What's In A Name

Sort of an addendum or perhaps a digression off of our conversation about meaning and purpose....

The thought struck me today rereading yesterday's posts and comments... I said that I wouldn't call Radiohole's Fluke a play, I thought it was a show, certainly, a live entertainment, a theatrical spectacle but not a play.  

Both Matt and 99 raised in the comments the question of what we call things and if our (and specifically my) conception of these boundaries are too narrow.   And this is an interesting question for me, one that sits at the nexus of the different viewpoints of writers and directors.

Let me start off by saying that for the most part I think something is a play if that's what the writer wants to call it.  I know that's not the most interesting, thought-provoking, comment-creating thing I could've said, but it's true.  If you want to call the thing you've written a play, go for it. There are plays that have been written but aren't intended to be performed (Manfred by Lord Byron, and a few of Ibsen's plays including Peer Gynt if memory serves), so even it being performed theatrically is not a prerequisite.  So certainly that something have some form of narrative or meaning or purpose (Three different things, I'm not equating them) shouldn't be a requirement either.  

At the same time it's worth noting what our audience's expectations are going to be when they decide to go see a work of art called "a play".  And for the most part, they're probably going to expect some form of narrative (not necessarily traditional or traditionally structured or linear or anything like that) and some kind of meaning.  Now, these expectations are not necessarily in place with an experimental theatre audience or someone going to the Ontological or PS122 or The Kitchen of course.  But for the most part, theatre-going audiences have these expectations.

These expectations in the post-Beckett age may very well be passe, and these expectations are certainly not the only things that matter nor should they govern your creation of your work but that doesn't make them exist any less.  And this is where my directorial viewpoint kicks in.  Part of my job is to look out for the audience's experience of the play, to set up their expectations properly, to create an environment in which they can come to the work and appreciate it.  So those expectations are expectations I have to keep in mind and consider. TO use an example: when we did The Amulet, we had to create this whole ritualistic environment surrounding the play to get the audience into its rhythms, its epic style and the impossible stage directions accomplished through pure metaphor. We didn't have to prep people for "this play has no narrative" because it did, but we did have to create an environment where the way that narrative progressed would feel natural and organic and true.

Or to use another example: The song Comedy Tonight was written in previews for A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum because the audience saw a bunch of people in togas with Roman names and weren't able to laugh 'cause they didn't know what they were watching.

Anyway, back to the point of what we call a play and Matt's new play.  Matt wants to challenge and expand our definition of what a play does and how it works, which is totally cool.  At the same time people are going to come to his play with certain expectations, expectations that would lead them to believe it's a "play about cancer" even though it's not because cancer is mentioned a lot in it.   Some other writers doing similar things have stopped calling their plays "plays". Ntozake Shange, for example calls both For Colored Girls and Spell #7 (again this is if memory serves) "Choreopoems". Which sends a pretty clear signal to both creative teams doing them and audiences "This is not going to work like what you think a play should work". Similarly, Henry Rollins calls himself "a spoken word artist" instead of a "stand-up comic" because although there is a great deal of comedy to his performances, some of it is serious and indeed when he gets serious he tells his audiences that's what he's doing now and he's sorry to be such a downer etc.

A few years ago I went to a benefit concert for the Kitchen.  One of the performers was the composer Robert Ashley who performed a piece made up entirely of spoken language for three performers (including him).  There was also according to the program digital manipulation of the voices (although to be honest it was almost entirely unnoticeable and consisted of reverb that occasionally hiccuped like a skipping CD).  The piece they performed was pure language, it used the phrase "schizophrenic person" rather similarly to how it sounds like Matt is using the word "cancer", it was very clear, since it was called a piece of "music" that the words "schizophrenic person" were being used for their musical value instead of their language value.  And the performers were also approaching the text musically (how does this sound? how to put together these sounds in a certain way? etc.) rather than theatrically (what is my action? what is my character doing here in this moment? who am i?).

None of this is to say that Matt should call his play something other than a play, and i hope that's obvious.  It's just interesting how much of an impact what you call something has on people's expectations of it, and when you defy those expectations how do you do it in a way that still allows the audience into the work?

I should also note that those expectations are culturally constructed and formed. Theatre functions very differently in different countries that have formed their own traditions and have their own histories, critical expectations etc. Certainly US theatre is a bit more conservative than many other countries when it comes to this stuff.