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.
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