When I went to Emerson College to study performance, I learned that theatre consisted of more than beautiful people singing and jumping and dysfunctional families yelling at each other in cross-sectioned living rooms. In studying the post-modern avant-garde movements, I learned that theatre can be sacred and violent, as real as it is surreal, personally affecting and brimming with meaning in every facet. It doesn't have to be financially gluttonous, or chained to tradition. It is alive, and it can grow and change and cast aside those tenets which are no longer useful.
Of course, school and the real world are very different places. In school, actors have the space to expand their horizons. In school, actors are always busy.
I wouldn't say I'm naive. As an actor, I don't expect deluges of fantastic roles all of the time. But as a theatre enthusiast, I demand to see progressive work.
I know I can't expect all theatre artists to produce naked transvestite versions of the Old Testament, or to sell tickets for the privilege of walking over a foot bridge while a man watches from beneath and masturbates, but, damn, I was hoping I'd at least be able to find more challenging scripts on stage.
I know that there are wonderful parlor dramas. Some of my favorite theatre experiences were just people talking honestly to each other about real concerns. However, these realistic depictions of life can't be confused for the foundation of theatrical work, because it's not. If anything, the avant garde examples I described are more closely linked to the classical and proto-classical, communally significant rituals that spawned what we now consider to be theatre.
I know that the 70s were ridiculous, but I thought there were some important lessons in there! What happened; did all those artists grow up and say, "Boy, that was silly, and I've had quite enough of it"?
Yeah, it was silly. Yeah, it was ridiculous and unlike anything anyone had seen before. That's what makes it worth remembering! It's always been hard to make people accept progressive work, but even the most popular mediums like film and television, I feel, seem to have a wider spectrum of topics and trends than theatre manages. I think there's room for that kind of work along with the stuff we're usually doing.
But no one is willing to take the plunge. Financial leaders in the world of Boston theatre don't see a reason to fix what isn't broken. Theatrical events, unlike movies, do not have trailers. This make it harder to guess what you're getting out of your money, and that makes the investment riskier for both producers and audience alike. No one wants to put up something weird and new if it means running the chance of alienating their core audience - which in 80% of all instances is senior citizens. Thinking about it now, I suppose that's a normal fear, like telling a girl that you like her: will she still want to be friends after that?
Some companies have noticed the shortsightedness of this approach, though. It's difficult to ignore the fact that the elderly in whom they invest so much will be dead within a few decades. And then all you'll have left are the young theatre professionals who can barely even afford to see a play on a regular basis.
Marketing strategies have been altered to target those bright-eyed youths (anyone under 40). Snarky taglines, hip and minimalistic posters, the Facebooks, the Twitters, the whole shebang. So how come it isn't working?
The shocking answer is revealed by this guy named Isaac Butler. According to Butler, the secret to attracting a younger audience is to 1) produce something they'd want to see, 2) produce it well, and 3) offer it at a reasonable price.
"Theater companies and producers for the most part do not want to do the above three things. What they want to do is do the same work and use marketing to trick younger audiences into thinking it's what they want to see."
Unfortunately for those producers, those younger audiences are smarter than they get credit for. The problem that companies are having are either that they simply don't know how to appeal to these audiences on an honest basis, or that they never cared about younger people to begin with - just their money.
[I'm sure I'm writing about a lot of basic topics here, but, please, let me think this through.]
Money makes the world go round, sure. Community outreach, especially the kind involving donations, is the cornerstone of theatre. For all I know, possibly the only reason there's still theatre in Boston is because of the amount of wealthy elderly living here.
So it's not just about ticket sales. Those who can afford to make donations help the company, and in return the company analyzes the demographic of their donors and puts up a play that would make them want to donate more.
How many young people do you know who can afford to make a donation to a company between rent payments? I have many friends who love theatre with as much intensity as anything, but not one of them has a subscription to any local company's season. Producers think they have nothing to give, and thusly say: "They're worthless; forget about them!"
But they would be wrong again! For there is one thing that young post-graduates can provide to a company that some older audiences cannot or will not; something which, in fact, they done very much of and have not yet gotten out of the habit of doing.
Volunteering!
It was my peer and fellow actor Scarlett Redmond who first told me about volunteer opportunities for Sleep No More. Even hearing her description of the production as a fusion of Macbeth and Hitchcock in a vacant school, I had a difficult time imagining it as something other than a haunted house with the ghosts of Laurence Olivier and Robert Donat wandering about.
Even after volunteering my ideas weren't terribly more concrete, but after stuffing headless plastic baby-shaped forms with sticks and paper for two hours, I knew I would have to come back and discover just what the importance of my work was in the greater scheme of the production.
I found that Sleep No More is what I've been waiting for, and it proves that my education was not a waste.
Designer Amanda Cameron and several others along with myself put on a performance just prior to which the performers, including Amanda and myself, dispersed ourselves amid the audience members. Only one professionally-dressed performer, Jim Sligh, opened the doors to the space and admitted everyone and bid them to be seated. He handed out newspapers in which different specific commands were given to the reader, which they were to act out based on particular sound cues from Oh the Places You'll Go, read aloud by Amanda (as stipulated in her newspaper). For about the next five minutes, various members of the audience jumped, took off their shoes, sought after certain objects that did not actually exist, applauded and lead around another blindfolded audience member who then recited the Pledge of Allegiance, during which all other audience members hit the deck and covered their ears exactly as they were commanded, among other things. And I was stripped to the waist, bound, gagged and dragged on stage to writhe in pain at the sound of applause. No one knew who was in on it until it was over.
What we did and what Punchdrunk has done is a very old school idea. In crossing the border between performer and audience, a single group is created, all of whom are creating and living in an experience. The audience stops being the audience and starts being creators - sometimes, in terms of volunteerism, quite literally so.
This is the one way in which theatre can always overcome the cheap and instant gratification of TV, film and streaming video - rather than a series of events to look at, you can make a world to inhabit.
And it's a strange and wonderful world indeed. Sleep No More's space is full of so many different, curiosity-piquing sights - "What does it mean?" you constantly ask yourself. The amazing thing about the show is that there is a headquarters of sorts, the Manderley bar, where you can ease your feet, take off your mask and ask the person next to you, "What was up with that room with the single stuffed fawn?"
I realized just now that I can talk about Sleep No More without end, but it's very difficult to write all those thoughts and keep it coherent. I guess the main thing I've learned is that there is at least one company that reflects the aesthetic inclinations of artists and non-artists my age with pomp and elegance, and their success should be a lesson to everyone.
Now I'm gonna talk about all of the video games that Sleep No More is similar to. Imagine my surprise when I found out that A.R.T. artistic director Diane Paulus described it as "art installation meets living video game", because that is exactly what I thought.
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Notes:
THESIS: Old people are ruining things for everyone, so they can fuck off and die.
ACTUAL THESIS: Old tendencies are hindering theatrical progress in Boston, and it's up to those in the spotlight to make the first move.
-What I was taught theatre was capable of (bare, ritualistic, violent)
--What I thought I could bring to it (daring scripts, simple and human storytelling)
-What theatre in Boston actually is (imports from NY, the same "classics")
--A mobius strip of self-defeat (http://theatregreaterboston.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/theatre-in-greater-boston.pdf)
---Like Emerson itself, too clique-y for its own good
-Outreach: how do people even end up going to theatre?
-Theatre vs Film
--Film has trailers. Plays don't. The investment is riskier
---Film doesn't do the same fucking classics over and over
-Asking the community to help
--Typical Boston theatre's outreach to the elderly (money)
--Punchdrunk's outreach to the young (volunteering)
-SLEEP NO MORE is...
--everything I'd hoped for
---a personal connection, as a theatre student (performer to performer)
----as an avant-garde performer (I've DONE this shit before, I can't believe it's actually viable!)
----as someone who wants to make bold, moving pieces
---freeform
----independent discovery
----open to interpretation
----encourages discussion amongst patrons (online, piano bar): THEATRE IS FUCKING COMMUNAL
-Criticism from old people
--"too open"
--("In the interest of attracting a younger crowd we should not succumb to today's popular formula of empty sophisticated forms, with food and drinks.")
---Sleep No More doesn't come close to being as vacant and grubbing (merchandise, subscription offers) as popular theatre
--Valid criticism
---"If the ART is to survive, it needs to reach out to the younger generation, so I am in no way suggesting that the problems noted above should affect the approach of the new management, but I wonder if it might make sense to have a couple of old folks performances of Sleep No More with a more limited attendance and a little more attention to enriching the artistic experience of those who are no longer as fast as they used to be."
---The old and the young
5 comments:
I can't tell you how much I am struggling with my own "theatre identity" right now. I want so badly for these high school students that I'm teaching to be given opportunities most never have; to be able to express themselves and say whatever the fuck they want. I want to hear their real stories. It just seems like so many people are incapable of letting go of that person they want to be, and incapable of admitting and accepting who they actually are.
It's really easy to get caught up in the product and worry only about how everything is going to look at the end. I try to focus more on the process. I have a few frustrations. But we could just have a conversation about that, it doesn't need to be floating around on the internet.
Terry,
Move to NYC. Then you can do all the low-budget 'wtf' style theater you can handle. Young people are exploding with weird shit on stage here. And there is always fringe.
Yours Truly-
Your lighting designer friend,
Rob
Here's the deal with Boston Theatre or hell...Boston Arts. Boston Theatre is a strange constricted beast. What happens is Boston as a city is one based and marinated in history. The vibe you get walking down the street is so blue vs. white collar that it's easy to forget about the artist with his paint spotted smock. It's easiest to see this in the city's architecture. The ethics of urban expansion in this city are so based in the importance of its monuments that the city fails to allow an impressive skyline or any contemporary, provocative architectural design to exist. In Chicago, one is surrounded by sculptures, murals, buildings of different shapes and sizes, well kept greenery (landscaping that actually looks like it's designed vs. the boston commons which has a light display that looks as though a 4 year old drew it with all of his crayola crayons)...such describes the city's relation to the arts.
What's scariest about American theatre right now is that we snuff events like Punchdrunk's Sleep No More or we bow down in adoration, but in London I've recently read a british blog entry where the critic literally asks if immersive theatre has become hackneyed. The Guardian critic had seen so many productions that had used the exploitive tactics of popular immersive theatre (I know, sounds like an oximoron) that he was actually getting bored with it all. Here, we haven't even scratched the surface of immersive theatre. Meanwhile, another article the same week pontificates if possibly English theatre is in a near-utopia. Hell, they've got young people coming to the theatre, new plays and new artists are being praised, and because of the challenging times they are creating challenging and mostly relevant theatre. One artist was so bold as to say that the theatre there didn't feel like it was going through a recession. (Haha the critic's one complaint was America's very opposite situation: they don't do much of the classics anymore and there were hardly any new musicals. Meanwhile, in high school we did a George Bernard Shaw play. We care more about British classics than the brits do.)
And if your solution to all of this is New York City, that's wrong too. New York City doesn't put productions like popular British theatre company Kneehigh Theatre's Brief Encounter in the middle of time square. In its initial run, they would put it off-off...off broadway. If your a big fish in New York you're not producing the same risky material the Royal Court is producing (including 2 incredible new plays, one of which coming to Broadway this upcoming year) unless you are Joe Papp. If you're producing pop theatre in New York you're not even producing the same level of intense work as the Royal National Theatre in London. I'm not jerking London off here, these are just the facts. Even the National Theatre of London knows that to develop a play they're not going to use the same technique New York's used for half a century (wait until the play's pretty good, out of town tryout, fix it, bring it to Broadway, win a tony. or wait until the play's pretty good, off broadway tryout, fix it, Broadway, Tony) Even the National Theatre of London knows that sometimes you put a play up in that fashion, but sometimes you develop it with the artists in the room. And sometimes you find innovative ways for the audience to enter the world of the play. And sometimes you play. The National Theatre is like...one of the best theatre companies in the world so I don't mean "even them" in a derogatory way. I mean it in a "this is where the old people in London go to see theatre and they don't get confused by the risky stuff" way.
All in all...American theatre needs to play catch up. We're such a text based theatre culture here and we need to kick off our socks and break a rules and stopping more of them. We need to stop getting intimidated by big ideas or the lines that have been created by our predecessors. Stop laughing at someone putting themself out there and try joining them. You may find your work has more meaning.
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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