Brian,
I think Kazan was the most important director of the 40s and 50s. I think he changed American acting and theatre for the better. I even admire him for his artistry. I could even come to agree that he carries more blame for the HUAC thing than he deserves. But when you say he is a model of courage...I just can't go there with you. I think he acted with cowardice -- understandable cowardice, cowardice shared by many others, but cowardice nonetheless -- and I don't find it courageous that he defended that cowardice until the last.

Scott

I know little about Kazan or this HUAC situation, so I will refrain from commenting....It has given me a new topic to read about, though. Thanks, ya'll.

So - DDS will convene Saturday the 18th of October? Howsabout we all get together for a late lunch that day? I have to open the theatre at NC Stage at 6:00 - can we all meet earlier that afternoon, say at 3 or 4? Where would ya'll like to eat? I'm a proponent of the pizza and beer set, myself. Anyone have contact info for Mary? I'd love to invite her as well...

Brian - do you have a place to stay that weekend? You're more than welcome to stay with me Fri and Sat eve if you would like...

I think we need to separate Kazan's work from his morality. After all, if we can celebrate the poetry of Ezra Pound despite his fascist opinions, or T. S. Eliot despite his anti-Semitism, we can certainly celebrate Kazan's contribution to the American theatre. As an obit on NPR rightly observed, he almost single-handedly changed the style of American acting forever (although Strasberg had something to do with that, too). He turned a lot of plays into poetry, including A Streetcar Named Desire which, in another director's hands, could easily have been a melodramatic potboiler. I don't think he is a forgotten man, but it is true that the work of directors tends to be forgotten because it disappears -- unlike a playwright's work, which survives on the page. I don't think this has to do with Kazan's unpopularity, I think it is the nature of being a theatre director. How many people remember Tyrone Guthrie, or George S. Kaufman as a director? Kazan gets his place in history, which he deserves.

That said, Brian's insistence that he was some sort of hero because he didn't admit he made a horrible ethical choice in naming names is akin to saying that Pete Rose is a hero because he never apologized for betting on games. There is no heroism in ethical stubbornness, and while Miller and Odets may have been big enough men to forgive him, forgiveness does not mean that the decision was right.

His lack of a moral or ethical spine is evident in the disgusting quotation you posted from his autobiography. "It was obvious to me, and later conversations with Theresa verified this, that Sam had, for a long time, tried to gentle her into his bed. I saw this without prejudice, because the truth is that most men of imagination and passion in the arts tend to use their power over young women -- and young men -- to this end. It's life-loving and it's inevitable." That is the biggest piece of bullshit I have ever read. Using power as a way of getting sexual favors is the very definition of sexual harrassment, and to use this as an example of his courage -- well, I am baffled and amazed, Brian. There is nothing "life-loving and inevitable" about the casting couch, and there is nothing courageous about defending it. You are disgusted because Miller had Marilyn Monroe talk to the chair of the committee, but you can overlook this? I don't get it. Kazan had no moral backbone, but cared only about his career.

The reason that Kazan is so reviled is that he was at the height of his career when called in to testify in front of HUAC (which is why he was questioned for so long), and he could have used that power to undermine the committee's power. But he didn't. Then he shot "On the Waterfront," which seemed to be a film that defended what he did.

Careerism is not an admirable trait; moral courage is. HUAC was wrong, and Kazan put his career before principle. Does that make his art less amazing? No. Does it make him a hero? Never in a million years.

Scott

Brian -

Thurs to Sat, Oct 16-18 at 8 pm. Sun, Oct 19 at 2 pm. If you are going to make it up, I think we'd all like to get together for a meal or something and just talk. We miss you!

Maybe we could all see the show on the same night?

Nice summary, Jess.

One thing we must agree on in order to approach this question of what makes a work of art great is whether the question "Is Play A better than Play B" the same sort of question as "Is chocolate pudding better than vanilla pudding?" In other words, are their criteria of greatness that can be based on more than mere opinion, subjective preference? If yes, then we can move on; if no, we must stop.

Scott

But John, what you are saying is that there is no such thing as "high artist vs low artist". That's not what we're talking about.

Qualitatively, doesn't there have to be a difference between high art and low art? A McDonald's hamburger advertisement cannot possibly have the same artistic merit as a poem by Tennyson. Yet they are both art, correct?

at lunch today, we discussed (among myriad other topics) the criteria for what makes great art, well, great.

great art is a different experience each time you revisit it.

great art is technically proficient.

great art prompts you to ask questions about yourself, your society, the work, etc...

great art doesn't pretend to give simple answers to complex questions.

great art is complex. it has layers and levels.

what else? (no fair saying what great art is not....)

It is possible to acknowledge the quality of high art and low art without saying that they are the same thing, isn't it? Seriousness of purpose seems to me to be what differentiates high and low art. And by seriousness, I do not mean non-humorous, I mean possessing a specific purpose that contributes an insight into the world. It is not genre-based: detective stories are low, tragedies are high. If this were so, Oedipus Rex would be low art, since it is a detective story. But it has a purpose to it beyond sheer entertainment. I'm thinking out loud here, but perhaps that is the way to differentiate between high and low art: low art has no purpose beyond sheer entertainment, whereas high art seeks to entertain and do something else. High art encompasses low art like a paragraph encompasses a sentence. I doubt that Cujo has much purpose to it beyond sheer entertainment, but Misery might. So it could be that, even within the works of a single author, there can be both high art and low art.

Scott

Brian:
On deconstruction: "The notion that coherent meaning is never possible because language is not stable- is very provocative." It is indeed very provocative, and extraordinarily nihilist. It is the underpinning of the idea that there is no basis for ethics and morality, but that ethics and morality are simply the verbal justifications of those who are in power and want to keep it. I find this idea dangerous, and paralyzing to the quest for a just world.

I think deconstruction is very valuable for dismantling things that deserve to be dismantled. It has been very effective when used by feminists, post-colonialists, multiculturalists, and post-marxists. Its problem is that its very premises makes it impossible to use it to construct anything -- it can only destroy. Into the vacuum steps the late capitalist corporation, who uses the value gap as a way of selling useless and decadent products.

People cannot live without a values and meaning. In their absence, they fill them with stuff. So deconstruction is great for capitalism. And for fundamentalism, which offers a stable alternative to the nihilist hole that deconstruction creates. Neither of which are good for the world, in my opinion.

So my hostility to deconstruction is based on my beliefs about what makes a society just, fair, and healthy.

Scott

Now, about Harold Bloom... I am struggling here, because I don't like Bloom. I found his massive "The Western Canon," for instance, filled with enthusiastic assertions about Great Authors but lacking in depth and insight. I was reminded of GB Shaw's line at the end of a very long letter, in which he apologized for the length but said he "didn't have time to write a shorter one." I think Bloom would benefit from writing less with more thought. Do an author search on Harold Bloom in our library catalog and you come up with 271 hits. Puh-leeze. I also struggle with Bloom precisely because he was the head of the Yale Deconstructionists -- a movement that I think did an awful disservice to literary criticism in this country. The irony is that he has largely abandoned deconstruction, and instead is writing old-fashioned explication these days.

But enough of my quibbles with Bloom, what about what he says? Again, I struggle. I keep hearing the names of "Dickens" and "Shakespeare" going through my mind -- authors often dismissed as hacks during their own day, now warmly embraced by critics such as Bloom. Stephen King may be no Poe, but Poe was no Poe during his day, either. He was just another penny-dreadful author. And frankly, the day we start lionizing Rudyard Kipling is a bleak day indeed. That "Harry Potter"will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book" seems like a feather in Rowling's cap.

What annoys me is that Bloom has fallen for the oldest game in the American journalist's book: getting the "stuffy old guy" to huff and puff about something that is popular with youth. We used to do this when I was a kid by getting some old teacher to fulminate about rock and roll. It was great fun, and good for hours of hilarious imitation afterwards. What annoys me is that such off-the-cuff harumphing really doesn't make a case, it just makes him look ridiculous. "What [King] is is an immensely inadequate writer, on a sentence-by-sentence. Paragraph-by-paragraph. Book-by-book basis." More, please. And I hardly think that Rowling's repetition of the phrase "stretch his legs" qualifies as analysis. But hey, the role of curmudgeon is great fun -- a mask as old as Pantalone's.

Perhaps I react the way I do because I recognize in Bloom my own embarrassing tendencies...

So much for self-reflection. It seems to me that the issue about which Bloom is objecting is one that, in fact, typifies the postmodern world, and incidently, is one that was brought into being by the deconstructionists: the erasure of the difference between "high" and "low" art. How can we give the same award to Stephen King that was given to Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Arthur Miller? We can because we no longer recognize a difference between them. The Pulitzer has been given to "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," let's not forget. The (somewhat questionable) modernist idea that difficulty equals quality has frayed and unraveled. A text is what you can make of it. A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse. I am certain that Stephen King's work reflects the archetypal fears of modern man -- if looked at in the right way.

All of which is to say that I agree with Bloom... ???? Agree in the sense that I think we would do well to restore some criteria for differentiating literature, so that we can celebrate Arthur Miller for writing the kinds of play he writes, without feeling that we must condemn Neil Simon for writing the kinds of plays he writes. So we can reward the chef who makes a great dessert and the chef who makes a great lasagna. When you go to the World's Greatest Chili Cookoff, nobody enters a cheeseburger and argues that a cheeseburger is "as good as" chili because they're both food. Similarly, people giving book awards ought to see themselves not as rewarding "books," but some subset of books -- and stick to that. That way Saul Bellow and Stephen King would never get the same award, and people like Harold Bloom wouldn't feel compelled to get their undies in a bundle over lowbrow incursions into the realm of great literature.

To my mind, a more alarming issue than Stephen King being awarded the National Book Foundation's award is the fact that there aren't more authors who deserve it more, who are writing profound books. Who is this generation's Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, not to mention Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, Garcia Lorca, Bertolt Brecht? The only one I can think of is Toni Morrison. Maybe. Tony Kushner is still a flash in the pan. Why are the schedules of regional theatres clogged with the classics? Because they can't find a worthwhile contemporary play. And that is cause for alarm. How much longer can we eat from the cold banquet of the past?

Well, it seems I have gotten behind again, and a lively discussion has ensued as a result. Let's see if I can add to it, rather than squash it...

On Sly Stallone: it seems to me that the the issue revolves around cultural understanding. The fear is that someone outside of a culture will lack the understanding to recognize, and fairly represent, certain issues that are deeply embedded in that culture. This is particularly feared when it comes to a controversial, yet much revered, figure such as Tupac. Such fear of misrepresentation is certainly justified historically; all one need do is think of the horrific misinterpretations and judgments made by colonialists when they encountered the stories and mores of a "native" culture. One might question whether African-American culture is that different than White-American culture -- different enough to justify such a segregationist attitude. If it is sufficiently different, then is it also true that African-American directors cannot direct a play about white people? What about plays from the past? Could a contemporary African-American (or White-American, for that matter) direct a play by Sophocles or Shakespeare? Wouldn't their culture be equally foreign? No, I think Brian's fellow students are concerned about distortion that comes from moral judgments more than cultural knowledge -- that Stallone will view Tupac's actions through the moral lens of a white person, and the film will present Tupac as reprehensible. Since so few black figures are given the honor of being presented on the silver screen, they want to make certain that those figures are shown in the "proper light," meaning, I would suspect, in a heroic light without moral complexity.

August Wilson sold Fences to the film industry with the provision that it only be directed by an African-American director. Eddie Murphy bought the rights, but the project has never been made, to a large extent because of Wilson's provision. The question that might be asked is whether African-Americans as a whole would have been better off had they had the opportunity to see Wilson's play, no matter whether distorted, than not seeing it at all.

Lunch next week: Monday between 11 and 11:30 meet in the Carol Belk Lobby. We will then go en masse to Urban Burrito. If you will be late, meet us as soon after 11:30 as possible at the restaurant.

I have TWO good excuses for not being at lunch--the first one is that I had a rehearsal which turned into a morning at the emergency room because I am so hard to work with that I give people chest pains. Anyone can use my extra excuse--first come, first serve.

Brian--I am glad that you enjoyed the article. The ideas being discussed rang of our discussions here. I am currently reading "The Shifting Point" and it seems Peter Brook was asking questions concerning the immediacy of the theatrical experience in 1965. He asks how the theatre can move away from static forms in order to provoke discussion among its audiences and it seems to me he keeps trying in his work.

I have another article of a panel discussion involving Brustein and others that discusses the quality of contemporary art--I don't have the info with me, but I will post it for all.

Jennifer

Alright, where was everybody today? Jess was there, and Kate was there. No Jennifer, no Lachlan, no John, no me... OK, I had no excuse: I just forgot. But you all better have a good reason, or I'm gonna go get a new group of DDsers. ;-)

Remind me again which one you are, Kate...

Scott

Just to let ya'll know, I have a new review online. Go to www.main.nc.us and click on the link that says "theater". My review is the one on subUrbia at the Artists Resource Center.

Let me know what you think...

All you clones look alike...

Brian wrote: "And as far as the whole cloning deal is concerned, I'm pretty confident that most of us are here because we DON'T want to be clones. Whether this makes us a herd of black sheep or not remains to be seen..."

This reminded me of someone who quipped about the Partisan Review group of intellectuals that they were "a herd of independent minds." *LOL*

Scott

Yes, I spoke to Lachlan, and she seemed genuinely pleased to be asked, and said she would like to be involved. Also, after talking to a few of you, I made an Executive Decision (very high-handed of me, I know), and I have emailed Ryan Madden to ask if he would like to be involved as well. Word has it that Ryan's writing has exhibited the kind of mind that would be a good addition to DDS, but that he needs practice at speaking these ideas aloud. Well, that's what DDS is best at, it seems to me! Haven't heard from him, but expect to soon.

We'll try again next Monday!

Also, Lachlan will not be at lunch, either. Could be just John and Kate!

Nor will Jennifer or I be attending lunch today -

Sickness, famine, appt. w/ the guillotine...

I will be unable to be at lunch tomorrow, as I have to go home to get an estimate on having our driveway fixed, and then off to the doctor for a stress test. I have been having a few health problems, and my doctor wants to make sure I'm not about to have a heart attack.

Also, next Saturday is the Departmental Picnic out at my place. It will start around 5:00, and at dusk we'll have a bonfire. Sign-up is on the board -- if you can bring something to eat (preferably not TOO healthy), that is great. Brian, if you can get away and want to join us, we'd love to see you.

Brian, I think that is a really inspiring post for a number of reasons: it is passionate and comitted, it embraces the past as well as the future, and it helps reinforce courage. I'm not going to say much more about it at the moment (maybe later), but instead address another issue (I think I have ADD) that has been bothering me for a while -- this about DDS itself.

When I created DDS last fall, it was inspired by the summer play reading group. As I watched you all get together every week to read and discuss a play, I realized that there was a hunger for ideas, and that there needed to be a place where talking about ideas was encouraged. I looked around the department and asked you all to be a part, because you seemed to enjoy thinking. Initially, DDS was seen as elitist, I guess because it was not an open group like APO or USITT. OK, we weathered that, and now the value of the group is starting to be recognized, as evidenced by Pat Snoyer's comment in class.

Somewhere along the line, though, the idea of DDS within the group started to change, and change in a direction with which I have grown increasingly uncomfortable. We have come to see DDS as an intellectual gladiator's ring where mental pugilism is practiced, and where participants emerge from lunch battered and bloody. Discussions have become increasingly aggressive, almost destructive. Instead of conversation, we engage in an artistic version of the Sunday morning political shows where nobody listens and everybody tries to squash the ideas of the other person. To my mind, this undermines what is best about DDS.

There should be a passionate exchange of ideas, yes, and rigor, and a questioning attitude. But we must escape from the argument culture where the focus of a discussion is to make your idea "win" and the other person's idea "lose." Instead, we should be using our differing perspectives as a way of forging stronger ideas through synthesis. When somebody brings a new idea about theatre to the table, and trusts us enough to share it, then we need to treat that idea with respect. I don't mean fawning and gentle smiles, I mean treat it as a creation that will benefit from our questions, our ideas, our extensions, and as an idea that has a right to live.

About a week ago, we had a breakthrough. Instead of talking about what we were against (which is necessary), we moved into talking about what we were for. This centered around the concept of immediacy, which each of us defined and extended differently. Each direction had value, and could have resulted in exciting art. But when we got to lunch, we went into argument mode, going beyond questioning an idea to rejecting it or attempting to squash it.

DDS is not a "support group" in some sentimental kind of way, but it is a group that should support the development of ideas in its members. The theatre can use as many ideas as it can get. We all are very differently oriented, and that is a DDS strength (I have often been accused of creating "Scott clones," and I am delighted that none of you have become one). It is not necessary to destroy that heterogeneity out of some misbegotten attempt to create unity. Ideally, there would have been several different experiments in immediacy that would have arisen from our discussion, not just one "winner."

We are all articulate people who like a good discussion. We get impatient with the departmental critiques because they lack rigor and honesty, and we are baffled when other people are wounded by rigor and honesty. But let's not confuse rigor and honesty with intellectual brutality. We must strive for a civil conversation that has energy and passion, rigor and honesty. Not an easy task, but I think one worth striving for. DDS could make an important contribution, but only if we stop killing each other.

Obviously, I didn't read Jennifer's post before making my own... Clearly the conversation has begun.

Kate said: "Our society has given up its myths, its gods, and its stories. Why in the hell shouldn't it give up their vehicle?"

Now THAT is a dynamite question (dynamite qualititively, AND in the sense that is is explosive) that addresses the content issue. Additional questions that flow from this: 1) HAS our society given up its myths, gods, and stories? 2) If so, has it replaced them with anything? Has our society created new myths, gods and stories, or are we in a mythless, godless, and storyless period? 3) Is the theatre the vehicle for myths, gods, and stories?

OK--I admit it, I had to look up the Norse references, but what I found was interesting.

"After the destruction, a new and idyllic world will arise from the sea and will be filled with abundant supplies. Some of the gods will survive, others will be reborn. The descendants of Lif (Life) and Lifthrasir (Eager for life) will inhabit this earth."

I believe that we can use the vehicle of theatre to encourage society to remember their myths, stories and deities. The fact that we haven't come up with "the answer" does not mean that we shuldn't explore possibilities for the future. Our discussion group is the perfect example that there are people who are interested in theatre's revival. It reminds me of "the Hundredth Monkey"...if we are exploring the challenges that theatre is facing, I have to believe that there are others that are wrestling with these questions as well.

A fast note on the way to Morganton. Someone once said, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." In other words, beware of finding The One. The same holds true here. We should not be searching for The One True Theatrical Form. We should be coming up with a multitude, all useful for different purposes, all fit for different content. We must resist the temptation to universalize, and in doing so, rejecting any other forms than The One True Form. As someone else said, the opposite of a truth may be another truth...

FYI -

DDS got a great compliment from Pat today in her audition class. She told the class that she was interested in helping students in the class develop the ability to express their critical faculties in a concise, understandable, communicable manner. (That may be paraphrasing a bit...) She THEN went on to describe DDS as an example of people with this ability.

COOL!

Ouch.

I thought we already had Reality Theatre--Joe Millionaire, Survivor, Fear Factor, etc... But that's the national scope I was referring to earlier.

If we've given up our myths, gods and stories, why is The Matrix and Lord of the Rings so popular? Or Harry Potter? Or the National Football League?

Theatre is not dead. The existence of fifty-seven different theatre companies in Western North Carolina alone should tell us this. Theatre is simply, as it always has been, behind the times. But, the good news is that the theatre is in a state of conflict right now--and conflict ALWAYS leads to change, which inevitably inspires growth. Here's the truth: we are part of that conflict. We are the grain of sand that the oyster worries into a pearl. We are useful.

John,
[Why is it that when somebody uses the phrase "all well and good" you know whatever has been described is about to be trashed?...] Yes, versatility is great (or all well and good), but in my opinion it is not a substitute for having an artistic vision -- it is something that enhances and artistic vision. During your life, you will only have a certain number of years to do plays. Will you leave to chance the choice of what plays you do during those years? Is one play as good as any other? If not, how do you choose without an artistic vision? When you are looking through the audition notices in Backstage, how will you decide which plays to audition for and which to skip?

What we are struggling with here is a complex question: what makes theatre different from other storytelling forms. Why do we care? Because economics are whooping theatre's ass. Why should anyone pay $25 to see a play starring unknown actors, when for $7 they can see a movie filled with stars? If our only answer is, "because plays are cool," then we have lost that battle, and theatre will go the way of all non-adaptive creatures such as dinosaurs. Now, we can just accept the status quo, make ourselves as versatile as possible so we can get hired as often as possible, and deal with the ever-dwindling number of viable theatres in our society, or we can do some thinking about how to make theatre special again.

Jess' idea of going to the bar with the audience addresses one aspect of the problem: artists have isolated themselves from the community. They no longer have a connection to where they live. Regional theatres employ NY actors who job in for a show or two and then are heard from no more. So actually speaking with the audience might be a step toward being able to communicate with them.

That said, it isn't the sole answer, and I don't think Jess was proposing that it was. But immediacy is a slippery thing. So is transformation. Let's wrestle.

Scott

brian, I think you may have been drowsy when you read my post as well. I never even insinuated that immediacy was created after a performance in a bar. In fact, that whole bar topic was in response to something we discussed Monday at lunch. BTW, I, at least, really miss having daily discussions with you. I think you should quit grad school and move back here for the sake of DDS. Just my two cents...

I'm all for the tomato idea. Or squirt guns. Or real guns.

John, I think the focus has been on immediacy because it was the first thing we could identify that seperated theatre from film and TV. Scott has ventured that theatre's transformative aspects are another difference. Beyond that, I'm at a loss to identify what else could differ between the mediums. Maybe locality? By that I mean that theatre does not have to relate to a national audience. It's focus can be local. I guess public access TV and independent films can also do this...

Can a play be effective without using direct audience address? Doesn't anything that engages the audience's imagination create immediacy?

I'm confused, Brian. Can you elaborate on your idea that fourth-wall theatre can have immediacy? Earlier, we said that one of the things that differentiates theatre from film, TV, and literature is the possibility of an exchange between the actors and the audience. How does that happen in fourth-wall theatre? Are you saying that we could take fourth-wall theatre outside, and because it is outdoors the immediacy would be improved? In what way? I am puzzled because we have a lot of outdoor theatre in this country, but I don't see it changing much.

By the way, I used Playback not as a model of the content, but as a model of the form. In Playback, the audience contributes the material for the creation of the piece. It wouldn't have to be psychological material. I used it as an example of a step along the continuum...

Scott

I would be interested in taking part in/directing for/helping produce an outdoor theatre festival in Asheville - provided that it took place in the late spring or summer. I have no time this fall, and there is no point in doing this when the weather is bad...

Taking plays out of the theatre does not make them more immediate for an audience. Engaging the audience's imagination is immediate - something that can be done in a theatre just as well as on a street corner or at the DMV. We must explore how to identify and implement the tools of the transformative aspects of theatre in order to engage the audience's imagination. We must also work to understand the role of the audience in today's society. Why do they act like they do? What influences them? What is their perceived role in a production--any production, TV, film, lit, theatre, etc... What are their outlets for criticism? For growth?

Remember, we are audience members as well as artists. How does that affect our art?

I believe we must know our audiences. We must all be part of the same neighborhood, if you will. I'm a director who shops in my butcher's store, who drinks at our buddy's bar, which is decorated by our friend, the carpenter--all of whom come to my theatre. We need to build communities, not pander commercial theatre to an impersonal general public. Inviting an audience to hoist a pint at Jack of the Wood while discussing the play ONLY works if those people would sit down and have a drink with you anyway. Otherwise, we are simply the theatrical elite granting audience to the unenlightened masses.

Dear Brian,
The DDSers went to lunch today and discussed some of the stuff that has been posted to the blog lately. We tried to take our enthusiasms and tried to understand them in terms of actual theatre practice. It was a good discussion, if inconclusive.
Since I think better when I am writing than when I am in the heat of conversation, I am going to try to sort out some of the issues here, in the hopes that they might be grasped more fully in the future.
It seems to me that we are dealing with at least two issues in the discussion:
1) Distribution and Access: Taking theatre out of our black boxes and to the audience. DMV theatre, living room theatre, theatre in Pritchard Park, theatre out behind the residence halls: these are all possibilities for a different way of distributing theatre in the hopes of creating a new audience.
2)Interaction and Immediacy: This is about the actor-audience relationship -- whether the actor acknowledges the presence of the audience, and to what extent the audience is allowed to participate in the development of the play. This interaction can have a wide variety of degrees.
The least degree of interaction is, of course, the "fourth wall" representational type of drama. Once we move away from that, we can move to plays such as Our Town and the plays of Shakespeare, in which the actors acknowledge the presence of the audience, and speak directly to them, but they do so in monologue -- the audience is not asked to respond. In combination with a very intimate connection between actor and audience -- say, Living Room Theatre, where the actors and spectators are very close to each other -- there can be a very dynamic sense of immediacy and even interaction. The general sense might be that of the storyteller telling ME a story.
Another level might be interactive productions such as The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which allows the audience to vote as to who killed Edwin Drood, and the end of the play flows from the audience's decision.
The next level might be improv productions or Playback Theatre productions, in which the audience provides the raw material for the actors to work with. In this case, the actors and audience are co-creators.
Next might be a production which stops at points in the play to incorporate discussion and commentary about the play, and the issues raised by the events being portrayed. For instance, we might stop a production of, say, The Good Woman of Setzuan in order to ask the audience whether Shen Te should begin relying on Shui Ta.
Another level might be something like "Tony and Tina's Wedding," in which the audience becomes part of the event, interacts with the actors as if they were guests at the wedding, and follow whatever characters they find most interesting. This integrates the audience into the illusion itself.

Once we have examined all the options, we can go on to content. But right now, I personally think we would do well to try to discuss a form -- i.e., a use of these techniques -- that might form a container into which we could pour all variety of material: great myths, local politics, personal revelations, discussions of ideas, and so on.
By the way, I think there is another unique characteristic of theatre that could be added to this discussion (in case it isn't complicated enough). I think that theatre excels at the use of transformation: things can be made to stand for one thing, and then suddenly be transformed into something else. An actor can be one character when he has one voice and posture, and suddenly transform himself into another character by changing his voice and body, or putting on a shawl or a hat. A broom handle can be a baseball bat in one scene, and a vaulter's pole in another, and a rifle in yet a third. This is very difficult in film and TV, which tend toward extreme literalness, and is totally worthless in literature.
All of this can be combined in different ways to create a sense of immediacy. For instance, I'm sure that the Czech production of Macbeth done by only a few actors in somebody's living room probably relied a great deal on transformation, the creative editing of the script probably utilized narrative that had a story-telling feel to it, and the close quarters created a sense of sharing the performance with specific people (as opposed to a faceless mass sitting in the dark), which gave it immediacy.
At lunch, we seemed to equate immediacy with actual audience participation (i.e., the most extreme parts of the interaction spectrum), but I am wondering about this now. Is it necessary for the spectator to be a part of the play, or is it revolutionary enough to personalize the contact so that the actor is telling a story to a specific group of people and not a faceless mask of "customers"? When might each type of interaction be most effective?

Scott

Warm bodies in the same room is not immediacy, it has the potential for immediacy. This potential doesn't exist for film or television. But simply to possess the potential without actually using it is no better than not having the potential at all.

I am seriously considering having dialogue with the audience be part of "The Frankenstein Project." I am still thinking this through, but right now I am imagining a dream-trial prior to which I raise the lights and have each section of the audience compile some questions they wish to ask of Dr. Frankenstein. These will then be asked by the Furies (who will serve as prosecuting attorneys), and have to be answered by the actor playing Dr. Frankenstein.

This is only a small step toward the kind of interaction and immediacy that needs to occur, but it is a start.

I also wonder how theatre peoples' idea of the purpose of theatre might change if they had to sit and have a drink with the audience after the play. If you were invited to somebody's living room to do a production, and afterward were going to have a cup of coffee and some cookies with them, would you be so quick to use your art to point fingers and make accusations? Would you take joy in obscurity, and feel self-righteous about your superiroity? Or would you assume the good will of the audience, and their basic human intelligence, and then join with them in creation? How much of our commitment to attacking the audience and making them squirm is based on the fact that when the lights go up we can run away to our dressing rooms like cowards, and snigger about the fat and self-satisfied middle class amongst ourselves? How much of our willingness to accept being boring as a sign of our superiority is based in the fact that our audiences have been cowed into silence during the play, and we don't have to face them afterward? I think Brian is right -- we talk big about the immediacy of the interaction between audience and actor, but we have created an approach to theatre that undermines that exchange at every turn. Maybe the best training a young theatre artist could get would be to do his work in living rooms and on street corners, where the actor-audience connection and the material better be electric, or you're going to know about it. Go back to the story around the campfire. Go back to the Bible story on the cart. Go back to passing the hat after the show is over. Go back to the groundlings with fruit. Put ourselves on the line, and really find out who is out there in the audience, who is America.

What a wonderful conversation has been going on in my absence (is there a connection?). You all started out from fairly traditional positions, and then suddenly synthesized several threads to an interesting idea: taking theatre out of the black boxes and to the audience. In Czechoslovakia, for instance, during the Communist era, Pavel Kahout, Vaclav Havel and other theatre people did productions of plays in living rooms; Tom Stoppard wrote a wonderful one-act, "Cahoot's Macbeth," about such a production. Here is something I found on the internet about the background of this:

"Cahoot's Macbeth is dedicated to the Czechoslovakian playwright Pavel Kohout. During the last decade of 'normalization' which followed the fall of Dubcek, thousands of Czechoslovaks were prevented from pursuing their careers. Among them are many writers and actors.

"During a short visit to Prague in 1977 I met Kohout and Pavel Landovsky, a well-known actor who had been banned from working for years since falling foul of the authorities. (lt was Landovsky who was driving the car on the fateful day in January 1977 when the police stopped him and his friends and seized the first known copies of the document that became know as Charter 77.) One evening Landovsky took me backstage at one ot the theatres where he had done some of his best work. A performance was going on at the time and his sense of fierce frustration is difficult to describe.

"A year later Kohout wrote to me: „As you know, many Czech theatre-people are not allowed to work in the theatre during the last years. As one of them who cannot live without theatre I was searching for a possibility to do theatre in spite of circumstances. Now I am glad to tell you that in a few days, after eight weeks rehearsals - a Living-Room Theatre is opening, with nothing smaller but Macbeth.
„What is LRT? A call-group. Everybody, who wants to have Macbeth at home with two great and forbidden Czech actors, Pavel Landovsky and Vlasta Chramostova, can invite his friends and call us. Five people will come with one suitcase.

"Pavel Landovsky and Vlasta Chramostova are starring Macbeth and Lady, a well known and forbidden young singer Vlastimil Tresnak is singing Malcolm and making music, one young girl, who couldn't study the theatre-school, Tereza Kohoutova, by chance my daughter, is playing little parts and reading remarks; and the last man, that's me...! is reading and a little bit playing the rest of the roles, on behalf of his great colleague.

"I think, he wouldn't be worried about it, it functions and promises to be not only a solution of our situation but also an interesting theatre event. I adapted the play, of course, but I am sure it is nevertheless Macbeth !" (http://buedg.daig-kastura.de/stoppard/stopp2.htm) Isn't that interesting? The spectator calls the actors and they take their production, in a suitcase, to the spectator's home and give a performance in their living room!

Last year, I received a manual from a former student about how to create "No Blame Theatre" or something -- theatre that takes place in the flatbed of a truck with the audience gathered around. This is how Luis Valdez, author of "Zoot Suit" and now artistic director of El Teatro Campesino, began his career -- playing off the back of a truck to striking California migrant workers.

Brian's reference to the medieval mystery plays is a good one, as well as the traveling commedia companies of the Italian Renaissance.

What such theatre does is force you, as a theatre artist, to examine what it is about theatre that makes it different than TV, film, and literature. As Brian notes, each of these forms tells stories, but each in a slightly different way. A novel lets us hear the thoughts of characters, for instance, and allows the narrator to comment on the action. Film integrates technology beautifully, and allows the director to focus the spectator's eye on any detail desired, and can shift from place to place in the blink of an eye. TV is a more intimate version of film, and is most effective telling smaller, domestic stories.

I might venture to say that one of the few things the theatre has that film and TV doesn't is, as Jess has said, the possibility of direct actor-audience interaction. TV and film does 4th-wall stuff much better than theatre, because they can ignore the audience's presence completely -- stand up and shout obscenities at the screen during a showing of "American Beauty" and Kevin Spacey won't even blink; do the same during the performance of "The Iceman Cometh," and Spacey might notice.

Also, as you have already said, one of the advantages theatre has is its portability -- you don't need a plug, electronic equipment. All you need is "two planks and a passion," as someone (was it Lope de Vega?) once said. The first line of Peter Brook's "The Empty Space" says the same thing: all it takes is an actor walking across an empty space to create theatre.

So how can this strength be used to theatre's advantage? Like everyone else in this culture, we want our bells and whistles. We want theatres that can fly scenery, we want computer-operated lights, we want costumes and sets and quiet, immobile audiences who will catch all the subtle details of our art. And all of these things are nice, but hasn't our desire for it moved us further and further away from what is alive and vibrant about live theatre?

Keep talking. This is one of the most exciting discussions DDS has had yet, it seems to me. Where is John and Jennifer?

Scott

Point taken. Next question - how can theatre compete with the mediums of film and tv? I still say that people will watch what is convenient. One of the trends in our society over the past fifty years is what I like to call "air-conditioner isolationism". People don't interact socially like we used to. Used to be, at the end of the day you would find people walking around the neighborhood, chatting with neighbors, attending small-scale social functions. Today, we rent movies, flip on the boob-tube and seclude ourselves with our housemates in our air-conditioned caves.

Theatre is so damn popular in Asheville because it is one of the few places where there is still value placed on social, small scale, in-town interaction. Exhibit one: our downtown, which is the envy of all towns even close to our size across the country. We interact as neighbors, we engage, we voluntarily seek each other's company--in tandem with an artistic awareness that beats the shit out of 90% of mainstream American towns.

Theatre is not an isolationist, convenient activity. Maybe it's declining popularity is a symptom of a definite social ill or ills.

Maybe we have to take theatre out of our dark boxes and put it where people are -- in their workplaces, in their schools, in their churches, in the malls, at the fucking DMV -- I don't know.

You CAN'T rent the play-going experience at Blockbuster. You can only rent a snapshot of the event. That's like saying looking at a picture in a textbook of Cezanne's apple painting is the same as seeing the actual masterpiece hanging on a wall. It's pretty, and it points to the art experience, but you don't catch what is the essentiality of that experience -- being overwhelmed by the "appleness" of the apples.

People don't watch films and television because they are intrinsically better at telling stories than the theatre. People watch what is convenient. People watch what they are told to watch--what the media decides people should watch. People watch what is sold to them.

I'm confused by the two statements you make in conjunction which I find to be contradictory: "Audiences want universal stories with eternal truths. Theatre will never be revitalized unless it regains its place as a popular medium." Are you saying that theatre does not tell universal stories with eternal truths? Are you saying that "popular" storytelling mediums do? I have noticed that the films and TV shows that embrace universal stories with eternal truths are NOT popular. "American Idol", "Survivor" and "Dumb and Dumberer" are popular. They have huge money machines behind them doing their promoting. They tell people to watch their product, they saturate the market, they are able to mass distribute--thus making them non-entities, artistically. They DO NOT tell universal stories with eternal truths--they pander to the lowest common denominator in society. Hitler would have loved it -- identify the stupidest member of your audience and play to them. But, they are popular.

Peter Brook:

"We can talk about housing on TV. We can talk about heaven in the churches. In the theatre we can ask why it's worth living in the house and if we want to go to heaven. Where else can we do this? We can talk about shorter hours of work in the weeklies and about leisure. If we don't examine the living of our leisure in the theatre, where else will we do so? In the loony bin?"

.....

Theatre only exists in this moment. This is where it differs with the "popular" mediums of entertainment, TV and film. There is no past. You can't record the theatre on your VCR, you can't rent it at Blockbuster. There is no immediate disconnection from the art created by mass distribution. The audience witnessing the work on the stage is entirely present and engaged in a way that is impossible to achieve in those other forms. Thus, our committment should be to true entertainment. We entertain the questions that are important to the people that see our plays. We show them spectacle, emotion, beauty, pain, love, violence -- all those things that people watch the idiot box for -- but we do it BETTER because we do it HERE and NOW. And, we get to address the reality of the human condition because...

Theatre, above all, helps us to see. This is done by provoking and questioning, by exploring, exposing and exploding stereotypes and creating new paradigms, by addressing the reason for the issues as well as the issues themselves, by embracing conflict and complexity, by refusing to compartmentalize and abandoning voluntary simplicity--the death knell of all that is artistic and the basis for success in our country's system of manifest "density".

Second question: if theatre does benefit society in some way, does all theatre benefit it, or does some of it not benefit society?

Scott

I think we need to back up (as Albee says in Zoo Story, sometimes it is necessary to go a long way in order to travel a short distance correctly). It seems to me that the government only gives money to things that it believes will benefit society. In what way does theatre benefit society?

Maybe part of the reason we see poor theatre in such predominance is due to the fact that 90% of the theatre artists working cannot devote the amount of time to the work necessary to create great theatre. Having to hold down a forty hour a week job seriously undermines your ability to stage quality work. It is this limitation I would like to see corrected.

Government subsidy of ticket prices is a necessity. It won't happen, though, until our political representatives see exposure to the arts as a necessary means for education of society.

Does anyone remember the days of yore when this chat room used to have conversations focused on theatre and the arts in today's society? Or are witty banalities the only way we can communicate anymore?

I offer this to the great group grope:

Does government subsidy of the arts merely create "welfare artists"? Is there an inherent difference in funding an individual and subsidising a theatre? Would the channeling of funds to arts groups be more appealing (and possible) if the focus for monied distribution lay in subsidising the audiences?

I call a pre-emptive "foul" on anyone who refuses to answer based on the grounds that we've already tackled this subject. Let's apply our critical thinking skills and work towards some type of synthesis...

Or, pose another topic that is art/society/theatre related. I'm sick of gossip and Rawlings references that substitute for dialogue.

Grrrrr....