Making Theater Matter

Happy New Year! I said that as of Jan. 1 I was going to do a little of non-tsunami blogging, and… well… here’s my first throw.

Over at George’s place, we have a conversation between George and the inimitable AC Douglas, in which Douglas asks:

"Would it be too elementary a matter to discuss on your weblog the importance of theater today, and why it should survive as an artform? I ask as one for whom the theater today seems a total anachronism, anything treated there better treated as a film. I know I must be wrong about that, but wonder what exactly about it is wrong (and I ask the question totally disregarding economic considerations, but ask in terms of aesthetics alone). So, is it too weenie a question to pose, and should I already know the answer but am so wooden-post ignorant of the aesthetics of theater that I don't?"

I don’t know AC as well as George does, so I can’t really answer the question “why should AC Douglas should go to the theater?” but I think he brings up some important and age old issues with the art that are worth grappling with.

Question One: Does Theater Matter?

Answer One: Of course not, silly!

I’d love to sit here at Parabasis central and argue that theater is vital for a rich culture, that theater is necessary to being a human being, that theater is, essentially, good for you, but I don’t have the heart anymore. I could make that argument in college, but I’m just sick of doing it. Don’t get me wrong—I believe that theater is vital for our cultural wellbeing and important to our humanity. It is, after all, the oldest art form, existing all over the world, and surviving much greater assaults than it does today. But tell people that often enough and you get what David Herskovitz called “medicine theater”—people going to the theater for the aesthetic equivalent of taking your medicine. None of this makes theater “matter”.

Theater doesn’t matter for one simple reason: almost no one thinks it matters. It is part of the art world’s record store bargain bin. Not in terms of price, of course (god no!) but it’s on that shelf in the back of the store that all but a few people ignore. The few are looking for the gems, the diamonds in the rough, and their tolerance for wading through big old turds to find the gems waxes and wanes. Theater, dance, poetry, opera, in fact, most art is in this bin.

So given this, why the hell should theater survive as an art form? What experience can it offer you that film and TV can’t?

As a director, I think about this question all the time. There’s no reason to be working in theater, where it is near impossible to make a living and you are confined to the bargain bin of aesthetic experience, if you are not in some way trying to make it more vital, more alive. We must investigate what it is that keeps people away, as George says, “We must take our art form as seriously as other artists take theirs,” and find what it can provide, and how we can take advantage of its unique strengths and weaknesses. AC Douglas doesn’t see theater that relies on theater’s uniqueness, and thus it is meaningless to him. For me, theater should survive because it is, at its best, the most complete art form around, and this completeness creates an opportunity to provide the audience with something new made out of the pieces of something old.

Theater is the most complete art form because it takes the elements of everything else around and presents these elements live and in three dimensions. When you go to see a play, you are seeing a sculpture, a dance piece, some music, fashion, poetry, painting all at once. These different art forms are placed in a tenuous balance by the creative artists and then presented for the audience. This balance doesn’t always work. Everything has to be in exactly the right place. This is one of the reasons the preview system has developed in theater, so that directors can get everything in front of an audience and revise the balance of various elements.

Film and television also combine different art forms, hold them in a tenuous collage, and spit them out for our entertainment, but there is something about theater’s liveness that makes it unique. This something is the most mysterious aspect of theater. What is the appeal of seeing live theater? Is it the capacity for a Shogun the Musical -like disaster? Is it the sweat on the actor’s brow? The unwrapping of butterscotch by the old lady behind you? Or is it, perhaps, that being in the same room as the performers forces a new kind of human reckoning, a commonality that flickering two dimensional representations of mega stars cannot provide? Truly great theater reaches out from beyond the stage and into your soul, and its completeness and its liveness can, at their best, engage you emotionally, physically, psychologically, intellectually, sensually and spiritually at the same time and, by doing this, make you for a brief moment a little more human, a little more alive, a little less alienated.

This experience is truly rare in the theater. Jesse Berger’s Pericles at 45 Below did it for me, as did the Broadway production of Millennium Approaches. This year, the closest I’ve gotten to that experience was A Thought About Raya at the Red Room in the East Village. This gift, the feeling of life for a couple of hours is the gift I want to give my audience. I don’t think I’ve accomplished it yet; if I could do it maybe once I would know that choosing directing as my vocation was worth it. How to provide this experience is the eternal question, as providing it consistently is the goal we must always fail at to be able to learn anything.

Comments

[angie]

hi my name is angie and i am 15 and a student at east mountain high school in New Mexico. i just read this article and thought it interesting. i am doing a project at my school called an inqury project and the question is why should theater matter? now by reading this i do admit that this person gives a lot of good reasons why it does not matter but i believe differently. like he said it is one of the oldest art forms in history so that gives reason right there that it should still "matter." theater is a way to put our lives behind us and live a better life through lies and meaningfull fairytails basically. thank you for reading my comment
if you could please email me i would really appreciate it because i would like to know more on this persons point of view on this matter
Angie