Helping the Audience, Part 2

Back on October 5th, I wrote and admiring post, "Helping the Audience to Appreciate Our Work", about Jeffrey Jones' essay in American Theatre entitled Thinking About Writing About Thinking About New Plays: Or, How the Visual Arts Audiences Got Comfortable with Radical Innovation, While Theatre Audiences Didn’t. I wrote: "The model he asks us to consider to solve the question “How can anyone ever get an audience to accept and enjoy new and difficult work?” is that of the visual arts, where during the rise of Modernism patrons were taught a “handful of terms and concepts…with which to discuss the work.” As a result of acquiring this vocabulary, the now-educated patrons “are suddenly and magically able to discuss and understand [the difficult work of art] – and, lo, the scales fall from their eyes and they see…” The vehicle for this revelation is the gallery’s 50-page catalog whose “actual purpose…is to provide an essay that places the work-at-hand in the context of that shared set of core terms and concepts.” “Theatre,” he goes on, “has spent almost no effort or energy in defining, let alone disseminating, a core set of terms and concepts by which new plays might be discussed an understood.” And you know, I think he’s right. And what a refreshing viewpoint!"

This month in American Theatre there is a letter from Benjamin Lloyd skewering Jones' essay. "Like many other highbrow artists," Lloyd writes, "Mr. Jones bangs his spoon loudly and complains that no one likes the theatre he likes....But then he proceeds to the odious position that it's because we are all too stupid to get the theatre he likes, and need thick, jargon-laden programs written by more theatratti to explain it to us. Obnoxious!" He goes on "When I feel like no one likes the theatre I like, I try to find out how to make what I like likable to my audience." And he concludes: "Those of us who create theatre that needs explaining are doomed to irrelevancy."

I sympathize with Mr. Lloyd, and in fact my gut response to Jones' essay had a similar flavor. As someone who directs, I had always been loath to provide even a "Note from the Director" for the program under the notion that if I'd done my job well, the audience should be able to "get" what is there without my help. I tended to agree with Lloyd: "It is not my job to lecture my audience..."

But what Mr. Jones suggests is that, especially with new work that stretches conventions, the artists provide the audience with the tools to more fully understand and appreciate what they are seeing -- in short, to help them enjoy themselves more. Why is this objectionable? When you buy most products, they come with an instruction manual so that you know how to use it. A trip to the computer section of the local bookstore reveals extremely long volumes about how to use Microsoft Word, or Windows, or Excel. Are these books insults to the public's intelligence? Should they be left to their own devices, clicking their way around in some sort of software version of the game "Myst"? Or rather, aren't they books that help me to uncover all the power in the program, and to fully utilize what is there?

Theatre is not easy. It goes by quickly, and you can't rewatch the pieces that you didn't get the first time. Why is it an insult to the audience to give them some guideposts, maybe even a little map, to help them navigate the trip, especially when the terrain is challenging and unfamiliar? If we don't do so, audiences will be confused, and rarely does confusion by itself lead to revelation (I'm putting aside those pieces in which confusion is the ultimate goal). It isn't that audiences can't appreciate new approaches, but rather that they need help reorienting themselves in the theatrical landscape. In fact, by providing audiences with a few tools, the artist is actually doing what Lloyd thinks should be done, trying "to figure out how to make what I like likable to my audience." Mastery of the new is enjoyable, no matter how conservative the audience!

As anyone who has been reading this blog knows, I object to artists having a hostile attitude toward the audience, but that doesn't mean simply giving them whatever they are used to, or even "meet[ing] them halfway" as Mr Lloyd suggests. I think artists should often be trying new things (or making old things new again), and stretching the form, and venturing into new areas. To not do so leads to a moribund art form. We send scouts ahead to describe the path and what to expect as we go along it, not to leave us behind in the dust. When an artist tries something uncoventional, it seems friendly, not "obnoxious," to shine a light along the new path.

In this case, I think Mr Lloyd missed the boat.

Bamboozled

I don't know whether I have mentioned this in the past, but in addition to my regular teaching load, I also teach a course each semester at the maximum security prison about an hour from Asheville. This semester, I have been teaching a course called "The Legacy of the Harlem Renaissance." We read from the 1920s works of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, as well as the work of artists who seem to have inherited the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Amiri Baraka's Dutchman, Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe. The primary theme that weaves through the course is the representation of African-Americans in the arts, as well as WEB DuBois' idea of "double consciousness" and his argument with Langston Hughes over how to represent black experience.

As a culminating class, this Monday we watched Spike Lee's brilliant film Bamboozled. If you haven't seen this film, I recommend it highly. It is the story of Pierre Delacroix (played by Damon Wayans), a Harvard-educated TV producer whose white boss informs him that his shows are not "black enough." Angered by his boss' attitude, Delacroix decides to get himself fired (he can't resign due to a 5-year contract) by pitching an idea for the most extremely offensive "black" show he can think of: "ManTan: the New Millennium Minstrel Show," complete with blackface, a watermelon patch set, tap dancing, and racist stereotype after racist stereotype. In a plot twist similar to The Producers, Delacroix is horrified to find that his boss loves the idea, and tells him to go into production. The show becomes a national sensation, with studio audiences, both black and white, arriving to see the show in blackface and proudly proclaiming, in the pre-show warmup, to being niggers. Like Dr. Faustus, Delacroix ends up selling his soul to the devil for wealth, fame, and power, and like Faustus ultimately ends up being dragged into hell.

As I said above, I think this film is brilliant. But as I drove home, I found myself wondering how it fit into many of the things I have written on this blog. Several of my students noted that they thought the message of the film was "You can't escape the power of money," followed by the conclusion, "You just need to make sure you get yours." They were not angered by what they saw, or motivated to change the racist stereotypes Lee says lurks barely beneath the surface of American society, but rather they came away with a sense of hopelessness. I have written that I think art ought to help people to find order and meaning in experience, to present an option to the speed and abrasiveness of everyday culture. This film is as abrasive as the culture, and seems to be an angry expression of frustration at the ultimate corruption of everybody. It really doesn't fit into my artistic world.

And yet, I think it is a brilliant film. It doesn't fit my stated aesthetic values, yet I think it is an excellent work of art. How to accomodate this seeming contradiction?

In one way, I value it because Lee has a complex moral vision. Despite the central theme of selling one's soul, the film is not a moral melodrama where the Good People confront the Bad People and lose (a melodramatic tragedy). Rather, each character is flawed: white as well as black, educated as well as uneducated, rich as well as poor, powerful as well as powerless. Indeed, it is interesting to look at the central character as standing in for Lee himself, and the dangers that he faces each time he makes a film in Hollywood -- the temptation to sell his soul for success. No hands are clean in this film. Lee's Swiftian thrusts skewers not only white TV execs, but also (and perhaps most brutally) black revolutionaries (in this case, a group called the Mau-Maus, who are simultaneously dumb as a rock and dangerous as a rocket). Lee's eye is critical, and unblinking.

So I ended up questioning my values, both personal and aesthetic. And perhaps ultimately that is what good art does: makes you go into your philosophical closet and try on all the clothes to see how they look with this new addition -- how does this old pair of pants look with this new shirt? If those of you who have written about making an audience "uncomfortable" mean this -- mean providing the impetus for the audience to reflect upon its assumptions and suppositions -- then I can walk along your road with you quite happily. Bambaoozled certainly made me think and think again, and that was a real pleasure.

Back Soon

It is the last week of classes here, and things are crazy! I will be back soon with a post or two.

Follow-Up: Thanksgiving Sermon

Check out Isaac's Thanksgiving Sermon over at Parabasis. Great stuff.

Thanksgiving Wishes

To everyone who visits this blog, and to everyone who loves theatre and who gives their energy to creating works of art, and to everyone who attends plays and helps to create the circle of energy that makes theatre a special art form, and to everyone who does what they can to encourage artists to develop their work, and to the teachers who devote their energy and thoughts to the growth of young people learning through the arts, to theatre bloggers from San Diego to New York to Australia who devote their time and thoughts to maintaining a conversation about a living art form, and to the community that surrounds us from the local to the national whose commitment to freedom allows artists to reflect the outer world and express their inner world -- to all, I wish a Happy Thanksgiving.

Help with Play Suggestions

The Drama Department where I teach has decided to try to plan our seasons two years in advance. The way we decided to start this process was to come up with eight "themes" (we do four shows a year), and to find plays that fit the themes. I will put the themes below -- if you have any suggestions of plays that fit these themes, including your own, please share your ideas. The themes are:

Courage
Desire
The Human Condition
Love
Memory and Imagination
Personal Responsibility
Survival
Wisdom

Experiment

Things have been fairly quiet around here lately -- mainly because I have been so darned cranky lately. I posted something about how NY sucks, which, after further review (and some friendly basking from fellow bloggers), I decided would be best if it were removed. Thank God for the delete function.

Here's the problem: I haven't had a new idea for about a week! It is nearing the end of the semester, and my brain is kind of crisp around the edges. My lack of mental activity is getting a bit disturbing, though.

But let me post an idea I had about a week ago. Now, this is not a universal or a normative idea -- I am not asking anyone else to adopt this idea. It is my little experiment. So why post it? Because I'd love some suggestions about how to improve the idea, and my readers seem to be bright folk.

In the Spring, my drama department is doing a project aclled "Stage Left." Instead of doing a play on our mainstage, we are all mounting small productions that have only one rule: they can't be done in a traditional theatre space (thus, Stage Left: we have left the stage. We academics are damned clever, no?). My contribution to this farrago is something I am calling "Living Room Theatre." Taking a page from Czech playwright Pavel Kohout (dramatized by Stoppard in Kahout's Macbeth), about half dozen students and I will be creating small "chamber pieces" that are designed to fit into a suitcase and be performed in living rooms. We are making ourselves available to individuals or groups at no cost. The only rule is that the students must be allowed to stay for the social events preceding or following the performance. I want the students to make personal contact with their audience, and explore how such an experience is different than performing in a larger, more formal venue.

Last week, I had an idea to embroider on this idea. Several years ago, I discovered the World Cafe. The World Cafe is an approach to community building and problem-solving that asks what if:

The future is born in webs of human conversation?
Compelling questions encourage collective learning?
Networks are the underlying pattern of living systems?
Human systems—organizations, families, communities—are living systems?
Intelligence emerges as the system connects to itself in diverse and creative ways?
Collectively, we have access to all the wisdom and resources we need?

The idea is to explore "questions that matter" in the following form. Put people into small groups of three or four around a table. Give them a large piece of butcher block paper and some colored markers. Give them the question to be explored, and have them explore it together, drawing and writing their ideas on the paper. After a certain amount of time, one of the group stays at the table while the other members go to different tables. Now assembled into new groups, the process continues using as a starting point what the previous group wrote and drew. Through this process, a group of people can come to know each other, and use their multiple perspectives and creativity to address a common problem. At some point, each table "reports out" to the group as a whole.

It occurred to me that this might be added to my Living Room Theatre concept. There was a recent report, discussed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which investigated how the motives of audience members differed from art form to art form. said that "68 percent of theatergoers surveyed said they attended plays as a way of socializing." This got me to thinking that theatres really don't attempt to facilitate such socializing very often. There are the occasional talkbacks, which are formal and usually directed at a central facilitator (I have done this several times for North Carolina Stage Company, for instance). But what if there was a way that audience members could be encouraged to talk to each other? To use the performance as an excuse to connect about the ideas, emotions, and viewpoints of the play?

And so I am thinking of using my "Stage Left" project to explore this model. The students and I will choose plays that might lead to a discussion -- perhaps plays that are open-ended, or alternatively plays that express a very strong viewpoint that could serve as the leaping off point for a conversation. I think these plays should probably be short -- perhaps one-acts, I don't know -- in order to allow time for discussion. I think that the actors and others bringing the play should also be participants in this process, again as a way of encouraging communication between audience and artist.

Do you have any ideas how this might be fine tuned? Do you have any suggestions for plays that might be intriguing? Right now, I am thinking about some Yeats one-acts, like Death and the Fool or Purgatory. I don't think I want political plays, but I don't know. I welcome any comments and suggestions.