American Mill #2 (Lint Head) is an unconventional, multi-medium production now being performed at The Gallery at La MaMa. The piece is a meditative docudrama theatre piece about mill work in the United States at the turn of the century, but in the experimental tradition of La MaMa, it emphasizes the experiential over the narrative or historical.
Pioneers Go East Collective concocted American Mill #2, and it feels very much like a collaborative effort throughout. There are various sections – which often transition quickly and abruptly from one to the next – with different mediums and means of presentation utilized. The show begins as a movement piece, almost dance, with video and industrial background noise to create a base image of life as a mill worker. But there are sections of folk singing, monologues, and even puppetry as the show progresses.
While each section has its own form and forward motion, there is a common tool that links many of the sections: repetition. There are long stretches where the actors perform brief, rapid gestures over and over. There are monologues performed and then immediately performed again. The folk songs – written by musical pair Jonesalee for the production – are generally composed of a single verse sung over and over. The easy take-away is that this consistent use of repetition is being employed to reflect the monotonous drudgery of life in the mill.
But as a show that consciously emphasizes the experiential over the traditionally narrative and historical, this repetition can also be seen as a single part of a larger message. At one point there is a section in which one of the performers recites from a historical text that documented the culture and work of a mill town in the American South. But these brief monologues are continuously interrupted by the sound design: harsh noise that breaks out, interrupting the narrative. Later in the production a similar technique is employed while the performers recite first-person accounts from the workers themselves (the titular “Lint Heads,” so-called because of the amount of dust and lint their heads and bodies would collect from long hours in the mill).
Together, these aspects of American Mill #2 (Lint Head) demonstrate a belief of the artists at Pioneers Go East Collective that something is lost when history is approached only through the traditional narrative means, including written word and field recording. This production is more about capturing the experience of turn-of-the-century mill work than it is about relaying historical anecdotes. And while it may suffer from many of the tropes of experimental theater – including an unavoidable self-seriousness – it succeeds in its consistent tone and its use of repetition to emphasize the experiential.
