On the recommendation of Brian, I have read Suzan-Lori Parks' essay "Elements of Style," which is published in The America Plays and Other Works. He was certainly right -- great stuff! I will pass it along to my students.
Some gems:
"As a writer my job is to write good plays; it's also to defend dramatic literature against becoming 'Theatre of Schmaltz.' For while there are several playwrights whose work I love love love, it also seems that in no other form of writing these days is the writing so awful -- so intended to produce some reaction of sorts, to discuss some issue: the play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline, trying so hard to be hip; so uninterested in the craft of writing: the simple work of putting one word next to another onstage. Theatre seems mired in the interest of stating some point, or tugging some heartstring, or landing a laugh, or making a splash, or wagging a finger. In no other artform are the intentions so slim! As a playwright I try to do many things: explore the form, ask questions, make a good show, tell a good story, ask more questions, take nothing for granted."
.......................
"theatre
Jesus. Right from the jump, ask yourself: "Why does this thing I'm writing have to be a play?" The words 'why,' 'have' and 'play' are key. If you don't have an answer then get out of town. No joke. The last thing America needs is another lame play."
.......................
"Most playwrights who consider themselves avant-garde spend a lot of time badmouthing the more traditional forms. The naturalism of, say, Lorraine Hansberry is beautiful and should not be dismissed simply because it's naturalism. We should understand that realism, like other movements in other artforms, is a specific response to a certain historical climate. I don't explode the form because I find traditional plays 'boring' -- I don't really. It's just that those structures never could accomodate the figures which take up residence inside me."
Monday, November 20, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Clurman and Enthusiasm
In preparation for a lecture on the Group Theatre, I have been reading Wendy Smith's fantastic Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940, and Harold Clurman's even-more-fantastic Fervent Years. Of the dozens of quotations that have me inspired, here is one that particularly resonates with what I have been thinking about and writing lately:
"To what human beings, one might ask, were theatre ideas to be valuable. First, to the theatre artists themselves -- to actors, since they were the theatre's crucial factor; actors were citizens of a community before they took on their dubious connection with 'art.' Second, theatre ideas were to be important to an audience, of which the actors were a focus, for it is the audience (seen as a 'community') that has given birth to its artists. The criterion of judgment for what is good or bad in the theatre -- be it in plays, acting, or staging -- does not derive from some abstract standard of artistic or literary excellence, but from a judgment of what is fitting -- that is, humanly desirable -- for a particular audience." (italics mine; from Fervent Years)
Clurman condemned the board members of the Theatre Guild: "They had this fixation on pessimism. If you felt BADLY and said life stinks! it STINKS! you were really an advanced person. There'e something about pessimism that gives people an aura of grandeur. If you think everything is hopeless and down and wretched and dirty, then you really are an exalted person. I've never understood why." (quoted in Smith, p 24)
"If theatre is an art, if it has any value beyond decorating the emptiness of our existence, it too, collective art thought it be, must have an analogous singleness of meaning and direction. It too must say something, it too must create from the chaos which is the common experience of its members, an expression that will have, like that of the individual artist, an identity and significance with which people, sharing the common experience, may sense their kinship and to which they can attach themselves." (italics original; quoted in Smith, p 7)
Clurman taught at CUNY back in the 70s, and a good friend of mine, Alvin Goldfarb (co-author of The Living Theatre and expert in Holocaust theatre), had classes with him. It must have been extraordinary! To warm your mind and soul through the heat of a man with a vision of what theatre should be, and who spoke those ideas in words of passion and intensity -- I can think of few things that could nourish the artistic heart more fully.
I am reminded of Jimmy Porter's plea in Look Back In Anger for "a little ordinary enthusiasm," and his frustration with the fact that "Nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm." Clurman had enthusiasm, he thought, he cared, he believed. He was not afraid to look silly because of his passion, he was not afraid to not be cool.
Is there someone who carries on that tradition? I sometimes feel it when I read some of Kushner's essays. Are there others that you can point me toward -- other visionaries who are putting forward a passionate, committed vision of today's theatre that echoes Clurman's 75-year-old prophecies? If I wanted to inspire my young students with a contemporary vision of theatre's power and potential, where should I look? Is there anyone who has transcended the hip postmodern cynicism to propose something that can be believed in? Is there somebody who embodies enthusiasm?
"To what human beings, one might ask, were theatre ideas to be valuable. First, to the theatre artists themselves -- to actors, since they were the theatre's crucial factor; actors were citizens of a community before they took on their dubious connection with 'art.' Second, theatre ideas were to be important to an audience, of which the actors were a focus, for it is the audience (seen as a 'community') that has given birth to its artists. The criterion of judgment for what is good or bad in the theatre -- be it in plays, acting, or staging -- does not derive from some abstract standard of artistic or literary excellence, but from a judgment of what is fitting -- that is, humanly desirable -- for a particular audience." (italics mine; from Fervent Years)
Clurman condemned the board members of the Theatre Guild: "They had this fixation on pessimism. If you felt BADLY and said life stinks! it STINKS! you were really an advanced person. There'e something about pessimism that gives people an aura of grandeur. If you think everything is hopeless and down and wretched and dirty, then you really are an exalted person. I've never understood why." (quoted in Smith, p 24)
"If theatre is an art, if it has any value beyond decorating the emptiness of our existence, it too, collective art thought it be, must have an analogous singleness of meaning and direction. It too must say something, it too must create from the chaos which is the common experience of its members, an expression that will have, like that of the individual artist, an identity and significance with which people, sharing the common experience, may sense their kinship and to which they can attach themselves." (italics original; quoted in Smith, p 7)
Clurman taught at CUNY back in the 70s, and a good friend of mine, Alvin Goldfarb (co-author of The Living Theatre and expert in Holocaust theatre), had classes with him. It must have been extraordinary! To warm your mind and soul through the heat of a man with a vision of what theatre should be, and who spoke those ideas in words of passion and intensity -- I can think of few things that could nourish the artistic heart more fully.
I am reminded of Jimmy Porter's plea in Look Back In Anger for "a little ordinary enthusiasm," and his frustration with the fact that "Nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm." Clurman had enthusiasm, he thought, he cared, he believed. He was not afraid to look silly because of his passion, he was not afraid to not be cool.
Is there someone who carries on that tradition? I sometimes feel it when I read some of Kushner's essays. Are there others that you can point me toward -- other visionaries who are putting forward a passionate, committed vision of today's theatre that echoes Clurman's 75-year-old prophecies? If I wanted to inspire my young students with a contemporary vision of theatre's power and potential, where should I look? Is there anyone who has transcended the hip postmodern cynicism to propose something that can be believed in? Is there somebody who embodies enthusiasm?
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Favorite Posts
Yet another crazy week (will it never end?). In lieu of writing a new post, I'd like to draw your attention to an old one that I looked back at and found worth repeating. I hope you find it intriguing.
http://theatreideas.blogspot.com/2005/10/attempt-at-synthesis-analogy.html#links
http://theatreideas.blogspot.com/2005/10/attempt-at-synthesis-analogy.html#links
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
About Theatre During a Time of War
"It is now often said that theatrical entertainment in general is socially justified in this dark time as a means of relaxing the strain of reality, and thus helping us keep sane. This may be true, but if more were not true, if we felt no deeper value in dramatic art than entertainment -- we could hardly have the heart for it now. One faculty, we know, is going to be of vast importance to the half-destroyed world -- indispensble for its rebuilding -- the faculty of creative imagination. That spark of it which has given this group of ours such life and meaning as we have is not so insignificant that we should let it die. The social justification which we feel to be valid now for makers and players of plays is that they shall help to keep alive the world with the light of imagination. Without it the wreck of the world that was cannot be cleared away, and the new world shaped."
-- George Cram "Jig" Cook -- Provincetown Players, 1918
-- George Cram "Jig" Cook -- Provincetown Players, 1918
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
If You'd Like to Hear My Voice...
Mirror-Up-To-Nature interviewed me on their podcast about the Broadway.com criticism issue at: http://dumbshow.mirroruptonature.com/uncategorized/episode-12/ Check it out.
Nobody's Buying
The defense of arts funding rages throughout the blogosphere. Libertarians say the arts should be self-supporting, the artists say if it's valuable it can't support itself. The conservatives attack liberal bias, the liberals attack narrow-mindedness.
My lack of sympathy with the basic tenets of libertarianism, with its naive and ahistorical faith in the benevolence of the free market, makes me unwilling to even mount an attack. It is like talking about music with the tone deaf. The guy who wrote, on Allison Croggon's blog, about being "dragged" by his wife to a production of Metamorphoses, which he attributes to some old "Greek" play (Greek? Greek???) and which disappointed him because it didn't have any nudity in it...well, it is representative, and arguing with a man standing at the intersection of Ignorant Street and Braindead Blvd really isn't worth the candle.
But I can hardly resist expressing my wonder at the defenses for the value of art being mounted by my blogosphere comrades in arts. At the drop of a grant proposal, everybody is willing to wax eloquent about all the beautiful things the arts add to life. A few paragraphs from Allison are emblematic:
All this discussion of "continuous pleasure" and "meaning and dignity" and "creating a sense of community and relationship" and "beauty in one of its myriad manifestations" -- well, it just chokes me up. The thing that impresses me about these paragraphs, and the many, many others just like it that are mouthed in defense of arts funding, is that the feelings expressed are so...balanced. In the midst of this Hallmark card image of the arts, there is a little gesture toward "questioning a national identity" (balanced, of course, by "establishing" that identity), but only a small gesture, and there is talk of "understanding ourselves as human beings," which sounds beautifully soul-enhancing. But the fact is that, when the rubber meets the road and the actors meet the stage, the people of the blogosphere don't give a damn about beauty and meaning and pleasure and dignity, and if you mention the word "responsibility" in terms of something like the creation of "a sense of community and relationship" they turn absolutely blue in the face and start raising images of Joseph McCarthy -- no, what they care about getting up people's noses, about sneering at just about any values at all. The true value of a work of art is readily established by measuring the degree to which it tweeks the noses of...well, of just about everybody except the artists themselves.
Over at "A Poor Player," Tom wonders about the lack of right wing art, and the relentlessly liberal slant of the arts in general. Well, I suppose one might point to the art that IS supporting itself and say that is right wing art. I stopped watching 24, for instance, when I found myself pulling FOR Jack to eject the ACLU lawyer who was there to prevent the CIA from torturing someone. Most Hollywood films are decidely right wing, especially in the action film genre. Music? Check out the rightward slant of country western, for instance, or the classical music genre entirely with its reliance on music by long-dead white males.
But both the left wing art and the right wing art stands on the same ground: scorn for the audience. The left wing artists think the audience is filled with non-thinking, insensitive, narrow-minded oafs, and they want to attack them; the right wing artists think the audience is filled with non-thinking, insensitive, narrow-minded oafs, and they want to pander to them. Rarely is there a healthy respect for one's fellow man, a sense of being a part of a community in the midst of facing the mysteries of life and living. The left wing artists put self-expression ahead of responsibility to a community, and the right wing artists put profit ahead of responsibility to community. They are brothers under the skin.
If the non-profit arts wants funding to continue, they need to take a little more seriously its role as part of a community; if the profit-making arts wants to avoid censorship and regulation, they need to take a little more seriously its role as part of a community.
And artists need to quit cynically trotting out this sentimental view of the value of the arts when their behavior contradicts the image. Nobody is buying it anymore.
My lack of sympathy with the basic tenets of libertarianism, with its naive and ahistorical faith in the benevolence of the free market, makes me unwilling to even mount an attack. It is like talking about music with the tone deaf. The guy who wrote, on Allison Croggon's blog, about being "dragged" by his wife to a production of Metamorphoses, which he attributes to some old "Greek" play (Greek? Greek???) and which disappointed him because it didn't have any nudity in it...well, it is representative, and arguing with a man standing at the intersection of Ignorant Street and Braindead Blvd really isn't worth the candle.
But I can hardly resist expressing my wonder at the defenses for the value of art being mounted by my blogosphere comrades in arts. At the drop of a grant proposal, everybody is willing to wax eloquent about all the beautiful things the arts add to life. A few paragraphs from Allison are emblematic:
Artists have personally experienced what the arts can give: as a means of self awareness; as a profound and continuous pleasure; as one of the human activities that give meaning and dignity to human existence; as a means of creating a sense of community and relationship; as a way of establishing and questioning a national identity; as a way of understanding our place in the world and ourselves as human beings beyond the materialist valuations of the marketplace.
Anyone who has ever loved another human being, who has had a child, who has felt - by looking at a painting, or listening to music, or by walking through a virgin forest or a humble laneway transfigured by moonlight or, like Wordsworth, by standing on a city bridge - in fact, anyone who has been touched by beauty in one of its myriad manifestations - knows that there are many things in life that are too complex and too profound to be valued simply in terms of money. Art is one of those things.
All this discussion of "continuous pleasure" and "meaning and dignity" and "creating a sense of community and relationship" and "beauty in one of its myriad manifestations" -- well, it just chokes me up. The thing that impresses me about these paragraphs, and the many, many others just like it that are mouthed in defense of arts funding, is that the feelings expressed are so...balanced. In the midst of this Hallmark card image of the arts, there is a little gesture toward "questioning a national identity" (balanced, of course, by "establishing" that identity), but only a small gesture, and there is talk of "understanding ourselves as human beings," which sounds beautifully soul-enhancing. But the fact is that, when the rubber meets the road and the actors meet the stage, the people of the blogosphere don't give a damn about beauty and meaning and pleasure and dignity, and if you mention the word "responsibility" in terms of something like the creation of "a sense of community and relationship" they turn absolutely blue in the face and start raising images of Joseph McCarthy -- no, what they care about getting up people's noses, about sneering at just about any values at all. The true value of a work of art is readily established by measuring the degree to which it tweeks the noses of...well, of just about everybody except the artists themselves.
Over at "A Poor Player," Tom wonders about the lack of right wing art, and the relentlessly liberal slant of the arts in general. Well, I suppose one might point to the art that IS supporting itself and say that is right wing art. I stopped watching 24, for instance, when I found myself pulling FOR Jack to eject the ACLU lawyer who was there to prevent the CIA from torturing someone. Most Hollywood films are decidely right wing, especially in the action film genre. Music? Check out the rightward slant of country western, for instance, or the classical music genre entirely with its reliance on music by long-dead white males.
But both the left wing art and the right wing art stands on the same ground: scorn for the audience. The left wing artists think the audience is filled with non-thinking, insensitive, narrow-minded oafs, and they want to attack them; the right wing artists think the audience is filled with non-thinking, insensitive, narrow-minded oafs, and they want to pander to them. Rarely is there a healthy respect for one's fellow man, a sense of being a part of a community in the midst of facing the mysteries of life and living. The left wing artists put self-expression ahead of responsibility to a community, and the right wing artists put profit ahead of responsibility to community. They are brothers under the skin.
If the non-profit arts wants funding to continue, they need to take a little more seriously its role as part of a community; if the profit-making arts wants to avoid censorship and regulation, they need to take a little more seriously its role as part of a community.
And artists need to quit cynically trotting out this sentimental view of the value of the arts when their behavior contradicts the image. Nobody is buying it anymore.
Friday, October 27, 2006
On Ideas
Recently, many theatre bloggers have been pondering how they should use their blogs in reference to productions their friends (and often fellow bloggers) are involved in. Should a blogger discuss in public the artistic creations of a fellow blogger? If so, should said blogger express only positive thoughts, and save negative ones for one-on-one conversations at the bar after the show? Of course, each blogger must come to their own policy. Mine encompasses not only blogging but also any conversations I have in Real Life: I will not discuss with the artists any show that is still running; once a show closes, it is fair game.
But I confess that many of the responses in this discussion have puzzled me. I left this comment in Isaac's comments box at Parabasis: "I think the theatre blogsphere has been relentlessly critical of the ideas of other people. We don't back away from saying that somebody's post is dumb as hell, and doing it in graphic and bloody detail. So my question: why does the theatre blogosphere tiptoe around theatre itself? Isn't there something contradictory about that? Do we feel that plays are just too delicate to handle criticism? Do we feel that ideas as somehow fair game and stronger, but productions are sacrosanct? Do we give more respect to the egos of artists than of thinkers? If so, why?"
I elaborated on this on Matt Freeman's blog: "There is something really weird about the lines we draw between people's ideas and their work -- as if the two were separable. We may not be professional critics, but most of us are not professional aestheticians and that doesn't stop us from having opinions about aesthetics. A community requires honesty."
In direct response to my comment, Isaac wrote: "ideas are a dime a dozen. Criticizing someone's ideas is like criticizing someone's socks-- they can always go out and get some new ones (or defend their choice off socks, I suppose). Ideas aren't really work the same way that artistic creation is, which is the space where you have to take those ideas and make something out of them. That for me is why arguing against someone's ideas is totally different from publicly discussing what you didn't like about their show."
This response stunned me. Ideas are a dime a dozen? You can just go out and get new ideas? Was Peter Brook's Empty Space a theatrical sock? Were Grotowski's ideas of a Poor Theatre something he could have easily dumped in favor of some other idea? Were Stanislavski's ideas less important than his productions? Granted, there have been no blog posts that have approached the profundity of Brook, Grotowski, and Stanislavski (although George's collected posts have potential), but nevertheless I would argue that that power of ideas to inform new artistic work and to inspire other artists makes them the equal of production, and worthy of being treated as seriously and as carefully as artistic work.
Boths idea and artistic creations benefit from rigorous analysis and discussion. And the blogosphere allows such a discussion to benefit more than the artists involved. Blogging has the potential to spread ideas beyond a small circle of friends and acquaintances to the theatre world as a whole. A playwright reading a serious discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of In Public might be able to strengthen the play he or she is working on right now. The same is true of a discussion of directing, or designing. As theatre bloggers, we have the opportunity to have a positive impact on the development of other theatre artists, and I think one of the things we need to model is a rigorous form of critical thinking and self-assessment. I'm not talking the spilling of blood, I am talking the granting of the ultimate artistic compliment: taking something seriously.
Ideas are where we rehearse the revolution. Analysis is where we tone our creative muscles. We plan the future by learning from the past and conjecturing about what might be. We combine the subjunctive and the indicative. Ideas are not intellectual socks, they are the skeleton that supports our frame. Ideas are the lifeblood of creation. We must not undermine the immense possibilities of the blogosphere to improve future works of art. Lucas, I believe, said he had had three years of public criticism in grad school, and he'd had enough thank you very much. I know what he means! But, truth be told, those are public floggings, not public discussions. It is the MFA version of hazing. But if we treat works of art AND ideas with the respect they deserve, and respect them enough to look at them with care and rigor, then something immensely valuable will result.
But I confess that many of the responses in this discussion have puzzled me. I left this comment in Isaac's comments box at Parabasis: "I think the theatre blogsphere has been relentlessly critical of the ideas of other people. We don't back away from saying that somebody's post is dumb as hell, and doing it in graphic and bloody detail. So my question: why does the theatre blogosphere tiptoe around theatre itself? Isn't there something contradictory about that? Do we feel that plays are just too delicate to handle criticism? Do we feel that ideas as somehow fair game and stronger, but productions are sacrosanct? Do we give more respect to the egos of artists than of thinkers? If so, why?"
I elaborated on this on Matt Freeman's blog: "There is something really weird about the lines we draw between people's ideas and their work -- as if the two were separable. We may not be professional critics, but most of us are not professional aestheticians and that doesn't stop us from having opinions about aesthetics. A community requires honesty."
In direct response to my comment, Isaac wrote: "ideas are a dime a dozen. Criticizing someone's ideas is like criticizing someone's socks-- they can always go out and get some new ones (or defend their choice off socks, I suppose). Ideas aren't really work the same way that artistic creation is, which is the space where you have to take those ideas and make something out of them. That for me is why arguing against someone's ideas is totally different from publicly discussing what you didn't like about their show."
This response stunned me. Ideas are a dime a dozen? You can just go out and get new ideas? Was Peter Brook's Empty Space a theatrical sock? Were Grotowski's ideas of a Poor Theatre something he could have easily dumped in favor of some other idea? Were Stanislavski's ideas less important than his productions? Granted, there have been no blog posts that have approached the profundity of Brook, Grotowski, and Stanislavski (although George's collected posts have potential), but nevertheless I would argue that that power of ideas to inform new artistic work and to inspire other artists makes them the equal of production, and worthy of being treated as seriously and as carefully as artistic work.
Boths idea and artistic creations benefit from rigorous analysis and discussion. And the blogosphere allows such a discussion to benefit more than the artists involved. Blogging has the potential to spread ideas beyond a small circle of friends and acquaintances to the theatre world as a whole. A playwright reading a serious discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of In Public might be able to strengthen the play he or she is working on right now. The same is true of a discussion of directing, or designing. As theatre bloggers, we have the opportunity to have a positive impact on the development of other theatre artists, and I think one of the things we need to model is a rigorous form of critical thinking and self-assessment. I'm not talking the spilling of blood, I am talking the granting of the ultimate artistic compliment: taking something seriously.
Ideas are where we rehearse the revolution. Analysis is where we tone our creative muscles. We plan the future by learning from the past and conjecturing about what might be. We combine the subjunctive and the indicative. Ideas are not intellectual socks, they are the skeleton that supports our frame. Ideas are the lifeblood of creation. We must not undermine the immense possibilities of the blogosphere to improve future works of art. Lucas, I believe, said he had had three years of public criticism in grad school, and he'd had enough thank you very much. I know what he means! But, truth be told, those are public floggings, not public discussions. It is the MFA version of hazing. But if we treat works of art AND ideas with the respect they deserve, and respect them enough to look at them with care and rigor, then something immensely valuable will result.
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