Every age it seems must reinvent the wheel. In art, at least, I think this is a necessary thing. The same old questions must be asked, such that new answers can be arrived at. Brecht, in A Short Organum for the Theatre, searches for a theatre that is relevant to young people of his time. The truths he found do not apply to us. We live in a different age. Yet we must ask the same questions and perhaps even redo the same experiments. Because art is not science. It is not fixed. The same question will result in different answers depending upon when and who is asked. And they are all true. Art differs from most activities in that it is about the asking of questions rather than the seeking of answers. Any answer that art gives is really just a question waiting to be asked.
This distinction between the asking of questions and the seeking of answers is another form of that old dichotomy of Theory and Practice. Answers become reified as theories and are held up by the academy as inviolate. Questioning on the other hand, is a way of being in the world. A mode of existence. Matt Freeman notes a controversy of sorts in the comments to this post between Joshua James and Scott Walters that in many ways centers around these very issues. To the reasoned theories of academia, ‘Finish the Fucker’ must appear reductive and intellectually weak. The truth is far from that.
The Theatre world is filled with theories. Writers and directors and designers and producers and audiences and even academics all have theories about what makes good theatre. But this kind of theorizing is not scientific theory. It is a kind of reverse engineered attempt at understanding the miracle of creation. That process, indeed practice, of making choices, consciously and unconsciously, that results in a work of beauty. And indeed it is a work. We may call it a play, and even have fun on occasion, but theatre is a full time job. Creativity is not easy. Creativity on a deadline is brutal. FTF might be a useful way of working for some artists. It is necessary in a theatre production. One does not have the luxury of inspiration. Inspiration often comes from opening night being three days away.
My first job out of Graduate School was as the Lighting Assistant for the San Francisco Opera. I had three years of intense theorizing within the safe haven of academia. I could try out ideas and experiment and it was wonderful. The focus was on a kind of purity of craft and aesthetics. Form derived from theories. Then there was the opera. And it was a total wake up call. Every formal theory I had internalized was put to the test. A lot of it did not work. Many things I was told to never do were brilliant practical solutions to problems. Zay talks about tactic switching, and indeed I needed to learn or go under.
Joshua James, in a different context, makes the point quite well:
[S]ome things cannot be given or lent out, they must be earned. There are just some things I could tell ya but it wouldn’t necessarily do you any good.
What does that mean? Well, it’s like in kickboxing, one of the passions I share with Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything…. You can take classes on kickboxing, you can learn kickboxing combinations and techniques up the wazoo, but until you get kicked in the face, it’s all just theory.
School is fabulous and I would not trade the training I got for anything, but in the end it is just theory. Getting kicked in the head, that is practice. Every creative person can and must find their own path. The technique that gives form to vision is a personal and private practice one must construct for oneself. Theories are put forth in schools but praxis determines their usefulness. If it works, use it. And if it is not useful discard it. Theory is good, but it is only a small part of creating work. And in theory lies the danger of trapping us in anachronistic modes of thinking.
I once made the point that what makes you good at something is doing it. You can be taught rules and ‘craft’ and so forth, but even still you must go out and reinvent the wheel. Like Grotowski who went into his laboratory and asked the same questions every theatre artist asks and came out with his own answers. This is not science. There are no absolute answers. With enough work we can find our personal truths, but never an answer. And the truth comes from within not without. Even if your experiments and failures and success leads to the same conclusions you were taught, you must do them, you must question the rules. For without questioning the rules, they become hollow formulaic dogma. Some might consider this ‘Non-Thinking’ but in fact it is the most powerful and forceful kind of thinking possible. It is action. It is praxis. It is a practice.
