Making The Ephemeral Permanent

Theatre’s liveness does not make it unique, but it does set it apart from the other major narrative art forms of books, film and television.  I’ve been thinking a lot about liveness lately, and it strikes me that there are ways in which the industrialization of theatre works against liveness’ power.  It may be a tradeoff worth making, but I don’t think we ever explore that we’ve made that trade off in the first place.

If theatre is a product to be consumed, or at least if it is approached that way, than it makes sense that you would want to have some quality control over that product.  An audience coming to see the show on a matinee on Wednesday is paying the same price as the audience Friday night, they should see a show that is identical in quality.  What this has given rise to, however, is the idea that they should see a show that is identical.  We “set” a play during rehearsal, refine it during previews and then the director skips town and the stage manager (and/or assistant) remain to make sure it is exactly the same.

Is this a positive choice we’ve made? Does making theatre transition from something in process to something semi-permanently fixed help it? Or does it instead diminish its liveness, the very thing it draws power from?

As a director, I have gone to see a show later in its run that I worked on and been semi-horrified at the changes (probably mainly imperceptable to the audience) that took place in the actor’s performances. So it’s not like I offer this as something I firmly come down on one side or the other of. I know that this is all reinforced by Equity rules, so this is more theoretical than anything else.

Or perhaps not.  I worked on a show as an AD where the director was at every performance and offered little notes at call time every night.  It was his company and the cast (all Equity members) went to grad school together. The show grew and improved throughout its run.  The staging didn’t change at all, but the characters got deeper and more nuanced as the show progressed. Often by late in the run, characters get less nuanced, flatter and more automatic.

Then again, perhaps long runs are partially to blame for this as well. 

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Good question. I've been frustrated by this both as a director and an audience member. Very few things seem *live* any more. Sometimes I feel its because we may be have hit the limits of the Stanislavski system or that we've accepted a very limited view of what is "real" in regards to human behavior. But then I see some awesome performance that transcends the limits of "training" and realize there's more to it.

I find myself waiting for theater to *Occur* (god, I love that phrase) and am often disappointed that whatever force of alchemy it takes to make that singular event occur never happens. That moment to moment thing, the feeling that time and space have bent in the course of a moment to the point you could reach out and touch a molecule, is very rare. It takes a great deal of attention and presence.

It is hard.

Onstage you have to process information coming at you from the audience and your interaction with other actors, the set, the sound, all the given variables at any one moment within you and without, with a clarity or at least a commitment to accepting that input in the moment and then making some decision about those impulses' content and choosing exactly what is the right thing to do in a matter of seconds. We hardly ever do this consciously or very rarely.

To bring it back down a bit: I always think and communicate to the actors that when something is "set," that we're at least establishing where the bar is, the note we're trying to hit. We may exceed those limits at one point or we may find it hard to maintain that standard at any given moment of any given night, but we've established what the limits are, what we're willing to accept and call a performance.

I don't know that you can do that kind of work when you're working quickly. Putting up a show in six weeks seems antithetical to this, but maybe not. I'm not sure where the disconnect is, but I feel it and am constantly trying to understand it.

[Paul Rekk]

You know, maybe it's just the circles I run in, but I would say the theatre that I encounter runs about 50% attempting to establish permanence through a run and 50% embracing the fluidity of the show throughout the run. And I'm talking about 4-6 weekend runs, some of which the director is seeing almost every performance.

As a director (and writer, for that matter), I very firmly fall in the camp that a show should be different every night. Stasis is false to me. However, as an actor I am willing to play the permanence game with those who are going that route, mainly because I don't see this a wall to rail against. There's already a wide spectrum of ways people are approaching this topic (again, at least in Non-Equity Chicago, there is). I wouldn't say anything about the choice 'we've' made, because it doesn't appear to me that any choice has been made.

And that's awesome.