“A Christmas Carol” clearly holds a place near and dear in many peoples hearts  every year many people travel to theaters to see performances of it or break out the old film versions why break the mold? Touching “A Christmas Carol” does feel like a bit of a theatrical third rail. Taking a story loved by so many and altering it from its original form is risky; there, acknowledged, moving on. What is more exciting than seeing a story that you know by heart and love to death? What about seeing a passionate new take on a story that you love, a take that is different from anything you ever seen. If we in the theatre have to call upon these certain treasured pieces of theatre to make a little money and if we are in the business of rick taking as much as we say we are then why shouldn’t we remake the “A Christmas Carol.”  Whereas I could stay home, pop some corn and watch George C. Scott tear it up as Scrouge, “Dickens: The Unparalleled Necromancer,” is something I wouldn’t miss seeing just for the experience. Perhaps it will be a fantastic flop but if people didn’t think out of the box on these sorts of things we’d still be doing Shakespeare in tights. If we’re really risk takers then its time we “personed” up and took some risk, especially on the dearly beloved stuff. Discover what people have been missing and then let ‘em have it.

The MMC theatre company in New York City was what the article referred to.  MMC was becoming frustrated by their own limitations both spatially and in terms of their season whose tight constraints they were finding suffocating. In response they’ve formed a new project that involves remaking themselves, literally. MMC is on the move! Constructing and new mainstage and and blackbox theatre dedicated to producing a greater amount of new work by professional playwrights as well as high school student writers. In looking at innovative companies, MMC saw a problem, their season didn’t allow for flexibility and they wanted more new work, and made a bold move to fix it.

Now, another topic that came up during our discussion, was money; that artistic impediment we love to hate. However, it may interest you all to know that MMC received $19.5 MILLION in bonds towards their $25 million project from the Department of Cultural Affairs of New York.  There have been others as well- The Signature Theatre company- 27.5 million towards a 70 million dollar project and the list goes on. These companies are finding ways to push the theatre forward be it through producing more new work, or getting secondary level students involved in producing, playwrighting and acting. These companies have been making bold efforts to increase the importance of theatre in people’s lives and, in doing so, increasing their own quality of image. If they can do it we not us as well, we have vision, inspiration, talent, and there clearly is funding out there. Company anyone?

Typically going to the theatre is an investment, an investment of time, usually of a good chunk of money, and, like it or not, you’re pretty much bound in your seat until intermission (if there is one). Now, by no means am I insinuating that the theatre should adopt more of the mindset of a flashmob, at least, not in totality. My initial reaction is to say that there are certain things that a flashmob can’t do that theatre can (one might be pay the people who participate but this could also be up for debate), but is there? If theatre is a reflection of the culture, if it’s purpose is (to quote the cliche) ” to hold as twere the mirror up to nature,” then why, in our fast paced society, are shows still three hours long and pricier than a Van Gogh? I’ve always been a big fan of developing a story, giving it time to develop and take the audience on a journey in the mean time but I think that the culture is nudging us in a different direction. Really, this is nothing new, before revenge tragedies got big I’m sure there were theatre artists sitting around saying “you know, I’m going to miss the love and the pretty language and the frolicking, but the culture needs some gore every now and then, and a few severed heads.” These artists saw the disconnect between their art and their society and jumped in and viola, theatre happened and people loved it! I love to take time to develop a story, take time to delve into a character, but what if what the society needs is something a little more instantaneous, if nothing else perhaps it will demonstrate that there are certain things that require time to be great, on the other hand once again we are able to reflect and be in harmony with the society around us and, in doing this become an important part of it instead of a luxury that merely exists on the outside.

Writing this feels almost like trying to recall a dream, something that slips away faster the more I try to put it into words. I’m not sure what happened the other night in that production. I don’t even think I walked away knowing the plot line (having never read the play) but what happened in the performance was so symbolically explosive, so charged with deep, dark energy, so ludicrous and so mind boggling, so specific and so expertly choreographed that I found myself sitting with my mouth agape for most of the performance. The strange thing is that this isn’t a type of theatrical experience that I would have considered myself drawn to let alone blown away by. I tend to have this die hard notion of theatre as being for the people! Telling them a story that will alter and affect them (in a verbal way is my assumption). But this! This play! The most moving images and stirring scenarios in the play for me were the ones that took place in silence, usually involving 15 foot tall nurses loping along in skull masks. THE POWER OF THE THEATRE! DAMN! It is not the mere written word, or the spoken word, it’s a bank of puppets 60 foot by 50 foot bank of puppets raising their arms simultaneously. The power of the theatre to move and affect people is in the slow unraveling of a piece of red velvet cloth, in the removing of a wig in the small fragment of red paper that falls, unexpectedly from the somewhere up in the rafters, it was in these moments that the audience gasped and sighed. I’d forgotten that this world that I’m setting off into is not merely about the power of words, it truly is about the power of action. The words may motivate action but the action is where the audience becomes viscerally involved instead of merely intellectually involved. This is too much for some people, some don’t wish to be viscerally engaged, it costs the audience something, there were people who left “Dollhouse” after intermission, but as for me I think the whole mass catharsis thing the Greeks had worked out is where the good stuff is. If the theatre is becoming merely an intellectual experience then it is dead, is is something that can be written and read, something that doesn’t need to be experienced. Mobou Mines and “Dollhouse” made me realize that we’re not dead, that our only hope for this art form to live on is if we provide people with something that they can’t read, can’t merely observe, consider or think about but something that they have to experience fully. We memorize through books but we learn through experience, learn who we are, learn about the world, this is what the theatre should give people, this is what it can give people.

I’ve always found this story to be such a powerful demonstration of hope and leadership in the face of incredible odds and now this story is being told with puppets. Yup! Puppets! BAM’s New Wave Festival is featuring “69 degrees South” (the latitude at which Shakelton’s ship sank) the show is carried out entirely by 3 foot tall marionettes created and operated by puppeteers from Phantom Limb. Much of the set is puppetry, the actors are marionettes, the ship, which sinks, is a puppet. The puppeteers stand high above the stage on stilts and are covered in swaths of white cloth making them look almost like snowbanks. I’ve always had some reservations when it comes to puppets and puppet shows but Phantom Limb puppets on ice, conquering the Antarctic snows and staving off impending death… now this is something I could get behind!

For myself I feel that by the time I really became aware of what was going on at Guantanamo, at least aware enough to be outraged by it, the place was being shut down. What’s left to history is the impression of what happened in this place, the terrible things that were done to people who may have been innocent or guilty. We as a nation are left with this scar on our country’s virtue, a virtue that we hold so dear in our  doctrine “Liberty and Justice for all!” This was not the case at Guantanamo and many Americans know what happened in that particular prison.

After the prison was closed down, however, nothing more was heard and nothing more was said. We all know the atrocities that were acted upon the prisoners but of the guards? When the prison was closed what happened to the people who carried out these acts. That’s where I feel this show carries real importance and, although at times it may be “preachy” it provides a point of view that Americans didn’t hear. I always assumed the interrogators of Guantanamo to be as bad as the people they were interrogating but a play such as ‘Lidless’ gives people a context, it humanizes them. To achieve with a topic as controversial as Guantanamo, a sense of humanity amongst the characters is not only a great feat but a frightening one. If we begin to realize that the interrogators at Guantanamo were human, then we must ask ourselves if we would have acted different, are we really as far removed as we like to think?

NY Times Interview with Mike Daisy