You See What We’re Up Against?

Andy Horwitz

Okay, so. Here’s the deal. Nobody wants to talk about it. But it is true. Lots and lots of people think that theater sucks.

Now, on the one hand we know that a lot of the “tastemakers” that we rely on in the media to deem things cool & hip (and therefore create buzz/audience) are just shallow, attention-deficit-afflicted, drunken, tragically hip coke-whores struggling to remain culturally literate, edgy and relevant beyond the age of 27. (At which point they give up their trendy downtown ways, marry the lawyer like Mommy said and move to Westchester).

On the other hand, it is true that there’s a lot of boring theater.

I don’t really know that there’s an answer to this dilemma. I don’t even know if it’s a dilemma at all. But it’s part of why theater is becoming more and more the loss-leader of the entertainment industry; the thing that writers and actors and producers do to try and get TV gigs. Maybe theater is boring because people are either trying to make theater like TV so they’ll get a job writing for a sitcom or movie or they are intentionally writing really difficult and demanding work to prove that they are not television.

I’m not old enough to know if there was a time in recent modern history when theater and performance was as culturally relevant and pervasive as television and film. I don’t know if there was a time when more people felt interested by live performance than they do now. Maybe it’s due to the drastic decrease in arts education funding that started in the 80’s. Maybe it’s that people are more cynical now than ever before and that the experience of tv/film makes them *think* they’ve “been there and done that” but they’ve really only seen it in moving pictures.

I don’t really know and I’m not sure whether people who make performances should even care. There’s probably no point in trying to get people who like country music to listen to jazz or vice versa. And there’s probably no point in trying to get someone to go to theater who’d rather be watching The Simple Life trying to get a peek at Paris Hilton’s nipple.

But when we get frustrated about the lack of audiences or the loss of funding we need to realize what we’re up against.

Posted

in

by

Andy Horwitz

Tags:

Comments

5 responses to “You See What We’re Up Against?”

  1. Juliana F.

    A few thoughts:

    1. Country music or jazz – unless the juxtaposition of those two genres is a veiled low art vs. high art swipe (which would be depressing) – who cares what kinds of music people listen to? The mystery of music is primary, the arrangements are secondary.

    2. Why are we trying to “get someone to go to the theater”?
    Shouldn’t we just try to create resonant works?

    3. Paris Hilton is brilliant. I would love to see her in a Richard Foreman play.

    Reply
  2. culturebot

    Well, to answer point by point…

    1. it wasn’t a veiled low art/high art swipe, it was just to demonstrate that people have different tastes and you can’t necessarily change that. For those people who love a specific kind of music the arrangements are not secondary, they’re the most important thing. On some level music is memory is identity and in our culture the kind of music we listen to is a primary identifier.

    In terms of taste – theater is one of those things that I think people either like or don’t like and for those of us that think it’s important it’s hard to understand why other people think its stupid. So I’m really asking myself – as someone who spends a lot of time trying to get people to see difficult work – is it realistic to expect to convince people to try something new?

    2. We are trying to get people to come to theater because if someone presents a play and no-one comes that defeats the purpose. And if we believe that what we are doing is important, then don’t we want to get people to come see it and be affected by it? I’m not sure what “resonant” is supposed to mean. Its one of those words that is slippery and hard to nail down. I think people should make work that is relevant, that speaks to the culture at large, that speaks to other human beings and sheds light on the human experience. I get nervous when people use the jargon of performance theory, because I think it can be a means to justify work that is unnecessarily hermetic and insular.

    3. I have to disagree. If Paris Hilton were doing what she is doing intentionally, she would be brilliant. I think she’s sad. She has no skills, no talent and no discernible vision for what she creates, if she can be said to create anything. She’s not like Judy Holliday or some of the other classic “dumb blonde” personas created by talented actresses. Come on, Juliana – you know true brilliance and genius when you see it. Why play into the Warholian Superstar myth? So many real artists of enormous intellect, skill, passion and capacity slave away to create meaningful work – how can that brilliance be equated with the clueless self-indulgence and self-exploitaton of an overprivileged brat?

    Reply
  3. Juliana F.

    Good morning!
    This is probably not so helpful in a practical discussion of audience development, but I really believe that all work finds its audience, whether it’s an audience of five or five thousand.

    I don’t speak performance theory – I’ve never studied it. I love the word “resonant.” I don’t think it’s slippery at all and I would be heartbroken if resonance only resonated as jargon.

    To me, resonance tracks the mystery of how we can recognize ourselves in a piece of work that should otherwise be absolutely foreign. It reminds me of A.E. Houseman trying to explain poetic impact:

    “Poetry seems to me more physical than intellectual. A year or two ago, in common with others, I received from America a request that I would define poetry. I replied that I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat, but that I thought we both recognized the object by the symptoms which it provokes in us. One of these symptoms was described in connection with another object by Eliphaz the Temanite: “A spirit passed before my face: the hair of the flesh stood up.” Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. This particular symptom is accompanied by a shiver down the spine; there is another which consists in a constriction of the throat and a precipitation of water to the eyes; and there is a third which I can only describe by borrowing a phrase from one of Keat’s last letters, where he says, speaking of Fanny Brawne, “everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear.”

    If a resonant play falls in the forest and only five people see it… the work will continue to unfold in those people in a way that I believe exceeds any lost revenue.
    —
    I will always be a Paris Hilton fan. I treasure the daft American heiress archetype (which predates Warhol and reminds me more of the late 19th century “professional beauties” like Jennie Churchill.) It’s not easy to explain, but knowing that there’s a girl who’s restyled herself to look like a Winx cartoon and is now blithely collecting careers like they were beads on a bracelet, gives me great joy!

    x,

    juliana

    Reply
  4. Matt

    I think the reason people think theater is boring is that modern theater is dumbed down to appeal to a broad audience. Much like TV, big Broadway shows, the kind of theater most people are exposed to, become about appealing to the most people instead of about appealing deeply to a community.

    Yes, there are human themes that can be explored on stage that we can all relate to, but part of what made theater so rich back in the day is that it talked to a specific audience. Classical Greek theater was filled with culture specific refrences that only Athenians would fully grasp. Every good Greek knew the story of Oedipus Rex. Shakespearean plays are the same way.

    In addition to this, I think as a society we are afraid of theater challenging the audience. Most “big tent” theater shows people a world they are comfortable with instead of challenging them. There are exceptions, but as a rule most theaters don’t. Combined, these two factors mean that most people who are only exposed to a little bit of theater, think it is boring. It’s kind of tragic really that they are missing out on such a wonderful art form.

    Reply
  5. culturebot

    see, now this is the kind of discussion that makes this editor’s heart proud! everyone reading this should come to “cocktails with culturebot” on Oct. 18th at Open Air Bar and we can talk about this stuff while drinking in the East Village. The way art was meant to be discussed!

    😉

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Juliana F.Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.