Standards of Education

I just returned from a quick trip to Illinois to see my stepson, Jake Olbert, perform in Illinois State University's production of Into the Woods. It was a very strong production, marred only by a small amount of directorial tinkering. After the performance Friday night, the show, which was an Associate entry in the American College Theatre Festival, received a "response" from an ACTF rep from a school down the road.

I, myself, have been an ACTF Respondent many times over the course of my career, and had many of my shows adjudicated as well. It isn't an easy job. You see the show, take some quick notes in the dark as the show goes on, and ten minutes after the curtain comes down you face the assembled cast, crew, designers, and director to share your thoughts about the production.

No time for thought of reflection. It is made even more difficult by the attitude ACTF takes toward the response.

The attitude exhibited by ACTF is based on a deep fear of actual criticism, a fear that is endemic to the field as a whole. When you are a respondent, you are sent a document that

gives you guidelines for respondents. It includes a suggested "disclaimer" that might be shared with the assembled college students. It reads as follows:

I’m here representing the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and I’m charged to respond to the performance I just experienced. I was not a part of the process that helped bring the play life, and I cannot comment on your growth in the work during that process but I can respond to what I just experienced as an informed member of the audience with a certain amount of training and experience as an artist and a teacher. I am not the art police, the oracle of theatre or the supreme authority on how this play works best in performance. Hopefully some of the things I’m about to say will resonate with the very fine training you are already receiving, and if so, please take my words to heart as the gifted and insightful comments of a remarkably astute theatre professional. On the other hand, if I say something you don’t agree with or you hear something that doesn’t resonate with what you’ve been hearing all through rehearsals, for heaven’s sake dismiss my remarks as the lunatic ravings of a sadly misguided schmuck with no discernable taste whatsoever. No matter what we say here in this session, you should in no way alter the choices that you and your director have so carefully built.

You can imagine the kind of mealy-mouthed responses that result from this approach to critique. It is the adult version of the undergraduate belief, trotted out whenever the issue of quality arises, that "what is good and bad is subjective." But if that is the case, then why do college departments pay $250 plus travel, lodging, and food to bring in someone from another university to provide feedback? After all, if he or she is "just one person," just an "informed member of the audience" and not, God forbid, an expert, then why not simply choose an audience member at random to stay after the show and give their impressions. I guarantee that they would at least be forthright, which is more than can be said about ACTF respondents.

What is ironic is that students, who know they are supposedly being prepared to go out, like lambs to the slaughter, into a profession with 87% unemployment, are hungry to hear an honest appraisal of their work. They want to hear what they did well, yes, but they also want to hear what they could have done better, because they want to have a chance when they graduate. Instead, what they get are airy generalities and gentle ego massages. It is a terrible disservice.

The response to Into the Woods followed this pattern to the letter. Everything and everybody, one at a time, was "wonderful," and the highest point of praise was that nothing happened that "took me out of the play." Consider the altitude of that particular bar: "you didn't do anything that took me out of the play." That this is worthy of notice, indeed that it serves as high praise, is an indication of the general level of college productions; that it is considered a critical insight is an indication of the general level of critical thinking by college theatre professors. I wish I could say that the level of discourse when the faculty talk amongst themselves is considerably higher -- informed by broad knowledge, deep experience, and careful reflection. But I can't.

We lack a common vocabulary, much less a common set of critical values. Most college professors, especially if they have been "trained" in an MFA program as most have, have spent their graduate education focused on the development of their own creative abilities -- period. They have spent 90% of their time doing plays, doing scenes, designing sets or costumes, cranking out production after production. They are never required to read broadly, develop critical thinking skills, clearly describe what they do, analyze their own work (both before and after it is done), develop a vocabulary and the skills that would allow them to learn from the work of others, see productions by masters, expose themselves to other art forms, or gain a knowledge of the world that would be deep enough to interpret a play by Kushner, Goethe, Shakespeare, Aeschylus, or whoever. What they are required to do...is plays. And then, when they do, they don't receive high level feedback.

Compare this to, say, college sports. A college football player or basketball player spends a lot of time doing, just like a theatre major, but the feedback they get is specific, demanding, and highly critical. Their performances are put under a microscope in the newspaper or on television after every game by experts, and fans don't hesitate to express their feelings about their work at the stadium, on the newspaper blogs, and in restaurants. If a coach comes in from another school to watch practice, that coach is likely to be brutally honest, because that's why he was brought in -- to improve the team. Most importantly, the coaches will share a common vocabulary and set of values that allow real communication to take place.

Compared to sports, the level of discourse in theatre departments across the country, even the most so-called prestigious, is woefully backward. It isn't only, as Tom Loughlin writes in his brutally frank discussion of "The Artist / Educator Gap," that theatre education provides students with "a skill set that is rapidly becoming outmoded and does not give young artists the tools they need to continue being artists," although that is bad enough, but that even these outmoded skills are being poorly taught by people who haven't taken the time to really understand what they are doing. All they've done is put on plays. That many of these professors have the temerity to include these productions on their annual reports as "scholarship or creative activity" shows a total lack of understanding of what scholarship really is.

Scholarship involves joining an ongoing conversation, making a new and original contribution, having that contribution reviewed by qualified peers, and making those findings public. If theatre teachers at the college level held themselves to the same standards as other disciplines, and felt they were responsible for making each production a contribution to the field, and felt responsible to communicate their findings to the field -- well, maybe American theatre programs wouldn't be so amateurish, and as a result maybe the American theatre scene wouldn't be so relentless superficial and inept. And maybe artists wouldn't be so resentful of their college professors. (All one needs to do is play the song "Nothing" from A Chorus Line in front of a group of actors to understand the full extent of the residual anger.) The fact is that the students know instinctively that they have been ripped off, that their professors are more concerned with their own egos than with helping them grow as artists and human beings (yes, those things are equally important), and that they have been either coddled through four years of college (and three years of grad school), or arbitrarily abused by unreflective egotists who haven't the faintest idea what they are doing but nevertheless do it loudly and with bone-jarring force.

The theatre is probably second only to opera in the complexity of the demands it makes on its artists. It deserves a professoriat worthy of those demands.

The Rareness of Thought

I received an email today promoting the new American Theatre 25th anniversary anthology. It reads:

“This is truly a special occasion,” said Teresa Eyring, TCG Executive Director. “The magazine’s coverage over 25 years offers a depth and diversity of perspective that goes unmatched in any single theatre publication. To be able to draw from that remarkable body of work to create The American Theatre Reader is a special gift that can’t be replicated.”

“These pieces offer insights not just into the history of contemporary American theater but also into the way artists and producers think -- a rare intimacy. “

---Charles McNulty, LA Times

Wow. "These pieces offer insights....into the way artists and producers think -- a rare intimacy." If McNulty is right, the "rareness" of this intimacy is a 25 year condemnation of artists and producers within the American theatre. Simply making art isn't enough. It is the responsibility of the artist to speak about the work, to write about the work, to contribute insights to the development of the field. The largely trivial nature of the last 25 years of theatre stands as a testament to the lack of ideas and the lack of communication.

By Analogy: Alexander Chee on Annie Dillard

This has nothing at all to do with theatre or theatre education, and everything to do with theatre and theatre education. It also has something to do with blogging -- the communication of ideas through words. This essay by Alexander Chee describes his experience taking a writing class with Annie Dillard. Please use the comments as a discussion thread: how does this apply to what we do? The essay is entitled "Annie Dillard and the Writing Life," and it was posted on October 16th at "The Morning News." (Big h/t to Patti Digh at 37days)

Comment Moderation Now Turned On

To those who think that rude, ad hominem attacks are worthwhile, I suggest you keep them on your own blogs. On this blog, they will no longer be approved. Period. Next topic of conversation.

Tom Loughlin on Quality

Over at A Poor Player, Tom Loughlin has written an excellent post entitled "A Question of Quality," in which he worries about his increasing crankiness with the general level of mediocrity he sees in theatre -- mediocrity that insists it be treated as excellence. What troubles Tom, and is of particular interest on for those of you following the development of the CRADLE(arts) philosophy, is how the issue of "quality" plays out within a commitment to participatory arts. What "keeps me from fully embracing a retreat from the concept of the “professional artist,” Tom writes, "is my fear that, given the propensity of 21st century society to raise the mediocre to the level of excellence, there will soon be no excellence at all." He goes on: "The question of quality is one that I think is tiptoed around when we speak about participatory arts. When we work to open the arts to all (an idea I fully support), in this current cultural mindset we run the risk of reducing the quality of art. When everyone can get a hamburger from McDonald’s, they begin to think that McDonald’s makes a pretty good hamburger. We know that dedication, full-time commitment, experience, and an intense passion for excellence can create high quality, and that is what we have traditionally meant by “professional artist.” Trying to ascertain what is the best process and best practices we can put into place to increase participatory arts while at the same time maintaining high quality will be the trickiest part of the entire enterprise."

The issue of quality is one that has plagued arts criticism for millenia: what makes something "good"? What if one critic "likes" something and another doesn't -- doesn't that mean that the concept of quality is "all subjective"? What if one era dismisses something, but a later era loves it -- or vice versa?

When the term "quality" is introduced into the participatory arts / community-based arts discussion, it is usually used as a way to suggest that amatuer artists don't (indeed, can't) create work with a "quality" as high as that made by a professional whose "dedication, full-time commitment, experience, and... intense passion for excellence" gives them a greater likelihood of achieving excellence. Indeed, in Malcolm Gladwell's wonderful book Outliers, he devotes most of an entire chapter to the "10,000 hour rule," which says that, no matter what it is, you have to do it for 10,000 hours before you are truly able to make a lasting contribution. The most memorable example he gives is The Beatles, whom Gladwell argues benefitted from the 8-hours-a-day gigs required of them when they were playing in clubs in Hamburg. It's a persuasive argument. On the other hand, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller make an equally persuasive argument in The Pro-Am Revolution. They write: "From astronomy to activism, from surfing to saving lives, Pro-Ams - people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards - are an increasingly important part of our society and economy. For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory, it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations."

Let's start with a quibble: I don't like the use of the word "quality" in this argument, mainly because it is too broad, too difficult to define. I have the same problem with its synonym "excellence," which I too often see as being defined as "those things I think are good." The characteristic that Loughlin is defining as "quality," I suspect, I'd be more comfortable calling "virtuosity," meaning "technical skill, fluency, or style." If we use that word, then I am more willing to admit that an amateur might be less likely to have put in Gladwell's 10,000 hours to develop virtuosity. (Although this is not always the case -- there are many people who devote as much time as do professionasl to their art, while not making their living at it. I question the linkage of virtuosity and money making, but that's probably best left for another discussion.)

However, I think virtuosity is only one part of "quality," and perhaps not the most important one. Virtuosity is something that is contained within the artist, and expressed through the work of art. It stands alone. For me, however, quality is an interaction, it is something that is created between an work of art and its audience.

A work of art can exhibit virtuosity, but fail to connect to its audience in any way. For example, a concert pianist might be a virtuoso playing a Mozart concerto, but if he performs before an audience for whom the Western tonal system is foreign and meaningless, then for me the performance lacks "quality." On the other hand, a story told by someone who lacks virtuosity, but whose story connects to its audience in a powerful, immediate way, for me, is a higher "quality" performance. In other words, "quality" exists not in the work of art or performance itself, but in the experience of the art by a specific audience.

Which brings me to what I consider more important than virtuosity: authenticity or genuineness. The characteristic of being "free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy; sincere:; or "Honestly felt or experienced: genuine devotion." This is a characteristic that exists both within the artist and the audience. The works is genuinely felt by the artist and authentically experienced by the audience. To me, more than anything else, this is what leads to a "high quality" performance -- the authentic communication of a genuine emotion or idea from artist to audience.

Sometimes, authenticity is enhanced by virtuosity -- for instance, think of when you watch figure skating in the Winter Olympics and you have been informed how difficult a particular move is and how long the skater has been working on it. When that skater successfully executes that move, you as an audience share in his or her authentic emotion and you appreciate the sheer virtuosity of what was accomplished. But all too often, virtuosity becomes an end in itself, and it stands between the audience and the epxerience. The form has taken precedence over the content, and the result is an empty experience and a lower "quality" experience for the audience. For example, much modernist art is incomprehensible to the average spectator, and while it may exhibit a high level of virtuosity, the experience is one of bafflement.

Would that experience be improved by a degree of knowledge, so that one might appreciate the technique? Absolutely, and such knowledge might release the authentic emotion contained within the virtuosity. But again, that rests not in the virtuosity itself, but in the interaction between audience and work of art. Which in turn means that the "quality" of a work of art changed with each audience.

Like Tom, I find most theatre that I see mediocre at best. But for me, it isn't because it lacks virtuosity, but rather that it lacks genuineness -- I don't believe it, I don't feel it. It doesn't speak to me, because I have no connection to the artist, the story he or she tells has little connection to my life, and all the virtuosity in the world won't bridge that gap.

Obviously, the ideal is to combine virtuosity and authenticity. The question is which element is primary. For me, a work of art needs to first be authentic; virtuosity is frosting on the cake.

Inexplicable Dumbshow Interview

The good guys at The Inexplicable Dumbshow have posted the podcast interview they did with me last week. Check it out, and while you're there, check out all the other great stuff they do.

In Praise of Theatre Bloggers

Recently, Tom Loughlin posted a link to a a short video of director and Group Theatre co-founder Harold Clurman from the documentary Harold Clurman: A Life of Theatre, which coincidently I had just showed to the students in my Directing II class. I urge you to not only watch the snippet Tom posted, but to locate the entire documentary to watch, as it will provide your with inspiration and, perhaps, a renewed sense of purpose.

Clurman was a passionate believer in the power and importance of the theatre. He helped found the Group Theatre not because he was trying to promote his career, but because he felt strongly about what role a theatre ought to play in the American culture. If you watch Loughlin's clip, you can see how, at the age of 80, he still had the fire -- a fire that comes through most powerful in the moment that follows his condemnation of the mediocrity of our culture, when he says, with what seems to me red-rimmed eyes, "This always makes me angry."

Me too. Me too.

To me, Clurman ought to be a model for all young artists. And not simply because he was an excellent director who founded and important theatre, but because he had a strong sense of his responsibility to the art form as well. yes, he directed many important productions, but he also was a critic, an author, a speaker, and a professor at CUNY. The Collected Works of Harold Clurman, which sits on the shelf right in front of my computer, runs to over 1000 pages, and that doesn't even include his full-length books such as the inimitable Fervent Years. It wasn't enough that he just "do the work," he felt that it was important that he write about it, convey his ideas to others, work to advance the field. Aside from Tony Kushner, what contemporary artists are making a similar attempt?

Well, as far as I'm concerned, the answer is: the theatre bloggers. The majority of them are artists trying, like Clurman, to create worthwhile works of art. At the same time, they freely contribute their time to make sense of what is happening in the world of theatre, writing post after post, arguing with each other, theorizing and criticizing. Someone like George Hunka, for instance, has not only written and directed plays, but has also written erudite blog posts linking up contemporary theatre with the great thinkers and art works of modernism. Isaac Butler, Matt Freeman, and Don Hall contribute thousands of words each week. Newer bloggers, too many to mention (a few: Chris Ashworth, Travis Bedard, Bob Fisher, Ian Moss) bring their own insights into the conversation. And a few of us older academics -- Tom Loughlin, Andrew Sullivan, and I -- throw our oars in as well.

What often gets lost in posts such as David Cote's call to action is that this activity is a true contribution to the art of the theatre, a contribution made in moments stolen from lives that are already chock full of day jobs, art making, and everyday living. It is truly heroic, like Clurman's heroic life. And while from time to time things may get tired in the theatrosphere, and may not be as consistently insightful as some would wish, nevertheless these bloggers are the keepers of the flame. Most of the well-known theatre artists have abrogated this responsibility, choosing instead to focus on their own careers while feeling no responsibility to advance the field or to represent it to the larger society. In a time when the internet allows such artists to bypass the mainstream press and communicate directly with the world, most make no attempt to do so, leaving the field to flounder.

And so I take this opportunity to salute the theatre bloggers. Thank you for your work.