In her article in The Guardian, Lyn Gardner alleges (or, I think, implies) that the professional theater community is merely paying lip-service to social causes; that they produce elaborate plays that claim to champion certain issues, yet these plays fail to inspire the audience to actually do anything about it.
She broaches this subject by describing a production of The Good Person of Setzuan (Sichuan) at the National Theatre. She then describes how the affluent patrons of the show “passed by two young, homeless lads asking for money. Despite what we had just watched onstage, not one of us stopped and gave.”
Anyone who has read The Good Person of Setzuan (and, I would have thought, anyone who has seen it) might pause here. In this play, Brecht paints a very clearly disdainful view of charity in general and recipients of charity in particular. Absolutely everyone who receives Shen Te’s charity in any form in this play is a thankless parasite, demanding more and making excuses for why they cannot contribute anything to society in return. Shen Te alone is grateful: for the charity she receives from the gods, and her thwarted and unappreciated attempts to share that charity make a very clear statement that those of us who enjoy the fortune of the gods (ie, the wealthy) should look solely after ourselves. Brecht’s privileged and condemning view of the underprivileged, no doubt strongly influenced by his analogous-to-suburban upbringing, is predictable, banal, and (I thought) obvious almost to the point of insult. Yet Gardner seems to think the play promotes charity.
It’s apt, in my eye, that Gardner’s article uses a misinterpretation of a Brecht play in order to launch her thesis. My first reaction was to think that this article is about one-hundred years too late to say anything groundbreaking or significant. Brecht himself described most theater as Gustatory: to be ingested, digested, and passed, leaving no lasting effect on the patron. It’s my understanding that Brecht was a hypocrite and con-artist of the highest order, who developed his theories post-facto to justify his new aesthetic, but he still originated or at least popularized the idea that theater should be political and should galvanize the audience into action.
I should pause here to explain that the vast majority of my knowledge of Brecht comes from Martin Esslin’s A Choice of Evils, which I strongly recommend.
Gardner suggests near the middle of her article that theaters (and she does seem to be talking about professional theaters, the bigguns) should be less concerned with those who step into the theater and more concerned with the welfare of those who have never been in one (to paraphrase her own words). She alleges that professional theaters are far too concerned with maintaining audiences and cash-flow, and that the subject matter of their plays is a mere smokescreen, a pretense of social responsibility.
So far, still nothing new.
What Gardner either misses or does not see as worth mentioning, is that professional theaters have always been interested in the bottom line, almost to the exclusion of all other concerns. A theater’s concern for inner-city youth is no more genuine than a bank’s concern for your children’s future, though every bit as profitable.
Maybe this is just an Emperor’s New Clothes situation. Maybe Gardner is just playing the game, couching her argument in deliberately naive terminology, since shaming people and institutions rarely inspires anyone to take responsibility and change their behavior. But the impression I got was that either Gardner is an extraordinary Pollyanna or is herself engaging the same faux-concern.
I just read another online article (an older one) about a middle-class white man escaping his slowly-gentrifying neighborhood and moving into a predominantly Caribbean-American one, which he goes on to describe with all the awed wonder of Crusoe and his condescendingly patient admiration of his man Friday. Just last month I read another by a young atheist (spoiler: he was white) talking about the religion of the underprivileged: he describes the beliefs as a mélange of biblical catch phrases and folklore. I’m being a little uncharitable in my description, but this young man actually used the phrase “folklore.” He then, in his infinite generosity, suggests that these unfortunate savages (my words, not his) need their superstitions in order to survive their harsh lives. He even criticizes ‘celebrity atheist’ Richard Dawkins for taking an “I know better” attitude in his famous The God Delusion; evidently this online writer skipped over the part where Dawkins explains how he finds it almost unconscionably insulting and condescending to suggest that other “lesser” people need their superstitions for comfort, and that it is cruel of us “better” people to deprive them of it, a common and frequently-debunked piece of privileged noblesse-oblige.
Anyway, I’m not the first person to suggest that art in general and theater specifically is a bastion of the over-privileged, raised to believe that they were less fortunate than they are and therefore constantly foraging for the means to make themselves appear less privileged, paying lip-service to the smallfolk along the way.
So, much like Gardner: so far, nothing new here either, I suppose.
But over the last hundred years, and certainly in the last twenty, theater has become so intertwined with social causes that its artistic value has become defined by its perceived social effect, or at least its perceived potential social effect. This demand for responsibility to those less fortunate than ourselves cannot be found in painting nor music nor even writing, not even in film half the time. Theater alone has this pseudo-Brechtian value assigned to it.
And there’s nothing wrong with theater that actively promotes a social cause. Milwaukee Repertory Theater is actively engaging more artists of color. Here in Chicago, Red Theater and Oracle are producing a Romeo & Juliet integrating sign language as part of the story, rather than just using ASL without specific commentary as past productions have done. The great thing about social causes as part of a production is that (unlike commercial theater) social equity and artistic value are not mutually exclusive. Certainly, using social causes as a means of marketing is at-odds with art, but the social cause itself is not at fault. Big theaters are as artistically valuable as they ever were (good or bad), as are storefronts. Social equity does no harm to art, while serving as a considerable boon to generally-ignored members of the theater community.
And therein is my primary objection to Gardner’s article. She states unequivocally that theaters should focus more outside the theater community, to those unfortunate lesser folk. Presumably, theaters should up their charity, or produce plays that are more effective at getting audiences to act charitably. But the only positive effect I’ve seen of socially-conscious theater is the benefit done to oppressed and ignored members of our own community; not due to the message of the play, but due to the company’s efforts to reverse their own ignorance. The old adage of the rod in the eye leaps immediately to mind.
I think that these wide-sweeping, general ideas are incapable of galvanizing people, because odds are they’ve already heard the message a thousand times: rationalized it, dismissed it, and gone on with their lives. If a professional theater artist can watch a well known play that they surely must have studied at some point and walk away with the exact opposite message that the script itself preaches, and then ignore that opposite message, I just don’t know what theater can really do.
Communication and new ideas move so quickly nowadays, it’s difficult to see how a play can challenge social convention. Far more often, it seems like even storefront theater (and definitely professional theater) is being dragged into the present by its progressive audience, much like the movies. People are still exploring immersive theater, imitating Sleep No More. Shakespeare plays without a fourth wall are just starting to get popular again, following the wake of Twelfth Night and Richard III from two years ago. Even this instant, the more I think about it, the more theater of any stripe seems very conservative in method and execution, liberal only in its messages.
A few years ago, I watched a staged reading of a play about the murder of Harvey Milk. Not surprisingly, the play championed equal rights and condemned bigotry. But who in the audience was opposed to equal rights? Who in this theater audience was in favor of bigotry, even by some more euphemistic name? In the talkback that followed, there was some brief discussion of the anti-police sentiments of the play, but little was said ultimately as the play itself barely touched on it. One audience member identified herself as an activist for equal rights, provided a brief description of some of her work, and actually asked what this play could really accomplish; what were we doing other than patting ourselves on the back? I myself suggested that, if nothing else, the play provided some defenses of equal rights that I (who rarely has to deal with such discrimination) might not have readily at my fingertips, should I witness such bigotry. But of course, a FB post could have accomplished the same thing much more simply.
Like most theater folk, I think art should provoke and challenge, that it should inspire people to see the world differently in the long term. Telling a roomful of people something they already believe doesn’t do that. I hope it goes without saying that I am in favor of equal rights; but if that is something I support passionately, there are far more effective ways to promote growth.
I think art has to do something specific in order to be effective, and theaters don’t want to do that because it risks lowering their audience turnout. Even storefront theaters, even fresh-eyed graduates, seem more interested in promoting their company (their brand) than in their actual artistic endeavors. And as long as your interest in gaining popularity and plaudits from your artistic community trumps your desire to provoke or challenge, nothing you do will have any significant artistic merit. It might (might) have social merit, but that merit is dwarfed by other, more substantial political efforts: rallies, protests, actual grassroots political campaigns.
Art can have strong effects. We’ve all heard of the riots that The Magic Flute provoked, but these were the results of challenging artistic convention itself. The Marriage of Figaro challenged the system, but again this was before the internet, and before eight new movies were available every day. And besides, limited access to liberal arts meant that the lack of divinity in our monarchs was a novel concept to many commoners. The issues we raise in socially-active theater today just aren’t.
And I’m not calling myself an activist: I’m as lazy and apathetic as anyone. I just don’t like it when things that aren’t art get called art, or when something’s artistic merit is judged by its social relevance, its profitability, or its popularity. But that’s just me… on my blog.
I think more plays should challenge the increasing similarity between plays and movies (especially scripturally). I think plays should challenge the convention of theater-is-a-business, of the prevalence of overpopulation and especially of cultural alcoholism. The five or six people reading this might disagree with some or all of those, but at least we wouldn’t be preaching to the choir.
New Thing: (Nov 17, 2015) I’ve just come across another article, this one extolling the virtues of politically charged theater. Unlike Gardner, C. Austin Hill alleges (amidst of forest of almost trollish levels of self-congratulation) that theater is doing just fine, fighting the good fight by producing plays that tell other theater enthusiasts the things we already believe. Hill lists several examples of how theater helped to shape political discourse and give context to current events, but none of these contexts are described to any degree. One such example is a class’ study of Master Harold… and the Boys, in light of recent events and Mizzou. Hill explains that many students had not even heard about Mizzou, and that Fugard’s play provided an excellent framework to discuss it. Exactly what links there are between Master Harold… and the Boys and Mizzou were unmentioned, nor indeed why Fugard was needed to add context to this event. If these students were unaware of Mizzou (first of all, were they under a rock?), and this is a vital part of education, why not have a mandatory current events class? Same goes for Hill’s other examples: The Laramie Project did not affect my concern for equal rights at all; getting to know actual gay people changed my views, along with mainstream media’s squalling pull in the liberal direction over time. Hill describes how plays comforted people after the World Trade Center attacks. All of the above are accomplished by conversation and community. Theater can do those things, but those are not its defining qualities, and theater is certainly not unique in those accomplishments.
Augusto Boal did theater that actually changed the lives of specific people and specific communities. I was incredibly impressed by his work. But, I quickly found I was not interested in performing his work myself. I was too self-centered, too self-congratulatory, too lazy, to go to places that actually needed help and to frame my art in the specific context of their specific needs. I don’t know anyone who is doing work similar to Boal. The fact that so many of us sneer at children’s theater, which teaches actual new lessons to people who need them, is also very telling.