Sheridan Singleton, Ashley Fox, David Fink, Isaac Samuelson, Christopher Donaldson Cardenas, Charlotte Long, and James Snyder in Ulysses
In a culture where the arts are seen as a decoration that we put in the spare corners of life, going to the theatre is a great conversation piece. Attending a play requires precious time, money, effort, and attention. This frames the experience as a transactional one: for the $100 of this ticket, you will receive $23 of laughs, $14 of tears, $18 of cool things to look at, $23 of self righteousness, $10 of feeling smart, and $12 of sitting down.
The experience of watching a “traditional” play is cruel. Audience members are expected to behave a certain way, dress a certain way, make certain noises at certain times, BUT NOT AT THE WRONG TIME, YOU PHILISTINE. The institutional theatre sets up a performance event that requires participants to have attended a previous performance event of similar kinds, and rewards those that do with a sense of erudition and belonging. Things that require that you already have experienced the thing before you experience the thing are broken things.
I am as bad an offender as anyone of theatrical tribalism. I shoot dirty looks when people unwrap their hard candies and get on the highest of horses when I hear a phone go off. I will sit in the dark, snot running down my face, bladder ready to explode, mouth gone dry of thirst, farting silently and deadly, counting the minutes until intermission rather than stand up in front of everyone and leave the theatre during a scene… of a play I don’t even like. As an audience member, you bet I reinforce the cruelty of the space. But of course I do: I was trained to from an early age and I’m good at it now.
But.
And.
I want to wrap my knuckles in old playbills and gaff tape and square off with the institution of the American Theater. In the secret basement fight club we would stand under the one hanging light fixture, perspiring with anticipation, surrounded by people waving philanthropic dollars as bets. I know I wouldn’t—couldn’t—kill him (we’ve got too much history) but maybe I could stop him from picking on people who don’t deserve it. Maybe I could knock him off balance just enough so that the people who hide behind him stopped feeling quite so secure. Maybe I could maim him so that the underdogs could become the new champions for a while. Maybe I could look deep into his eyes and he understand, dropping his fists and I would nod the tiniest nod and we would run to each other and hug. Later, at the corner bar, he would tell me that he doesn’t know how he got so stuck, how he hadn’t seen himself fading from the culture. Or not.
Theatre does not have to be for everyone, but everyone should have a full opportunity to decide if theatre is for them.
Every time a play is in a language, it is excluding people. Every time a play happens in a place at a time, it is excluding people. The exercise of trying to make “universal” art is a futile one. However, that does not let us off the hook. It is our prerogative as artists to communicate. We ask the world: are you seeing what I’m seeing? What are we going to do about it? Each artistic impulse leaves a mark on the world, from the microscopic shifting of fibers to the exploding of a crater. Knowing that, artists have to hold responsibility for those marks and their consequences.
To talk more specifically about theatre making, here are some of the things we are responsible for:
- The human beings that come together to make a piece
- The bodies of those human beings
- The histories of those bodies
- The words that are said
- The words that are unsaid
- What happens in a story
- What doesn’t happen in a story
- Where the audience looks
- Where the audience doesn’t look
- Whom the audience listens to
- Whom the audience doesn’t listen to
- The materials we use
- The space we choose
- The experiences we impose
And we should be held accountable for these things. There are always elements that are out of our control. We still cannot abdicate responsibility for them if we continue insisting that the show must go on.
Why, then, would I choose this art form, deeply mired in capitalism, struggling to free itself from racism, sexism, and ableism, inconvenient and elitist, when we are in the Golden Age of Television?
Because theatre is magic.
I believe that. (Which you know because I wrote it, but I want to say it again:)
Theatre is magic.
There is a concept in LARPing called The Magic Circle. It describes the boundaries within which the rules of the game are active. Inside the magic circle, you are an elfin lord with an army chanting incantations at your back. Outside the magic circle, you are Greg from accounting who has the weird hobby. The theatre creates a magic circle, and that’s why we shouldn’t throw away this container—let’s wash it out and reuse it.
Theatre, unlike a game, uses pre-planned happenings to give an audience an experience. This allows theatre artists to, within the Magic Circle, build a world that is distinct from the world outside. A world with different rules. Maybe the rules are that I am the prince of Denmark and I am PISSED at my mom. Maybe the rules are that when I have a lot of feelings, I burst into song supported by a full orchestra and company of dancers. Maybe the rules are that this cinder block is my baby. Maybe the rules are that I am me and you are you and we are together. By inviting the uninitiated into the Magic Circle and teaching them the rules, we are not asking them to suspend their disbelief, we are making belief.
At its best, theatre is a multi-sensory experience of togetherness. I don’t mean that the audience all leaves and goes to the same bar and they all become best friends and a few of them get married to each other. It’s the experience of ‘not alone.’ You see this and I see it too. You see this and I see it differently. You say this and I hear it. You breathe the same air as me. You beat the same heart as me. If the play is long enough, you smell like me.
Theatre is a salve for loneliness.
Here we are, trapped inside of our own skins, which we dragged to some dark room on the other side of town, hoping it was worth it. Worth the memory space that this experience will occupy. Worth the trust that I put in these artists. Worth the vulnerability of sharing space. Worth it in that it mattered that I showed up. That it would be different if I wasn’t here. It mattered that I was here and that we were together.
Theatre is a salve for loneliness.
And some of us can’t wait for the next show to come to town, or find ourselves curious enough about the show to want to see how it’s made. If we’re lucky, we find that it is made with joy and curiosity and bravery and integrity. If we’re really lucky, we find that it is made with people that we like to spend time with. And if we’re really unlucky, we find that we can’t do anything else.
(Well, we hit my secret reason for being a director: pathological loneliness.)
(Theatre is a salve for my loneliness.)
(So I make it.)
(And share it.)
(Because maybe someone else needs it too.)
In the rehearsal room and the auditorium, it matters that we show up. That constellation of accountability and vulnerability—those are the ingredients for relationships between people. They are also the ingredients for a society.
In our industry, we learn to forge relationships quickly and intensely, and sometimes we treat them carelessly. We build micro-communities in rehearsal rooms, fully autonomous and just as ephemeral. We build macro-communities and play the politics like it was a Medieval monarchy. We practice ritual and belief systems that are based on the supernatural. We fuck, marry, and almost kill each other. We chase theatre as it moves through time like a shape-shifter, the only constant being change.
But
Theatre is fundamentally made of people, for people; form and content reflecting each other in an endless search for moments of together. Of not alone. So, how do we make theatre that creates an “us” without also creating a “them?”
