About

The End of the World
PART ONE
Q. and A.
Dialogue Between Science and Nature
Art
Friends
The Bomb

PART TWO
The Seven Churches
Good and Evil
The Tribulation
The Whore
1000 Years Peace

PART THREE
The Round
The Laws
Animals
Mother Nature
Tea Ceremony

PART FOUR
The Unknown
Newton and Einstein
Life
Dance of Celebration
Death of a Star

Since the beginning of recorded history, and probably long before, humans have been
contemplating their own annihilation. The instrument of their destruction has varied,
depending on the preoccupations of the time and the cultural beliefs of a given society, but
we have never been free from the anxiety that our collective stay on this planet is finite.

The early 1980’s was a time of a specific and focused form of this trepidation. When Ronald
Reagan was inaugurated as president in January 1981, it ushered in a period of intense
anxiety for many concerning the possibility of nuclear escalation with the Soviet Union.
The following year, Jonathan Schell published The Fate of the Earth, which described in vivid,
scientifically-accurate detail exactly what would happen to the inhabitants of New York City
if a nuclear warhead fell on Midtown. The book was widely read at the time and was
nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Iris Rose moved to New York City in April 1982, and three weeks later met two members of an
artists’ collective from Ithaca, NY, called Dinosaur. They asked her to participate in their
upcoming performance – an anti-nuclear, conceptual fashion show called Fallout Fashions
to be presented at a downtown gallery on the same weekend as an upcoming, immense
anti-nuclear march, set to culminate in Central Park. One million people showed up for the
demonstration, making it one of the largest political protests in American history. Fallout
Fashions, on the other hand, was critical to Watchface history since, besides Iris, other
performers included future Watchface members James Siena and Kim X Knowlton, as well as
frequent collaborator Joshua Fried.

A few months after Fallout Fashions – and after James had left Ithaca to move in with Iris – he
loaned her his copy of The Fate of the Earth. Reading in vivid detail about New York City’s
annihilation and the global extinction it might trigger made her think in a new way about the
earth’s finite lifespan. Around the same time she began working her way through Joseph
Campbell’s four-volume comparative study of the world’s major religions, The Masks of God,
and from that she learned that there were many different ways of imagining that end.

In the fall of 1985, Iris began to develop the performance that became The End of the World,
pulling together ideas and outlining the structure of the piece. Earlier, when Iris was just
beginning to conceive the project, she wrote an unsuccessful grant proposal that
nonetheless helped her coalesce her ideas on the subject, including its relationship to art:

Visions of apocalypse are common to many cultures and many times, but the
availability of scientific data and its application to this ancient pastime makes the
current crop of soothsayers harder to dismiss. Artists, then, are faced with a particular
dilemma. Art can outlive the death of its individual creator, but what is Art’s purpose in
a world that may not survive to cherish and conserve it?

The show, she decided, would address cultural anxiety concerning the end of the world as
well as the contrasting ways that different religions and world views imagined that end. It
posited four possible endings, each from a different perspective. In Part One, from the
scientific viewpoint, the world ended by nuclear holocaust. In Part Two, from the Western
religious perspective, its termination followed closely the events in The Bible’s book of
Revelation. In Part Three, no specific end was suggested since a prevailing view in Eastern
spiritual traditions is that existence is cyclical. In Part Four, from a primitive slant, the sun
burned out, as all stars must.

Iris asked three of her past collaborators – Kurt Fulton (who was referred to in the script and
supporting materials by his nickname, City), Kim X Knowlton, and Maggie Siena – to each
represent one of three themes that were woven throughout the performance: Kim (whose
college major had been Geology) was Science, Maggie Siena was Nature, and Kurt Fulton
was Art. Each played many roles throughout the production, and they most often functioned
as part of an ensemble, but their theme words gave them a focus during the initial creative
period of rehearsal, and each had a solo that directly related to their theme. Iris asked
James Siena to provide live music using a mixture of musical instruments and household
objects, as he had done previously for National Enquirer.

One of the most unusual aspects of The End of the World was the lighting, provided by found
sources rather than theatrical lighting. For the scientific section, for instance, light came from
a slide projector without any slide, a flashlight, and small alcohol lamps similar to the Bunsen
burners used in laboratories; the primitive section was lit by candles embedded in sand in
large aluminum tubs, the closest approximation of campfires that Iris was comfortable using
in a performance space. lighting and costume lists

The use of ordinary objects as lighting sources and musical instruments was intentional. This
is a quote from Iris’ rejected proposal:

By focusing in this way on the visual and aural magic embodied in common objects,
ordinary life is shown to be a richer experience than is usually perceived. It is this
depth of attention that is the point of existence, the piece concludes, not the
accumulation of treasure or merit for an uncertain future.

Iris decided to primarily provide the vocal component of the performance, as a narrator,
commentator, spiritual guide, evangelist, and more. This not only allowed her to give voice
to the ideas of the piece, it also allowed her to stand apart from the movement pieces as the
show’s director during the rehearsal process. Iris had found it a challenge to direct and
perform at the same time in shows like House of Jahnke, Of Little Women, and Woolworth’s.
For much of The End of the World, she was able to separate those functions.

PART ONE

Science-based PART ONE began with Kim’s solo, a section called Q. and A., drawn directly
from The New York Times’ “Science Times” column. Iris, dressed in a white lab coat, read
questions or statements chosen to represent different branches of Science, such as
Chemistry, Genetics, Physics, Biology, and Astronomy, and Kim provided the responses,
which she illustrated with movements representing those scientific disciplines.

Q. and A. was followed by Dialogue Between Science and Nature. Iris voiced both sides in
the argument between the human impulse to control natural forces and Nature’s resistance
to that desire. Interspersed within were humorous phrases and movements drawn from
improvisations related to the scientific issues being discussed:

Iris (Science):
We will predict and prepare.

Iris (Nature):
Tornadoes are stronger than buildings. Blizzards still stop you cold. Hurricanes come
to take your power, each stronger than the one before.

Maggie:
Go ahead, try it. I’ll whip your house in half. I’ll rip your kitchen off and send it to
Detroit.

Kurt:
I’ve been to Detroit.

Iris (Science):
We will learn all about you. We will know every detail of you, all there is to
know.

Iris (Nature):
Whatever you learn, however you pry, however you fight me for control, there is
always more to know. There is more outside of the outside and inside of the inside.

Kim:
No, I don’t know everything, but…

Iris (Nature):
You are an animal. You are mine. You will never be my master.

This was followed by Kurt’s solo, Art. His dance and Iris’ accompanying monologue both
grew out of ideas about art that came up in early discussions among the group.

In Friends, Maggie and Kim executed center stage a repetitive series of actions based on
emotional states between friends, while stage left Kurt performed phrases and movements
based on popular culture interpretations of, or allusions to, the end of the world, such as “Eve
of Destruction”, “In the Year 2525”, On the Beach, and Dr. Strangelove. On the other side of
the stage, Iris read a dialogue between two friends in which each line was also inspired by
these popular culture artifacts. Friends text The eerie sense of foreboding hanging over this
mundane conversation was reinforced by an echoing wind sound from James and minimal
lighting by small alcohol lamps.

The Bomb ended PART ONE, with movements based on images described in The Fate of the
Earth and John Hersey’s Hiroshima. James’ voice provided a low and ominous drone. Iris
began with a protestation she presumed some in the audience might be feeling:

Iris:
I’m so sick of these things that are supposed to make me feel guilty or something,
like I’m not doing my part. What part? You don’t have any more idea of what to do
than I do, so just get off your high horse.

She then switched to her own voice and attacked complacency, then ended by advancing
global cooperation:

Iris:
The things that promote communication between different cultures, things that
recognize the fact that it is just one planet and we all want our little piece of it, in other
words those things that build bridges, should be supported.

Things that draw big black lines between groups and label the two sides “Us” and “Them”
should be recognized for the backwards step that they are.

Most of all, remember this: it’s not the end of the world. It’s an end of the world, just one
of the possibilities.

Nobody knows the last page until he reads to the end of the book, OK? OK.

PART TWO

The second quarter of the show began with Iris in a white surplice, like altar boys and
choristers wear during Catholic masses. Microphone in hand, she strode back and forth
along the front of the stage, addressing the audience directly, like an evangelist, while
James provided a repetitive soundtrack on a toy piano. Her subject was the seven
churches, a reference to Revelation, but in The Seven Churches, Iris used this designation to
represent any organization to which one could devote one’s life:

Iris:
I’m not talking about the Catholic Church or the Baptist Church or the Lutheran Church,
no.
I’m not talking about any church that goes by the name “church.”
I’m talking about the church that exists for one purpose and one purpose only: to do
good work.
The seven churches are organizations of work.
The seven churches are organizations of conscience.
The seven churches are organizations of information.
And the seven churches want you to join them, will you do it?

The Seven Churches was followed by Good and Evil, in which Iris detailed the complexity of
judging good from evil – and a third possibility, being human.

Iris:
You’ve done an act of kindness without thought of a reward.
That’s Good.

You’ve lost control of your emotions and lashed out in violence.
That’s Evil.

You’ve done an act of kindness that’s backfired and unknowingly harmed the one you
intended to help.
You’ve committed violence to destroy a great evil and good has come of it.
That’s Human.

Each set of examples was accompanied by paired actions by Kurt, Kim, and Maggie
representing something “good,” such as Honesty, and something “evil,” such as Child Abuse.
Three rotating, four-hued color wheels, like those that illuminated aluminum Christmas trees
in the 1960s, were added to the lighting instruments in this section.

In The Tribulation, a free-form text – which included references to the Lone Ranger, Godzilla,
helicopters, hamsters, and plagues – and the equally wild movements were drawn from free
associations based on descriptions in the Bible of the tumultuous events preceding
Armageddon. This was followed by The Whore, the only section in PART TWO with a text that
came directly from Revelation, in which the Whore of Babylon is depicted as a woman who
is richly dressed and sitting on a scarlet-colored beast. Biblical scholars believe she
represented the Roman Empire, but in The End of the World, she was New York City. This
seemed fitting given the following description: “And the woman which thou sawest is that
great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth, and the merchants of the earth are
waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” The account of her end in Revelation
is not dissimilar from the one projected in The Fate of the Earth: “Therefore shall her plagues
come in one day, and she shall be utterly burned with fire. And the kings of the earth shall
lament for her, saying alas, alas that great city Babylon! For in one hour is thy judgment
come.”

The performance space was illuminated by many strings of Christmas lights, and James’
piano music accelerated to a frenetic pace. Iris sat down with her microphone in hand,
ceding all visual focus to intense, frenetic movements of the trio as they represented the
destruction of New York City.

The final section of PART TWO was inspired by a section of Revelation that never received as
much attention as the Mark of the Beast or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
According to John of Patmos, before God’s final judgment there will be a thousand years of
peace on Earth. Iris’ version imagined what world peace would look like in the wake of
enormous destruction. 1000 Years Peace text The space was bathed in an amber glow from a
colored slide in the projector, the movements were very simple, and James’ repetitive toy
piano theme returned.

PART THREE

For PART THREE, all of the illumination was provided by four old-fashioned standing lamps,
their yellowish, cylindrical shades evoking lantern light. The third part opened with a musical
number, The Round. The lyrics reflected the theme of PART THREE – nothing ever ends.
The Round lyrics It was sung, to a tune composed by James, as a round, with James
accompanying on xylophone. The performers also executed a series of movements as a
visual round – all doing the same actions but beginning the series at different points in the
cycle. The lyrics for The Round were printed in the program as a hint to the audience that
they were encouraged to join in.

In The Laws, Iris, now dressed in a black kimono, spoke of the laws of science in an
authoritative yet reassuring voice, as though they were bits of ancient wisdom, playing on
the compatibility of much of Eastern religion with scientific discovery:

Iris:
Even a perfect system can’t grow forever.
The balance is always a delicate one.
Growth has a limit, to be followed by decay.
This is the law of thermodynamics.

Kim, Kurt, and Maggie illustrated these scientific concepts physically. The Laws movements
James’ accompaniment changed to ukulele, played to sound like a Japanese koto or
shamisen.

The centerpiece of PART THREE was Maggie’s solo, Animals, in which she physically
represented the animal kingdom in all its diversity and struggle for survival. Animals text In
most of the sections of PART THREE, each of the performers had his or her own standing lamp,
but in Animals, Maggie was surrounded by all four.

Unlike those in The Laws, the examples of ancient wisdom in the section Mother Nature were
genuine, drawn from eight different traditional Eastern texts, including the Tao Te Ch’ing, the
Buddhacarita, the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, and Shinto poetry. The sources were cited in
the program to underscore their authenticity. One quote in particular, from the Indian
Arthasastra, echoed those in The Laws:

Iris:
The big ones eat the little ones, and the little ones have to be fast; this is the law of the
fishes.

James played the music in 3/4 time, somehow making a toy piano sound like an Indonesian
gamelon.

The final section of PART THREE, Tea Ceremony, applied the principles of that Japanese ritual
to the tiny details of the performers’ everyday lives. James began the action with the phrase
“Is it today?” and played a quiet, slow, shamisen-like melody derived from The Round. Each
of the four other performers, Iris included, described the actions of a typical day, while
performing condensed representations of those actions:

Kim:
And then I sit up.

Maggie:
I wake him up and I get up.

Kim:
I go to put on the water.

Kurt:
Finally I’m up.

Iris:
I have to get up.

Kim:
I go find a cigarette.

Maggie:
I wash my face, I brush my teeth.

Kurt:
Quick shower.

Iris:
The cat nags me.

Kim:
The coffee water’s ready.

These close observations of the tiny details of their days continued on until the music – and
the other performers’ movements – dropped out briefly as Kurt described the process of
making his afternoon twig tea. The music and the others’ movements returned, and they
continued on until one by one they went to bed, after which James repeated, “Is it today?”

PART FOUR

For the final quarter, Iris literally let her hair down and applied a suggestion of tribal makeup,
while Maggie, Kim, and Kurt prepared the aluminum tubs filled with cat litter and candles
that represented campfires. In PART FOUR, Iris spent less time as a separate, singular voice
and more as part of the group. In the first section, The Unknown, they chanted short
questions and statements about the mysteries that fascinated both early humans and
modern scientists – time, space, the origin of life – as they took turns performing for each
other, lit by the “campfires.” James’ instrument was an electronically altered whistle that
faded dramatically at the end.

Kim had a second solo that was spoken word only. In Newton and Einstein, while James
drummed on cardboard tubes, she contrasted the two scientific heavyweights:

Kim:
Newton eliminated questions, Einstein created them.
Newton worked for the future of science, Einstein for the future of humanity.
Be skeptical, he said, don’t trust your own eyes or what any scientist may tell you.
The more you know, the more there is to know.
No one has the answers.

This tribute to the great scientists appeared in the “primitive” section, rather than the
scientific, because of Einstein’s perception that our own comprehension of the universe was
inadequate in relation to its mysteries.

Life was an energetic section about natural phenomena like gravity, light, and death with
more chanting and more drums. A chant about the cycles of the moon contained a parable
about menstruation, written and performed by Maggie, for which the drums were
momentarily silent:

Iris:
New, new, waxing crescent, half, waxing gibbous
Full! Go nuts!
Estrogen secretion
Ovulation
Luteinizing hormone
Corpus luteum

Maggie:
The mother makes her child’s bed, then goes to sleep waiting for the child to come.
The child sneaks into her room looking for her lover, waits and waits, then takes the
bedclothes from the bed and leaves to look for him. Mother wakes up and notices the
bedclothes are gone, makes the bed and goes to sleep waiting for her child.

All:
The changing of the moon!

Iris:
That’s life

For the creation of The Dance of Celebration, each of the performers made a list of the best
things in life, and these were organized into sets. James’ drumming went wild and everyone
else danced joyously. The Dance of Celebration script

For the finale, The Death of a Star, the inevitable, eventual demise of the star at the center of
our solar system was paired with the common tragedy of the death of a movie star. Maggie
described what happens to a star past its prime, once its hydrogen is gone; Kurt offered one
half of a telephone conversation between friends shocked at the demise of a beloved
Hollywood celebrity. Iris’ movement solo reversed the actions for the two kinds of stars,
performing actions based on Kurt’s text when Maggie spoke hers and vice versa, as James
alternated between concertina and harmonium.

The development of The End of the World took many months, beginning in September 1985.
In December, when the show was only partially complete, Iris arranged for a work-in-
progress performance at her friend and coworker Victoria Milne’s loft space above the store
Trash and Vaudeville on St. Mark’s Place to test material in front of a live audience. The
staging was a bit cramped, as were the observers, but the moody object-lighting worked as
planned and the crowd’s reception was enthusiastic. Rehearsals continued on through
January and February.

It was an ambitious, complicated production, so the search for an appropriate venue for its
true premiere took some time. Iris approached Mark Russell, Artistic Director of Performance
Space 122, the respected East Village performance venue, about presenting The End of the
World there just as they were planning a festival sponsored by neighborhood restaurant
Veselka. Veselka Festival program Part of the festival was the presentation at 8 PM, 10 PM, and
12 AM of three different shows with four performances each. The 8 PM slot was filled by John
Kelly’s Born with the Moon in Cancer and 10 PM by David Cale’s The Redthroats. Mark
offered Iris midnight, which she eagerly accepted, since this was their first opportunity to
perform at PS 122. Getting an audience to attend a challenging show like The End of the
World that late at night, however, proved to be difficult.

Between the two weekends of the festival, C. Carr wrote a multi-page, glowing profile of
David Cale in the Village Voice, and as a result, his second-weekend shows were
completely sold out. Maggie remembers arriving each night at the performance space as
streams of people were departing after David Cale’s hit show, and the PS 122 crew were
converting the stadium seating into two rows of chairs for The End of the World‘s much
smaller anticipated midnight audience.

Two months later, Watchface officially became a group and performed for the first time
under that name. Its first show was Watchface’s Greatest Hits, which included the members’
favorite sections from most of the shows they had already created together up to that point.
From The End of the World they chose to showcase Tea Ceremony. Watchface’s Greatest
Hits was presented at the opening night of Kestutis Nakas’ Gates of Dawn and later at
Darinka. Gates of Dawn program

Various sections were performed at Dixon Place and King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut as preparation
and promotion for The End of the World‘s final engagement in October 1986 at St. Mark’s Church as part of the Danspace Project. The full-length show drew a respectable audience at the reasonable hour of 8:30 PM. The beautiful old church, erected in the 1790’s, was acoustically challenging but an appropriate setting for the show’s pan-religious themes.

The following spring the section Art was included in A Watchface Sampler. Performed at the
Jeffrey Neale Gallery, the selections, which also included Amy: Art from Of Little Women and
Art Types from Stereotypes, were chosen for the gallery setting.
Jeffrey Neale Gallery card
Jeffrey Neale Gallery program