A Theatre of Things at the Roberson
It has been about a year now that artifacts and curiosities from Borneo, Viet Nam, the Solomon Islands, Myanmar, Brazil, and many other areas of the world have been quietly tucked away in a glass-fronted gallery of the Roberson Museum and Science Center under the enigmatic title “A Theatre of Things: Conjuring the World on the Westside.” The exhibit has come to feel like a permanent installation at the Roberson but, in fact, its long run will conclude at the end of January.
The assembly is a portion of the acquisitions of Binghamton University Associate Professor Emeritus Don Boros who has purchased, traded for, or been gifted with each of the displayed pieces - 180 or so - during the visits to, and sojourns with, indigenous peoples throughout the world that he has slotted into seasonal breaks from university teaching since the early 1970s. His West Side Binghamton home, composed of a number of small rooms, contains around 200 additional collected objects.
These are things; so why is it theatre? Boros, now an advisor at the University, used to teach acting and directing, and theatre and performance history in the classroom. He once traveled two days by elephant to visit the Akha tribe and ended up bartering for five days to buy a hat. Immediately after a rabid dog bit him in Brazil, he drove from JFK airport to Binghamton for hospital treatment with the delivery end of a long, elaborate blowgun sticking out the backseat window. He has been married against his will in Thailand (for just a few minutes to a nearly irresistible bride), and has narrowly escaped ritual execution twice (once for unauthorized entry into a sacred Men’s House in Papua New Guinea and once for not accepting the marriage to the nearly irresistible bride). Though all of this could be said to have a theatrical ring, the theatre aspect actually comes into play as a result of his never-ending quest to find “the genesis of things.”
“How did theatre come about?” he asks. “Of course, there are millions of thoughts about that,” he answers himself but, “I wanted to know whether there is a theatrical instinct.” After several decades of solo travel around the world - accompanied only by native guide/interpreters - to live in indigenous communities and interact with diverse cultures, he says, “I’m convinced there is. You just can’t help it; you express yourself for some reason.” Mythologist Joseph Campbell famously declared that there are three basic reasons for ritual: for pleasure, for power, and for duty. “I found out he was dead right,” Don confirms. “No matter where I went, that was the case. Theatre had to have grown from this.”
The gallery is light and airy. “Everything that looks like gold is gold,” Boros explains, such as the golden hues in the Circle of Life Buddhist painting from Nepal near the entrance. The very first artifact in the room is an unobtrusively elegant black necklace that appears, at first, to be a solid piece but proves, on closer inspection, to be made of smooth shells of graduated size; Don calls it, “the Oscar of headhunting.” Parts of the exhibition attempt to replicate Boros’ home through photos and a scene set-up in one cozy corner with a large desk displaying a note that invites visitors to open the drawers and discover hidden surprises within. “This is not my desk. I don’t have anything nearly that formal,” Don confesses. “I’m one of those to put a door on top of two file cabinets.”
While these works appear to be ancient, most were created in the 20th century (a few are from the 19th) and represent these cultures in a modern-day world. The carvings, masks, figures, bodywear, puppets, etc. are grouped not by their geography but by their esthetic, visual flow. Don can be seen and heard on a large television screen on one wall, in a 20-minute video loop, talking from his home about the collection. When Carousel visited, a woman with two or three delighted children rushed past on their way out. Her richly brown face was animated as she said, in an accent that sounded African, “West Africa has some scary stuff.”
“She’s right,” Don says. “West Africa is the most ritual-driven part of the continent.”
“Some places I’ve gone, I’ve terrified people,” he says, pausing for the effect to sink in. How could this gentle man terrify anyone? “White,” he says, “is the color of death,” pointing to a white mud doll in one of the displays. “So, if I show up at certain places,” he goes on, now rubbing his white hands and forearm, “children, in particular, get really, really, really, upset and afraid.” They can usually be appeased with the gift of a balloon.
One way to tell whether a people has been exposed to Western culture – in any of our variegated splendor – “is just by looking at what they’re wearing,” says Don. “If they’ve been introduced to westerners, they will want Western clothing – t-shirts, shorts, flip-flops, for example. If they’re not wearing any of that, if they’re naked or wearing a penis gourd or just wearing things of fiber and grass, then basically, you can infer that either they want to preserve their culture – which is usually not the case,” (Don had related earlier that some teenagers in “long ear” cultures have been known to cut off the elongated ends of their earlobes in an attempt to reject their own cultures and become more Western) “or else they’ve never been introduced [to Western ways].” The influence does, in a minor sense, go both ways; a look at much of the fine arts of the 20th century – cubists, Giacometti, etc. - betrays the strong influence of tribal art.
In the center of the exhibition there is a rare, full set of armor gifted to Boros by a family living in a longhouse in Borneo. Reluctant, at first, to part with this inheritance from a grandfather, the family changed their minds when Don made it clear to them that he wanted these possessions in order to educate his own society about the past and present of this peoples’ mores and lifestyle. “You mean, you will tell people we exist?” he says one woman asked with tears in her eyes. He assured her he would. A Theatre of Things is a promise kept.
A Theatre of Things: Conjuring the World on the Westside is currently showing now through January 2018 at the Roberson Museum & Science Center, 30 Front Street in Binghamton. Hours of operation are Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays & Sundays 12 noon to 5pm and Fridays 12 noon to 9pm. For more details visit roberson.org or call (607) 772-0660.
