For the curious, and for the haters, a long interview with Saint Genet director Ryan Mitchell (about Paradisiacal Rites, about Shoot, about the Jackass phenomenon, about whether pulling a performance stunt like Shoot is just a cheap exercise of white-guy privilege, about Captain Ahab, about how one can love Brecht but still think he didn't get it quite right, about whether your opinion about anything matters at all, and more) is now up over here.

Here is some video documentation of Chris Burden's Shoot, with some spare commentary from the artist.

This morning, Theater Schmeater artistic director Douglas Staley sent out a press release saying the company would start looking for a new place to make theater.

Which means this run of The Twilight Zone: Live! will be your last chance one of your last chances to see a show in the subterranean venue that, in Seattle, has become synonymous with the term "basement fringe theater." (This summer's Game Show will be the final production in Schmeater's current space.)

The recent departure of the Brocklind's costume shop upstairs is the issue. In a subsequent email, Staley explained that the theater and the store had "a symbiotic relationship" because they had different business hours, so there were never noise problems. Now the upstairs space is going to house a restaurant and bar, and the theater ceiling is already so low, it can't build in sound muffling (which probably would only be marginally effective anyway).

"We are already at about 8'2" at the bottom of the cross supports," Staley wrote. "Putting in a ceiling and bringing down all of our lights means some of them will be maybe less than 7' from the floor. That precludes using any risers for the audience, or casting anyone over 5'6". Our light designers make miracles but that really is more than I could ask for."

But the future isn't all gloomy. He added:

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At dawn last Sunday morning, in a remote and wooded area of Seattle, Saint Genet director Ryan Mitchell re-created Chris Burden's notorious 1971 artwork Shoot. In the original, Burden was shot in the arm with a .22 rifle inside a gallery and called it sculpture. Mitchell was shot in the arm with a .22 rifle beneath a tree, then walked approximately 10 miles to a theater and called it performance.

The re-creation of Shoot was secret—I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement before I was even told what was happening—because the stakes were high. First, the action was probably a crime. Second, there were some serious liability issues. Third, the action happened the morning before Saint Genet's closing-night performance of Paradisiacal Rites at On the Boards, and if On the Boards artistic director Lane Czaplinski got wind of it, he might've pulled the plug on the whole show.

The shooter, who has been hunting with guns and bows since he was 8 years old, stood in the dim forest with a few other people watching. He said there wasn't enough light for him to take the shot safely...

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(A long interview with Ryan, in which he explains his rationale for all this, is coming soon. Also, apologies for forgetting to turn off the comments earlier. But if you want to talk about it, head on over to the story itself.)

• SG
• Before the shot.

At dawn yesterday morning, in a remote and wooded area of Seattle, Saint Genet company director Ryan Mitchell re-created Chris Burden's notorious 1971 artwork Shoot. In the original, Burden was shot in the arm with a .22 rifle in a gallery and called it sculpture. Ryan was shot in the arm with a .22 rifle, then walked approximately ten miles to the theater, and called it performance.

• Walking.

I walked with him. I was not exactly thrilled to be in the situation, but if it was going to happen anyway, I felt a duty to witness.

That was the beginning of Saint Genet's closing-night performance of Paradisiacal Rites at On the Boards. The top-two activities for Seattle just after dawn were jogging and homelessness.

There's a photo of the wound—for your own verification purposes—below the jump. More coming in next week's paper.

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Gothic anguish, degeneracy, nakedness, wine, and a wheat field. Also, gold leaf, honey, tar, blood, wax, flowers, leeches, pheasants, and arrows. And Jessie Smith. And Jessie Smith choreography. And Jessie Smith wearing a weird cape thing with a very long tail with egg-carton-like shapes bulging from it. And music. And weird, beautiful acts of endurance. And gay shame and bullying. And the most perfect curtain call of all: None at all.

It might be sold out. Sneak in anyway.

And it has already included cops at dawn, with rifles drawn, trying to stop one of the performances.

• bk
• Ryan Mitchell, two hours ago.

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• Blood and wine.

Quick primer: Starting tonight, Saint Genet will be performing its Paradisiacal Rites at On the Boards. Saint Genet is an extraordinarily polarizing company that creates exquisite, and sometimes painful, "actions and images" instead of plays.

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Actually, this week we have a preview by Melody Datz, based on her interview with the associate ballet master at Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo:

• SASCHA VAUGHN

Raffaele Morra does not shave his chest, even though his professional wardrobe includes pointe shoes, a golden tiara, and yards of fluffy white tulle. For someone used to the traditional staging of classical ballets, it may be jolting to see a hairy, um, décolletage nestled into a frilly white Swan Lake costume, or to watch the uniquely defined musculature of male quadriceps peeking out from under a tutu while whipping through 32 fouettés. But the all-male company Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo makes it work.

The Trocks have been around since the 1970s but Morra mentioned to Datz that in the past several years, as drag aesthetics have entered mainstream culture, the company's audience has diversified. But they are not, he emphasized, drag—they keep their male personality and technique while dancing roles traditionally reserved for women.

Read the whole thing here.

This week's theater section is brought to you by the emotion Ambivalence. (Ambivalence: It is and it isn't™.)

I have mixed feelings about Mike Daisey at this awkward moment in his career:

Daisey is recalibrating. His observations seemed stale and flat-footed: Disney World is a bizarrely detailed consumerist fantasyland, Burning Man is disorienting and anarchic, Occupy revealed that power fears democracy and will break laws with impunity to suppress it. That's old news. And between the staleness of the information and the wobbliness of its presentation, American Utopias seems like the work of a performer who was publicly neutered and is still trying to find another pair of balls. They're out there, Mike. We want you to find them. Just keep looking—America is, after all, the land of reinvention.

(His upcoming show in Portland is, apparently, about how journalism works.)

• John Cornicello

Chow contributor Kim Fu has mixed feelings about Cafe Nordo's latest, Western-themed show:

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• Ian Bell and his horny posse.

Ian Bell’s crowdsourced carnival of anonymity will be going on hiatus for awhile, which is a shame, because it's one of the more regularly entertaining things at ACT Theater, and Seattle in general.

For the newcomers: Every three months, Seattle Confidential collects anonymous stories and gives them to actors to read. (Sometimes they add bells and whistles—PowerPoint presentations, charts and graphs, instant polls that the audience contributes to via text.) The confessional mode gives the writers a cloak to air their dirtiest, most hilariously awkward laundry, and everybody has a blast. It's like sneaking a peek at Seattle's diary.

And the event is also strangely comforting—we all have screwed-up stories and messed-up things we've done or had done to us. Laughing about them together feels therapeutic.

Before Seattle Confidential takes its indefinite break, Bell put together a best-of show. It plays tonight and tomorrow at ACT. Go check it out. Who knows where or when it will reappear? (Though I am confident it will—either ACT or some other venue will want it. It's too good to die.)