Drawings from (Un)Easy Rider

The idea for (Un)Easy Rider first came to us during the pandemic.Suddenly, after making and performing most of our work overseas for the past fifteen years, in vain wishing for more time at home, we were finally fatally stuck here. Back in the U.S. of A with all its conspiracy theories and Clorox. In the headspace we occupied during this liminal time, it was not at all difficult to imagine that the type of work we had been doing and the way that we had been doing it was simply not going to be possible anymore. We had been citizens of the world and now we were not. We were Americans in America now, with no real idea what that meant for us—alienated as we were politically, also socially (locked in, unable to work).What the hell were we going to do here? What did it mean to be home? What next? Could we find a way as we had in our prior work to accept the given conditions (even THESE given conditions) and just make the next thing? Whatever it was.Every artist we knew at the time was being asked if they could make something easily sharable over the internet. This, of course, made practical sense, but it wasn’t compelling to us: it wasn’t what we needed. We were stubbornly determined that this was NOT going to be our new normal. We wanted more than ever to reconnect to the essential reason we make theatre as opposed to some other art form—to share space and time with other humans again, even outside of the theatre box. We needed direct address and sweaty physical human contact.The Black Lives Matter protests that summer felt like a loud “yes” to this yearning. People were out in the streets together again even if it didn’t feel totally safe. Theatres opened again, too, but not to host performances, only to serve as open bathrooms for protestors. Maybe this is the future, we thought—of theatre, but also of the streets.Pavol and I had just the year before learned to ride motorcycles as a kind of personal mid-life challenge. We wondered if we could use the motorcycle as a kind of vehicle (literally and metaphorically) to bind us to the land (vulnerable as we would be to America, its terrain, weather, etc.) and as a way to physically connect us to people across the country. As soon as travel was permissible (if not entirely practical) we decided to try. We were interested in understanding what kind of connection we could have with Americans now, during this time. Were we intractably stuck in our liberal metropolitan artist bubble? Or was there a bigger world and a mandate now to engage with that? If the theatres were all now closed and shuttered and we were still committed to live art, Where was the stage now? Who were the players? What was the show?We thought the biker film Easy Rider could serve as a point of orientation. The movie was made in 1969 at a similar time of unrest. The plot: two artsy hippie types travel across the U.S. on motorcycles and are eventually killed by strangers with guns. There were several instances of this happening in 2020. People were on edge. The metaphor didn’t seem too forced.We would just hit the road and see what happened and, hopefully, not get shot. Our first trip was in August 2020 from New York to Maine, the second trip was New York to Sturgis, SD in 2022, and in 2023 we traveled south from New York to the Florida Keys. This year we hope to continue and visit the southwestern United States.I find I still struggle to articulate exactly what this journey has been for me so far—a physical challenge, certainly—a kind of endurance art that has brought me to my absolute limits on more than one occasion . . . but more than that, it’s been a major zoom out (or a zoom in?) to the country, to my being and purpose in it . . . a hard looking for answers in uncertain times.I doubt. I fret. I am inspired. I am hopeful. I have been humbled and angered, but also awe-struck. It has not been a straightforward narrative. The characters (particularly the main two) are all over the place . . . inconsistent, fractured, broken. But still capable of wonder, grasping for understanding.I’ve stopped in the middle of a two-lane highway in North Dakota to watch a herd of antelope dance in the setting sun.I’ve had the hair on my neck stand up watching someone fly the confederate flag in Pennsylvania.I’ve been warmly invited to cool off in a stranger’s pool in Florida.I’ve been hungry and lost in East Cleveland, where I finally understood what is meant by “food desert.”Wherever you go on a motorcycle—there you are. The stage is set. There’s no container around you to keep you safe. Anyone can walk up and engage. I’ve learned that some people feel quite safe talking to strangers, and some do not. I see the assumptions people make about other people in America, myself included. I’m embarrassed to admit that I was too afraid initially to talk to two black men eating lunch next to us in a parking lot in a South Carolina Walmart. When, however, the ice was finally broken, it turned out they were also afraid to talk to us. They only felt safe when Pavol left to go to the restroom. The degree of safety we feel and who gets to feel safe and where is something that has been a recurring theme.I’ve been touched by the generosity of people who spontaneously—and anonymously—have paid for some of our meals along the way, just because that’s what you do for strangers. I’ve been touched by people who’ve shared their stories with us, because that’s a kind of generosity, too.I’ve found the country to be more friendly than I thought, but also poorer than I ever imagined—with people living closer to the edge.I am still in the process of figuring our if and how this work can possibly be translated or recontextualized as live performance in a traditional sense, and I’m also searching myself to see if that’s even necessary. I don’t think at present I have an idea how to do it, because what I know how to do with this would in a way cheapen what the experience has been for both of us. It would be telling a story about what happened and putting it in a theatre box, when the important thing for us was that we were able for a while to step outside of that box.On these road trips, of course, we took some photos, and—as a way to continue to think and engage with the provocation these experiences engendered—I have started to draw them and paint them and try to frame them for myself.I hope, eventually, also for others.(Un) Easy Rider has been made possible by a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, and was originally commissioned by the Onassis Foundation’s Eureka Commissions program. We are also grateful for continued support from the Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards. Delta Grill (Elaine, AK).. Miss Rowart whispered across the table: “Something really bad happened here a long time ago.” Yes, I tell her. I know. It’s what brought us here. We wanted to see if the things that happen leave a trace.“When good things happen, you have to praise the Lord and when bad things happen, praise the Lord again.”Titan I Missile (Cordelle, GA).. It’s an actual real decommissioned nuke. Right off highway I-75.The lady at the front desk of our hotel assured me it’s real draw for tourists. She even had a man specifically request a top floor room with a view of the missile so he could see it the entire week he was here.Lewis Country Store (outside of Nashville, TN).. After a hard rain, we dried ourselves and ate a fried baloney sandwich next to a taxidermized coyote. The woman who took our order was wearing a shirt that said “Un-vaccinated and ready to commit tax fraud.”Later read in a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center that the store’s owner is a self-proclaimed “proud Nazi” who hosts a secret gym upstairs where local white nationalists are training themselves for the impending race war.Pie at Moody’s (Waldoboro, ME).. While we waited for dinner, we listened to a local elder advising a young waitress: “Get a college degree in nursing. Be a nurse. That’s the way.” But the girl had dreams of her own.And I remember all night here I couldn’t sleep. Outside our window this bird was calling, calling. To the wind in the trees.Lost (outside of Guntersville, AL).. I ask the woman at the front desk what kind of fish are in the lake. Catfish are in the lake, she says. I tell her we’re from NY. “They don’t have no water there?” I tell her there’s water all around, but it’s still nice to see new places.Silos (somewhere on the way to Ekalaka, MT).. The temperature dropped to the low 50s and freezing rain. We both put on every piece of clothing we could plus all our rain gear just to try and stay warm. Finally stopped at a bar called The Dawg House in Ekalaka, MT hoping for hot coffee. They didn’t have any, so we settled gratefully for mugs of hot water.It was one of the most beautiful, empty, lonely landscapes and somehow inseparable in my mind from the grey rain and the cold. The land felt as vast as the ocean.All drawings by Kelly Copper. Courtesy the artist.