About

1984: The Future Repeats Itself
PART ONE: OCEANIA
Inside the Ministry of Truth, Part 1
Doublethink
The Hate
Big Brother is Watching
Family Circle
Minority of One
Inside the Ministry of Truth, Part 2
History Lesson
Newspeak
Chestnut Tree Café
Facecrime
The Anti-Sex League
Prole Quarter

PART TWO: THE LOVERS
Cupid Strikes
The Golden Country
Dialogues
Love Song (and Dance of Poverty)
Hate Song
A Mind is a Terrible Thing To Waste
We Are the Dead
The Inconceivables
Consequences
The Heart vs the State
Chez O’Brien
The Book
The Dance That Everybody Does

PART THREE: ROOM 101, THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD

In 1983, with the iconic year 1984 just over the horizon, print and broadcast media were filled
with references to George Orwell’s classic novel. The common theme was that Orwell had
mostly gotten it wrong, and it was sometimes added that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
had been a much more prescient harbinger of the current era.

Iris Rose was a great admirer of Orwell, particularly his nonfiction works Down and Out in
Paris and London and Homage to Catalonia, so she decided to take 1984 as the basis for her
next full-length piece after Mysteries, her first show upon arriving in New York in the spring of
1982. In contrast to the naysayers, however, she started from the premise that Orwell’s text
had gotten it all right, but that its truths required interpretation. In the same manner that
biblical scholars find contemporary parallels for images from Revelation (“The locusts are
helicopters!”), she didn’t ask whether there was a Big Brother but rather who was Big Brother
in contemporary culture? Who were we encouraged to demonize in the modern equivalent
of the novel’s Two Minutes Hate and by whom? From our perspective in 1983, what was in
Room 101 – “the worst thing in the world?”

Iris addressed these questions to a group of friends she enlisted as her collaborators and
cast. They were all experienced performers and all recent transplants to New York City. Kurt
Fulton was one of Iris‘ closest college chums in Long Beach, California, in the early 1970’s and the first of the group to arrive in New York at the end of 1980. Encouraged by having a friend in the city, Iris joined him in the spring of 1982, soon followed by two more California friends, Chazz Dean and Melanie Monios.

Iris met James Siena soon after arriving in New York while participating in an anti-nuclear
conceptual art fashion show called Fallout Fashions at the Just Above Midtown Downtown
gallery in Tribeca. The performance was the work of an Ithaca, New York, art collective
called Dinosaur, of which James was a member. A few months later, James left his rustic
farmhouse in Ithaca for Iris’ loft on Franklin Street that she shared with Kurt’s friend Gary
Cathey.

With this group of collaborators (which initially also included Gary), Iris began the task of
deconstructing and interpreting Orwell. The results of these investigations were processed
using techniques she had learned in the Frankenstein Collective (see METHOD for a detailed description of that group and the techniques it developed) and formed into a lightning-
paced, highly physical performance called 1984: The Future Repeats Itself. There were more than 25 sections in the finished one-hour piece, each 1 to 3 minutes long.

PART ONE: OCEANIA was a portrait of American society in 1983. Stage right stood a large
wooden frame on a stand that represented a “telescreen,” Orwell’s monitor that watched
you at the same time you were watching it. The proportions of the screen were such that a
performer standing behind it appeared to be on television. Each section in PART ONE was
preceded by someone speaking on the telescreen from texts based on found language.
Below are some sample telescreen texts:

Before History Lesson (about the trivialization of history):

A Swift’s Premium Butterball turkey, Mrs. Cubbison’s dressing or stuffing mix, Ocean
Spray cranberry sauce, and a Pepperidge Farm pie shell with Libby’s pumpkin pie filling
will give you all the holiday flavors you remember.

Before The Anti-Sex League (about sex):

There’s nothing to add, make, or dissolve. No bag to wash or dry. Completely sanitary.
Leaves you feeling fresh. Quickly. Comfortably.

Before Chez O’Brien (about the privileges of the elite):

There’s a new elegance, a new refinement. A program dedicated solely to owner
satisfaction. It’s beautiful from any angle. Charismatic, without pretension, without peer.
Original, authentic, handmade, and collectible. For those who value excellence. If you
can’t decide which one would be best to start your collection with, buy all three.

PART ONE covered most of the classic concepts for which the novel 1984 is best
remembered, including Big Brother, Newspeak, the Two Minutes Hate (shortened to The
Hate), the Anti-Sex League, Anti-Sex League script and Doublethink, each in its own discrete
section.

PART TWO: THE LOVERS was a deconstructed romance set in the poor neighborhood where
the novel’s lovers, Winston and Julia, met to evade the strictures of Big Brother’s society.
Scenes included: Cupid Strikes, in which the two met and fell in love; Love Song, an off-kilter
attempt to write a classic pop song; and Dance of Poverty, a dance by the poor contrasted
with a dialogue between the lovers, delivered with complete sincerity and comprised
entirely of lyrics of classic love songs:

Melanie:
You light up my life. You give me hope to carry on.

Kurt:
Don’t go changing just to please me. I want you just the way you are.

Melanie:
I can’t see me loving nobody but you for all my life. When you’re with me, baby,
the skies will be blue, for all my life.

Kurt:
My cheri amour, lovely little one that I adore, you’re the only one my heart beats for.

Prole Quarter and A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste were both about the impoverished
neighborhood that was the backdrop for Winston and Julia’s tryst. In We Are the Dead,
newscasters reported multiple news stories describing the death of one or both lovers,
forecasting many possible endings to their story. We Are the Dead script PART TWO ended with
The Dance That Everybody Does, a pedestrian celebration of ordinary human beings – a
quartet choreographed of simple movements that humans frequently do, including Rub
Eyes, Wave, Scratch, and Fall Down.

PART THREE: ROOM 101, THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD imagined worst case scenarios,
including the most mundane, and the compensations society offers for coping with the
difficulties of life.

While the work was still in progress, individual sections were performed at a variety of
venues. Most notable of these was Watchface’s first appearance at the Pyramid Club, the
site of much of their early work, where they presented Big Brother, The Hate, and A Mind is a
Terrible Thing to Waste. A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste was also performed at Fashion
Moda, an art space in the South Bronx that was important in the emergence of the hip-hop
and graffiti movements, along with the section Prole Quarter.

The first complete, work-in-progress performance of 1984: The Future Repeats Itself was
presented in a large room without air-conditioning above the Chanticleer restaurant in
Ithaca, New York, on a very hot weekend in July. The first New York City performance was at
a rented space in the community center, Charas, at the East Village corner of Avenue B and
10th Street in September. It was repeated in December at the White Columns gallery on
Spring Street in Soho as part of the exhibit Science and Prophecy.
Chanticleer program
White Columns postcard

Michael Perranteau of Diverse Works in Houston, Texas, attended the White Columns
performance and invited the group on the spot to bring the piece to his gallery in June, the
group’s first road trip. Since Kurt was unavailable to make the journey, excerpts from 1984:
The Future Repeats Itself were performed (with Iris substituting for Kurt), along with the
premiere of James and Iris’ Negotiations.

1984 was significant in Watchface’s history because it was the first full-length production that
brought together the majority of its eventual members and employed the techniques that
would later define the Watchface style.
 
 
*Iris and James’ roommate in 1983, Gary Cathey, was originally part of the cast but dropped
out early in the rehearsal process. On the lists that became the section Big Brother, Gary’s
name can still be seen. Because of the intensely collaborative nature of the process,
undoubtedly some of the movements and words that he contributed remained in the final
product after his departure.