writing.performance

Just had a lovely evening with a playwright friend, talking about the drive towards “uplifiting’ comedies in the theatre at the moment. The conventional wisdom seems to be that in grim times, people want to laugh. But when people tell you that a play is “too dark”–what are they saying? Too dark for whom? (And what would Toni Morrison make of the “dark/ light” poetics of cheer vs. gloom here?) There’s always a ring of fear behind this assertion of the need for comedy. Now, I like to laugh too, but I don’t like ONLY to laugh in the theatre. I want to feel connection, and truth, and for the world to look different afterwards because my perception has been re-aligned by the force of another vision of the world. (more…)

I’ve been thinking for a while of how to find and walk through the other door. The door to doing the creative work on my own terms, actively finding collaborators, writing what comes and what excites me rather than starting with “product” and “market” and the hope that my work will be “picked up”. (more…)

… the sports obsession and misogyny.

BBC – Nick Bryant’s Australia.

Here’s an amazing online archive of avant-garde film and sound.
Thanks to papertheatre.org for pointing me towards this.

A blog review from Bam’s Brambles on Trojan Barbie that considers the question of the relative value we place on Western vs. “other” lives.

And another review in the Harvard Crimson:
The Harvard Crimson :: Arts :: ‘Barbie’ Revives, Revises Tragedy.

Just found this on the 99 seats blog:

It raises the question: why do theatres do capital campaigns for buildings but not to pay artists and staff, whose teeth are often falling out for lack of dental insurance, or who get laid off every summer when the work is slow? If the “mission” of a theatre is all about the art, what about making paying a living wage for artists a priority?

These are really good questions.

“And as we know, the pilgrims who founded our country hated the theater, because they hated sex and the irrational. (Have you ever wondered why Boston is not a theater town?)”

I have to say, this made me laugh out loud. I’m quoting Sarah Ruhl, from a longer essay she posted on the fabulous website and writing engine papertheatre.org

I’m quoting without doing justice to the context here; it’s well worth reading Sarah’s full essay, which advises, among other things, not to send your characters to reform school (in the guise of making them “learn something” during their incarceration in your play).

Projects — UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities.

So, this is what I’ll be up to for the next month or so as one of the writers of the Virtual Performance Factory.  I’m fascinated to be learning about these new modes of writing/ designing.

I’ve been thinking lately about the need to find other paths through my life as a playwright.  The regional model is timid and broken; it’s about product and (as Morgan Jeness puts it) serving the oligarchy.  And frankly, my plays are not going to function well as “product” in those contexts.  In one of the most thoughtful reviews of Trojan Barbie, the writer said “The playwright is not interested in our comfort, though there are many entertaining moments in her writing. Instead, she asks that we consider the suffering of people we do not know in lands we may never visit. “

And that is true, but it doesn’t mean I want to insult or alienate an audience.  I want them to come with me in looking at something painful, but in a form that’s beautiful and compelling so that we can bear to do it.  I think a feeling of truth in art, and moments of beauty (formal or thematic) are rare joys and the pathways to these experiences for audiences are systematically blocked through lack of arts education, a frantically materialist culture, and the deeply patronizing view that audiences aren’t up to–nor up for– complex, intense, problem-posing art.

However, as Spencer Golub has said repeatedly, it’s all in the frame.  Perhaps it’s just that they(we) are not up for being sat in rows and made to look at the same thing together any more.  The blackboard, the stage, the monument… there’s something about those forms that seems to recede into the 20th century already.

The question, then: what IS the relationship (or array of possible relationships) between work made for performance and its audience?  Maybe it’s fractal rather than perspectival now.  The relationship of a physically unified audience to a singular spectacle on a proscenium stage dates to Renaissance discoveries in painting, and is organized around the God-king’s eye.  Now we are all tiny gods with our insect-eye computers and iPhones, and perspective is multiple and dispersed, although still very much formed in and by a field of power relations.   This new connectivity is both too intimate and too fractal for the stage.  Yet there’s something about bodily presence that I still believe we crave–it’s telling that isolation is the least bearable of stresses in captivity.

So that’s what I want to figure out. How to write supple, intimate, fractal performance texts that have form and shape but function as strands in a web of dialogue with an audience.   Preferably by June.  Any clues, post ‘em here!  And I’ll write more about the VPF as it unfolds.

Inaugural Playwrights’ Festival — The Harvard University Gazette.

What with this and Trojan Barbie, it’s been a really busy semester!

The Playwrights Festival went really well and affirmed my conviction that you can’t just teach playwriting by sitting in a room sharing writing and talking about plays– though that’s important too.  Writers need collaborators and the breath and body of actors to learn their craft and bring plays to life.