Found this really important article that we should all read. The piece, found on the Harvard magazine website, is about the direction theatre may or may not be heading. You should read the whole thing but I’m just going to pull out some things that struck me as important or surprising…
- Andre Gregory (actor, director, playwright) states: “Broadway isn’t theater. That’s show business.” He distinguishes “passive theater doesn’t force you or seduce you or charm you into asking questions, that tells you what to look at onstage, and when you come out, you say, ‘Gee, that was good!’ or ‘Harry Sterns sang that song well!’”—from “active theater which demands that you ask serious, challenging questions of your own life, the culture, and the society we live in. The live actor performing something like King Lear, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, orDeath of a Salesman is extremely disturbing. The question is: Is there an audience for that?”
I love his distinction between passive theatre and active theatre but I’m concerned in this statement. Who is to say what a play does to its audience? It is impossible to flavor a show as passive or active, unless it is only a personal response to an experience. To say that broadway is not theatre? I just can’t get behind this idea. And I really don’t think its because of my age or my generation filled with technology and media. It probably has a lot to do with our program here in Boston. There are numerous “active” theatre pieces on broadway now. Plays and musicals that prove without doubt that it is not about show business. IN my mind at least. The last show I saw on broadway was War Horse and to say that that did not force me to ask questions and challenge the world I’m living in? Impossible! I find it hard to believe that the caliber of that show doesn’t make it “theatre”. It has inherinent basic theatrical devices, puppets? music?, throughout. And by god, there certainly is an audience in that house every night. Its nearly impossible to get tickets to the show. And how many of those audience members would deam that “passive” ? I think very little – but I can’t speak for them.
- “Broadway is an expensive business,” McGrath says. “It is mainstream theater—it’s not designed to be experimental, just as movie studios don’t produce the same material as independent filmmakers.”
Not experimental? I don’t know how I feel about this either. I understand that Broadway can be viewed as commerical and “safe” but take a look at an example like Book of Mormon. How is this not the most experimental piece of theatre on broadway right now? Sure, the status the creators have as the writers of the popular and commericalized tv show South Park, but a musical comedy about the lives of Mormons in Africa? I don’t understand the thought things on Broadway can’t push potential and rock things up a bit. Look at Rent. That one show, that was radical in its opening in 1997 has paved a huge road for rock musicals to be born in New York. Last year’s popular Oscar Wilde comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest had Brian Bedford, who also directed the production, play a crossing dressing Lady Bracknell. A show all about idenity mistakes and confusions – what a smart, witty, effective and highly experimental choice. It wasn’t blown out of proportion as you may imagine a completely radical adapation of Wilde’s play could be but it is certainly not “mainstream”. I think its easy to gloss over Broadway as being commerical and mainstream but its more important to find the glimpses of effective and innovation direction, acting and production concepts within the shows on Broadway.
- Finally, Diane Paulus, director at ART brings up a wonderful and refreshing perspective, especially for us as students of the theatre:
“There’s a syndrome in our profession—to blame the audience, especially young people… ‘They don’t want to go to the theater anymore—why? They don’t have attention spans. They’d rather be in control, with their personal handheld devices. There are too many entertainment choices. We’re a depraved culture.’ I’ve always found this deadening, because it doesn’t give you any room to change. We have to flip that analysis and say, ‘Maybe it’s us—maybe it’s the arts producers. Not just the writers and actors but the whole machine—perhaps we have to do a better job of inviting this audience back to the theater. Have they left? Yes. Have they not developed the habit of coming? Yes. Is it their fault? No!”
Yes, Diane!! This has everything to do with what we learned about being Dramaturgs. As a class, we have definately sharped our knowledge of audience. What play serves a particular audience? what do those people need from theatre? in what ways can we get the correct audience in our theatre? I love this philogsophy. It doens’t place blame on anyone else but yourself as a theatre company, or as an individual artist. It’s more empowering (but often harder) to put it on yourself to make way for a new type of theatre or get a certain type of audience back on your side. Clear examples are seen all around us – think about our two latest graduate directing thesis’ – both productions pushed for a new audience. A new way of viewing a piece of theatre. They are taking the opportunities to risk and create something experimental.
that is all. read the article!
