating the need to stand, or even to be at the event itself—but it creates other divides in accessibility given the necessary technology and know-how required to use it. Because of this, I still see HONK!’s Saturday edition as the most accessible form of the festival.
Ever since attending, I've tried to figure out what exactly about Honk! made me feel so warm and fuzzy. And while I do believe the root of this lies in the lack of boundaries in terms of both scope and staging, the real core of this feeling seems to be: trust. I felt trusted as both an attendee and as a human, and I therefore extended my own trust to those around me. I realize this may sound overly sensitive, but I do think it's critical to recognize the intense empathy-driven activism present in removing bounded stages. Everything about HONK! is non-hierarchical--from it's planning team, to its event volunteers, to its performers, to its audience members. There are no rigid definitions, and the event reflects this. When you put trust in your community to support each other, festivals flourish, and that is the best lesson I learned from experiencing HONK! 2019.
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