3PO

Saw Threepenny tonight. I don't really feel like discussing the production much, but it lead me to ponder this question:

Brecht really married deconstructionism and theater with the whole idea of the Alienation Effect. At the time, like putting a urinal in an art gallery, it was a real rebellion against a real problem with art. Now, however, alienating the audience from an empathic response to the work and deconstructing your drama are, shall we say, just another set of poses. Just as we sometimes forget that Naturalism is merely a style, we forget that deconstructism has become itself merely a style.

Given this, what are we to do in the theater now that deconstructionism is now another amongst many stylistic choices that can be deployed brilliantly (as in, say, WELL where the deconstructist aesthetic brilliantly and perfectly mirrors the themes of the play) or poorly or whatever?

(I ask this because I think in fiction there has been the realization that we need something that moves us, or tries to move us beyond the aesthetic of postmodernism while still grappling with the postmodern tradition. I think in theater we could be having that conversation more)

Comments

[Ian W. Hill]

Reconstructionism.

That is, taking all the pieces of what has been torn asunder in Art of the last 100 or so years, and putting it back together, but not necessarily in the same order or pattern it was originally in, so that certain underlying characteristics and connections, not only within the work but to the world around it, become more apparent.

Showing the mechanism of the system of the work, while at the same time enabling the work to provide that same old emotional/aesthetic "kick" that has been lost in the morass of cynicism that passes for "irony" and the inability to deal with the underlying emotion of a work that passes for "Brechtian distance."

[Abe Goldfarb]

What are we in the theater to do? Erm, I dunno, maybe MAKE STUFF. At this point, we're missing the forest for the trees. Threepenny's historical significance is, yes, tied in with the formal innovations Brecht employed. The lasting moral, artistic and political legacy of the thing is much more to do with the fact that Brecht was trying to say something he genuinely believed. Which is, of course, lost in the avalanche of post-modern theatrical japery that followed, aping the style but not absorbing the content. It's an easy mistake to make, and it looks like Scott Elliot's done it again.

In any case, fuck the question of how we proceed from here, just believe in what you're doing. Form will always follow content. Or at least it should.

[Col]

I actually think WELL hits you over the head so hard and relentlessly about what it's doing and how it's doing it that it is really annoying. I mean, I know I've seen & done a lot of downtown shows, and am more than familiar with pomo bells-n-whistles... but I was like, Jesus, how stupid do you think we are? Enough already. There were a couple of wonderfully dizzying moments but they were few and far between all the scaffoldings and explanations. My girl Christina Kirk was AWESOME in it though. Just AWESOME.

What is the next new aesthetic thing? We won't know until a few people are doing it or one person does it exceptionally and attentiongettingly well and then there will be a name for it, I think...

[Lucas Krech]

This is what I was getting to with talking about Networks over at my journal. The Networked Theory of the Stage as I envision it is similar to what Ian posits with his 'Use Everything.' It is a systemic approach that is not tied to a particualr style or genre but sees all styles and genre as potential tools.

It is about taking the tools from the past and looking at them a new and useing them in ways that they have never been used before. Although he is not talking about theatre per se, the following gets at the point. In Saul WIlliam's 'Coded Language' he says "today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies
into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry,
crafts, love, and love.
We enlist every instrument: Acoustic, electronic.
Every so-called race, gender, and sexual preference.
Every per-son as beings of sound to acknowledge their responsibility to
uplift the consciousness of the entire fucking World."

[m in brooklyn]

deconstruction is a word without a fixed meaning -- usually deployed in order to indicate anything that seems self-conscious or anti-naturalistic in the theater.

the word was originally used to descibe a certain kind of CRITICISM that sought to unearth hidden, covert, unconscious, encoded, or purposefully buried elements in a work of art (particularly literature).

why can't we just say "self-conscious" when that's what we're talking about?

and can we ban the word "metatheatrical" too?

plays have been calling attention to their own artificiality and undermining their own"illusionist" elements since aristophanes. it is a traditional, time-tested, and effective comic trope. it's not new to this or the last century.

a large part of brecht's genius (and he was a genius) was a REMINDER of the essential power of theater's live-ness ... he certainly wanted to use that power for arguably new ends -- as an awakener of political consciousness -- but his insight (like many moderns) was into something ancient and fundamental.

[isaac]

Hey just a quick note as we continue the conversation... as I've said previously here on the blog, I would appreciate it if people focus on engaging in the question asked and what people are saying rather than dismissing it. If you don't think the conversation is worthwhile, simply don't participate in it. If you think the conversation is problematic for some reason, express that in a way that constructively engages and addresses what nascent commuity we have here on Parabasis.

[m in brooklyn]

did't mean to sound snarky. very much enjoy the site and your thoughts. and you're definitely right that certain branches of the theatrical community need to move beyond formal self-consciousness to something that moves and provokes.

on the other hand, the majority of theatical practitioners give very little thought to formal questions, much less to ways that formal experiment can help change the world, as did brecht.

and clearly, you too give these questios serious thought. keep it up.

[fred]

a recent reply from a regional theatre...

" while I don't think they're right for the XXXXX right now,
I am a big fan of your writing and strongly encourage you to continue
sending your plays here. I like your writing because you actually deal
with ideas that are large in scope -- frankly, not many writers do these
days -- but it's the element of realism in your work that doesn't gear
it for us as much....."

so, should theatres have their own ideology about the formal nature of the work they perform, or should they respond more to content (and the form that it dictates..)?