Love's Labors Lost: manifestos and new models for theatrical communities

August 12, 2010

manifestos and new models for theatrical communities

Over at 2AMt * Travis Bedard linked to Mariah MacCarthy's Theatermaker's Theatergoing Manifesto. Let me make it short and simple: Read. That. Shit. Right. Now.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

Welcome back.

You know what I like most about this list (besides the fact that I agree with almost every one of the items on it)? Because it puts a name and a face to the anonymous blob known as "the audience" and sets up a process for being accountable to the people we make theatre with and for. Several of the points the manifesto brings up touches on one of the most persistently frustrating aspects of making theatre: the insularity of the theatrical community.

Insular is perhaps the wrong word. But I often sense a very strong unspoken opposition to the idea of mutual cooperation and uplift. It's particularly puzzling for me because in a medium such as theatre, which depends so heavily on cooperation, there is a sort of - unwillingness? - to expand that cooperation beyond our own productions.

Part of what attracted me to WOW Cafe Theatre was this idea of a more collective model of making theatre. It simply makes more sense to me than constantly competing over scraps. Don't get me wrong, collectives come with their own idiosyncrasies. Nevertheless, I find it confusing and sad that we don't see more efforts similar to WOW happening here. I could understand if there was a shortage of talent or ability, but that's not the case. We can take four walls and create another world but we can't take an hour or two of our time to improve our own community. What does that say about us?

If you agree that our theatrical landscape is too White, too male, too upper middle class, what are you doing to fix that? This discussion happens all the time. It's like clockwork. Every couple of months, someone will go, "OMG! Where are the women? Where are the people of color? Why is everything by and about White guys?"

I'm not talking about Broadway. Fuck Broadway. I'm talking about us little guys, us rinky-dink no-name folks in our tiny little corners of Theatre World.

I don't have a full production at the moment (lack of funds and shit), but I've done readings, and sent out copies of my script (*clears throat at James Comtois*). People have given money - more than I expected - for which I'm grateful (and waiting to be made available so I can do a fundraising thingamabob in the near future).

What would help me right now? If people (besides me) would engage with my work. It'd be nice to start a conversation going about the work that goes beyond your typical film or theatre review. And I do try to put my money where my mouth is. I do go to see shows that have nothing to do with my own, which is my way of supporting other theatermakers.

What about you? What kind of support could you use right now? What kind of support can you offer?

* "Rainy Days and Glass Ceilings Always Get Me Down"

2 comments:

Mariah MacCarthy8/16/2010 2:21 PM
thanks so much for sharing my rants and raves! :-)
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RVCBard8/16/2010 8:17 PM
You're very welcome. Feel free to share mine as well. :D
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Words, Words, Words

. . . a lot of it [fostering rather than smothering students' playwriting] has to do with finding a way to construct a dialogue about ongoing work that empowers the writer. A lot of it has to do with making sure there's a diversity of voices around you. A lot of it has to do with thinking of the writing program as a brain trust for writers, not as some infantilization in which the dramaturg gets the power. And basically trying to find a place where everyone's aesthetic in the room grows larger rather than smaller. There are many ways to do that. It's really not a hard thing to do.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Here is what seems to me an elementary truth that must precede any other: namely, that the theater, an independent and autonomous art, must, in order to revive or simply to live, realize what differentiates it from text, pure speech, literature, and all other fixed and written means.
--Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/15/1931

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged.
--Peter Brook, The Empty Space

My work is characterized by one thing above all --- invention. In theatre we imagine the world, we do not record it, we are not documentary makers. I hold all social realism and journalistic theatre in contempt. It is a sordid habit. And the social realists have the impertinence to pretend they are 'telling the truth…'
--Howard Barker, interview

Women and writers of color are still seen as threats because, in essence, when a woman or writer of color is defining a play world, there's another definition of what our society is, and that's very threatening.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Through this experience [working on " . . . and last week it was a mountain"] I learned the importance of the life and the dynamics under the words, and began to see the power of working from the silent space within - the emotions, the images, the experience and the feelings - rather than relying on the words.
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

How does it happen that . . . the Occidental theater does not see theater under any other aspect than as a theater of dialogue?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

All conventions are imaginable, but they depend on the absence of rigid forms.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'. Nor do I claim to tell the truth or enlighten people. We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets. That is also its politics, if it has any politics at all. And modern democracies hate secrets, they want everything transparent. Obviously the critics collaborate in this desire to expose everything to the light of day, they are the police force, after all.
--Howard Barker, interview

I think that form is content . . . I've always been more interested . . . in the formal devices and the structure rather than in the subject matter . . . I really am a follower of Viktor Shklovsky, who said that in some ways the subject matter doesn't even matter. It's whether or not we see the subject matter anew that matters.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

I am well aware that the language of gestures and postures, dance and music, is less capable of analyzing a character, revealing a man's thoughts, or elucidating states of consciousness clearly and precisely, than is verbal language, but who ever said the theater was created to analyze a character, to resolve conflicts of love and duty, to wrestle with all the problems of a typical and psychological nature that monopolize our contemporary stage?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

The mediocre artist prefers not to take risks, which is why he is conventional.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

"Transcendence became my life theme. I wanted to be lifted beyond everyday circumstances and everyday reality."
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

I actually think of writing for the stage as not writing . . . It's about structuring, about gaps between the language that are really filled in by the collaborators and the process. It's all about indirection rather than a direct statement . . . It's like a three-dimensional chess game in a way. If I say this, will the director go in this direction? If I say this, will the actor respond? And one of the delights of the process is actually not having your intention fulfilled, but finding out at times that other people's interpretation or intention is actually more interesting than you originally thought of.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

The person who has an idea of what this language is will be able to understand us. We write only for him. --Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/28/1932