Look at Plays Like Music and Visual Art

I want to ask a question and make a statement at the same time. Whatever it takes to get people to consider the topic.

Is theater art or entertainment? in general, television is entertainment. Are the performing arts just live entertainment? Years ago, when I lived in New York, any big budget plays I saw struck me very much like television for people who are too snobby to watch television.

Most of the discourse on theater that I read and hear assumes that -- while not exactly entertaining -- theater is entertainment.

Funny that. People don't expect the performing arts to be entertaining yet they use the same linear vocabulary to discuss theater as they would for television and film.

I believe that while art is always entertaining and entertainment is sometimes art, as categories of work and human experience, art and entertainment are extremely, importantly different. Good entertainment confirms for you your beliefs, comforts you with a view of the world that you already accept. Good entertainment hits only your pleasure buttons. Don't get me wrong - these are worthwhile buttons to hit. Good entertainment however is only surprising in entirely unchallenging ways. Good art challenges your assumptions about your world in a way that is also, often, pleasurable. Surprising. Delightful. And also thrilling because the boundaries of your mind are being pushed hence the limits of your life are being blown away. Excellent art makes you feel as though anything were possible and the human creature is divine, transcendent, something. This is a difficult state to achieve but also a state so much more pleasurable and rewarding than simple entertainment that its worth, once felt, is self-evident. Pure entertainment is also quite nice. Life is hard. Challenges can be challenging. Sometimes we just want to settle in and laugh or let our sentiment be manipulated so we cry. Absolutely. However, the expectations we bring to entertainment v. art can and should be different than they are now -- especially as it relates to the performing arts.

A few days ago, I sat down for a coffee with a wonderful, older, sort of well known former dramaturg. He mostly directs now but he made his name in the theater world as a big time dramaturg. I had asked him to read one of my latest plays because I wanted to know how readers around the country were perceiving it when I sent it out. I explicitly asked him not to "dramaturg" the thing but to simply respond to it and articulate that response.

First of all, in case he ever finds this blog, he was incredibly articulate about issues that others only were able to describe vaguely. My conversation with him was incredibly helpful. While I may rail against dramaturgs from time to time, good, intelligent conversations about scripts are all too rare actually. It's the formalized role of dramaturg that bothers me -- not the concept of feedback and collaboration. With that disclaiming out of the way --

Two topics of our discussion have nagged me since we met and relate to the ideas I was exploring above:

1. As soon as he sat down, he gave me a broad overview of his generally positive response to the play but then ended with conclusion that, paraphrasing, "with the ending as it is, it seems to suggest that 'anything is possible'. . . which can't possibly be what you mean. . ."

Except, 'anything is possible' was, in some ways, very much what I meant for a person to conclude at the end of the play. At least in regard to plot. I don't need to explain the entire play here but I should say that I was trying, in part, to focus attention away from the drama of plot to see/explore the universality in certain characters. So, the idea that a person might turn away from the plot at the end because 'anything is possible' was entirely accurate. Yet, this reader rejected that conclusion because, in large part, because its simply not a conclusion he was willing to accept.

Yes, I could conceivably do an even better job of driving that concept home yet I also wonder: We say we want our theater to challenge us yet ideas that are challenging enough to be outside the acceptable definition of challenging ("you can't possibly mean that.") are rejected.

At another time, he pointed out that the character were very "self-focused," chasing after their own needs and desires in a way that didn't always take in to account the "others" around them. He said this as though that were a weakness on my part. Yet, I have to say that in my experience of everyday life -- and I was trying to write about everyday people swept up in big big turns of events -- self-focused is an understatement. . if somewhat unpleasant to acknowledge.

Perhaps more skill on my part would have made him see and accept the very conclusions he came to with more confidence rather than assume I didn't mean for him to come to those conclusions (when I did). However, I also think that no amount of talent can overcome everything. If we look to theater to really be art (previously defined), then perhaps we can recognizable some of the most challenging stuff better.

Two points -- right now, most of the stuff we call challenging isn't really. It's reactionary. It makes a relatively obvious point in contrast to a point already made in the theater we already expect to see. That isn't challenging. It's comforting rebellion, not real conflict.

And, critics and consumers of music and visual art already have a better vocabulary and more ingrained tendency to search for the completely unexpected in their art form. You can easily look at Jackson Pollack's work and say "You can't possible mean that. You're kidding." or "You're failing at whatever you're attempting." On the other hand, you can look at it and say, "What if he actually does mean that? What does that suggest about everything?" Some with, in its day, cubism, abstract expressionism, everything interesting requires that someone take its challenge seriously. Imagine if someone looked at impressionism and said, "I thinkk maybe you need to sharpen these details." It's funny in visual arts yet I can almost hear someone saying the analogous thing in the theater.

2. Which leads to the second nagging part of the conversation. Mr. Smart and Helpful Guy asked me what I was trying to say with this play. I had the presence of mind to reply that I don't ever think that a play can or should be summarized in to some kind of message or simplistic interpretation. It's an experience, I said, that I hope raises questions or ideas or something in the audiences mind. "What kind of questions then?" Well. . . I'm starting to be less firm now. . . I think the questions that the play explores are already out there, I tried to say. The play assumes a certain zeitgeist, I guess. How different or how similar are we as people around the world? How can we live such different lives in different places? How can we be so different? Are we so different? . . . The play assumes these questions at the beginning and then. . . well, explores them?

Here's where I stopped being able to answer the questions he was asking me. Perhaps I need to understand my work better or -- perhaps -- the premise of these types of questions is false. What statement was Picasso's Guernica make? Chekhov's Three Sisters? Beethoven's Fifth Symphony? Or what questions do these works of art challenge you to ask? You may interpret them some way or ask certain questions while you're there but clearly the artist is not trying to literally make you ask a question or a statement. These works of art are broad creative RESPONSES to the world that we occupy which CHALLENGE us by EXPOSING a TRUTH about the world that we EXPERIENCE in the work. Truth is a loaded word. Truth implies a statement in words. Why? Forget that definition. When you stand in front of Guernica, you know that you are experiencing something deeply truthful. The aesthetic unexpectedness and craftsmanship and passion all combine to make you see something a new way, to experience a new truth or feel a new idea in your bones. To say, however, that Guernica is an anti-war painting is to actually say almost nothing about what Guernica is. There are a lot of anti-war statements in the world of art and entertainment. While Guernica may contain that idea it is entirely something more.

By creating entirely original worlds, art exposes truths about the world that we live in in ways that challenge our expectations or contentment or assumptions. To me, this is a thrilling and entertaining experience. But we have to be looking for that in our art in order to produce art that does it. We look for it in music and visual arts but when it comes to theater, we still look for a plot that always makes sense and characters that are consistent. I realize that plot and characters have baggage that is hard to shake the audience from but still . . . in order to make the true art that many performing artists strive for -- within an art form that needs a wider audience than perhaps visual art at least -- maybe we should start asking ourselves different questions.

Oy. I thought I'd be clear but i find myself confusing myself the more I write. I'll probably have to redraft this one.

Alan