Art as a Resistance to Our Burnout Culture

In her book Monoculture: How One Story Is Changing Everything, F. S. Michaels paraphrases philosopher Isaiah Berlin, writing 

"If you look at any civilization... you will find a particular pattern of life that shows up again and again, that rules the age. Because of that pattern, certain ideas become popular and others fall out of favor. If you can isolate the governing pattern that a culture obeys, he believed, you can explain and understand the world that shapes how people think, feel and act at a distinct time in history."

Our master narrative is all about money. We have turned James Carville's simple-minded directive "It's the economy, stupid" into a motto to live by, along with Gordon Gecko's line from Wall Street, "Greed is good" and Jerry McGuire's "Show me the money!" Shannon Hayes, in her book Redefining Rich, calls this monoculture the Extractive Economy, and proposes its opposite, which she calls the Life-Serving Economy. Her book teaches the lessons she has learned running  multi-generational Sap Bush Farm in upstate New York, but I'd argue her ideas apply in many other contexts, including the theater. The book describes

how to build your work around your family and the things you love the most; how to deepen your understanding of true wealth, capital, and finances; how to extract harmony and order from the chaos and stress of farming, family, and entrepreneurship; as well as how to maximize your rest and ignite your creativity to keep going for the long haul, year after year, generation after generation, through good times and crises, until this life-serving economy is the reality for everyone.

Another book to check out is philosopher Byung-Chul Han's The Burnout Society, where he argues that our relentless "achievement society" of constant improvement teaches us to "exploit ourselves passionately until we collapse. We realize ourselves, optimize ourselves unto death." 

I would argue that such a monomyth works against the creation and appreciation of the arts, and that reading a book or poem, watching a play, visiting an art gallery has become an act of resistance to our extractive, burnout society. Even more revolutionary is to actually create works of art as an end in themselves, not as a means to fame and riches. 

More from Alan Jacobs

 Quoting Alan Jacobs may become a weekly feature! Here's the context for the discussion Cory Doctorow's concept of the Memex I wrote about below. This is J R R Tolkien's concept of "The Mathom-House" from "Concerning Hobbits."

"So, though there was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the museum at Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort."

Not There Yet...

 ...but I'm trying.

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
- Toni Morrison

Broadening Our Definition of Wealth (Formerly "Eating the Economic Orange")

 I posted this in 2012, and it seems particularly relevant at this time, when so many people are obsessed enough with The Economy that they're willing to hand our country over to an immoral, unprincipled, and greedy fascist.

Leo Hwang-Carlos does a great job explaining why the economy is more than the numbers reported by economists. I was particularly impressed by his description of all the ways he participates in the economy, and wonder how young people in high school or college might be educated to think of different ways of making ends meet than simply using a paycheck to pay for goods and services. A more varied approach might free up time for creativity.

It also might remind us that defining our lives according to our bank account is ultimately bankrupt in itself. I'm not talking about living on the brink of disaster, but I am talking about other ways to live an abundant life. I wrote about this in Chapter 22 of Building a Sustainable Theater, borrowing many of the ideas from Shannon Hayes's fantastic book Redefining Rich.

Peter Marks and the Need for Critics

 

Theater has become instrumental -- a means to profit, not an end in itself. This ultimately leads to stupefying shallowness. Yes, we need a new group of theater idealists who restore theater to its rightful place as an art form.

It Doesn't Have to be This Way

 “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” -- David Graeber, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World: Essays

French Farming and Theater

[602 words.]

I recently came across an article in David Byrne's nonprofit online magazine Reasons to Be Cheerful that I thought had interesting possibilities for theater. Reasons to Be Cheerful publishes articles that are "stories of hope, rooted in evidence" that are designed to "inspire us all to be curious about how the world can be better, and to ask ourselves how we can be part of that change," and I encourage anyone to subscribe (free) .

The article, entitled "Cultivating the Next Generation of Farmers in France," described "an initiative in the southwest of France that is helping young people become the country’s next generation of farmers via low-risk, small-scale and closely-supported projects — and thereby helping create ultra-local networks of organic, seasonal and low-carbon produce for city-dwellers. The so-called “Green Belt” project, which began in the French municipality of Pau, rents out modest, two-hectare plots of farmland near the city that are already prepared and equipped at an affordable rate for fledgling farmers."

The problem that is being addressed is twofold: an estimated 70% of current farmers are expected to retire in the not-to-distant future, usually without family members ready to step in and take over the farm; on the other hand, there was a generation of young people who were interested in being small, usually organic, farmers, but who were being prevented from doing so by the high cost of farmland and the prohibitive entry costs of equipment and materials. The Green Belt project is addressing the problem by buying farm land from retiring farmers and breaking it into 2-1/2 acre plots. "Each farm," author Peter Yeung writes, costs €200,000 ($220,000 US) to set up—half subsidized through Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy and the other half through a loan, which the farmers pay back over time through rent, making the project in theory self-sustaining." The new farmers sign "an annual renewable contract, with the right to remain on the site for at least 18 years." Meanwhile, the project provides education for the young farmers, and also endeavors to make sure that there is a ready market for the produce that is grown. Because they recognize that it will take a couple years to get the farm fully functional, the new farmers "pay a monthly contribution of a few hundred euros that progressively increases until the third year, at which point the rent is fixed for the rest of the period."

So what does this have to do with theater?

What if there was a program that did the same thing for young theater artists who want to start a company? A foundation would be created to provide with a small, fully equipped theater space that is paid for half through a grant and half through an interest-free loan. Company members would be required to go through training in building and running a theater--maybe my book Building a Sustainable Theater could be part of the curriculum! Their monthly rent would start out low and gradually increase over the three years it would take to find an audience and a functional business model. After three years, they would provide a report of their progress toward sustainability.

I was reminded of Muhammad Yunus's book Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs. 

I don't think we need a new generation of theater artists taking over the existing massive regional theaters with their legacy audiences and traditions; I think we need to give young artists a chance to start over and develop their own visions of what theater ought to be in the 21st century. They need seed money.