The Arts and Purpose

Ironically, my time has been a bit more constrained as of late:
-This week: We've been rehearsing in the mornings for about 4-5 hours a day; followed by 4-5 hours of time in the box office each afternoon into the evening. Today, I spent a few hours reading some of the potential winners for Under 6 and assisted with the special needs students in one of the classes. We spend most of our time in there helping the participants in rehearsal and during the performance. All the scenes/skits are showing off parts of their own identity. One young lady will be doing a piece about her upcoming Golden Birthday (26 on the 26th! Which means I missed mine by...a long time ago; oh well.) Another is doing a group speaking and sign-language presentation dedicated to her Jewish faith and Israel. And there's the guys: one is trying to get to Tampa...via monster truck. The other is ready for the Cubs to break the 102nd year drought and win a World Series. It's fun. And they're fun people--a good way to end the weekdays.

-I've been busy also reading a book called the Empty Space, by Peter Brooks. It's split into four sections, each devoting time and explaining Deadly, Holy, Rough, and Immediate Theater. Right now, I'm just up through the The Deadly Theater chapter. It talks in detail about this particular type of theater, and the various people that contribute to it, that brings about boring, repetitive, meaningless work to the stage--often driving audiences away and making the experience of theater going rather dull. The author challenges the reader to conceptualize a theater with a specific purpose which aims at the overall improved welfare of society. This kind of act will, as he believes, inevitably lead to a theater essential to, and even fun for, the social collective. This, in turn, would make the participation in theater not just frivolity and entertainment, but an expanding and ever-evolving  redefinition of the human condition (to those of you who have read the rest, let me know if I got that right; I hope to elaborate more once I make more progress--as I've alluded to, it's very dense material). Pretty big stuff I daresay.

But it's also nice to think that what we do as part of the performance industry goes beyond mere amusement. I talk a lot about how during the tour we encouraged children to embrace their own identities. Our hope is they use their perspectives to explore and express life as they see it in the present. And there's Race, by David Mamet, that points out that maybe we all have a little racism somewhere in the back of our heads (this was a good point that one of the cast members brought up with me today). The imaginary world is a really cool place for me because it gives us the flexibility to suspend our own expectations to better understand the possibilities of working with someone else's.

Especially with money as tight as it is, the arts are one of the first sectors to come under scrutiny. It's so hard to define our role because it fluctuates along with the times. Even something as trivial as fashion can change the whole meaning of a performance. A play today may not have significance three years from now. Or perhaps, in the case of the digital age, less than a year. That's why so many people, for example, hold Shakespeare in such high esteem, although a devil's advocate would argue that maybe tradition itself has over-emphasized the Bard's importance. English classes often teach us more about what IS good rather than letting students discover the definition of "good" for themselves.

What works, if left to the opinions of their readers, could stir the hearts of high-schoolers today? Maybe it's not the classics. Maybe it would be more than just Harry Potter. Or at least not the works they study in today's classrooms. What subjects should plays address? Are we so fractured in our beliefs and opinions that new works cannot connect beyond the cliche themes and messages? That seems cynical, but those are the challenges and questions I consider when thinking about my career in the bigger picture. If the performing arts are to stay relevant, I believe they cannot function solely off the public opinion nor can they afford to live economically without it. Lest we forget, your participation as the audience member, as this book wisely points out, is just as vitally important. An audience willing to be involved will make any good show great--it's almost essential. You're contribution to this debate could very well help, or hinder, the perpetuation of this art-form.

-Ben