Daniel Irizarry in Class Dismissed. Photo: Bronwen Sharp

When I was an undergrad, one of my assignments in Theater Arts 023—Acting was a performance art piece. Drawing from stereotypes of avant garde theater, my group waved our hands, recited nonsensical blocks of text, and wandered around the stage before presenting the actual piece we’d created. This faux performance art parody came to mind when I was watching Class Dismissed, the underwhelming theater piece now playing at LaMama ETC.

Class Dismissed, by Robert Lyons, employs four performers: a male professor (Daniel Irizarry, who also dircts) giving a lecture about an unnamed “esteemed author”; a pair of students (Yaraní del Valle Piñero and Rhys Tivey) dressed in all white reciting abstract poetry; and a woman wielding a suitcase (Pepper Binkley) recounting different events involving someone named Nancy. There’s no apparent link between the players, though they often pop into one another’s spaces—the professor draws chalk outlines of the woman while the students declaim, or the students make encouraging comments while the professor, center stage, sermonizes.

I like to think of myself as someone who embraces experimental theater and loves innovation, but the truth is my tastes are somewhat conservative. I don’t find myself at LaMama that often; I tend to seek out narrative- and character-based plays. I enjoy being challenged by art but need to be engaged; I am not into the absolute alienation that might be a hallmark of this brand of performance art.

But even if I were more drawn to performance art, I’d still have a hard time with this production. It’s a two-hour Dadaist experience, a recitation of (mostly) academic language rendered meaningless through decontextualization. My teenage theater companion decided she’d had enough after five minutes, and I understood why: apart from some clever turns of phrase, there is little to engage the mind. (Much gratitude to said teenager for her patient forbearance.)

Audience members are instructed to bring a book so that they might trade with other attendees. It’s a nice idea, but when it comes time for exchange theatergoers are instructed to engage in conversation as they swap paperbacks. There didn’t seem to be much mingling going on, and I awkwardly thrust a book I didn’t want toward a stranger who gave me the book they didn’t want. I ate some of the homemade bread the cast offered but declined the shot of rum. It was like being stuck at a party, waiting for a friend who just wouldn’t leave.

And it wasn’t the only moment of discomfort. The audience is constantly called upon to participate: applauding the lecture, clapping in time to the music, playing catch with cast members, activating cellphone lights to illuminate stage action (that last bit is pretty clever, actually). I like when a show calls for volunteers, as this one often does, and I can enjoy watching a civilian having a glass of wine with Pepper Binkley (less so witnessing Daniel Irizarry lick a guy’s forehead), but I tend to avoid productions that require audience participation; it can feel like work or, worse, enforced fun.

I have seen performance art pieces I’ve enjoyed—usually there’s humor involved, or the ideas being communicated are more accessible. And they don’t drag on as long. But art like Class Dismissed feels like work to me. It reminds me of struggling through Derrida in my college semiotics class, trying to decode what I was reading and why I was reading it. And, like Derrida, shows like this make me feel dumb because I just don’t get it.

I’m glad experimental theater exists and I am happy to stray from canonical works, but when it comes to alienating art, I prefer media where I get to choose how long to engage. Hint: that will not be for two hours