Theater, Coda
Yeah, I've been known to overstate things sometimes. Ace says I certainly did in my previous post about the theater.
I think that the idea of "challenging" an audience has its usefulness. I think Matt is overstating things quite a bit when he says that they never want to entertain an audience, or when he suggests they should do only that.Well I think Ace and I are on the same page in general on this one, but let me just clarify.
One of the things I used to love about the theater is the idea that for about two hours — if your production is effective — you can really emotionally lock in to the audience. You get a good bond going with them, and then maybe they can see things from a different perspective. Show them the life of someone on stage — someone they can empathize with and understand, but maybe just from the other side of the tracks — and you can get them to think.
This kind of thing is only possible when the artists make a genuine effort to communicate. You can only affect change if you make that connection. And you can only make that connection if you really try to understand your audience and respect them and try to understand where they are coming from too.
And that last part is the essential missing component of the leading theater voices today. They don't understand Red America at all (and please gag me with a spork for using that phrase). Red America stopped going to the progressive theater a while back, because the progressive theater was so gung-ho on converting its paying audience. And now all the artists have in mind when they think of Red America is a caricature of what it's really all about.
I have a good friend who is still a part of the active local theater scene. And it is like pulling teeth to try to get her to understand that middle-class-to-rich white people are not, in fact, corporate whores or slaves who get off on thumping the Bible against their chests while en route to a book-burning -slash- gay-bashing -slash- secret meeting where they discuss how to screw the poor out of their tax refunds.
She's a smart girl. But she isn't exposed to the real people in suburbia who do care about their families and who do just want to keep more of their paycheck, and who do volunteer and donate their time and money to charity. They're good people. My friend lives in an enclave, though. It's an echo-chamber. And it's ringing with contempt for Red America. And yeah, that influences their attitudes and their play selection and their artistic choices.
So it's no wonder their work is confrontational and in-your-face instead of persuasive. It's the hard sell vs. the soft sell. You have to respect and trust your audience for the latter to work. Theater, movies, all art — they work best on the soft sell. You've got to envelop the audience in the work, and let the ideas permeate, percolate, marinate.
I think until they figure out that the other side is, in fact, human, they'll have to be content living on the margins and preaching only to the choir.
Posted by Matt at November 16, 2004 1:15 PM
