This fall I will be working with two of my favorite theater artists. Heather Carson, lighting designer, will be lighting Richard Foreman‘s newest piece Idiot Savant. I am her assistant for this project. Neither of these artists approach theater in a conventional mainstream way, In fact they each have styles so radically unique that once familiar with them, one could clearly see both their own original generative style right away as well as easily identify the many derivative works created from their styles.
What each of these artists bring to the theater pieces they create is a highly specified view of the world. Their weltanschauung manifests in light or word or movement. They are unique ways of seeing. The inner world made manifest in the external world. Richard’s work is as much visual as it is textual. Often, the text is closer to a soundscape and is simply one part of many that go into the creation of these worlds that he manifests on stage. To see these two worlds, Richard’s and Heather’s, collide on stage should be a fascinating experience.
The best theater work I have seen approaches disparate aesthetic approaches to storytelling as beneficial. Far from removing discordant elements, they are allowed to flourish and teach us something deeper about the piece. About three years ago I wrote something approaching an exploration of this idea of collision here:
The final product on stage is not the creation of any one individual, but rather the result of a collective negotiation between numerous people striving for the same goal. The making of a play is a constant negotiation. Ideas are brought forth and tested in light of other ideas. One pushing the other slightly aside, or transforming the meaning of another to match some new form. It is a beautiful and organic thing to watch happen.
I personally find it most interesting when the elements do not all mesh perfectly. When the whole does not fall into the hypnotic seduction of false empathy. Rather, to see the various elements stand a bit apart from one another in a constant negotiation between text and subtext, between the real and the imaginary. Because in the end, those lines are not so hard and fast, even in our daily life. The life of the mind is not a different thing than the life of the body in society.
Art is at its most compelling when we see the inner world made manifest in the external world. But, a simple mirror of the world is not enough. Art must reach past the mirror. It must reach through the glass and around the corner. It must bring to light that which lies just out of sight within the mirror.
Both Heather and Richard are interested in light as a storytelling tool first. Most every theater practitioner talks about storytelling, but by and large that means lighting the people talking. It more often than not comes down to some variation on the follow spot. But not for these two. Rather they are interested in the story that light has to tell. Light not only tells its own story, it comments on the story told by the other elements of the production. We are not just following actors around a stage we are being pulled into an almost schizophrenic presencing of the world.
Last week we discussed engaging the space and while that is certainly what these two theatre artists do, their conception of “space” is larger than the literal physical surroundings. It is an expansive notion of space that includes not only the physical volume in which action takes place, but the psychological space in which this all occurs.
Foreman creates works that engage directly with the viewer’s inner psychological world. He often employs techniques that serve to bypass our standard linguistic processing of information and move us into modes of being where we experience more directly. Carson’s work engages the space directly at an existential level. It demands the space answer the question, what are you?
The collision of radically disparate elements is a foundational aspect of contemporary art. This is our world. It is not a world of breaking things down. The era begun with Heidegger’s destruktion has ended. We are in an era of reconstruction. All the great themes have been used up. We are rebuilding an aesthetic of presence that locates the subject in several places at once.
No longer is art the sole creation of an individual, for the very concept of the autonomous subject is being eroded by our contemporary world. The borders of self blur and we find more and more that our psyche’s are subjected to random associations in the manifest world. Our art must be no different.
We, as beings in the world, confront an environment grappling with its own deconstructive critique. It has broken itself past the point of meaning to the seemingly endless abyss of the post-modern. Yet that abyss is not an end. It is simply the break in the song. The beat has fractured and been lost for a time, but it will return. We hear echos of the future slowly manifesting before us.
The reconstruction is beginning. We as artists must guide that presencing as it manifests. We must engage our environment as beings in the world to allow it to bring forth its most authentic possibility. Our questioning must force the world in which we live to show us its authentic self or else we will bring that authenticity to it by force. The environment is not the only thing being confronted with this questioning. The very psyche of the viewer will be asked these questions. How will you answer?
