Burning Man This Year: How the Man Was Won

As I mentioned, live music performances don't work very well at Burning Man, in my experience. Recorded music works better because it puts the focus on the dance floor instead of the stage. I think that's built into the definition of a rave.

On the other hand, when it comes to live theater performances, Burning Man feels like the great resurgence of theater, after a century of slow decline in the United States and the rest of the western world, mainly because of the effect of "persistent media" (movies, television, videos) that have filled the human pyschological need for the dramaturgical.

At Burning Man, it's turned upside down. Live theater works very well. If anything, there is too little of it.

By far the best show I saw was the annual skit performed by Ashram Galactica, who run the Grand Hotel (where the auction off nightly stays in their luxury canvas sand-floor tents that are decorated like luxury rooms in various parts of the world). Before the auction they perform their skit, which changes from year to year.

This year's performance was a time-travel spoof, set in the year 2073, and pretending to "look back" at the Burning Man of 2013. It turns out in their future history that 2013 was the last year that an actual Man was burned on the playa.

The skit follows what happened: a group of neatly yessed well-meaning folk hear about the burning of the Man, and they decide that it unfairly targets "the Man," who himself makes a humorous appearance in a three-piece suit and a white beard, proclaiming that he just wants gratitude. That's why he does all the things he does---wars, etc.

The well-dressed insurgents stage an armed invasion of the playa and massacre the Burners (Black Rock City is a gun-free zone), taking over the Man, which "has stood until this day" (i.e. 2073) unburned on the playa.

At this point a time-travel Burner-Hippie comes on stage and asks the people of 2073 if they are all "retarded." He then excoriates them for misunderstanding the entire point of burning the Man.

Ashram Galactica, photo from their web site.

He tells them that the Man on the playa does not, in fact, represent "The Man."

"It doesn't represent anything at all."

"It represents whatever you want it to represent."

At this point the well-clad people of 2073 strip off their shirts, revealing themselves prepped as half-clad Burners underneath.

It was very professional. The cast was very talented and had rehearsed to the level of a Broadway show. 

The performance was accomplished through recorded vocals with good lip-synching and dancing. So in a way, it is the same thing as the music. But it ensured a consistency of performance from night-to-night throughout the five-night run (until Friday night---on the weekend, all the night actions shifts to the playa).