So many things I railed against are coming back to me know as the right path--or at least part of the answer to these burning questions.
I'm really excited about a possible answer to one of these questions
But first:
MY AWESOME CONVERSATION WITH DAN KITROSSER.
It's gets all caps, because Dan is awesome.
I have to go into this because it's too important to me. So my next post ,which may also go up today, will have to address this possible "answer" separately.
For those of you that don't know Dan, Dan is a wonderful playwright, composer, lyricist, and actor. He works a lot in children's theater and with Rabbit Hole Ensemble. He is a wonderful playwright--he writes plays/stories for children as well as "adult" plays.
Dan was just as fired up as I am about what I am trying to define as important in theatre. He's all in.
He also introduced me to a wonderful new word: asymptote.
You'll just have to forgive my lack of tech savvy and follow this link to see a visual representation of what I am I talking about: http://www.richwidows.com/art/asymptote.jpg
Here's my imperfect recital of Dan's layman's definition: It's a curve that approaches the zero line of an axis, getting closer and closer to it, but never hits that zero line. It doesn't ever touch it. No intersection.
Look at the link again.
You can see in those links that those colored lines get closer and closer but never touch. They become almost parallel.
That's what most theater is or tries to be. Get close, but do not touch.
What I want, what Dan wants--is not to throw out storytelling or narrative--but to embrace the problems within the story and in the telling of the story. Intersect.
He gave a wonderful example of when he saw the Normal Heart. In a crucial scene, one character threw a milk carton down and it exploded all over the stage and for the rest of the play everything was covered in spilt milk. They didn't clean it up--there really wasn't anyway for them to without stopping the play for an hour. Everyone just had to deal with it. If you know the play, then you understand what a simple but powerful metaphor this is.
That's an example of a beginning of a moment where the lines of an asymptote touched. At least within the performance. That's a good place to start.
Because they embraced the problem. They didn't try to contain it. They didn't clean it up. Or ignore it. They didn't dump milk all over the audience in some sort of childish and cruel attack--but they embraced the problem of the play. In a way that film and television would have a hard time doing, by the way.
I remember working on a scene where an actress did something similar breaking a plastic glass on the floor instead of the trash can where she was supposed to.
The rest of the scene became about me picking up the (plastic) glass pieces while trying to deal with her. It was fantastic. Far superior to anything we'd rehearsed, because we embraced the problem instead of trying to ignore it. I learned more about what was happening in that scene than I had in a month of working on it because I had a real problem to deal with.
Hell I have million examples like this. We all do. "I was there the night the set/costume/prop/lights didn't work...so and so stopped the show because...an audience member did this and then..."
Reality intruded upon the unreality.
The lines intersected.
My friend Erin McCarson also said something about this to me recently--create a problem onstage and then deal with it.
Well goddam. Isn't that what theater is supposed to be?
What's the problem? Embrace it. Now honestly try and deal with it. Not in a completely predetermined way, but in an honest living way. I suppose Meisner would call this living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. But I think sometimes we back away from the problem part.
Well, unless God hands me a new stone tablet with fresh set of rules/answers to preach to the masses, I think it's time we stopped trying to preach and teach to one another and embraced real problems onstage honestly and with respect to different points of views and values and then try to deal with these problems.
Otherwise, what are we saying?
Come see this play because it will make you cry? Laugh? Angry?
Well, only one of those options is really attractive isn't it?
And stand-up, sketch comedy, sitcoms--those are all easier, cheaper options than spending 2 hours in a theater.
Maybe when I said "authentic" what I really meant was "problematic."
I think maybe that's closer to what I'm searching for.
Maybe it's time for us to stop giving pat answers or just crying out.
I don't want to watch sad stories because they're sad. I don't watch things just so I can get mad about something.
I'm not interested in sadism or masochism as guiding principles or methods in art.
I read/watch/investigate stories because I'm interested in the problems that effect my world/life and because there is an empathy/common bond/resonance there that I relate to.
I want empathy and understanding. Not screeds.
No more crying for the sake of crying. Let's get to the problem. Isn't that what we're really interested in?
(Get ready for overreaching, incredibly cheesy metaphor...)
I want to spill the milk, and then force both performers and audience to deal with the spilt milk, and not just sit there and cry over it.
(oof. That was cheesy...)
Then Dan kinda blew my mind when he told me something I hadn't really thought of.
Children's theater usually has most of the things I am talking about in it. It's much freer, it freely interacts with it's audience in all kinds of ways. It's always about dealing with a problem.
He told me about the preshow of his one man Sleepy Hollow/Ichabod Crane show. Before the show he went through the audience changing from character to character telling people in the audience in first person what each character knew about the Headless Horseman and whether that character thought the Horseman existed. Then before the show started he asked the audience as whole whether they believed the Headless Horseman existed. The audience would answer. Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Then Ichabod begins the show proclaiming he doesn't believe in him.
After the show the kids would ask Dan if he believed in the Headless Horseman, and then explain--often struggling with their answers and their reasoning--why they did or didn't believe in him. They had to defend their answer.
Well done sir. Problem embraced by the performer and problem experienced by the audience. And while the path of the story was laid out beforehand--after all Ichabod's point of view doesn't change--there was an uncharted, unscripted element to the show. One that wasn't just a fun flourish or something forced upon the audience, but was actually getting to the heart of the matter. It didn't add to the show--it made the show about what Sleepy Hollow is really about--do you believe? and if not, how do you explain what happens? Take out that and what is sleepy hollow is about? A spooky story? Colorful characters? So what? Who cares?
Children's theater. It gets a bad rap I think because it tends to embrace silliness and overacting. Shortcuts.
But I've seen performances where the actors actually embraced the values and circumstances of the play--and it was beautiful and moving. And thought provoking.
It's easy to get away with a lot of shortcuts artistically because children are accepting and easy critics--but that's our fault for not giving them what they deserve.
But maybe that's where we should start looking. Why is normal for someone in a children's musical to do certain things and accept certain things and not okay or normal to do those things in adult theater?
Look at any Shakespeare play in it's original day.
Closer to our traditional theater or to children's theater?
If you got to experience International WOW's production of SURRENDER last fall you know how powerful "playing" can be.
To describe that production would take too long--you can read about it elsewhere. Just google International WOW and Surrender.
Suffice to say it was an immersive, playful, interactive, and powerful experience.
They had you leave everything you brought in behind, dressed you, trained you, played war with you, played Hero comes home with you, Hero dies with you. Mourn the Hero. Struggle with what the Hero has lost. All the time putting you into the experience. Literally. In very smart and non attacking ways.
This is the type of theater that when described to me sounded awful and invasive. If I had read about it beforehand, I might not have gone.
But I loved it.
I am learning like dear old Becket to find a new faith.
An imperfect production ultimately--because at the end they tried to revert to standard "look at this this story/image" theater way too late in game--but a wonderful production nevertheless.
And a production that could NEVER have happened in a proscenium theater.
To go back to MY AWESOME CONVERSATION WITH DAN, it was incredibly inspiring and helpful on many fronts.
But then I brought up the problem of making theater Accessible to everyone--
Well that's when Dan really blew my mind...
BUT I'm going to have to leave you here for a bit.
And since I've been ending these posts with incredibly cheesy quotes/sentences, I think I'll just make that a tradition.
I'm sure you've seen those Levi commercials with voice over quoting Walt Whitman's Pioneers! O Pioneers! poem?
Yep. Looked it up because of a commercial. For blue jeans.
Poem.
Commercial.
Cheese-or-ific!
(Somewhere my father is crying)
Here's part of it, I'll put a link to the whole poem at the end.
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
Come my tan - faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistol? have you your sharp - edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Have the elder races halted? Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers!
Here's the link the entire poem: http://whitman.classicauthors.net/PoemsOfWaltWhitman/PoemsOfWaltWhitman3.html
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