Jack Smith’s performances were radically unrehearsed improvisations privileging process over spectacle.

Evidence

By my own observation, Smith’s performances involved listening to music, watching him make minor adjustments in the set and waiting for the unprepared actors to finish dressing. Obviously unrehearsed, they appeared confused, reading from the script whose pages were passed around the stage, while responding (or not) to Smith’s direction. The action typically involved the slow burial and exhumation of artifacts from the set. Boiled Lobster Easter Pageant was followed by Religious Spectacle of Atlantis, Fishhook of Orchid Lagoon Water Pageant and, as summer neared, Withdrawal from Orchid Lagoon (a clue that the wading-pool waterfall had been dismantled). — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 2027

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘art as work in progress, never finished’ ethos here pairs with the Godard premiere note at location 2022 — the same avant-garde principle surfacing across film and live performance.