Cereal Box Collection Displayed

Visitors to the theater and dance department at UCSB have come to expect the unexpected, but on Thursday, June 20, something was happening in one of the dance studios that very few of even their most assiduous observers could have predicted. Tree of Life, a one-day performance/presentation by Distinguished Professor of Theater William Davies King featured more than 2,000 cereal boxes, each one different, laid out in a variety of patterns until they covered the entire floor. This is the second time that King has presented these carefully preserved consumer packages; the last time was in 2002, and the collection has grown considerably since then. All the familiar brands were represented — Cheerios, Wheaties, Rice Krispies, and Corn Flakes — plus many that one had either forgotten or had never heard of in the first place. Kellogg’s OJ’s anyone? How about a nice bowl of General Mills Reese’s Puffs? 

The cereal boxes are only one aspect of King’s vast collection of consumer product labels. He has been cruising the aisles of supermarkets for decades with an eye for new packaging and gently releasing labels from their products and storing them in binders since the 1980s. The story of his “collection of nothing,” as he prefers to call it, plus an extraordinarily persistent and erudite attempt to make sense of his activities, can be found in his 2008 memoir, also called Collections of Nothing and published by the prestigious University of Chicago Press. 

King ordinarily stakes his claim as a university professor of theater on the scholarly side of the scholarship/performance divide. He is a renowned expert on the life and work of American playwright Eugene O’Neill, and he has also written a book on Wallace Shawn. He teaches a popular UCSB course on ancient drama and has recently begun sharing his thoughts about collecting in a course on that subject as well.