Ramblings. Take them or leave them. It's hard to discuss with no one on the other end, y'all!

Where have I been? In the real world. I suppose that's why it's so disappointing that so much theatre resembles the real world. Lord knows I've had enough of it by 8:00 pm, and I especially don't want to pay for it, when I can get it for free on television – or, I mean, on the streets. Yo.

It's fine, really, that there's theatre that resembles real life, that purports to ... (natch) ... act as a mirror on the world. What isn't cool is how little of it comes to bear upon what actually happens in the everyday. The mirror only shows what it sees, not what it thinks or hears or feels or ignores or transcends -- only what "real life" looks like. And real life, my friends, rarely looks pretty.

In his review here of the new play Essential Self-Defense, the Times' second-string "critic"* Charles Isherwood asks why a playwright would write plays if he weren't interested in human behavior. I'd like to doubly-negate the question and ask: Why wouldn't you write plays if you weren't interested in human behavior? Everybody's doin' it…

This is why you wouldn't:

[Disclaimer: Overwhelmingly opinionated and relatively untested statements to follow.]

Human beings are mysterious, unpredictable, deeply rational, and sexy. Human behavior is none of these things. Once you decide to portray human behavior, you cease to be interested in human beings.

Content dictates form, right? Wrong. It seems more and more that our various and sundry entertainments seek to understand why? why? why? – the content. Having somewhat "explored" these topics, often alone in a solitary room, the author gives a shape to the conflicted inner somethings-or-other, that result in onstage human behavior – the form.

This is gross.

This, in an academically undergraduate sort of way, is referred to as "showing, not telling." In my mind, this is showing that is telling. Telling that has become showing, because authors assume their audience to be stupid, when the audience aren't [necessarily] stupid but are often lazy. Characters get these quirks: "She's a single girl who has a hang up about baths and botanicals"; "He's got commitment issues with everyone except his turtle"; et cetera. These characteristics are meant to signal to audience something vaguely meaningful about the not-so-hidden neuroses of these ostensibly human beings. Look, flaws/quirks/peculiarities/irritations! They're onstage!; they're [not] human!; they're just like you! Identify with them, goddamnit!

These people are not real. Their lives are not real. Why should we care?

It is a theory of mine that the audience do not really care all that much about the characters onstage, but they do care about the performers. There's always the fascination with people who can do things that we believe we can’t.

However, there has recently been an overwhelming flood of movies and television, and also theatre, that portray real people, who in many cases are still alive (The Queen, etc), or else still loom large in the public consciousness (Walk the Line, The Hours, etc). In the face of these entertainments, we’re watching not so much to see others do things we can’t, but to see if they can “pull it off.” We’re constantly measuring Reese Witherspoon against our notion of June Carter, or Helen Mirren up to our image of Elizabeth II. This underlines the dishonesty of entertainment masking as “art”: the insistence that their offering is not a product, when that is how the audience is now treating it. Did we get our money’s worth? If Helen Mirren was enough like Queen Elizabeth, then I guess we did. If (contrary to popular opinion, which has a lot to do with it) she didn’t, then we got a bum deal.

How do we make these continuous comparisons between the real and the performance? Ostensibly through their exterior characteristics: the way she walks or sounds or looks (I’m talking to you, Nicole Kidman’s prosthetic nose). However, what the audience is truly craving is an entrance into the “emotional life” of the character, which is often spelled out for you by these outside mannerisms. We’re really seeking affirmation that we’re all alike and all deserve pity. If Helen Mirren had played Elizabeth II as a complete bitch, would the movie have been as popular? By convincing us enough that they’re the same (onscreen) through their outward performance, these actors can (quite willfully on our parts) convince their audience that the inner emotional life of this real life person is expected and explainable, just like we like our own emotional lives to be. We can define ourselves on the inside with our appearance and behavior, just as these actors can their subjects. Our lives are worthy of movies, too!

This phenomenon is having a disastrous effect on the theatre, in my opinion. No longer is the wow factor watching a particular actor derived from his feats, but from the belief that we can do the same, and he only did it better (or worse). At the same time, it allows for the tidy spelling out of someone’s psychology through these outward, performative ticks and mannerisms as evidence of real life. And who does real life better than the audience?

This is precisely why the theatre must move beyond real life and human “behavior.” There is nothing we can do onstage in attempting verisimilitude that isn’t better or more easily done by the people that are walking in to see us. And we can’t even begin to compete with movies and television, so why even try?

Let’s approach from the outward-in. Let’s do away with the expected signals of the “inner life” and thus allow the audience to not know, to not be able to constantly evaluate their purchase. Let’s give them something they didn’t want to buy, and hopefully, they’ll realize it was something they were wanting, needing, missing in the everyday – and ignoring in their own lives in the “real world.”


*Many "critics" are, in my humble opinion, either only reviewers or (perhaps more honestly) salesmen and press agents. There's no criticism, only a recapitulation of the plot, and a yes or no/go see it, don't go verdict.

Is it really “off-Broadway”?: Second stage adventures at large, institutional, not-for-profit theatres

Even as I have too much time on my hands I feel these posts are a bit overbearing. Thus, I will try in this post to cover three productions I saw over a two week or so period that between them show off the good and the bad about the not-so-off-Broadway theatre just right off, well, Broadway.

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER
Roundabout Theatre Company @ the Laura Pels
Grade: C

THE CLEAN HOUSE
Lincoln Center Theater @ the Mitzi E. Newhouse
Grade: A

HOWARD KATZ
Roundabout Theatre Company @ the Laura Pels
Grade: C

If I had the words I would tell you

TRANSLATIONS
Manhattan Theatre Club @ the Biltmore
Grade: A

MTC and the McCarter Theater at Princeton collaborated on this production of Brian Friel’s 1980 play Translations, which appeared first in the fall in New Jersey. Garry Hynes, who was the first woman director to win a Tony Award (for The Beauty Queen of Leenane), directed a cast that included Irish, British, and American actors.

The play takes place in a “hedge” school for illiterate adults, run by a crippled man and his father, the presiding professor. When the professor’s other son returns unexpectedly, he is a respected member of the British army who has come, with another lieutenant, to map out the town and its adjacent countryside and standardize these places' evocative but irregular Irish names. Cultural, romantic, and familial clashes ensue, most notably between the English lieutenant and a young Irish woman, who fall in love despite not understanding any of each other’s words.

One could compliment this production with any number of superlatives, but what struck me most was its insistence on taking its time and allowing the audience members to bring themselves into the world of the play. So much theatre is so afraid to lose the attention of the audience that every scene, every moment, every exchange becomes, in effect, an advertisement for the play at large. This production was unafraid to let its audience consider and chew the meat of the play during the actual production, not only afterwards. The script itself allowed textually for a large amount of observation and meditation before a truly emotional connection was demanded, and the production definitely capitalized on Friel’s slow burning structure.

One scene in particular stood out for its immediate, visceral emotion that frankly caught me off guard as I returned from intermission. The two lovers (who are both speaking English for the sake of the audience, but in the world of the play are incomprehensible to one another) struggle to communicate their feelings. The ensuing complications and frustrations only deepen their nonverbal connection and cause some humorous misunderstandings. But the play will end on a somber note, as the lieutenant goes mysteriously missing and violence is stoked by the imperial British movement. The scene was overwhelmingly romantic and quite erotic, in its way; and unbearably sad.

The production was beautifully spoken and a real joy to listen to. Capitulating on the subject of cultural invasion and unwanted, insidious change, Ms. Hynes and Mr. Friel made overtures toward the increasingly disastrous, imperialist war in Iraq – but the argument was subtly done and emerged quite gracefully from the prescient and immediate nature of Mr. Friel’s thoroughly undated play.

This was theatre that, yes, was realistic/naturalistic, but never to a fault, as so much television-theatre is. It elevated the unfortunate lives of the poor and illiterate to a place of poetry and illuminated our most universal, desperate, and basic needs in a way that eschewed condescension and invited disagreement and disappointment: which, being allowed to experience, I did not.

In the beginning

In the next few days/posts I'll attempt a (hopefully) short recap of the productions I've seen so far in NYC and their effect on my hypothèse de théâtre that is currently still under revision. Of course that will probably always be. First off: (and I am deeply unhappy to admit it) my very first, and most awful, theatrical experience in NYC.

AS YET THOU ART YOUNG AND RASH
Target Margin Theater @ the Ohio Theater
Grade: D

Target Margin Theater has devoted its season to a reinvestigation/reimagination of the Greeks. As Yet Thou Art Young and Rash is the company’s retitled version of The Suppliants by Euripides, which depicts the women of the defeated Troy begging for the bodies of their dead, and the leader who initially refuses their request but is ultimately swayed and moved by their grief and war-weariness. David Herskovits directed a five person ensemble cast, which collaborated on the writing and creation of the final piece.

This production, for me, defied comprehension and any genuine conversation with its audience. From the very first moment of the piece, when one of the actresses entered and surveyed the stage very slowly, I felt it: I just knew it would be awful; but I said to myself, “Stay open, stay alert, and give it a chance.” There was still something somewhat exciting about those first moments, the chance that it might be amazing, or that it might not. But as soon as this actress was joined by three others, and all began dancing in a vaguely tribal manner, the piece was over for me.

Interesting, however, was their mélange of formal and contemporary language (with contemporary instances used sparingly, mostly as comments or self-references). However, the ineptly non-poetical, semi-classical language spoken the majority of the time was delivered in a stilted, determinedly performative manner, with stops and starts inserted at random. Evidently this was meaningful to the actors and their director, though this was hardly communicated to the audience (much like most of the non-plot). The pauses were epic!: one could commandeer the fucking Titanic right through them and never notice a play was even happening at all. Curiously, this was my actual physical sensation during those seventy bygone minutes of my life.

I’d like to make clear that, in theory, none of what was attempted in this piece bothered me or my sensibilities. A collaborative, performative style; a reinvestigation of our oldest Western stories; a (somewhat thankfully) oblique critique of war (and the war in Iraq in particular, obviously): all of these are fine by me. What was not was their execution. Rigorously nonrealistic yet stubbornly nontheatrical, the piece simply failed to engage. Toward the end of the play (which attempted to happen eighty-nine different times), I was particularly offended by a last-ditch attempt at a deeper meaning/emotional connection: as photographs of random, multi-cultural and –sexual families and pairings were projected onto the back wall, the cast sang endless repetitions of “Home on the Range.” The song struck a peculiar nostalgia within me that the production then unscrupulously attempted to attach to my death experience watching them, which only angered me, though I suppose I was thankful for a moment’s attention from this selfish, impenetrable performance.

Midterms...

As my adventures in blogging begin, I'd like to take a look back at the productions I have so far seen/witnessed/been assaulted by on the New York stages since my move here. In a spirit of solidarity with my classroom-bound comrades, I've graded each production and assigned NYC its midterm GPA. Will the city keep its TOPS? Find out now!

D As Yet Thou Art Young and Rash
A Translations
C Suddenly Last Summer
A The Clean House
C Howard Katz
B Fêtes de la Nuit
A The Little Dog Laughed
A Particularly in the Heartland
C The Mother of Modern Censorship
C Witness
D All's Well That Ends Well
B My Fair Lady
A Spring Awakening

According to my calculations, the stages of NYC squeaked by this quarter with a 2.769 GPA. (And grades in some of these cases are somewhat generous, but I'm coming from an LSU standpoint, here.)

What's more impressive is the total ticket cost I withstood to see all of these productions: $65.25. Not bad for thirteen shows (three on Broadway, three off Broadway, two off off Broadway, three university theatre, and one special event).

Coming soon: an exhaustive discussion of the above performances - or at least a summation of the good and the bad and the merely there (perhaps the worst offense of all). Said discussion to encompass such worthy topics as directorial lack of imagination/inspiration/theatricality/stage logic; non- and mis-directed acting; the sordid, pernicious, and dismal effects of television and film on stage productions; and the abuse of one's audience, whether through ignorance, laziness, dishonesty, or downright malice.

An introduction

Ten and one half weeks ago I departed the family homestead to make my way in the big city. I left with a prestigious internship, a manageable financial situation; and in some greater sense, a worldview: a scheme of ideals, thoughts, feelings, hunches, intuitions, and dissatisfactions about my world and the art that happens inside of it.

Ten and one half weeks later I have none of these things.

But don't despair, gentle reader: this would-be crisis has forced me to reconsider all I had known and reimagine all I could want, for me and for theatre. (Which is to say, hopefully/eventually for you, an audience, as well.)

This weblog hopes to chart these developments as they...develop - and to invite discussion where many often demur. You know, somewhere inside, that you didn't enjoy the performance you just witnessed; you feel forced into submission by the sheer and guilty enormity of your ticket cost; you want to talk, to complain, to dissect, and maybe even to redeem what you've seen, but you don't have the words.

Or maybe you're just that asshole who doesn't like anything - like me.

I like to bitch, whine, moan, ridicule, deride, flay, obfuscate, manipulate, deliberate, and irritate just as much as the next guy. I also know when to congratulate and to appreciate when something precious and fleeting has been given to me, handed from the stage to an enraptured and inarticulated audience. But I don't want these impulses to be checked at the auditorium door. I want them to lead somewhere, to something bigger.

I want a theatre that is expansive, inclusive, straining, and trascendent. I hope for a theatre that transports and renews. I work toward a big theatre.