A and B

Why cannot I not deal with realism and/or naturalism in the theatre?

Realism, especially, demands a structuring of a performance that gives to the audience the appearance of inevitability.

Inevitability -- the inability to evade. Unable to escape. Inevitability finally leads to death.

Realism hinges on "transitions" and psychology to connect every single dot in a mostly linear fashion to give the appearance of inevitability, part of its appearance of being "real." That where you start and where you end in a play, and everything in between, will always essentially be the same, which is to say, will appear the same every night.

This kills the fight. This makes every ministration in the "real life" of a realistic play mean nothing, have no result, other than to connect moment A/the beginning/life to moment B/the ending/death. With little awareness of such, because no one steps out of a realistic play to say:

To-morrow, to-morrow, and to-morrow
creeps in its petty pace from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time,
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death.

At least Beckett was honest about the nothingness in between, so honest to show that that is really all we are truly aware of. We don't know, we can't remember moment A, because no one can remember their own birth; and no one knows when moment B might occur, when one will die. All we have is the time in between.

Realistic theatre cannot portray action or choice because it believes it knows when, where, how, why, etc., about moments A and B. Moment A is irrelevant. Moment B is inevitable. Whatever action and choice connects the two must "make sense."

It must "make sense" to comfort the audience, to assure them that how they live their lives will not lead them ultimately to a place of fear and uncertainty at the last, or in the now, but especially at the very, very last. This is a peculiar and unnoticed effect of our culture's infathomably deeply-ingrained notion of religion, particularly monotheistic religion; without which most people's worlds would make absolutely no sense, and moment B would not be just non-inevitable but downright obvious and terrifyingly immediate.

Non-realistic ("non-traditional") theatre assumes nothing about moment A or moment B. There is the beginning of the performance, and the end of the performance. What happens in between is a container for choice and action which fly in the face of inevitability, which erase linear time to extend beyond the beginning and ending of the performance and even try to pass our ultimate, but unknowable, points A and B of reference.

It is a dream of flight and fear. It tempts death and scorns birth in an attempt to transcend existence in the quet for true life, the very opposite and archenemy of pitiable "real life."

"The Right to Pleasure"

You would think that I go mad with grief
when the white sails fill and the keel cuts
the waters like a knife honed on whetstone:
that’s the way you’re taught to interpret these signs–
matted hair, the salt-dirt lines where sweat has run,
hands that feed the mouth but will not wipe it.
But when my love decides to go and then is gone,
I can still taste him, bitter in the throat; I still
feel the weight of his body as he fights sleep.
I do not fight it: on the contrary, I live there,
and what you see in me that you think grief
is the refusal to wake, that is to say, is pleasure:
qui donne du plaisir en a, and so if
when he couldn’t sleep in that long still night
you sensed it and woke to show him how
to unfasten each and every button, then it is
promised you, even when he goes--


Jessica Fisher, New Yorker, p 72, 1/8/2007



For Evangeline to lament. A letter?

Amazing un/mis-remembered thoughts

Had some very potent notions bubbling in the head this weekend, but I now can't remember any of them, except that certains of them were explosive. I need to keep a pad and paper around all the time, but most especially when I'm high.

I may be working on an outdoor production of Macbeth with the Red Door Theatre in Queens. In October. It sounds cool, however, it is a 7 person "adaptation." I'm fine with doing it with 7 people, but let's not cut anything and see what happens, hmm? Also, though how unlikely it would be to get a the derangement/ouragan show up this fall now, it would have to be in October to do it in Lasker Pool, at least. It opens as a skating rink in November. So those would coincide/conflict. I suppose if I had a tad more ambition and got my shit in order this wouldn't be a choice.

Somewhere recently I read (probably on someone else's blog) that Richard Eyre, who directs often at the National Theatre in London and made that lovely film Notes on a Scandal (ha!) plus the genuinely lovely Stage Beauty, once asked Sir Peter Hall if he could assist him. And Sir Peter told him to be no one's assistant, or you end up a repetitor. I don't know if that's necessarily my case, as I'm extremely overconfident and hypercritical 89% of the time, but I suppose it would be different working with someone on Sir Peter's level, versus an outdoor Macbeth in Queens directed by "Who?"

I'm all moved which is exciting and fun. Must indulge in the TV and then stop it stop it stop it.

Can't wait for a coast-of-Massachusetts holiday this weekend.

Hitting major job fatigue and want to move on to something else. I have 15 weeks left here! (Including this one). Plus, is there ever real money in my life? You know the answer, I'm sure, dear reader. I can't keep spending time with new-to-the-city friends b/c the money just evaporates in their still-honeymoon/vacation phase. Argh! But: I think I will start saving up each week to do brunch, b/c that's amazing to my soul.

Watched What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? It was almost worth it for those last fifteen minutes. Almost. Mostly it just made me want to watch Sunset Boulevard.

These monstrous deeds do not exceed

Who did not love that J.K. Rowling prefaced Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with the following from The Libation Bearers (or Choephori from the Oresteia by Aeschylus)?

Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death and the stroke that hits the vein,
the haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief, the curse no man can bear.

But there is a cure in the house and not outside it, no,
not from others but from them, their bloody strife.

We sing to you, dark gods beneath the earth.
Now hear, you blissful powers underground - answer the call, send help.
Bless the children, give them Triumph now.

I sure as fuck did.

Also reminded me of the Orestes/Electra bit in Ariel View (how did it go?):
"Pour out my birthright...something something..."
"Kill our mother/father/someone..."
and then Elizabeth Godley (yes!):
"...and then -- go free!"

I have always wondered who/what stands in for Iphigenia in Hamlet. From whence all of Denmark's bloody strife? Is there an Iphigenia figure in The Spanish Tragedy? Anybody?

Well, Hamlet doesn't follow Oresteia particularly well toward the end anyway. Hamlet/Orestes doesn't kill Gertrude/Clytaemnestra, Claudius/Aegisthus does. And the Furies/Fates don't chase down to prosecute Hamlet/Orestes so much as he gets killed by Laertes/Pylades. (Am I thinking on this right?) All for the continued usurption of the throne of Denmark by Fortinbras? Damnit, none of this is following now. I think I still like Oresteia better than Hamlet (it sure moves faster, sometimes). Hamlet/Orestes in love with Ophelia/Electra? Hmmm...brother/sister love? Grrrr...I can't make this work.

Insurance is the most bloodletting industry I know.
Inanity leeches the spirit from my veins.
The boredom is existential.