I click on a New York Times link about Stephen King and John Mellencamp collaborating on a musical that they will try out in at Atlanta's Alliance Theater -- First thought, "Well, I guess musical theater is exactly where formerly great artists go when they're totally over the hill." Second thought, "What? Once you pass a certain age, you actually enjoy theater more than other entertainment? Again - why do we worry about the blue hairs in the audience. They may die but someone will come and replace them. It's environmental. It's the senior citizen food." Third thought: "Another nonprofit theater supports the creation of a big time money making musical. Just like the Guthrie's little house on the prairie. This is what we've come to -- the minor leagues. Not leading the theater movement but begging for scraps from the table of commerce. Well, I hope they get perpetual revenue from it at least -- I'm sure that's how they're justifying it to themselves."
Final thought when I see the video advertisement for a new musical called "In the Heights" in a corner box on the same page: "Is this is joke? Haven't I seen a satire of the musical that looked exactly like this? Seriously -- is this a joke? And if its not a joke - What the hell did I actually think theater was supposed to be?"
P.S. I always make fun of the plays where I think the artists seem to have just discovered that the world exists. "Look, Honey! People suffer. Aren't they dignified?' or "Look, Honey! Those wacky others." I'm also going to have to start to make fun of the art where the artists think their world is the world. "In the Heights, Baby! If you're not here, you're nowhere. You don't even know! . . . Hey, I stubbed my toe. Is that, like, a whole wide world that I stepped on? Naaah."
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Maybe It Will Help me Get Grants
My conscious influences; Shakespeare, Chekhov, J.M. Synge, Bertolt Brecht, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Luigi Pirandello. Also, probably, Naomi Wallace and Carol Churchill.
People I doubt are influences: Ibsen, Strindberg, Eugene O'Neil (maybe), Tennessee Williams (even though "Streetcar" is one of the best plays ever).
People I really like who may be subconscious influences: Arthur Miller (compassion, character, craftsmanship, issues), David Mamet (spare musical muscular language full of raw emotion and subtext), Lanford Wilson (lyrical music, wide-ranging eye for real subjects), George Walker ("nothing sacred" I saw when I was 14. I was so stunned I forgot to give a standing ovation. So was the rest of the audience).
Who I'd like to be influenced by: Dario Fo. I should read more.
Other important influences: Classical music. Jazz music. Live clubs full of young people and rock n'roll. Visual art -- especially the cubists. Also dutch masters and early 20th century American artist like Edward Hopper. And WPA art. Antonin Artuad who I probably read at a too young, too easily influenced age, what can you do?
More detail about who I emulate:
Shakespeare -- everything, of course, the language, the plots, the beauty, the power but consciously, I want to capture the wide-ranging, varied nature of all his plays. They bring in a world. They change up in style and tone constantly. They are not minimal. They are raucous and ambitious and free.
Chekhov -- life on stage precisely without somehow being as tedious and undramatic as life actually is. How does he do that? One thing is that he fits in to no category. He plays by no rules. His work is the most original of all playwrights because it is neither conventional nor avant-garde. It is entirely its own thing. . . I wish I could.
J.M. Synge: Story and language and delight and melancholy. An obsession with death counterbalanced by an obsession with the funny moment. And the language. And the sense of straight ahead, here we go, story telling. The ear. He writes like people talk but obviously don't talk. Careful listening.
Brecht; i think our entire culture has internalized the "alienation effect' without even realizing it. I was doing brecht stuff in my plays before I ever read brecht. But what I learned when I read him is that his plays are incredibly emotionally engaging. (I saw the last performance of the Berliner Ensemble which was the first America. It was so entirely carried away by this incredibly dynamic performer.) We are alienated enough, sure, to use our intellectual to analyze what we're seeing but we're not distanced. The effect comes from the way in which we are emotionally engaged moment to moment at the same time that we are thinking. I love that! Who else does that?
Edward Albee: first playwright I read. Thought I'd written the "Zoo Story" in my head when I read it at the age of 15. Said in an interview that he didn't write stage directions but wrote language like a musical score on the page. Have been doing that ever since and its totally fucked me up. Readers don't give me the benefit of the doubt that they give Albee when they're reading a confusing stage directionless script.
Sam Shepard: Freedom. Anything happens. Raw. Emotional. unintellectual. Feels the closest to music, jazz or classical or rock n' roll, in the theater that I've ever experience. The American mythology shoved in there.
Luigi Pirandello: So much fun. So smart. So intelligent and so compassionate about people and character. i have never ever seen a bad production of 6 characters in search of an author. How is that possible? because with all the tricks its the most true of anything. He's able to be theatrical and philosophical while also being real and alive and compassionate to people and their struggles. He brings the theater off the stage. It needs to come off the stage.
Naomi Wallace and Carol Churchill: They are living examples of exciting, emotional, complex work that combines fascinating stories, beautiful language, unique structure. They write music for the stage. I've actually modeled plays of mine off of specific plays of theirs. (Cloud 9 and In the Heart of America).
People I doubt are influences: Ibsen, Strindberg, Eugene O'Neil (maybe), Tennessee Williams (even though "Streetcar" is one of the best plays ever).
People I really like who may be subconscious influences: Arthur Miller (compassion, character, craftsmanship, issues), David Mamet (spare musical muscular language full of raw emotion and subtext), Lanford Wilson (lyrical music, wide-ranging eye for real subjects), George Walker ("nothing sacred" I saw when I was 14. I was so stunned I forgot to give a standing ovation. So was the rest of the audience).
Who I'd like to be influenced by: Dario Fo. I should read more.
Other important influences: Classical music. Jazz music. Live clubs full of young people and rock n'roll. Visual art -- especially the cubists. Also dutch masters and early 20th century American artist like Edward Hopper. And WPA art. Antonin Artuad who I probably read at a too young, too easily influenced age, what can you do?
More detail about who I emulate:
Shakespeare -- everything, of course, the language, the plots, the beauty, the power but consciously, I want to capture the wide-ranging, varied nature of all his plays. They bring in a world. They change up in style and tone constantly. They are not minimal. They are raucous and ambitious and free.
Chekhov -- life on stage precisely without somehow being as tedious and undramatic as life actually is. How does he do that? One thing is that he fits in to no category. He plays by no rules. His work is the most original of all playwrights because it is neither conventional nor avant-garde. It is entirely its own thing. . . I wish I could.
J.M. Synge: Story and language and delight and melancholy. An obsession with death counterbalanced by an obsession with the funny moment. And the language. And the sense of straight ahead, here we go, story telling. The ear. He writes like people talk but obviously don't talk. Careful listening.
Brecht; i think our entire culture has internalized the "alienation effect' without even realizing it. I was doing brecht stuff in my plays before I ever read brecht. But what I learned when I read him is that his plays are incredibly emotionally engaging. (I saw the last performance of the Berliner Ensemble which was the first America. It was so entirely carried away by this incredibly dynamic performer.) We are alienated enough, sure, to use our intellectual to analyze what we're seeing but we're not distanced. The effect comes from the way in which we are emotionally engaged moment to moment at the same time that we are thinking. I love that! Who else does that?
Edward Albee: first playwright I read. Thought I'd written the "Zoo Story" in my head when I read it at the age of 15. Said in an interview that he didn't write stage directions but wrote language like a musical score on the page. Have been doing that ever since and its totally fucked me up. Readers don't give me the benefit of the doubt that they give Albee when they're reading a confusing stage directionless script.
Sam Shepard: Freedom. Anything happens. Raw. Emotional. unintellectual. Feels the closest to music, jazz or classical or rock n' roll, in the theater that I've ever experience. The American mythology shoved in there.
Luigi Pirandello: So much fun. So smart. So intelligent and so compassionate about people and character. i have never ever seen a bad production of 6 characters in search of an author. How is that possible? because with all the tricks its the most true of anything. He's able to be theatrical and philosophical while also being real and alive and compassionate to people and their struggles. He brings the theater off the stage. It needs to come off the stage.
Naomi Wallace and Carol Churchill: They are living examples of exciting, emotional, complex work that combines fascinating stories, beautiful language, unique structure. They write music for the stage. I've actually modeled plays of mine off of specific plays of theirs. (Cloud 9 and In the Heart of America).
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Ideas Again
Art is the process of creating worlds of perception, through music or sculpture or theater, that by virtue of originality, delight, and surprise somehow make us feel as though an unexpected truth about life has been revealed in the experience. Or at least that we have gained a new experience that enriches the truth in our life.
Art, like God, is a three letter word that attempts to define the indefinable.
Still, just like we talk enough about God to not confuse it with Dog, its worthwhile talking about Art so we don't confuse it with Shit.
Playwrighting is the only art form where the product is judged in a completely insufficient state. When you hear or see other works-in-progress, a song, a painting, a sculpture, you can see or hear some version of them that utilizes the elements which will eventually result in the final product.
Plays are read first. But plays aren't meant to be read. At all. They're meant to be performed by actors on a set. . . I've got think of a better way to present my plays to theaters. I'm thinking of creating demo tapes, recorded cds with pictures. . . I like that idea. If you were a literary manager or artistic director, would you accept a cd recording of the script with pencil sketches of the look of the play and images of select scenes?
Art, like God, is a three letter word that attempts to define the indefinable.
Still, just like we talk enough about God to not confuse it with Dog, its worthwhile talking about Art so we don't confuse it with Shit.
Playwrighting is the only art form where the product is judged in a completely insufficient state. When you hear or see other works-in-progress, a song, a painting, a sculpture, you can see or hear some version of them that utilizes the elements which will eventually result in the final product.
Plays are read first. But plays aren't meant to be read. At all. They're meant to be performed by actors on a set. . . I've got think of a better way to present my plays to theaters. I'm thinking of creating demo tapes, recorded cds with pictures. . . I like that idea. If you were a literary manager or artistic director, would you accept a cd recording of the script with pencil sketches of the look of the play and images of select scenes?
Monday, February 11, 2008
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
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
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Enough With the Self-Pity
The theater I want --
The characters leap off the stage, surprising, delightful, and alive. Surprising.
The theater I see --
The actors convey characters clearly. The characters are written as a consistent collection of ticks and behaviors.
The theater I want --
The characters live in a visually stunning inventive world that transports us to a place similar to but different than our own.
The theater I see --
Nice house they built there. . . The actors stand on stage well and speak their lines forward well.
The theater I want --
Draws together the multiple, complex threads of 21st century society in to an odd but compelling tapestry whose picture becomes more clear the farther away you get from it. Days later, I'm standing in my shower and the characters and images of the play are still bouncing around in my head and my heart, and I finally have a revelation about what all those strange connections truly mean. And feel.
The theater I see --
Says something clearly about some tiny corner of the world.
And, the theater I want --
Tells exciting stories that take place in the world.
The theater I see --
Tells "clever" or "whimisical" or "cute" stories where everyone is just discovering their true feeling all the time. Self-discovery rather than actual discovery.
The theater I want --
Believes in itself.
The theater I see --
Presents itself for approval to the audience.
The theater I want --
Creates a world around us.
The theater I see --
Documents a small corner of the world from, metaphorically, a 3rd person perspective instead of a 1st person perspective.
The theater I want --
Cares most of all about HOW people live their lives.
The theater I see --
Cares more about what people SAY about their lives.
The theater I want --
Is brave.
The theater I see --
Is well put together.
The theater I want --
is non-judgmental
The theater I see --
is judgmental.
The characters leap off the stage, surprising, delightful, and alive. Surprising.
The theater I see --
The actors convey characters clearly. The characters are written as a consistent collection of ticks and behaviors.
The theater I want --
The characters live in a visually stunning inventive world that transports us to a place similar to but different than our own.
The theater I see --
Nice house they built there. . . The actors stand on stage well and speak their lines forward well.
The theater I want --
Draws together the multiple, complex threads of 21st century society in to an odd but compelling tapestry whose picture becomes more clear the farther away you get from it. Days later, I'm standing in my shower and the characters and images of the play are still bouncing around in my head and my heart, and I finally have a revelation about what all those strange connections truly mean. And feel.
The theater I see --
Says something clearly about some tiny corner of the world.
And, the theater I want --
Tells exciting stories that take place in the world.
The theater I see --
Tells "clever" or "whimisical" or "cute" stories where everyone is just discovering their true feeling all the time. Self-discovery rather than actual discovery.
The theater I want --
Believes in itself.
The theater I see --
Presents itself for approval to the audience.
The theater I want --
Creates a world around us.
The theater I see --
Documents a small corner of the world from, metaphorically, a 3rd person perspective instead of a 1st person perspective.
The theater I want --
Cares most of all about HOW people live their lives.
The theater I see --
Cares more about what people SAY about their lives.
The theater I want --
Is brave.
The theater I see --
Is well put together.
The theater I want --
is non-judgmental
The theater I see --
is judgmental.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Fuck
I'm coming to the sad conclusion -- truly deeply sad -- that there just isn't any point to this theater thing. Sure I see good shows all the time. Great actors. Good direction. fine enough script. . . but . . . Nothing moves me the way it should. No one pushes me out of my chair. I never jump anymore. . . What is it that people are trying to do up there? There's a quote "The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity." Or something like that. In theater: "The most talented lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity." Is it just Minnesota where the profession is big enough for some people to make a living but not big enough for their to be some really edgy professional theaters to support them.
I'll be honest here. Except for "The Miser," which was mind-blowing, nothing I've seen at Juene Lune has been that great. That would be another post to explain but I mention it here because they're, at least, supposed to be the rockin' theater in town.
O. It's so depressing. And it comes with the realization that the type of work I write hasn't simply not found its niche yet. It will never find its niche. It's so different from both the edgy and the mainstream stuff that well. . . It'd be easier to take if I was 10 years younger and I could calm myself with the thought that I simply haven't reached my potential yet. . . I'd like to think I haven't reached my potential yet I also have a certain degree of confidence in the work I've done in the last three years. I actually have done a good number of the things that I set out to do. . . Can you imagine how depressing it is to know that when you succeed at your goals, you still fail? . . .
o well. . .
I can always go back to bartending.
I'll be honest here. Except for "The Miser," which was mind-blowing, nothing I've seen at Juene Lune has been that great. That would be another post to explain but I mention it here because they're, at least, supposed to be the rockin' theater in town.
O. It's so depressing. And it comes with the realization that the type of work I write hasn't simply not found its niche yet. It will never find its niche. It's so different from both the edgy and the mainstream stuff that well. . . It'd be easier to take if I was 10 years younger and I could calm myself with the thought that I simply haven't reached my potential yet. . . I'd like to think I haven't reached my potential yet I also have a certain degree of confidence in the work I've done in the last three years. I actually have done a good number of the things that I set out to do. . . Can you imagine how depressing it is to know that when you succeed at your goals, you still fail? . . .
o well. . .
I can always go back to bartending.
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