Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 10:13:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Dong-shin Chang Dong-shin Chang Building Community -- The Spaghetti Dinner "Tell me what you eat: I will tell you what you are." --- J. Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste "We sometimes give you a piece of bread along with the puppet show because our bread and theatre belong together. Theatre K was meant for the skin. Bread was meant for the stomach. K Theatre K is more like bread, more like a necessity." --- Peter Schumann, Bread and Puppets The connection between food and performance can easily provoke abundant mutual image linkages. On the one hand, Food preparations in restaurants or banquets, food services, food design, and even the space settings could be decoded as "performances." On the other hand, performance is often regarded as "soul food" when compared to tangible daily foods. Both "foods" provide vital substances to the body and soul. To what extent will people obtain substantial satisfaction if there is a place where both food and performance are offered? Spaghetti Dinner, a monthly event currently held by the Great Small Works, has distinguished itself from other theater performances for twenty years in providing food and performance in a whole night event. Food, usually spaghetti, comes to people's plates before they sit down. Later, varieties of performances grasp their attentions and at the end music bands play dance tunes to invite people to enjoyed and relax. The conceptual invention, the structure of program, the connection between food and performance, and the overall sensational experience in Spaghetti Dinner, therefore, appeal to detailed investigations. The structure of this paper rests on a time sequence of the event. Through a time sequence, I intend to present its history and to analyze its evolution based on my participation, observations, and personal interviews. I hypothesize that the concept of community or the object of communal union seems to take form in or dominate Spaghetti Dinner. Through food and performance, Spaghetti Dinner has built up a gastronomic, social, and artistic community. The feeling of belonging, of being in an intimate community, sustains the continuation of this event. Kitchen I rushed into PS122, a performance space on 9th Street. It was 5 past 5; I was late for my appointment for helping to cook the spaghetti for the Spaghetti Dinner tonight. As I came upstairs, I met some members of the Great Small Works (GSW) - Stephen, John, and Mark - who were busy setting up the space and doing rehearsals. They told me that Trudi, the chef, was already in the kitchen. Trudi just placed everything on the table when I came in. She said that tonight the situation was a little bit unusual. Because of bad scheduling, she would keep coming and going between the kitchen and rehearsals. The cooking time is overlapped, or in conflict with the rehearsal time. Before 7:30, food and performance must be ready. That Trudi has to do more than one task in fact characterizes the way GSW divides the workload in order to host this monthly event. Normally everyone plays more than one of the roles: card designer, cook, puppeteer, director, actor, stage manager, musician, singer, technical staff, and usher. How the jobs are divided depends on how the program is structured. An understanding has been developed among the members that they know how to help each other without an authoritative leader to assign the tasks. This communal, collective way of working, in John's point of view, is a heritage inherited from the '60s. "It is anarchic, but highly-organized and highly-generated," John said. Tonight, March 31 1998, the program consists of puppet shows and music by GSW's Invisible Hand Orchestra. And as usual, spaghetti will be served before the performance. Trudi's jobs, consequently, include cooking, singing, playing flute and puppet. Before she left me in the kitchen, Trudi showed me two important jobs in cooking spaghetti: first is to boil the water in the big pot; second is to chop all the garlic into tiny bits like paste. The huge amount of boiled water is for cooking all the spaghetti that would be served to the audience; garlic is the traditional and indispensable ingredient for the spaghetti sauce. As the odor of garlic permeated the kitchen and the water seethed in the big pot, the cooking ritual of this monthly event began. The strong smell of garlic, spaghetti, and two big pots, one of blue and white ceramic and one of stainless steel, testify to the gastronomic evolution of spaghetti and the history of the Spaghetti Dinner performance. Amy Trompetter, one of the founders of Spaghetti Dinner, bought the big ceramic pot and advocated using garlic in spaghetti. In 1979, Amy and some members of Bread and Puppet (B&P) Theatre rented a storefront on 9th Street as a resident home in New York City. In presenting their puppets and puppet shows, Amy suggested that the strong smell of garlic, an effective olfactory stimulus, might draw passengers into their store to watch their performance. A combination of a warm meal with puppet shows thus becomes the basic format of Spaghetti Dinner. Since then, garlic, or the smell of garlic, has its sensory presence in the spaghetti. On a personal level, Amy's choice of garlic is due to her craving for the herb. The medical effect of garlic keeps her healthy. In a larger sense, however, the founders of Spaghetti Dinner might consciously or unconsciously have accepted this decision under their experience in B&P Theatre. The influence of B&P Theatre exists both in food offering and in performance. Peter Schumann, the leader of B&P Theatre, offers aioli, a thick garlic paste, for the bread. Eating garlic has the intention of providing good, healthy, refreshing substance for the body. When I was chopping the garlic in the kitchen, Mollie, a musician, who plays saxophone in GSW's orchestra tonight and joins the performances of B&P sometimes, came to help me during her rehearsal break. "Do you like garlic?" I asked. "Yeah, joining B&P, you have to love garlic," she said. >From a scientific point of view, "odor preferences," Cain deduces, "are not inborn, but are made" (21). One's liking or disliking an odor involves conditioning: nausea paired with an odor makes one dislike the odor; positive experience paired with an odor makes the odor pleasant. Thus, "the pleasure obtained from smells reflects experience," Duffy and Bartoshuk conclude (146, 163). In the case of garlic, the conditioning - pairing the odor of garlic with theater experience - should have established garlic as a positive preference in smell. This "positive conditioning" consequently is applied in Spaghetti Dinner and makes the dish, spaghetti with garlic, "liked." Apart from garlic, the choice of serving spaghetti to the audience seems apparent to anyone who is involved in Spaghetti Dinner. Spaghetti is popular, simple, nourishing, hearty, and cheap. In the early days, the storefront puppet show plus garlic spaghetti cost only one dollar. Even nowadays, the ticket is still cheap (8 dollars) if compared to that of most performances in New York City. The theater, like spaghetti, is accessible and affordable. In his "Bread and Puppets" manifesto, Schumann declares that theatre is "more like bread, more like a necessity." "K[O]ur bread and theatre belong together. K The old rites of baking, eating and offering bread were forgotten." In Spaghetti Dinner, however, Schumann's vision has been carried out in a derivative way. Spaghetti takes the place of bread, food of necessity; theatre and spaghetti belong together. Mark, member of GSW, perceives the repetition of cooking and serving spaghetti as a way to "ritualize the event," presenting the continuity of Spaghetti Dinner. Using his metaphor, the old rite of "baking, eating, and offering bread" has survived in "cooking, eating and offering spaghetti." After chopping garlic and boiling water, the rite of cooking spaghetti continued with slicing other ingredients: onions, mushrooms, carrots, squashes, tomatoes, basil, parsley, preserved olives, etc. This list of ingredients is more elaborate than that of the earliest ones. Amy remembers that there are only three ingredients: garlic, basil, and parsley. With olive oil and cheese, that is it. In addition, garlic is uncooked; it is only through the heat of the spaghetti that garlic is cooked to a certain extent. This recipe mostly reflects Amy's personal opinion, or the belief of Spaghetti Dinner founders, of what a simple, healthy spaghetti meal should be. In contrast, the current recipe looks much fancier. Nonetheless, Trudi still keeps the rule of a simple meal due to a budget limit: it will not cost more than 60 dollars to purchase all the ingredients. Under this guide line, different variations of spaghetti develop according to different chefs and, more importantly, the request from the audience. Trudi remembers that some people complained about the meat in spaghetti because they were vegetarians. As a result, now vegetarian spaghetti is served, even though none of GSW's members is a vegetarian. From sharing the personal belief to response to the audience's need, the evolution of recipe at least signifies the gastronomic communication between the performers and the audience. A spaghetti meal is simple but crucial in building up the relationship with the audience. People who keep coming back to Spaghetti Dinner want to enjoy both food and performance. In the meantime while Trudi was coming in and out of kitchen and cooking the spaghetti sauce, several people showed up and helped with the chopping: Jacqueline has been a helping hand for several times; Lacey, a big fan of Spaghetti Dinner, showed up at the door and volunteered to cook; Michael Romanyshyn, a long-term friend of GSW who would perform in several pieces that night, brought in bread and joined us. Suddenly the kitchen was crowded and busy, filled with vitality. "We always need volunteers and we usually invite friends who are available to help with the cooking," Trudi said. Through collaboration and collective work, the cooking job went smoothly. However, at a critical point when the spaghetti was done, Trudi was away. Lacey and I started to panic. It wasn't until Stephen, another member of GSW, came to our aid and Trudi came back that the spaghetti finally reached the point of readiness. Stephen and I poured the spaghetti into a colander; Trudi instructed Lacey and me to mix spaghetti and sauce layer by layer into the blue and white ceramic pot. The ceramic pot has been the container of spaghetti since the inception of Spaghetti Dinner. Several years ago, Stephen remembers, the ceramic pot was broken and could not be used on the stove. They told the audience about this trouble during one Spaghetti Dinner. Later, an audience member bought the stainless big pot for them. Now the ceramic pot serves as the symbol of history. The stainless pot, on the other, takes up the real responsibility of a cooking container, a container for continuing the cooking ritual of Spaghetti Dinner. The time was 7:30. Lacey and I moved the ceramic pot, which had warm, hearty spaghetti in it, from the kitchen, behind the stage, to the performance space. Commensality Tonight Lacey and I served the spaghetti to the audience; Jacqueline took care of the beverages. When we moved spaghetti onto the table, a line had already formed. Between 7:30 and 8:00, people had their spaghetti; at 8:00, the performance began. The process of serving/sharing spaghetti is simple: people come to the table, and we place spaghetti on a plate and give it to them. People usually pick up a piece of bread and add some cheese to the spaghetti, then they move on to the beverage bar to have some drink. During this process, some simple dialogues occur between the servers and the audience: "Hey, how are you doing tonight?" "Good, K erh, can I have some more?" "Sure. K Is it good?" "No, no, no, just give me a little bitK yes, that will be OK. Thank you." Lacey was good at breaking the ice and making a little bit of conversation with people. The little conversation over the table is only part of larger conversations that happen around the performance space. Through the process of sharing the same food, people open the channel of communication. The performance space is not as serious as a place where only watching and applauding are allowed. Rather, people feel free to eat, drink, and talk. Moreover, some people have attended performances of Spaghetti Dinner so many times that they become acquaintances of the performers and some audience; they come here to see their friends. I saw some familiar faces who had showed up the last time. Commensality, or food sharing, has provided the chance for socializing before the performance starts. In his two articles about food, Roland Barthes defines food not only as "a collection of product," but also as "a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behavior." (a: 21) Eating food is a social act; enjoying food together (alimentary pleasure) with good conversation has created a new form of sociality: the convivium, a composite pleasure. The composite pleasure comes from the enjoyment both of food and communication. "The convivium," Barthes suggests, "requires us to consider communication as a bliss - and no longer as a function." (b: 73) Metaphysically and practically, spaghetti in Spaghetti Dinner means more than a food product. It not only provides alimentary pleasure, but also creates a system of communication through the process of sharing. Even though people do not eat together on the table, they share the same space and within it they interact with each other. A composite pleasure, convivium, burgeons around the space. Because of commensality, a great signifier of community (Bell and Valentine: 106), and because of the convivial atmosphere, there exists a small social and gastronomic community within the performance space. When Barthes defines "convivium," he says that the celebration of a food is "laicized" in the form of a new mode of gathering together. In other words, Barthes regards the celebration of a food as secularized if the element of sociality is added. In the performance of B&P Theatre, a piece of bread is offered to the audience during or after the performance. The offering of bread is substantial but symbolized, ritualized. In Spaghetti Dinner, comparatively, spaghetti is offered before the performance, which creates different situation for eating and social activity. When asked about the original concept of offering spaghetti, both Joanne Schultz, another founder of Spaghetti Dinner who stayed until '95, and Trudi mention that offering spaghetti has ritual image projection to the food offerings in some churches. However, they emphasize the effect of a warm, substantial meal to a person's body, and not so much the ritual of giving and taking. "It is like you invite people to your living room, or backyard. You use the ancient art of cooking to provide a substantial meal for them, and let them really feel what a hot meal is," Jenny, member of GSW, also has similar opinions. In fact, people really want food in Spaghetti Dinner. Tonight many people came back to ask for the second run of spaghetti. There were excesses of spaghetti in the pot because the audience was less than expected. At the last Spaghetti Dinner, on the contrary, there were huge crowds and the food was totally gone even before people bought the tickets. Members of GSW have the understanding that if the food runs out before people buy the tickets, the front desk will offer discount in order to let the audience buy something to eat. "But people really get mad when they figure out there is no food. 'Then what are we supposed to do?' people would complain," Trudi told me. The last time there was an old lady who came to me and complained that she bought the ticket and she had nothing to eat. Trudi gave her back her money "Nobody should be unhappy," she said to me and went back to work. Tonight, after the performance the bar re-opened, and some people came back for spaghetti. A sturdy woman with a bulging belly came to me, asking shyly: "Can I have some spaghetti?" "Sure, sure." "I love the spaghetti she (Trudi) makes, it's delicious." Suddenly I remembered she was the one who intruded into the kitchen and watched us mixing the spaghetti and sauce with interest and this was her third run. I could feel her need for spaghetti. In Schumann's manifesto, he says: "Theatre K was meant for the skin. Bread was meant for the stomach." His statement of "bread (food) was meant for the stomach" has vivid and substantial confirmation in Spaghetti Dinner. Enjoying food is a pleasure. The pleasure reaches deep inside the body, evoking an overall sensation, coenaesthesia, in Barthes' definition (b: 62). If the sensory pleasure has an effect on the audience, how does this sensory experience - eating spaghetti - play into the whole content of the performance? In Marinetti's The Futurist Cookbook, he fiercely protests against eating pasta. "Futurist cooking will be free of the old obsession with volume and weight and will have as one of its principles the abolition of pastasciutta," Marinetti declares. "Pastasciutta, however agreeable to the palate, is a passeist food because it makes people heavy, brutish, deludes them into thinking it is nutritious, makes them sceptical, slow, pessimistic." (33) Marinetti's protest rests on his patriotic belief that in order to lead Italy into the futuristic, "high speed, airborne life," pasta, the obsession with the past, archaeological ruins and shackles of tradition, should be out of the futurist's plate. (36-37) Contrary to Marinetti's wish, what has been practiced in Spaghetti Dinner is establishing a tradition of eating spaghetti. The commensal eating has been kept so unchanged over the past twenty years that it has established a name brand for this performance. It has positively built up a communal and communicative foundation. It is indispensable. "It frames the show, the performance as a community performance," John said. "Maybe the most important thing (of the whole night event) is you eat the spaghetti, or you listen to the music, or you dance, or you see your friend. That's an important difference (from other theater performances)." What about Marinetti's accusation that spaghetti makes people heavy, brutish, slow, and pessimistic? "After people eat spaghetti, maybe the food will make them emotional so that they cannot be critical to the performance," Stephen said jokingly. Over the years, a thematic program has been developed that ties festival foods with performances. During Mardi Gras, for example, rice and beans is served and the performances are related to the carnival. At Hanukkah time, there will be potato latkes, a Jewish festival dish served in Spaghetti Dinner. In the New Year's Eve Spaghetti Dinner of 1997, there were hand-made doughnuts, Hopping John, and Italian lentils, which represented good luck and joy for celebration. These exceptions are the attempts GSW makes to present more diversified food offerings which, on the one hand, give the audience new gastronomic sensations. On the other hand, festival food offerings help to develop specific themes for the program. Up to this point, the construction of food and performance has evolved in a way that they seem to be knit more tightly. The process (or ritual) of food offering and sharing represents the spirit of this whole night event and, more importantly, provides sensorial satisfaction for the audience and the channel to build up a social and gastronomic community. Performance There were three pieces in tonight's program: Venus Envy: A Puppet Peep Show by Cosmic Bicycle Theater & Jonathan Cross; What You Do: Cantastoria for Lori Berenson by Michael; excerpts from The Unfinished Eye by Stephen. Between their performances, two MC hand puppets, mayor Giuliani and his deputy, made connections between the pieces, either by cracking jokes or by announcements. In addition, GSW's Invisible Hand Orchestra played music pieces inspired in Brecht's works. At the end of all the performances, the band played music, inviting people to dance. The whole night event lasted until most of the audience left. The whole structure of this program is a typical model of Spaghetti Dinner. Usually there are several pieces at one night, either hand puppets or members of GSW host as MCs, and some bands play their own works or dance music for the audience. Like tonight's combination, GSW normally invites artists or friends they know of to come to present their works. The Cosmic Bicycle Theater is a puppet theater group from Lower East Side. Michael is GSW's friend; he helps to cook, and acts as a puppeteer and musician in the performance. Because members of GSW have been around artist circles for a long time, they have well-grounded relationships with people. As Spaghetti Dinner has gradually become known, better it is much easier for GSW to invite artists for a free (or minimum-paid) performance. Apart from guest performances, GSW presents its collective works, or members' individual works in Spaghetti Dinner. It is Stephen who presents his work-in-progress tonight. Some of their works, either collective or of individual, are tried out as episodes first in Spaghetti Dinner and later developed into full-length productions. Home Family God Country Flag, a well-known group work of Ninth Street Theater, and The Man Who Was Thursday, a piece directed by Mark, are two examples. In order to link all the pieces into a continuation, MCs are responsible for bridging the time gap. The seasonal or festival theme and performance announcements, therefore, help to generate topics. Moreover, using mayor Giuliani as a hand puppet provides linkage or critique to the current issues, which include Giuliani's attitude toward art funding and politics. Also, this year is the centennial of Brecht, who has become a theme developed in every Spaghetti Dinner. Apparently, all these issues address to the contemporary world, either artistic, social or political, that address the audience's concern. MC's talks are creative, humorous, with cynical parody and sometimes surprise. Tonight, when the puppet MCs were making announcements, someone shouted from the audience: "Stop the announcements!" He walked up to the puppet stage and pulled down the two puppets. The talks were interrupted and I was shocked. The man siad that they did not know how to play the puppets and asked the puppeteers to practice some hand exercises with him. John and Michael came out of the stage, sheepishly and embarrassingly asking: "need we do that?" "Hey, who is this guy?" someone challenged. "Oh, he is Pablo Cueto, a Mexican puppet master who comes to visit us tonight," John said and continued his exercises. It wasn't until after the performance that I figured out this interruption was arranged, part of the tricks to surprise the audience and introduce their friend. Most pieces performed in Spaghetti Dinner are puppet shows. This tendency can be traced back to the influence of B&P Theatre and the tradition of artistic inventions in Spaghetti Dinner. Because the founders of Spaghetti Dinner are members of B&P Theatre, they all have the experience in making puppets or doing puppet shows. Amy, for example, is a professional puppeteer. The first episode performed in Spaghetti Dinner, Nose Family Saga, was inspired by the format of silent movies and the performance of Sicilian puppet theater. In Nose Family Saga, small-scale puppets were presented inside a proscenium stage and real actors, dressed the same, acted as the "life-sized" characters outside the frame. A narrator told the audience about the story and there was music accompanying the whole piece. The performance style of Nose Family Saga in a way has the residual influence of B&P Theater, but it is also innovative and different. In tonight's three pieces, Michael's work is a puppet show with drape illustrations and music; Stephen's piece has resembles Japanese Bunraku; the Venus Envy piece uses clothes, small objects, and hand gestures to create a puppet performance. Over the years, there are many styles of performances presented in Spaghetti Dinner and the range has extended beyond puppet shows. The spirit of invention and creation has always been the most important element in every piece in Spaghetti Dinner. For their own creations, GSW declares that their productions want to "re-appropriate and reinvent ancient, popular theater techniques: toy theater, mask and object theater, circus, sideshow, and picture-show." For example, The Toy Theater of Terror As Usual, one of GSW's collective works, is a surreal serial drama performed in miniature proscenium stage in which cut-out images from daily newspapers are used. Part of their re-appropriation of ancient, popular techniques is using Xerox machines to make different scales of images. The technical advance of Xerox machines changes, or enhances the way of making puppets. The different scales of images combine with texts excerpted from daily newspapers to depict the stories (terrors) of daily life in a "surreal" style. Not only the styles of performance are varied, the contents of performances address different aspects of life. Among the three pieces tonight, Michael's piece, What You Do, told the story of Lori Berenson. Berenson, a New York woman, was arrested with Peruvian rebels in 1995 under the charge of treason and sentenced to a life sentence. Now she is serving her sentence in Peru's most notorious prison and her health condition is deteriorating. Human rights are the concern of Michael's work. On the other hand, Stephen's piece, The Unfinished Eye, is his personal tribute to his sister who passed away several years ago. Sometimes GSW accept and invite their friends or audience members who want to share a reading, poem, or singing in Spaghetti Dinner. These examples illustrate the range of performance contents presented in Spaghetti Dinner. From political, social concerns to personal sharing and life experience, Spaghetti Dinner presents performances that are not just some simple, jerky puppet shows. "We try to build up a performance rested on a triangle of political, theatrical, and ritual basis," Jenny said. A whole night event contains a hot meal and several pieces of performances, and usually the audience will dance with music in the end. What is the term that would be appropriate to define this performance? This was a tough question when I interviewed members of GSW. Amy and Joanne define Spaghetti Dinner as "Indoor Street Theater." Before they started Spaghetti Dinner, Amy and Joanne were members of a street brass band. They did performances, including music and puppet shows, on the street and in Central Park. Part of their intention in creating Spaghetti Dinner is that they want to invite their neighbors to watch their performances inside their storefront. Spaghetti Dinner is a performance for the community. When I suggested the term, "community theater," to define Spaghetti Dinner, "well, yeah, but it will not be the common sense of a 'community theater.' Spaghetti Dinner is not a performance for the local community now. An 'artistic community' might be the community Spaghetti Dinner appeals to," Trudi said. There are some other terms that come up in the discussion: cabaret, dinner theater, variety shows, etc., but none of these terms are satisfactory. All of them only explain part of the characteristics of Spaghetti Dinner. It is cabaret, but a folk-driven cabaret; it is dinner theater, but a Brechtian dinner theater; it is a variety show, but an elaborated, artistic variety show. "Party, yeah, it's more like a party," both Jenny and Stephen felt so after our discussions. "Spaghetti Dinner can be viewed as a food event. There is the real food, spaghetti, as the appetizer. Then come several short episodes as main dishes, and the music as side order or something," Mark came up with this idea after my question about the connection between food and performance in Spaghetti Dinner. "It is avant-garde community dinner theater," John said, with a bit of tongue-in-cheek. Community After the last puppet performance, John announced that the bar would re-open and they were going to play several pieces of music. Gradually the audience came down from their seats, moving around the space. Some chatted with friends; some bought drinks or had some spaghetti; some left. Later, when the band played a couple of dance tunes, some people began to dance. There was a group of young people dancing, laughing, and enjoying themselves with the music. Usually when people go to theater, they buy the tickets, go to their seats with the ushers' help, watch the performance, and then leave the theater immediately. However, the experience in Spaghetti Dinner totally differs from that in ordinary theaters. People come to this whole night event where they expect to have a hot meal, good conversations with friends, good performances, and even relax and dance. If there does not exist a suitable term to define this event, at least a community has gradually taken form in Spaghetti Dinner, a community built up through food and performance. The notion of "community" had occurred to most, if not all, members of GSW when interviewed. Either using term such as "artistic community," "community performance," or "community dinner theater," they recognize the existence of a group of people who identify themselves belonging together in Spaghetti Dinner. More obviously, when people join a performance, a temporary community has formed by the performers and audience members. In Spaghetti Dinner, the temporary community extends and grows into a continuation because people keep coming back to enjoy it. The community formed in Spaghetti Dinner, however, blurs the ordinary boundaries in defining a community. The meaning of community varies as people perceive the term differently. Sociologist Worsley proposes at least three definitions: community as locality, community as a network of interrelationships, and community as specified kinds of interrelationships. Therefore, geographical propinquity does not dominate the formation of a community; it is the feeling of belonging, either physically, conceptually, artistically, or aesthetically defined, that matters and weaves the network of interrelationships. In addition, Bell and Valentine also regard the meaning of the term community is "not only descriptive, but also normative and ideological." (93) In order to form a community, the members share some common belief and ideology. In investigating the community Spaghetti Dinner has kept building up, an evolution of definition exists that shifts the emphasis from locality to artistic, conceptual belonging. In the early years, Spaghetti Dinner was a performance for the local community. The Nose Family Saga, for example, is a series of stories about an immigrant family, the Nose Family. The inspiration of the characters comes from the observation of an old bakery owner on Ninth Street. Among a neighborhood of Ukrainian, Hispanic, and Italian immigrants, the puppet shows in Spaghetti Dinner appealed to the community. However, as the rent doubled and tripled in East Village and in 1983 members of the Ninth Street Theater were evicted from the storefront where Spaghetti Dinner was held, the connection with a local community was lost. In 1986, Spaghetti Dinner moved to PS122, a public place provided for various performances. Although PS122 is also on Ninth Street, the neighborhood in East Village has changed, and more importantly, PS122 is not a private-owned space. On the one hand, the lack of an own space reduces the predominance of local intimacy. On the other hand, however, an open, public space provides a channel to broader artistic circles. Since 1986, Ninth Street Theater and later GSW have kept hosting Spaghetti Dinner as a monthly event. People who are drawn to Spaghetti Dinner identify themselves with this performance partly in joining in the long-term network of friendship, partly in sharing the food, and partly in enjoying artistic and aesthetic creations. The feeling of belonging or of being in a community built up through food and performance distinguishes Spaghetti Dinner from other performances. In 1997, Great Small Works was awarded an OBIE Grant award for their contribution in bringing "community celebration and cultural critique together" in New York City. Spaghetti Dinner is one of their outstanding efforts. "I see no reason in not doing Spaghetti Dinner; without Spaghetti Dinner, GSW will be just another theater company," John said. After hosting Spaghetti Dinner for more than ten years, he enjoys the feeling of seeing old friends in Spaghetti Dinner, and he does not want to give up the long-term connections and relationships built up in it. What, then, will be the next step or direction for Spaghetti Dinner? Members of GSW all have positive attitudes toward carrying on this tradition. However, there are some foreseen difficulties ahead. Doing Spaghetti Dinner is their labor of love. They gain no economic profits from this monthly performance. Each member has to have daytime jobs, which really places time limits on their efforts in creating new works and hosting this monthly event. Taking the economic pressure from another aspect, the cost of living in New York City becomes such a burden that none of GSW's member lives close to either their rehearsal or performance space. This seems to be an invisible gentrification. Nonetheless, some positive signs confirm the practice of Spaghetti Dinner. Stephen notices that this year there are many more young people coming to Spaghetti Dinner. Part of the next generation seems to enjoy this event. In addition, as some new members join GSW, they provide new perspectives in structuring the program. Mark makes an effort in hosting live radio shows in Spaghetti Dinner. Stephen is a professional puppeteer and he solves the problems of making puppets. Roberto, the newest member of GSW, is an excellent accordion player who has multi-language ability and is working on introducing Italian plays to the program. Moreover, Jenny was excited about a Mardi Gras Dinner, "Masks + Rockets," she managed in 1996 when I interviewed her. "There is a drag queen show, Chinese dragon dance, carnival music; it almost has everything," Jenny said. She perceived a wider view of the world that has been introduced to Spaghetti Dinner. On that day when I interviewed Joanne, she showed me what has been changed around the neighborhood. We walked by the bakery store and the original storefront on Ninth Street. The bakery still exists, under different management, and the storefront has divided into two fancy shops. Someone greeted Joanne on the road. I could feel her intimate acquaintance with the local community. This feeling of belonging surfaced in my mind when I participated in preparing food, talking with people, and watching their performances in Spaghetti Dinner. As people's need of belonging, being in a community, still exists, I perceive Spaghetti Dinner, the ritual of sharing food and performance, will keep providing satisfactory solutions. Works Cited: Barthes, Roland. "Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporay Food Consumption," Food and Culture. Ed. Carole Counihan and Penny V. Esterik. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. ---. "Reading Brillat-Savarin," On Signs. Ed. Marshall Blonsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. Bell, David, and Gill Valentine. Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat. London: Routledge, 1997. Bradby, David, and John McCormick. People's Theatre. London: Croom Helm; c1978. Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme. The Physiology of Taste. New York: Knopf, 1971. Cain, William S. "What We Remember About Odors," Perfumer & Flavorist Vol. 9, June/July 1984. Duffy, Valerie B. and Linda M. Bartoshuk. "Sensory Factors in Feeding," Tasting and Smelling. Ed. Gary K. Beauchamp and Linda Bartoshuk. San Diego: Academic Press, c1997. Great Small Works. Newsletter, Obie Award announcement. Archival materials. Koch, Heinrich P. Garlic: The Science and Therapeutic Application of Allium sativum L. and Related Species. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1996. Marinetti, Filippo T. The Futurist Cookbook. Trans. Suzanne Brill. San Francisco: Bedford Arts, 1989. Schumann, Peter. "Bread and Puppets." The Drama Review. XIV:3 (T47), 1970. Worsley, P. New Introduction to Sociology. London:Penguin, 1987. Personal Interviews: Bell, John. Interview with Author, April 20 1998. Cohen, Trudi. Interview with Author, March 31 1998. Kaplin, Stephen. Interview with Author, April 14, 15 1998. Romaine, Jenny. Interview with Author, April 6 1998. Schultz, Joanne. Interview with Author, March 27 1998. Sussman, Mark. Interview with Author, April 3 1998. Trompetter, Amy. Interview with Author, March 24,31 1998.