Maxwell Anderson on Tragedy

I may have mentioned that I am preparing a new class for the fall on the American theatre of the 1920s and 1930s. I began reading plays and essays this week (I just finished The Time of Your Life, which was quite engaging). In a little book entitled American Playwrights on Drama, I found an essay by Maxwell Anderson entitled "The Essence of Tragedy." In it, he says the following:

"And since our plays...are exaltations of the human spirit, since that is what an audience expects when it comes to the theatre, the playwright...must so arrange his story that it will prove to the audience that men pass through suffering purified, that, animal though we are, despicable though we are in many ways, there is in us all some divine, incalculable fire that urges us to be better than we are...[I]n the majority of ancient and modern plays it seems to me that what the audience wants to believe is that men have a desire to break the molds of earth which encase them and claim kinship with a higher morality than that which hems them in...[They want to see plays that show] the groping of men toward and excellence dimly apprehended, seldom possible of definition. [Such plays] are evidence to me that the theatre at its best is a religious affirmation, an age-old rite restating and reassuring men's belief in his own destiny and his ultimate hope. The theatre is much older than the doctrine of evolution, but its one faith, assseverated again and again for every age and every year, is a faith in evolution, in the reaching and the climb of men toward distant goals, glimpsed but never seen, perhaps never achieved, or achieved only to be passed impatiently on the way to a more distant horizon." (1939)

What I see in this quotation, among many other things, and what I also say in The Time of Your Life, is a tremendous sense of optimism, a belief in mankind's ability to remain hopeful in the face of adversity, and a belief in his ability to make things better. Many would call this naive, and others would say it is impossible to hold onto those beliefs in the face of everything that has happened in the world. But what Anderson is saying, and I agree with him, is that the basis of tragedy is exactly this sense of courage and hope in the face of pain and inhumanity; the refusal to allow such inhumanity to seep into one's own consciousness. At one time, 75 years ago, such tragic pluck was valued, and the theatre served to reinforce the courage necessary to face the trials of each day. And so far, it has been a joy to encounter it.

NYTW No More

Just a public notice that I have said my last word in NYTW -- moving on. In addition, I am going to refrain from commenting negatively, on that or any other topic, on other blogs as well. I'm going to follow Matt Freeman's suggestion that I "talk about what [I] love, not what [I]hate." We'll see where that leads me. I need to extricate myself from the Sunday-Morning- political-talk shows approach to blogging: I've engaged in too much bluster and outrage, and not enough contemplation and reflection. I'm a grizzled old academic, and my interests should reflect that. So a warning to my readers: new things to come.

NYTW: How I Think It Should Have Gone

I have been thinking about the NYTW controversy. I suspect that many of you who have read my posts about the artist's relationship to the audience, and the artist's responsibility to the society, may have thought that I would have come down in favor of Nicola's actions -- that he was being responsive to his community, and not trying to get in their face, and I would throw my hat in the air and shout "Huzzah!" As my previous post shows, this is not my opinion. So let me lay out how things might have transpired if I had been in Nicola's position.

First, it is important to understand that, as artistic director, it is my respoonsibilty to be paying attention to the people who form the NYTW community -- not just the board, but the subscribers, the other members of the audience, and the larger NYC community as well (although this last group secondarily). At some point, I may have encountered My Name is Rachel Corrie, and become intrigued by the play -- there was something about it that I felt was theatrically exciting.

At this point, I should ask myself a question: does my audience need this play? Not want this play; need this play. How would I answer this question for myself? From my knowledge of my audience. I might have noticed, for instance, that when members of my audience discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they tend to be unable to see the Palestinian viewpoint, or they tend to be unable to understand how anyone could sympathize with the Palestinian cause -- in short, that they are unable to project themselves into a Palestinian viewpoint. If this were the case, I might say: this play will put a face on a viewpoint that they find foreign, it will humanize people whose motivations have been incomprehensible to them. At this point, I would decide: yes, this is a play my audience needs.

If, several months later, the deaths of Sharon and the ascendancy of Hamas have my audience feeling "edgy," my original commitment to this play would be strengthened: now more than ever, when my audience is even more fearful and is even more prone to dehumanize the Palestinian side of the issue, this play must be done because of the work it can do.

I have begun studying Chinese medicine lately. While the metaphor of artist as doctor has appeared on this blog, it is a Western model of medicine being used: looking at a wound or illness and trying to fix it. While I am in the very earliest stages of research into the topic of Chinese medicine, I have begun to see a much more dynamic and useful model of the "doctor" that I'd like to explore, because it applies to the NYTW situation, and to the artist in general.

From a website describing traditional Chinese medicine: "Chinese medicine views the body as an energetic system in dynamic balance. Qi, which can be translated as energy or life force, flows in a regular pattern through a system of channels — or meridians — to all parts of the body.
When the flow of Qi is unimpeded there is harmony, balance, and good health. When there are Qi blockages, too much or too little qi, there is an imbalance which can lead to disharmony and disease. Chinese medicine helps restore the body to balance and works on an energetic level to affect all aspects of a person..." [ital mine]

Perhaps we could conceive of the ideal society as a healthy body in which the life force flows unimpeded. To do so, there must be balance. In this model, the artist would have his or her hand on the pulse of the community, and respond to maintain balance. This is the opposite of "giving the audience what it wants," since what it will want is more of what has thrown it out of balance in the first place. If society has become too ordered and uptight, like say America of the 1950s, then the artist must throw his or her weight in the opposite direction -- which is exactly what happened with the beats in the 50s and the explosion of counter-culture art in the 60s. If the society is racist, then the artist must throw himself or herself in the opposite direction. Homophobic? Same thing. With the goal of restoring balance.

At a certain point, the society will begin swinging too far in the other direction, and the artist, hand on the pulse, will begin to move in another direction. For instance, the abandonment of all artistic form and structure in the 1960s, while a necessary corrective, might need another corrective so as to avoid total anarchy. Again, the artist moves in opposition to the prevailing norm, always asking what his or her community needs at that particular moment.

Had Nicola's audience been evenly split between those who could not see the Palestinian viewpoint, and those who could not see the Israeli viewpoint, a play other than My Name is Rachel Corrie might have been a better choice, one that perhaps humanized both sides of the conflict. Again, this decision would be based on a knowledge of the audience, on taking the audience's pulse.

The artist becomes the canary in the mine who senses trouble first, and sings out a warning. Or another analogy: the artist is poised at society's fulcrum, and senses every shift first. Either way, the artist, or artistic director, asks: what does my community need now?

To a Man With a Hammer

Sorry for the slowness in posting -- as I mentioned below, it was a very busy week. Of course, I have been dying to join the discussion of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, and Isaac's prompt combined with the time afforded by Spring Break (which begins today) finally has goaded me to do so.

First of all, I want to take what I suspect will be a very unpopular position regarding one part of this issue: I think using the word "censorship" in this case isn't justified. Producing organizations cancel productions every day, and for reasons less defensible, without cries of censorship. I remember that the initial production of Assassins was cancelled because it seemed inappropriate given the geopolitical situation (if I am remembering correctly, Desert Storm), and I don't remember an uproar over censorship. To me, censorship comes from outside the theatre community, and means "the play can't be done -- period; or it can't be done unless certain changes are made." NYTW has no formal obligation to produce this or any other play. I'm sure they have cancelled plays in the past without cries of censorship, so what makes this different except that there are some who want the play heard? Nothing prohibits another Off-Broadway theatre from deciding to produce it, and if they did, they would likely sell a lot of tickets -- nothing sells like controversy these days.

Perhaps the issue is self-censorship, which George Hunka calls "the worst kind of censorship." At the risk of sounding like Socrates, define self-censorship. What it sounds like to me is: putting any considerations other than your own to the fore. Apparently it is wrong because we should put individual artistic will ahead of group responsibility, which I see as artistic libertarianism. "If it feels good artistically, do it. Nobody tells me what to do." But the fact is that we self-censor every day. There are things that I do not say in front of my students, not because they aren't true, but because they are inappropriate in that context. And this is right and proper. James Nicola decided this play was inappropriate at this time for his community, that to do it would lead to the play being examined within a context he didn't wish it to be. Again, I think this is his right as artistic leader, and the act of considering such issues is not an act of intellectual or artistic self-betrayal. I would like all artists to ask such questions.

Saying that Nicola has the right to cancel a show, and that he was right to consider his audience in his decision, is not, however, to say that I think he made the right decision. He didn't.

For me, this is the damning quotation: "the fantasy that we could present the work of this writer simply as a work of art without appearing to take a position was just that, a fantasy." [ital mine] If he ever held such a fantasy, it reveals a depth of naivete that borders idiocy. Nicola wants to have it both ways: he wants to present a play that is deeply embedded within political events, that will receive attention only because of its politics, indeed a play that has value only because of those political events (surely no one is saying that this play, which was not written but rather edited from documents, is an artistic masterpiece that will survive the ages), in short he wants to present a play with an actively committed political purpose -- but he wants to maintain a Kantian belief that the work is "simply...a work of art" that he hopes will be regarded through an aesthetic lens outside of political debate. This is breathtaking in its simple-mindedness. In justifying his actions, Nicola seems surprised and horrified that "there was a very strong possibility that a number of factions, on all sides of a political conflict, would use the play as a platform to promote their own agendas." Well, of course they would! After all, that is purpose of a provocative play, and it is what the play asks you to do. How could it be otherwise? This will not be changed by the passage of time, unless Nicola postpones its performance until after the Israeli - Palestinian conflict is ancient history. Then we might be able to regard it in the same way we do the politics of Shakespeare's Henry V. But not now, and not in foreseeable future.

When I read this story, what I see is what I have been writing about for several months now (and thus the self-referential title of this post): the desire of so many artists to provoke the audience as long as there is no chance that the audience will actually respond to that provocation with equal force. I can punch you, but you can't punch me back, which doesn't work on the playground and shouldn't work in the playhouse. Nicola seems afraid that a play that has a clear political purpose will be reacted to politically. Duh.

Why the surprise? Because he has bought into an artistic belief that provocation is a one-way street. That spectators are supposed to play subs to to artistic doms. Thank you, sir, may I have another? And suddenly, he found that this wasn't the case. That plays affect people, and when affected they respond, and not always politely, and sometimes the artist's voice will be eclipsed by "the din of others shouting for their own purposes." Welcome to the real world.

We saw this same attitude at work with the artistic reaction to the uproar over the Danish cartoons: wait, you're not supposed to talk back! It's "just a cartoon," for crying out loud! We want to play politics until somebody responds, and then we want to scurry back to our Kantian safehouse and plead "art." Literary and legal scholar Stanley Fish, in a provocative letter to the editor in the NY Times about the Danish cartoons, wrote: "The first tenet of the liberal religion is that everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas) is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously." [ital mine] James Nicole suddenly found himself in a situation where ideas were taken seriously, where provocations were responded to, in short where the rules of the genteel game of artistic provocation, where anything can be said as long as it isn't taken too seriously, were not accepted.

I say: stand up straight and face the music, Mr. Nicole. You scheduled a provocative play, now have the courage to defend the play forcefully and with all the integrity you can muster. Schedule public discussions, put together forums to examine the issues, write a damn good program note -- grasp a prime teachable moment. You have an opportunity to advance this debate -- sieze it, don't run from it. The time for considering your community has passed -- Sharon and Hamas may have made them "edgy," but this play would have made them feel edgy at any time, and that didn't seem to bother you when you first scheduled it.

And to the theatre community: Nicole and NYTW have a history of doing good work and promoting new playwrights, so you have done well not to rip his throat out publicly. But that doesn't mean maintaining a complicit silence. Like others, I hope that prominent NYTW alums are speaking backstage about this issue. Others should be taking this opportunity to discuss with Mr. Nicole and his board the larger issues involved, and making sure they know the errors of this decision. Write letters, contribute to blogs, and think broadly about how this whole thing might reflect larger issues in the way we think about the theatre. And question yourselves -- would you have responded differently? If so, how? And how might that approach have worked?

Howard Zinn

While I don't have enough time to actually write something (I'm dying to join the fray over the NYTW controversy), at least I have time enough to cut and paste. Here is something from historian Howard Zinn:

On Getting Along
By Howard Zinn

You ask how I manage to stay involved and remain seemingly happy and adjusted to this awful world where the efforts of caring people pale in comparison to those who have power? It's easy.

First, don't let "those who have power" intimidate you. No matter how much power they have they cannot prevent you from living your life, speaking your mind, thinking independently, having relationships with people as you like. (Read Emma Goldman's autobiography "Living My Life". Harassed, even imprisoned by authority, she insisted on living her life, speaking out, however she felt like.)

Second, find people to be with who have your values, your commitments, but who also have a sense of humor. That combination is a necessity!

Third (notice how precise is my advice that I can confidently number it, the way scientist number things), understand that the major media will not tell you of all the acts of resistance taking place every day in the society, the strikes, the protests, the individual acts of courage in the face of authority. Look around (and you will certainly find it) for the evidence of these unreported acts. And for the little you find, extrapolate from that and assume there must be a thousand times as much as what you've found.

Fourth: Note that throughout history people have felt powerless before authority, but that at certain times these powerless people, by organizing,acting, risking, persisting, have created enough power to change the world around them, even if a little. That is the history of the labor movement, of the women's movement, of the anti-Vietnam war movement, the disable persons' movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the movement of Black people in the South.

Fifth: Remember, that those who have power, and who seem invulnerable are in fact quite vulnerable, that their power depends on the obedience of others, and when those others begin withholding that obedience, begin defying authority, that power at the top turns out to be very fragile. Generals become powerless when their soldiers refuse to fight, industrialists become powerless when their workers leave their jobs or occupy the factories.

Sixth: When we forget the fragility of that power in the top we become astounded when it crumbles in the face of rebellion. We have had many such surprises in our time, both in the United States and in other countries.

Seventh: Don't look for a moment of total triumph. See it as an ongoing struggle, with victories and defeats, but in the long run the consciousness of people growing. So you need patience, persistence, and need to understand that even when you don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that you have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. Okay, seven pieces of profound advice should be enough.

Sorry

Folks -- It is the week before Spring Break here, which is usually pretty hectic, but in addition I also have to coordinate the annual Dorr Lecture for the Arts and Ideas Program, which this year is bringing in poetry critic Helen Vendler from Harvard. I have been running quite a lot, and haven't had time to have a coherent thought. I hope you'll bear with me, and I will try to post something soon (perhaps my response to p'tit boo, which I have begun writing). Don't abandon me, folks, I'll be back.

Freedom, Baby

It is with some trepidation that I venture into the arena of political theory, because it is definitely NOT an subject in which I have a thorough knowledge. But a comment by Joshua (whose comment prompted the title of this post), which reflects the ideas of many of you who have responded to my posts, leads me there reluctantly.

Many artists, including many of you who read this blog (and truth be told, me as well) are pretty liberal. We tend toward a leftist political orientation that favors programs to help the poor, to heal the sick, to educate the masses, to save the environment, to enforce equality in matters of race, gender, and sexual orientation, and to create economic justice. Some use their art to promote these ideas, some use their blog, some simply possess these values as foundations for personal behavior. At root, we want a society that is built on the respect and appreciation of all people. But when it comes to their art, libertarianism is the order of the day.

The artist should be completely free, giving no thought to anything other than the expression of their personal truth. The idea that an artist might have responsibilities as citizen, as members of a community or a society, that goes along with such safeguards as freedom of speech leads to cries of "Censorship!" To suggest that artists might simply think about the effect of their art, and whether it contributes to the improvement of their society, is greeted with arguments about "slippery slopes" leading straight to strict government censorship and the regulation of taste and expression. Thoughts immediately fly to government intervention and coercion, even when the suggestion concerns simple human civility. This response demonstrates a level of paranoia that may, in fact be justified -- it hasn't been that long since the McCarthy Era, for instance, and in the midst of a Bush presidency that labels any questioning of government actions as un-American, such watchfulness may be very, very necessary. Let me make this plain: government control of the arts, or control by any group outside the arts, is very, very wrong -- I condemn it without hesitation. But government control and self-control are not the same thing.

My political orientation combines a socialist economic stance with a Communitarian social orientation. According to the Responsive Communitarian Platform Text on the Communitarian Network website:

"A communitarian perspective recognizes both individual human dignity and the social dimension of human existence. A communitarian perspective recognizes that the preservation of individual liberty depends on the active maintenance of the institutions of civil society where citizens learn respect for others as well as self-respect; where we acquire a lively sense of our personal and civic responsibilities, along with an appreciation of our own rights and the rights of others; where we develop the skills of self-government as well as the habit of governing ourselves, and learn to serve others-- not just self. A communitarian perspective recognizes that communities and polities, too, have obligations--including the duty to be responsive to their members and to foster participation and deliberation in social and political life. A communitarian perspective does not dictate particular policies; rather it mandates attention to what is often ignored in contemporary policy debates: the social side of human nature; the responsibilities that must be borne by citizens, individually and collectively, in a regime of rights; the fragile ecology of families and their supporting communities; the ripple effects and long-term consequences of present decisions....

America's diverse communities of memory and mutual aid are rich resources of moral voices--voices that ought to be heeded in a society that increasingly threatens to become normless, self-centered, and driven by greed, special interests, and an unabashed quest for power. Moral voices achieve their effect mainly through education and persuasion, rather than through coercion. Originating in communities, and sometimes embodied in law, they exhort, admonish, and appeal to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. They speak to our capacity for reasoned judgment and virtuous action. It is precisely because this important moral realm, which is neither one of random individual choice nor of government control, has been much neglected that we see an urgent need for a communitarian social movement to accord these voices their essential place." [ital and bold my own]

I believe in freedom of expression, and the preservation of that strong right; I also believe in personal responsibility for one's actions, and what those actions do in the world, and I believe in relationships based on mutual respect. Joshua, in a comment appended to one of my recent posts, writes: "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." The key phrase here, for me, is "because I care for him." Mutual respect does not undermine the need to speak truth, to argue vigorously, to get people's attention. But mutual respect does affect the way you do this. Joshua and his friend are not strangers -- they have a relationship that has been established that allows Joshua to shake his friend to get his attention. If Joshua were to go up to a total stranger and do the same thing, the likelihood that such shaking would lead to the stranger listening carefully is lessened, because the stranger will feel in danger. His focus will be on self-protection, not openness to a new idea. This is why I have called for artists to get to know their audience members, to get to know the people who make up their society, to become a part of their community; so that when they grab their audience's shoulders and shake them, the audience will listen because they have a bond.

If you believe that your audience is comprised of "ignorant redneck backward-ass country fucks," as Joshua characterizes his hometown community (and who am I to argue), and you can't find any point of contact or mutual respect, then the likelihood of communication happening between artist and audience is pretty low. Joshua can shake them all he wants, but all he's likely to get is a fat lip. For some reason, Joshua believes that I have told him "I cannot and should not say something like that." Not true. I have never said you shouldn't say it. What I have said is that an artist cannot communicate with his audience if he sees them in these terms. Continuing, he says: "I can and will. It may be mean and disrespectful, but it's my truth. And I love that I live in a society where I can express my truth freely every day. It's important, that freedom. I may disagree with you, I may say you're full of shit, but I'm not going to ever say you don't have the right to spout whatever you want to spout on your blog." I agree wholeheartedly. And I am alright with you telling me I am full of shit because we have an ongoing relationship that is based on (here are the words again) mutual respect. The same is true of George and me: I think we tell each other we are full of shit more than we applaud each other (which is actually, too bad, but that guilt is for another post), but early on we established a mutual respect for each other as thinkers and human beings. If some other person arrived in my comments box telling me I am full of shit, I probably wouldn't feel all that compelled to respond. Same with Alison and p'tit boo, who are currently whooping my ass. None of us are "friends" -- George isn't going to call me up to celebrate his birthday -- but we have established a relationship, and that relationship allows a level of honesty and directness. I listen, I think, I have even been known to alter my opinions because of George's, Alison's, p'tit boo's, Freeman's, MattJ's and Joshua's comments. But anonymous-reply blogger blasting into my comments box without a name or history? Garbage pail.

If you want to actually affect opinions (and there are some who profess to care only about expression, not about reception), then a relationship is necessary, one based on trust and foundational respect. As human beings, we are part of widening circles of community, from family to friends to world -- we are social beings. Art is a social act that is built on an exchange. I am proposing a simple thing: that the artistic exchange have a foundation of mutual respect, and a deep sense of responsibility.