Not Quite, A Think Tank

[marie]

In order to avoid feeling like a clandestine spectator in this "sort of 'on-line performance' for twenty or so invisible onlookers" as Jacob puts it in a previous post, I am coming out to say hi to you all. After quickly registering last week, it is my first real visit here and looking at the number of posts, I see I do have a lot to catch up with.
The sensitive questions you are raising sound familiar to me for they are waking me up often in the middle of those January nights. Being in the middle of the process of creating a new play, I am of course often thrown in a neurotic kind of trance which makes communication with others uneasy, but I will try to post a word once in a while to take part to the conversation. For now, I'll read a bit and then will switch my member state preference from invisible to visible, so at least, if I stay silent and spectator, you will know when I am there.
I apologize for my unsophisticated use of english
and
thanks to Jacob for inviting me here
marie brassard

[cdembski]

Lose track alittle bit trying to read all the various opinions, views and such with this one.
I played music at a great party on Friday and one word that keeps coming back to me is inclusion.
To host a party where anyone can come, is actually welcome and can interact with you as the artist (or host) or whatever. It's almost as if we need to offer FREE classes to educate people about what we are doing (if anyone is truely interested) instead of charging money for everthing we ever do.
This would include having open rehearsals with shows or performances, writing programs which explain the process of one's own creation or practice. Artists so much of time seem to be shooting themselves in the foot by "pretending" the show is for others (whoever they are) and then end up being cold, distant and secretive about so much of what they do.
Yet who knows maybe the "mystery" of how it gets done is what people love about it.
_________________
The BEST idea ever and then everything goes horribly horribly wrong.

[Jacob Zimmer]

I've always wanted to be able to give the work away. though various experiments in this in halifax were a bit depressing.
I agree about the secretness - to me it's something about beleiving I can hide the work away until it's "ready" that isn't useful either to me or to the audience.

I do get uncomfortable with the word "education" - but I think I understand what you mean...

[Megan]

Hm. Interesting.

To speak of the blog phenomenon, I am also fascinated by reading other peoples' blogs. Perhaps it's because there are parts of them that I'm curious about, and hoping they'll reveal there (as opposed to actually having to ask them, and then dealing with the consequences of that while they're right in front of me). I also find that in that form, people tend to describe specific moments - almost like mini-stories, that can reveal more about them than they, than anyone realizes.

I also might be looking into this too much.

However, since starting my own blog, I've dealt with a lot of personal issues/questions. Like
a) What am I doing writing about this in public?
b) What is making me want to do this?
c) Why would anyone be interested in this aside from myself?

And what's interesting is that I'd always been under the impression that nobody is reading it. And when I would find out that they are, I would panic, having potentially revealed more than I'd intended.

And then I felt kind of liberated about that, and I think that has something to do with the difference between performers that I enjoy and performers that I don't enjoy.

And I also think that all performance, regardless of the category, carries the same sets of rules and values for me. If I believe that I'm trying to be conned, I will hate what I'm watching. If I don't feel that the person in front of me is a) trying to connect with me by allowing me to see them ("them" being as honest as they possibly can in the situation), b) connected with what they're doing (be it singing, moving, acting, whatever it's all the same), and c) generally doing something brave, which isn't the same as shocking (some people find getting naked in front of people difficult, other people would find it difficult to reveal a terrible secret about themselves in front of people, and conversely, some people would find those things easy, and yet would put it forth as being difficult in order to have the appearance of having done something special when truly they're just trying to con us).

Certainly, I don't think the basic structure of theatre is working anymore. I don't think it's relevant, and I don't think people are interested. Unless it's done very, very well, and "well" is a term that is different for everyone. It's very difficult to try and convey any idea to people in a live capacity through theatre because generally, the people who come to your shows are usually people who already like you, and possibly have similar interests. So that's great, and we all feel great about that, and everybody can go for a beer and agree with each other. However, what would be more interesting is getting people to come and see your show who have no connection to you. But that rarely happens.

There are a few people in town who are looking into the "problems" with theatre. ie, why people aren't coming out. But to tie in the idea that all performance art is the same, people aren't hardly coming out to live music, or any kind of live form anymore. Numbers are down. It would be interesting to get a cross-section of the people in this city (in any city) and ask them a few questions about what they're interested in, what is their general impression of theatre, where do they get their ideas/inspirations from, etc.

Now, how to use that information is a completely different thing. Once you find out what people are into, do you then try and change your format to make it more palettable to them? When you find out that everybody thinks that live theatre is stupid, do you give up?

I'm not sure how to close all this up. I appreciate this forum, though, to get out some of these thoughts.

[Jacob Wren]

[Dixon]

Jacob Zimmer, I was at that Trampoline Hall w the guy who talked about fantasy basketball (I played the banjo for about ten seconds) and my wife, who spoke about floods, hated that fantasy basketball lecture b/c she felt that guy was just wasting his compassion and his intelligence on something that wasn't worth that kind of time-commitment. I had liked it, had been very interested in that idea about being intimate w/o being personal. I thought he was onto something. She thought he was copping out. I can see her point: It's possible to be intimate w/o being personal just before blowing one another's brains out, like the guys in the bar in Waking Life. So one might ask, what value does it have. Still, at the time it had moved me because I felt the passion he was conveying in trying to explain the beauty and meaning of his obsession. I was moved by that. She rejected it. The gender divide bugged her too. So is it good theatre when it creates that kind of division? Does good theatre divide us?

I've also been in a house full of people, bored out of my mind, and then the lights come up and everyone around me jumps to their feet and exclaims that we have a classic on their hands. That makes me feel sad, b/c I feel I've been barred from the community that has been created around me.

And then there's the 5-hour opera I saw today, at the 3-hour mark of which someone exclaims in German, 'Siegfried has killed the evil dwarf." And I thought, 'Do I laugh out loud at this point? I don't think I'm supposed to.' Are you supposed to let a line like that just go by b/c it's part of the cultural experience to do so?

The funny thing about that was, at the 4+hour mark, when the cell phone rang nearby, it created a beautiful effect b/c the cell-phone was in the same key as Siegfried and Brunnhilde. The cell-phone tone made me appreciate the exchange of the lovers, for about a minute. And then I wondered what it ould be like to do an opera like that one with singers who use vocal qualities of intimacy that I recognize. And then I thought, if I were to do that, I'd probably choose a different opera. Not one with a line like (etc.)

In many cases I'm fascinated by the problem of speaking to the audience that you've got. I feel challenged by Paul Thompson's dictum that the most radical thing you can do as a theatre-artist is to find a crowd of people and tell their stories back to them, b/c it flies in the face of my earliest desires for the theatre, which is, I think primarily, to feel awe and to convey awe. Theere didn;t seem to be anything awe-inspiring about what he was talking about. But I've gone into the country and watched him do that with a show about barn-thrashing that had an effect on its audience quite different from the hokum of a summer-stock bedroom farce. It was like being at a Trampoline Hall lecture attended by farmers. I never thought I would be interested in this problem, but the integrity of that barn-thrashing show was clear. I never expected that. It's also hard work.

In the presentation of theatre, are you creating a community for those 70 minutes? And if you are creating a community, then have you become a bunch of fascists? I don't think so.

Today all I know is, I don't know who it is that is responding to 'Siegfried has killed the evil dwarf.' And I don't think I want to know. I don't know who wants to play that game, or why.

The Sukenick quote is a beautiful quote.

[Jacob Zimmer]

"does good theatre divide us?" - I don't think it needs to, but then I also I don't think it needs to unite us either... Howard Barker writes quite eloquently about tragedy making you feel alone, and how that's a good thing (I'm doing a disservice to his writing, which I don't have with me)

I wonder about the desire, which I share often, to speak to as large a group as possible and to have a unified response... I wonder if that's reasonable or even desirable - butis it part of what "relevance" mean? - impact on a larger scale... maybe it's an issue of time - if I forego large crowds and unified response then any answer to the question of relavance or impact will take much longer, perhaps longer then I will be alive to see- which returns to some question of faith... and a very modern notion of worth...

I also like the idea and the feeling of communities that don't need to be unified on everything. that we can feel like a community though we disagree often. I certainly have friends like that and I value them very much. because we're in many ways against the wall does that mean we need to force unity ("the people united will never be defeated") are there other basis' for unity?

the idea of going to communities and telling their stories troubles me abit - maybe I've seen bad examples or more to the point, only seen them on tour in urban setting where they are judged differently... but there's a level of ego involved, and assumption that I could tell their stories better then them.
which then leads to people who facilitate exactly that. which can feel a bit like hit and run... a friend recently told me a story of a forum theatre guy going into a native community to make a show about residential school - many of the participants showed up with buckets - when he asked why they said that when they talked about their experience they usually vomited, so they brought buckets. I feel completely unqualified to deal with that. or to claim to.

not sure where this post is going anymore...

evil dwarfs? I dunno. My mother always says she used to enjoy Catholic mass until they started speaking English, she could enjoy the ritual, the spectacle, the music, the feeling of community in the room - but once she could understand what they were saying the magic was gone. Maybe she could no longer pretend - the "con" was undeniable for her. Maybe opera is the same? I've never seen one without sur-or sub-titles, though I wish I had. I think I'd enjoy the form more.

time for sleep.
jz

[Jacob Wren]

After reading the last two instalments in this thread I considered starting a new thread called WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF ART? but then thought that I’ve started too many threads already. (Also a bit afraid of seeming too pretentious.) However, if anyone else wants to...

There are two central questions raised here that I find extremely interesting because - depending on where one stands on them – one will make very different kinds of work:

1) UNITING AN AUDIENCE v.s. DIVIDING AN AUDIENCE:

I think it’s too much of a generalization to say uniting an audience is always fascist (and also using the word fascist much too loosely.) However, thinking about this reminds me of the Adorno/Horkimer observation that the reason right wing movements are often so much more effective then the left is that the right always plays to base qualities that already exist within people (fear, anger, jealousy, etc.) while the left tries to generate something new within people (a new society, different values, etc.) Obviously it is much easier to work with what’s already there then it is to create something new.

From this you can assume correctly that I have a tendency to prefer works which divide audiences. The debate around what is or is not of value is such an essential tool to help us figure out what we find meaningful, what we actually believe. For me this will always be one of the main purposes of art.

2) REFLECTING THE AUDIENCE BACK TO THEMSELVES v.s. CONFRONTING AN AUDIENCE WITH SOMETHING NEW

I think perhaps the best way to be successful in theatre is to reflect an audience back to themselves (with a slightly positive spin.) People are dying to see themselves reflected (because they so rarely see anyone like themselves in the pop culture mirror.) And I do think this has value.

But (I fear my position is getting a bit predictable) for me the performances I remember and that have stayed with me are always the one that have confronted me with something new and unexpected.

Actually, maybe I’ll stop there. Try to leave the question open...

[Dixon]

Re Thompson: but he's from there, so he has the authority. in recent years, it seems to me that the work he's done in the city doesn't really find an audience, and yet the work he does out there in Huron County connects solidly. Is it because he's come to realize that he knows that place better than he might have once realized? He knows how to pull them in and then challege them?

I met some guy out there after a show who told me he's always telling Thompson that he should work harder on his theatre pieces, strip them down and give them a broader commercial appeal to a wider audience. I said 'Why would he want to do that? The audience he's trying to speak to is right here.' And the guy said, 'Ah, I can see he's infected you with his propaganda. He's a bad influence.' Which leads me to wonder: Is the most challenging, radical vision of theatre I've encountered coming from a 65 year old man in the Ontario countryside who I used to think of as a used car salesman?

I've heard Brooks say that theatre is a young man's game, but when I look to Thompson, I see that isn't quite true. Of course, it doesn't seem to be true for Brooks either.

Anyway, that's all meant as a precis to my real thought, which is that perhaps a thing that ties contributors to this forum together is a sense of displacement, a sense of discomfort with the concept of 'home' and 'community'. Alienation, somewhat, from the life of the cities where we live (i.e. perhaps the non-community *is* our community) . And perhaps that is also the kind of audience that we seek. But they're difficult to find b/c they too feel alienated and displaced. You want to create a theatre that's relevant to them, but they're an elusive bunch. We're an elusive bunch.

Maybe I'm foolish to generalize about contributors to this forum. Maybe it's a simplification. But why else would theatre people sit and chat over the internet with a bunch of people they don't know?

All I know is, sometimes I see piece of theatre that seems relevant to me, perhaps in a way that I don't quite understand. One of the last times I felt that way was at Darren's Pppeeeaaaccceee - not the final production but the first workshop presentation. I identified with the smallness of the characters, their weird little naps, their disconnection from real and shattering events around them, their lack of narrative and emotional disconnection. I was grateful for the absence of patented narrative devices or an ending that tells me what the play was *really* about. I felt like one of my stories was being told back to me and I felt grateful for that. And I know I was not the only one who felt that way. And yet that play was torn to shreds in the media. Maligned, really. There was relevance there and it was maligned.

I think an answer is to coax a discussion of relevance. Not just here in a forum like this, but everywhere. Including among the critics. They're not dumb people. They might be cynical, but they're not dumb. Or is that a misguided notion? Are they just the enemy?

[Jacob Wren]

Last night I was having this talk with my friend Sylvie, about how when we were both younger and starting out in theatre we went to see The Wooster Group, Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Needcompany, The Augusta Company, DNA, and a few others I can't even remember. And how at that time I really thought 'This is theatre.' That there seemed to be all these different kinds of work, all these strange possibilities, all this untapped theatrical potential, happening in all kinds of different places and structures - how the reason we started working in theatre was because we wanted to be a part of it. And how now we both feel a little bit cheated because in the current environment it seems that theatre isn't that at all, it's something else, something most of the time we're not even really that interested in.

Perhaps one of the reasons I've become so addicted to this forum is because I'm searching again for a little bit of that original feeling. The idea that it's all these kind of eccentric, ambitious ideas that really 'are theatre' or at least that such artistic possibilities might some day re-emerge. So when I read about your experience watching Pppeeeaaaccceee I think, despite the critics, that there's still a kind of untapped potential and perhaps all we have to do is seize it.

Here's another quote that I think relates:

"One writes neither for the true proletarian, occupied elsewhere, and very well occupied, nor for the true bourgeois starved of goods, and who have not the ears. One writes for the mal- or "disadjusted", neither proletarian or bourgeois; that is to say, for one's friends, and less for the friends one has than for the innumerable unknown people who have the same life as us, who roughly and crudely understand the same things, are able to accept or must refuse the same, and who are in the same state of powerlessness and official silence."
– Mascolo, Le Communisme (1953)

[Dixon]

Urjo had this adage taped above his desk that generated so much respect, which went something like this: 'Don't make theatre for 500 of your friends.' He was preaching against being exclusive and insular. But whenever I think of that, I think. No, it's just the opposite: make theatre for 500 of your friends. Why should it be any more than a great reckoning in a little room? Don't worry about it. And then, if it busts open, let it. the only time I ever value the thing that I make is when I've taken that approach. Mind you, under such circumstances I might get the occasional comment like, um, 'That was strictly amateur hour,' or 'I left early and you know what? I wasn't the only one.' Or, my absolute favourite: (a man to his wife) 'Come one, admit it: Don't you think if this was on television, you would have changed the channel by now?'

But that stuff doesn't hurt me as much as it used to, doesn't burn into me so much, because I've become aware that you can't please all the people etcetera. And the only time people really try to hurt you is when they see that you're focussing in on something that you clearly cherish. And at least I can feel, under such circumstances, that I really went for something. Turned words into images, made the images active, and shot them stright through, or tried to, to a spectator's visual imagination.

I mean, when you think about it, who in the world would have started out doing anything but making art for 500 of their friends? For 70 of their friends even? Or ten? Whether it was theatre or painting or performance or what ever? Who wouldn't be shocked to even have 500 friends? Esp when they're just at the beginning? Perhaps I've gotten up to 500, I used to have only ten or twelve. How else can you approach it? if your little play becomes a runaway hit, then you become disassociated from that larger audience anyway. 500 friends. Now that would be really useful in determining whether or not you have something there. 500 *associates*. Maybe 500-friends could be the name of my next theatre co, since my last one got stolen by a friend who made a bunch of money and had to incorporate.

Still, if I had realized when I first got into it what a conservative culture it was, generally speaking, I likely would never have gotten on board. I was very naive. I thought the theatre world was this enormous community of adventurous neo-Beckettians. I don't know what I thought. I thought I could start a conversation with the urban environment and its people through my plays alone. I still wonder why I can't do that. I think I still try to do that.

[Jacob Wren]

[Dixon]

Nice. Thanks.

[Jacob Zimmer]

I wonder if that mix of naivite and guile is what keeps us in it. in a positive sense... the belief that somehow, whatever the initial attraction was is still possible - mixed with enough guile to be able to continue despite all other pressures...

I aslo wonder about the relation of distance to that feeling that Jacob W talked about seeing other companies... I could make a current list, with some of the same people (Wooster, Foreman) who have continued (though Foreman is switching gears) and some new NY companies like Radiohole, Collaspable Giraffe and the Canadian companies would now include PME, Sto Union, Mammalian, Public Recordings - it's not a centralized as maybe it was, but it is still there... maybe we're just too close sometimes.

also the breadth of people lurking on the forum is encouraging...

I find even the 500 friends daunting, and am still working on making shows that I would like to see, which I think is a vital step...

Ame talks about (*prompt*) not comparing what we're doing to the "status quo" - that both artistically and number-wise - that just doesn't move anything forward... maybe this has baring on the question of relevance... that comparison is just not very helpful - if it were tv he might of flipped, but it's not. so what is it and how does it work.

on the reflecting vs confronting question - I'm reminded of Marc Diamond who taught playmaking at SFU saying that a good story should fulfill an audiences expectations in an unexpected way - which to me at this point means both reflecting and confronting...

jacob z

[chaddembski]

Wanted to go back to this topic, after almost two years.

Recently been reading Charles Marowitz (an older collaberator of Peter Brook's) and his interpretation of Hamlet. The play itself (his version) isn't actually that interesting but I did love his thoughts on theatre. This is from 1968 or so and these are all random comments (meaning I'm not quoting perfectly)

"The most persuasive argument against the formalism of beginning-middle-and-end is that it is not truthful. Our lives simply do not unfold like that.

"That is the dilemma of the theatre today; trying with simple and inappropriate forms to convey the elaborate content of our lives."

It also talks about our lives (in 1968) being like a newspaper where our focus and emotions are taken all over the world.

This could now be extended to one of our major modern problems; truth and the our ability to believe in anything that we see, hear, or even experience (at times).