tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post114064628144316981..comments2024-02-27T16:59:54.089-05:00Comments on (The New) Theatre Ideas: Freedom, BabyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140933466378331992006-02-26T00:57:00.000-05:002006-02-26T00:57:00.000-05:00It may be also that intimacy is the thing that man...It may be also that intimacy is the thing that many people are seeking when visiting theater these days, and not finding: promised that theatrical person-to-person communication, in larger theaters they find only a sort of enacted movie. They want the one-on-one communion that the appeal to a broader audience denies them.<BR/><BR/>I really, truly believe that, to be effective in its most sublime manner again, theater must needs be small and intimate, for all the other art forms seem to reach for a broad generality that is simply, technically unavailable to the theatrical process. Aping the far superior spectacular techniques of film and television is a waste of time, film and television already has them. The time of the ancients has passed; when the theater of the Greeks was the only mass entertainment available, that communication obtained. Since then, the generality has been served in narrative performance by radio, film and television.<BR/><BR/>Experimentation in theater is an experimentation in perception. Why limit it only to those who seem to be an inner priesthood?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140904829222469862006-02-25T17:00:00.000-05:002006-02-25T17:00:00.000-05:00Scott, forgive me, but this strikes me as a weird ...Scott, forgive me, but this strikes me as a weird idea; you can't just pass around a process as if it's a new kind of software. (Though I suppose Grotowski did that kind of laboratory work, since he didn't want an audience at all, and his work has been widely influential.) There's something like an industry model here that makes me flinch, though; as if what matters is not the presence, carnality, excitement of the theatre itself, but what can be abstracted as "ideas", what is "useful". As you know, I am disturbed by utilitarian attitudes towards art - but I guess I'm gesturing yet again towards Sontag's Against Interpretation. Also, it seems that you're saying that the only point of theatre is ultimately to be popular, to reach bigger audiences (the rest is kind of just of specialist and ultimately minor interest), and that might not be the case; it is perfectly legitimate for theatre to appeal to small audiences, and much significant theatre has and still does just that, only seeking audiences of say between 50 and 200 people, because only with small audiences can an essential intimacy be maintained.Alison Croggonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140891345963515412006-02-25T13:15:00.000-05:002006-02-25T13:15:00.000-05:00Alison -- I wasn't saying only they would be inter...Alison -- I wasn't saying only they would be interested. What I was saying is that there ought to be a "laboratory" where theatre people can do pure research without concern for appeal to any audience other than those of peers. Innovations could then we widely distributed, and applied to pieces that would appeal to a larger group.Scott Waltershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04177922467901223790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140734800880721862006-02-23T17:46:00.000-05:002006-02-23T17:46:00.000-05:00Hmm. Isn't there something patronising in the assu...Hmm. Isn't there something patronising in the assumption that only theatrical practitioners would be interested in innovative theatre? I'm sure it's not true. The last Melbourne Festival had a program which leaned heavily on the innovattive - it was a great program with work from the US, Europe, Britain, Asia as well as here. And every show was absolutely packed out - and the majority of those audiences looked like a good slice of the GP. Maybe people actually like being challenged, puzzled, surprised, excited; it's something to discuss over the water cooler.Alison Croggonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140658635012467522006-02-22T20:37:00.000-05:002006-02-22T20:37:00.000-05:00"Now THAT would be an experimental theatre -- espe..."Now THAT would be an experimental theatre -- especially if it were followed afterwards by a discussion with the audience of artists about what worked, what didn't, and what other applications it might have to other works. Lacking that, if somebody would publish the results, so that others might benefit from the experiments."<BR/><BR/>Ah hah! A rationalist! I knew it all along.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140657837168506542006-02-22T20:23:00.000-05:002006-02-22T20:23:00.000-05:00Sorry for the misattribution, Joshua. I had cut a...Sorry for the misattribution, Joshua. I had cut and pasted some comments to use, and failed to identify them properly.<BR/><BR/>Also, you are correct, you were discussing your hometown folk. I was projecting you, as an artist, into that milieu and imagining the result. I know you moved to NYC to get away from those folks, and have a much different relationship with them than I suspect you would have with the hometown community.<BR/><BR/>To Alison, p'tit boo, and George: I hasten to tell you that I am not feeling particularly wounded or battered because of our recent discussions. As I said in my post, we have a relationship, and perhaps have earned the right to occasionally rip each other a new one. "Whooping my ass" was my way of signaling I still have my sense of humor about me.<BR/><BR/>As far as preaching to the choir, I think there is a place in theatre for that. There ought to be theatres where theatre people and other artists go to have their sensibilities really challenged, and the boundaries really pushed, and to see big risks happening. Now THAT would be an experimental theatre -- especially if it were followed afterwards by a discussion with the audience of artists about what worked, what didn't, and what other applications it might have to other works. Lacking that, if somebody would publish the results, so that others might benefit from the experiments.<BR/><BR/>I'm all about focused audiences.Scott Waltershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04177922467901223790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140654579816873602006-02-22T19:29:00.000-05:002006-02-22T19:29:00.000-05:00actually, I made a mistake - it was mattj's commen...actually, I made a mistake - it was mattj's comment - <BR/><BR/>Also, I didn't mean to say my audience watched Fear factor or American Idol, rather most of the people in my hometown do . . .<BR/><BR/>I'll shake them if it's worth it, no worry about a fat lip. That's something they should worry about, given the history there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140654342770103122006-02-22T19:25:00.000-05:002006-02-22T19:25:00.000-05:00The above comment you attributed to me was in fact...The above comment you attributed to me was in fact Matt Freeman's comment.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140654109156736492006-02-22T19:21:00.000-05:002006-02-22T19:21:00.000-05:002 points - 1) the comment "If my friend, whom I re...2 points - <BR/><BR/>1) the comment "If my friend, whom I respect, is just not getting it, I might grab his shoulders and shake him "Please, please, just listen!" I might say, "I have something important to tell you, forget everything else for just this one moment." I'm in his face, but I need to be there, because I care for him." is, I do not believe, a comment of mine. I think you may have attributed someone else's comment to me. I'll surf through and check, but I'm pretty sure. <BR/><BR/>2) I never said my audience is comprised of "backward ass country fucks" - I said my hometown was, not my audience, not any of my audience. (I'm pretty sure that most of are big fans of Fear Factor and American Idol, however) - it's distressing to me, Scott, that you assigned that statement to my audience. I was referring to a discussion we had about offensive statements, remember? I never said that was my audience. <BR/><BR/>And even if it was, so what? Don't you think this is what Jeff Foxworthy says during every one of his shows, the audience is backward and country LIKE ME! <BR/><BR/>I think you're confusing things - I'm telling you that in order to have freedom of expression, there must be some disrepect for someone at some point. Otherwise, it's not freedom.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140653410919514742006-02-22T19:10:00.000-05:002006-02-22T19:10:00.000-05:00Well, censorship wasn't the whole point of your po...Well, censorship wasn't the <I>whole</I> point of your post; I mischaracterize. Apologies for that.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140653088639522452006-02-22T19:04:00.000-05:002006-02-22T19:04:00.000-05:00And allow me also, Scott, to thank you for your co...And allow me also, Scott, to thank you for your comments. Again, quite well said.<BR/><BR/>Provocative characterizations of an audience, like "ignorant redneck backward-ass country fucks," are odd sorts of expression indeed: and in these words I sense a greater, more general hostility to a world than simply to a group of people in it. I believe too that it demonstrates a ... well, let's call it a modicum of reluctance to encounter the audience, at the very least in the sense of "encounter" that you mean, Scott.<BR/><BR/>And I do sigh again because I do recognize in all this, going back a few days to the who's-radical-and-who's-not debate which just proved in essence how insufficient these labels are, a way in which our consciousnesses are all affected, in one way or another, by Late Capitalism, the spirit of which is inescapable as it worms our way even into our very vocabularies, even those of the radical (if that radical's not paying careful attention). It has become our unconscious <I>lingua franca</I>. A large part of the communitarian spirit has its origin, after all, in Adam "The Invisible Hand" Smith's <I>The Theory of Moral Sentiments</I> (an absolutely fascinating document, by the way), in which the spirit of capital lays the base for the spirit of community. Or the other way around, always hard to tell with Smith.<BR/><BR/>This isn't to say that communitarianism isn't simply a subsumation or a co-optation of human activity according to a capitalist vocabulary (though I think it might be). And a post-industrial capitalism, the sort which Adorno postulates as responsible for the fractures of the 20th-century modernist spirit and practice (and, tragically, as inevitable), contains the seeds of destruction of the community, as I think we may all agree.<BR/><BR/>And the hatred and revilement contained in this Late Capitalism, so at odds with a socialist perspective, more perhaps than Early and Middle Capitalism, emerges oddly indeed. It emerges lately on theater blogs. It emerges with the assumption that the market is a good, or at least that cooperation with the market is valuable to art. It emerges with the emphasis on "professionalism," as if we should bring back the competition of the craft guilds (or, alternatively, cut ourselves off from the community by defining the rest of it as "non-professional," whatever that may be, or by characterizing those with whom we disagree as "unprofessional" or immature). It emerges with phraseology like "ignorant redneck backward-ass country fucks," speaking of your classist characterizations.<BR/><BR/>So what does the artist do with his freedom of speech, which was the whole point of your post, Scott? In what sense is speech responsible or irresponsible, and is that responsibility defined (as so much else is), unconsciously, by the spirit of Late Capitalism?<BR/><BR/>I do believe in control, and texture, and compassion, and discipline of chaos in the service even of presenting a vision of violent chaos: and the best artists always, of course, negotiate with self-censorship, with the fear of saying the unsayable. Those playwrights and dramatists I admire have the wherewithal to craft that unsayable so that it can rather miraculously be said and even understood. This is, at least for me, a central aim of art. And, all this being said, there can be no more dangerous repression than self-repression; the glory is in release and freedom. Yes, we all, I hope, respect that.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140648583826217492006-02-22T17:49:00.000-05:002006-02-22T17:49:00.000-05:00And also, I do see plenty of applauding. I don't t...And also, I do see plenty of applauding. I don't think it's out of balance. But frankly, we grow more from being told we're full of shit then being applauded. That's just how it is.DLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11971226704327883196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140648436188840422006-02-22T17:47:00.000-05:002006-02-22T17:47:00.000-05:00Well said Scott... And please know, that "whopping...Well said Scott... <BR/>And please know, that "whopping your ass" is not the intent. If that was my intent, I would be a reactionary and that's not what I am trying to do. <BR/>Ifeel the same way about anonymous comments.... <BR/>To me, it doesn't matter if it's written, i try to only say things on blogs that I would be ok saying in person. <BR/><BR/>Know that I respect you and feel enriched from all the conversations back and forth !<BR/>Cheers.DLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11971226704327883196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16876687.post-1140647586244858862006-02-22T17:33:00.000-05:002006-02-22T17:33:00.000-05:00Again hurriedly - the question underneath yours I ...Again hurriedly - the question underneath yours I think Scott is, are we speaking only to the converted? That's a good question, with many possible responses...yes, maybe, and maybe no...<BR/><BR/>I still think you mischaracterise in many cases provocation with disrespect: they are not the same thing, and in intelligent work, work with integrity, that very provocation can be expressive of profound respect. But, frankly, there is a reason I write popular genre novels, and not just because I want to make money. It grew out of a feeling that I wanted a lot of young people to read what I had to say, because on the whole I've given up on adults. They are fixed and damaged, and I realised a long time ago that stupidity is probably the most intransigent cause of damage to this world. And this damaged world is what we're handing to young people. Being a writer, there's actually not much I can do (futility seems to go with the territory); but perhaps I can suggest that some things are all the same worth struggling for. Some of my readers (to my surprise, frankly) go on to read my poems, which are a different kettle of fish entirely; but I find a hope in that.<BR/><BR/>At the same time, I see in a larger sense that possibilities of human expression are part of a larger freedom. Not just symbolic of it, part of it. That's why I think art is deeply political. That's why governments try to suppress it. It always suggests other ways of thinking; and the possibility of being offensive is, and must be, always part of that. What are we afraid of?Alison Croggonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com