Posts Tagged ‘performance’

Theater is boring

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Theater is boring.

This is more true than most theater makers are willing to admit. I can not count the number of times I have seen some version of “Our subscriber base is getting old, how do we get young people into the theater?” “It must be ticket prices, let’s do a special rate for people under 30.” Sure ticket prices may be part of the problem, but they can only account for a small percentage. “It must be competition from TV and movies for entertainment dollars.” Perhaps.

Or maybe, just maybe, most theater is boring.

The sad part is the problem is cyclical. Audiences decline and theaters panic. In order to ensure a slower drop off they play safe with their subscriber base (main source of income) and program boring stilted shows they think their increasingly greying audiences want. They are shocked when younger people don’t want this and choose instead to spend their money on a rock show or going out to clubs. More income drops and the shows become safer, and smaller, and more like sitcoms. They become dead and boring. They lose their theatricality and their aliveness.

There are interesting works out there, they are just not the norm. Cirque du Soleil is an expanding global franchise. Not only do their shows pack in audiences, but these audiences are willing to pay a premium price for the experience. Triple digit ticket prices may be grumbled about but they are paid. When the audience leaves the theater there is a smile on their face. Traditional theater, not so much. And it baffles them, these producers at traditional theaters. “We’ve been doing the same good work we always have, why is our audience dying off?”

Perhaps because the same good work has become boring. Perhaps paying $100, or $40, or even $10 to watch a small handful of people, only slightly more interesting than your friends sit around and talk about inane subjects is too much to pay. I can get that on TV, without cable. Fuerzabruta in New York packs in audiences like sardines. Why? The show is not boring. In fact, it is exciting and big and dangerous. Three adjectives rarely, if ever, applied to the typical regional and mid-sized theater.

Making money with live entertainment is hard. It is hard because you are asking patrons not only for their money, but for their time. Buy a painting you don’t like and you may be out a few hundred dollars, but you can just pack it into the closet, or resell it. CD you don’t like? Take it to the used record store. But with theater we have the audience trapped, for anywhere from 90 minutes to 6 hours. This is a not insignificant amount of time that they are never getting back. If what you are subjecting them to is not fucking awesome, then you are doing it wrong.

I am not saying it needs to be perfect. I am not saying it needs to be above critique. What I am saying is that it needs to not be boring. Sure there are exceptions. Theater makers like Richard Maxwell, and a large slice of the New York downtown avant garde, have taken boredom as an aesthetic lens through which to explore the human condition. That is different. Audiences going to those shows know what they are getting into and love it. Ibsen, Shakespeare, Checkov, Wasserstein, and many many more are regularly given mediocre productions of potentially interesting plays by reputable companies. This drives audiences away in a steady march towards irrelevancy.

Shakespeare should be sex, and passion, and sword fighting, and clownish baffoonery. It should be funny and scary and dangerous. Too often it is a pathetic imitation of a middle school English class production. The average non-theater-going public will go to a show because they think they “should” or to support a friend, not because it is exciting. Shakespeare is thought to be boring when his texts are anything but. Yet the productions he gets make me want to quit the entertainment business.

If the show is not dangerous it is boring. If the show is boring it is not worth spending time to go see. End of story.

Dangerous need not mean the audience risks having scenery fall on them. Ibsen, when his plays were first produced, contained dangerous scary ideas. It was feminism back when the very word was terrifying to the establishment. Not the mock fear we have now but actual existential threat. Today the ideas are small and the plays are still produced. And that is the problem. A new translation does not make it exciting.

Why would anyone produce A Doll’s House or Hedda Gabler unless they had found a way to make it big and interesting and dangerous? English class is boring. Mabou Mines did that with their A Doll’s House. It is awesome and has been touring the world for the better part of a decade now. It is big and dangerous.

It is also theatrical. This is another problem rarely dealt with in theater productions. Most are not theatrical. I hear far too many people say something like “what is interesting about theater is it’s aliveness, having real live performers in front of you.” But that is only true if the production is alive. If we just have a few people sitting around a living room discussing the effects of the Iraq war it is not alive, nor very interesting. It is television. Too often bad television. If you want to write and produce TV shows, that is awesome. Go do it! But please, for the love of god, don’t put them on stage.

I’ll come clean. I don’t go to the theater much. I used to. There was a time when I would go see at least, at least, one show a week in excess of whatever I was working on. The problem I would encounter, over and over again, was a sense of having wasted my time and money on a boring TV show. These days, even if the ticket is free, I typically turn it down because I don’t want to waste my time. And many to most potential audience members have had the same or similar reaction. Why pay $50 for one TV show when I can get a month’s cable for that?

Vaguely apathetic middle class white people who speak in liberal talking points is not interesting theater. Nor are any of the other stereotypes of American demographics being paraded around on stage.

For theater to be interesting it needs to be big. It needs to think in big ideas and make broad gestures. It needs to entertain. Somewhere along the line many (it feels like most) American theater makers forgot that we work in the entertainment industry and began a transition to social medicine. Having a play about a cause is fine, but make it interesting. Angels in America was big and theatrical and scary when it first came out. That play is about as cause driven as you can get.

Theater will never go away. There will always be a sufficient amount of grants to combine with people who think they “ought” to go see a play to keep it limping along. But for theater to truly be alive, it needs to reinvent itself and be something that people are banging down the doors and waiting out in the rain and snow to see. It should cause rioting, or at least dancing, in the streets. It needs to be the event that can’t be missed. Because if it can be missed, why not miss it? There will be another, to be missed production, in a few weeks anyhow.

Or perhaps the apathy in the theater is the same apathy which prevents people from standing up for their rights with TSA, or demanding that 9/11 first responders get health care. Perhaps, then, we have exactly the theater we deserve.

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Posted in theatre | 15 Comments »

Recessionary Aesthetics; Money, Minimalism, and Art – Or, it’s the performer stupid

Monday, December 14th, 2009

I am currently working on two shows that, for budgetary reasons, have pulled back on the design elements and are working within a minimalist framework. It has long surprised me that smaller theater and opera companies will often spend a significant percentage of their budget on scenery (or costumes) and skimp on a lot of the other elements of the show. Dance learned years ago that when working with limited means the first thing to go should be the elaborate scenery, followed by fancy costumes. The whole purpose of live performance is to experience the performers.

Modern dance developed within a rather poor environment even for the arts. Scenery and, to a lesser extent, costumes were largely eliminated in favor of spending money on performers and, by extension, lighting. You can do any show without scenery and without costumes, but you can’t do it in the dark. As the saying goes, “If you can’t see them you can’t hear them.” One quickly begins questioning what exactly that means. Seeing the performer does not necessarily mean a spotlight on their face. If you are working on a noir piece revealing the actor in shadow and half light may be the most effective means of hearing what they are saying in a given moment. Yet the underlying logic is true. If the audience can not see the performance they will fast lose interest.

It is interesting that theater and opera companies will often sacrifice the actual performances in order to have scenery and costumes when, in the end, the audience comes for the performers. Both of the shows I am currently doing in a minimal style have made sacrifices in order to directly improve the performances and thus the audience’s experience of the piece. In one case a rather pricey scenic element was cut to hire a dialect coach. In the other case singers salaries were increased with, what would have been, the scenic budget. In both instances a choice was made in favor of the performance over the packaging. In both these cases the lighting budget is tiny (as it should be) but I will make it work overtime.

Don’t get me wrong. I am incredibly vocal about the utility of good design. I firmly believe in the value that visual storytelling brings to a work. I have seen shows whose success was largely through the design ideas alone. But no slick piece of stagecraft will make up for a poor performance. One of the great things about lighting is that it has the capacity to work scenically as well as a means of illumination. Through the use of standard American theatrical lighting instruments whole worlds can be created with variations of color, texture, shape, and angle. Interiors and exteriors can be created not to mention the more obvious qualities like time of day.

I see a lot of companies cutting back their programming or doing smaller shows in order to make up the funding gaps they are experiencing under the current economy. Sadly this is precisely the wrong direction to go. Audiences come to the theater to see shows. By reducing the programming you are reducing your audience base and risk pushing them away more permanently. Instead the most logical thing to do is revision the way in which performance is seen. Exploring minimalist approaches to design is certainly one way to do this. Cut the scenic, costume, and lighting budgets and do the five actor play you really want. Cut all the fancy drops and hire that amazing singer.

It is common in New York, and with many European companies, to forgo design altogether. No set, rehearsal clothes, and worklights. While this is often too bold a choice for most directors it is a way of producing work that focuses first on the performance.

Before these ideas get tossed to the side as the ravings of a post-modernist, keep in mind that Shakespeare operated in much the same fashion. The scenery for his plays was minimal to non-existent, the lighting was daylight (and perhaps a few effects), while the costumes were a hodge podge of items the company would carry around with it. Roman characters might be wearing Elizabethan clothes and brandishing Greek weaponry and all this in simple daylight on a more or less bare stage. The focus, once again, was on the performance.

Far from cutting back on performance, when times are tough, it is exactly the performance that needs to be focused on. Additional rehearsal times, dialect coaching, higher performer salaries (to both allow them to relax and focus on the work as well as garnering a higher quality performer) are what the money should be spent on. An audience should leave the theater thinking fondly on the performance. If they leave remembering the scenery or lighting, with no resonance to the story, we have done something wrong.

At the rate of economic “recovery” we are experiencing these are issues companies will be dealing with for the foreseeable future. If live performance is not to be totally overwhelmed by mass consumer culture something must be done to keep performance alive and growing.

How will you respond?

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Posted in dance, design, opera, theatre, theory | No Comments »

Transformative Performance

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Last week I pulled on some low hanging fruit to make an argument about live performance and social change. While there has been some interesting dialog about that, the focus has largely been on the example used, Burning Man, rather than the larger question I was interested in: how can art, and performance in particular, serve as a vehicle for social change? That line of questioning largely got lost. It is worth our effort now to tease that idea out of the shadows and bring it center stage into the spotlight for closer exploration.

Let us review last week’s post:

We, the makers of the work, create this space and this experience for our audience and ourselves. But what happens next? What guarantee, if any, do we have that the ideas and transformations from within the work will in any way transition out to the real world and effect true social change?

While it is certainly true that the cause and effect relationship between art and action is rarely if ever clear and direct, it is significant to explore our motives for creating the art in the first place. If one is merely interested in creating diversions from daily life, and that is certainly the intent of many people, then we can stop the questioning now. If we are interested in works that spark the imagination, engage thinking and potentially transform, we must not only question our work and our motives, but seek to find ways of further enhancing the experience beyond the confines of the performance venue.

The Temporary Autonomous Zone of the performance creates a resonant chamber wherein new and potentially revolutionary ideas germinate. The performance itself must be transplanted into the fertile soil of society to truly take root. Such performances are rare, but possible.

Let us look at a recent example of a performance moving its ideas into the larger social world, How Theatre Failed America, by monologist Mike Daisey. His performed piece was accompanied by an essay along similar themes titled The Empty Spaces. The thrust of the work is how the focus in mainstream American theater has shifted from the work and the artists who create that work to the institutions themselves and the buildings that house those institutions. While I was unable to see the actual work performed, due to logistical circumstances beyond my control, I did read about the fallout around the internet including Mike’s blog wherein he engaged with several artistic directors and theater makers across the country in email, essay and blog comments. The resultant conversation, while it may not have effected immediate change, certainly shifted the dialogue around artist salaries and related topics.

An older example worth exploring is Rites of Spring by Stravinsky and Nijinsky. That work was so extreme, relative to what the status quo music and dance worlds could understand, that it quite literally sparked a riot in the audience. The revolutionary force of the performance was such that the audience could do nothing but react through physical violence.

I am not arguing that art must shock and devolve into riots in order to be effective. I am saying that true art must effect some kind of change if not outright transformation in the viewer. Simply reinforcing the values and opinions of the audience is not the role of art, particularly performance.

I hold performance up to such a high standard because of the liveness of it. There is a direct energetic channel created between viewer and performer that, unlike the plastic arts, is not mediated by materials but rather exists directly in the experience of the work. Because performance happens over time, unlike a painting or sculpture which happens instantaneously, the performer and audience are undertaking a journey together. Thus an idea or emotion is presented, expanded upon, negated, and otherwise radically transformed over the course of the journey.

This thinking has moved us deeper into the subject of our inquiry, but has not solved the fundamental problem at its core. The question remains how artists interested in effecting social change through their work might do so. We will continue to explore this idea as we move deeper into the possibilities inherent in performance.

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The False Positive of the T.A.Z

Monday, August 17th, 2009

The concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone has been around for some time now. The basic premise is that it is possible to create a space outside the confines of everyday society and culture that allows for a more fully expressible aspect of self. A common example given of a TAZ in practice is the Burning Man festival that occurs every fall in the Nevada desert.

While the concept has some merit and certainly can be a useful tool for more extreme social experimentation than is allowed in every day human culture I would argue that the system itself creates a false positive in terms of results and at best does nothing to change the status quo and at worst reduces the willingness and capacity for people to engage in real social change.

Why would this be the case?

Using Burning Man as an example we see a system that purports to create an anarchist utopia where all social conventions have been questioned. A space where the economy of supply and demand has been replaced by a gift economy. Where imagination is limitless and possibility endless.

While this is a lovely vision, by creating a space wherein one can feel as if this freedom is true, it reduces the chance that most people who experience it will work towards such possibilities in the real world outside the festival gates. I am not saying that the experience can not be amazing and profound. What I am saying is that by creating a scale model of that possibility one need not manifest it in their daily lives since they know they have access to it, like clockwork, every September. I am of course leaving out that subset of the attendees who go only for easy sex and access to drugs. What I am talking about are those who do sincerely believe in the utopian qualities of the festival.

The reality of such spaces is that they exist by virtue of the economic systems we have in place outside the zone. Not everyone is equal or has equal capacity since we only have what we bring inside the zone which, again, is determined by where we are in the outside world. The very structures that gave rise to the abundance there are reinforced upon reentry to the real world. After all, we need to make even more money this coming year so we can have even better blinky gadgets to give away next fall.

Because the feeling of radical freedom has been met in this space there is little to no need to make that potential a reality. It is uncountable the number of people I have met who spend 360 days out of the year in buttoned down desk jobs only to “let their freak flag fly” during a week of adultery and debauchery that is made permissible by some idea that the rules are different in Black Rock City. While the actions may, from some perspectives, be permissible, the consequences of those actions remain beyond the confines of the event.

The irony of course is that far from freeing themselves from the confines of social structures and rules they are wholly adopting the rules and confines of a different culture. No true questioning has gone on. What has happened is the wholesale transference of one externally imposed value system with another. The rules are the rules and they will simply follow them even if the rules change. The freak who emerges from the desert is not the “true self” but simply a mirror of the same rule following self within a different context. Not only that, but they are probably more willing to accept the structures of daily life knowing they will have an outlet in the fall.

I do not want to deny that there is the occasional true transformation. However, I would contend that this is by far the exception rather than the rule.

This relates to performance in some very interesting ways.

First, what we create between the performers and the audience is a kind of TAZ. The rules of reality have been suspended as we all go into the collective hallucination of the performance piece. Be it a play, musical, dance, opera or music piece we are, for the duration of the work, transported, in spirit if not in body, to somewhere wholly other.

At the same time the very trap of Burning Man and other TAZs also exist. We, the makers of the work, create this space and this experience for our audience and ourselves. But what happens next? What guarantee, if any, do we have that the ideas and transformations from within the work will in any way transition out to the real world and effect true social change?

This may not be a concern for most people who work in live performance. After all, there are plenty of people whose primary concern is simply to create a diversion. A little entertainment to take the edge off the stresses of every day life. But for those of us concerned with truly transformative works of art how do we proceed? How do we take the possibility and potential in the work itself and build from that the beginnings of alternative social structures.

How can we facilitate not just the temporary transformation of a few hundred audience members, but of society as a whole? Is that even the role that art and performance can play?

If it is, I would argue that we need to get beyond the TAZ and out into the very social fabric upon which the zone rests. The TAZ may provide us with a nice laboratory setting, but unless and until we are getting real world results, the efforts are nothing more than experiments on mice in mazes.

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Posted in theory | 5 Comments »

It just gets better

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

I saw the most spectacular dance/performance piece ever last night. From the people who did De la Guarda.

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Yikes!

Saturday, April 21st, 2007

Last night’s performance of INVINCIBLE SUMMER was disrupted when eighty seven members of a Christian group walked out of the show en masse, and chose to physically attack my work by pouring water on and destroying the original of the show outline.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

intellectualism and aesthetics

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

I saw Mother Courage last night and must say it was quite a wonderful show. The production style lay firmly in a contemporary American style of design and it served the text quite well. By locating the visual language within a modern musical theater world, the emotion and ideas behind the text come through quite strongly. It took me a while to get used to the performance style, but once I did I had a wonderful time.

A friend complained that the staging seemed to be built around a traditional proscenium stage rather than the near three quarter round of the Delacourt. I took the staging to be a “Brechtian” choice and just rolled along with it. Either way I am not sure how much, if at all, it detracts from the experience.

There is a current of theatrical production that tends to over-intellectualize the work. So much effort goes into researching the text, that the play often gets largely ignored. Moss Hart, in Act One, makes the point that sometimes it is better for a writer to approach a subject with no more knowledge than what the average theater goer comes into the play with. In so going, the text can meet the audience at their level, thereby creating a single adventure for the two to go off on. This is a highly effective means of avoiding the deadly trap of didacticism.

By making Mother Courage conform to the visual language of the contemporary Broadway musical, it allowed an otherwise difficult text to be engaged with directly. It sidestepped that deadly didacticism that a lot of “Brechtian” productions of his plays fall into.

Research is a wonderful thing. And I certainly love the various opportunities that different plays provide for researching new and different avenues of thought and inquiry. However, it must be remembered that we are not writing essays. Rather we are constructing a work to entertain an audience. Brecht understands this, which is why there is such a wonderful play between the idea and the emotion and the humor in all of his works.

Once in the theatre, the research must be abandoned. This does not mean to ignore it, but rather to trust that you have done your work and now the focus must shift to a more formal aesthetics. The questions should not be does this or that conform to the research. But rather does this or that look and sound right in the context of this performative moment. The “thinking” such as it is becomes a visual and aural thinking. It is not an intellectual thing at all. In fact, intellectualism can and often does destroy an otherwise beautiful piece of theatre.

The mind is always removed from the immediate world. The mind can only react after it has taken in information and fully processed it. The heart can act directly. It is here, or perhaps the [heartmind], that one must operate in. It is that place of direct action where one does not “think” but rather one acts. That action creates beauty. Allowing the play to be the play and not some intellectualized idea of a text is a difficult thing to do because we love our minds. But our minds often get in the way of our direct action. Preparation certainly can and should exist in an intellectual space, but the direct work itself is a whole different animal.

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Posted in design, theatre, theory | 7 Comments »

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