With Apologies to Brecht, the gloves are coming off

Alright.

First let me say from the bottom of my heart, thanks to all who read and/or responded to the previous posts.

Thank you.

Your support and investment in this "moment of clarity" is wonderful--I am moved more than I would normally care to admit.

Thanks.

So I want to think out loud a bit more and start refining exactly what I believe in here. I think best out loud and in conversation so feel free to talk back, argue, push, and question what I am saying.

I've never done anything in my life right the first time so read on with forgiveness and a keen eye for my missteps.

So,

Immersive Theatre

First off, there has to be a better title or term for that. I don't know what that is yet, but Immersive just doesn't have quite the ring I'm looking for. Feel free to throw out some suggestions.

Secondly, I'm not talking about just wholeheartedly committing to doing theatre in the round and/or environmental theatre. Or blowing up theatre as we know it and only doing crazy ass experimental theatre.

I'm talking about both.

I've always been big believer in doing theatre in non-proscenium forms because it forces the audience to PAY ATTENTION.

Brecht--who I admire even though his principles and artistic goals are essentially contrary to mine--believed that we should prevent people forgetting they are at a play. He wanted them to judge, argue, and confront things in the theatre. Not just sit and watch something happen far away from them.

So far so good.

He also believed a bunch of other things that I will self-righteously call garbage because I think that they exemplify the worst impulses in art. He thought that art should be intellectual, purposeful, and political.

In my book, my personal taste, in what I believe this is so close...and so far from what art needs to be doing. As someone who grew up in a southern pentecostal church with a long line of ministers and missionaries behind me--I hate preaching. And I hate arguments where the outcome is already decided or is only dependent on personal beliefs. Hate it.

If you like that sort of thing, good for you. Variety is the spice of life I suppose.

To get real nerdy/artsy fartsy (brace yourself) and quote Keats:

Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth.

If the outcome is already determined then why are we doing this? Isn't an honest investigation better than a debate of lopsided rhetoric?

Maybe things were different when Brecht was doing his thing. But in this age of claustrophobic information where we would rather text message then email someone, email rather then call, call rather then sit down face to face with someone--distance and information is not what we need.

I don't know a damn thing about Arnold Bennett but I heard a quote by him years ago that resonated so deeply within me it that it became part of the foundation of everything I do and everything I think about art.

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.”

Add to that this from Carl Jung:

“There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion"

So...NO, I do not want to just go off the edge into intellectual experiments in theatre.

I don't want to chain myself or theatre to a cold objective eye or purpose.

I want to take everything we have learned and are learning from the experimental and the avant garde and mix it back up with traditional theatre. Not in a deconstructionist way, but in a construction of a total experience.

I love theatre in the round because it's limitations and it's nearness force a creation of a total experience. If Hamlet has his back to us as he as he says "To be or not to be" it can no longer just be a 2 dimensional moving image. It can not just be about the exclamation of those words.

We have to create a 3 dimensional Hamlet.

It requires two things I love in art: a personal investment in the art and behavior.

If Juliet has her back to us when Romeo proclaims his love, her reaction must LIVE in her body for us to sense it. And we as the audience must INVEST in what is happening. We have to care. And that care will carry the weight of Juliet's plight at the end when she puts that dagger in her chest. And that empathy is what will affect our lives.

Sorry Mr. Brecht.

But I do want to take somethings from Brecht.

I want do want to confront the audience. Not necessarily in a jarring, attacking way, but in an inviting, effective way.

I don't want to just do DEATH OF A SALEMAN in the round or in a real house, I want to use all the power of live performance, design, and experience to make the audience Live both the illusion that Willy creates and chases after and the crash of reality that destroys that illusion in Biff.

And yes, I also want to experience and create new pieces as well, that are not just altered or expounded on in this approach but are created to take full advantage of it.

I don't want to attack or abuse the audience or that play, but I want people to feel like they have lived that play. When they come to that play it should just be something that is watched. It should be experienced. Experienced because it was too close, too unpredictable, too enveloping, and too focused on--maybe this is the key verb I'm looking for--giving them the experience of that play.

I believe in not underestimating your audience. But I also think that intellectual ideas without empathy and emotion just turn into gobbledygook to those not involved in the creation of those ideas.

I want to communicate with everyone. I despise elitism. I don't care about theatre for theatre people. Or art for other artists. Or critics.

So what I am talking about--and this is not anything entirely new or original--is bridging the gap between the traditional and the experimental.

But what is new, for me at least, is that I don't want this sometimes. I want to do this all the time, every time.

And I don't want to do it as an afterthought or part of a package--like an extra detail that comes off more as cute then as part and parcel of the experience.

I want it to be a goal and a guiding perimeter from the start. I want everything I create to be immersed in the principle of creating an experience for the audience.

I don't see why anyone making the effort to come to a theatre, with all of the planning that requires, and all of the sacrifice of easier pleasures--should get any less.

And if I'm going to give any less than that, then I don't see why I shouldn't just go to film school and work in television and movies. It would feel more honest then creating something easily outmatched by something cheaper and more effective--and then pressuring people to come to it because they "should."

Theatre should be more then just another "should" in peoples' lives.

I just can't help feel like sometimes theatre feels a charity. That or a vegas show. That's unfair and sweeping generalization, perhaps, but sometimes it feels true. It should never feel true. Never.

It should be necessary.

The only things in life that we get to control are our perspective and our behavior. Everything else is left to fate.

But perspective and behavior are powerful, powerful tools.

Immersive theatre will require a commitment to creating, discovering, living, and guiding both of those things.

An expansion of our powers as artists.

It's time to take the gloves off of theatre.

Not to fight, but to touch, to give.

Oof.

Well, it can't get much cornier then that last sentence. Let's try and butch it up a little with some Jay-Z.

"Thank God for granting me this moment of clarity

This moment of honesty
The world'll feel my truths
Through my Hard Knock Life time
My Gift and The Curse
I gave you volume after volume of my work
So you can feel my truths"