Disclaimer - there is some mild swearing further along in this post in a quote from a script.
Recently I have seen two shows, and heard about two companies that reminded me why I believe that theater is important.
The first show was "Laramie: Ten Years Later". The second was "Neva". The companies are Bond Street Theater and Girl Be Heard.
As a theater maker, one of the essential questions I keep returning to is why we need theater - why is it important, why is it relevant, why (and how) can it make a difference.
"Laramie: Ten Years Later" is an epilogue piece to "The Laramie Project", a show which I have written on before. What strikes me in the epilogue is the notion that we haven't done much yet - we have talked about making things better, about changing things, and we are working to change them - but that change is slow, and time distorts more than we realize, even just in its passing - we think that we have forever, and the next thing you now, 10 years have past, with nothing that is markedly different.
This show also juxtaposes the conversations of Matt's mother with the conversations of one of the perpetrators. You see how society hasn't moved, how it has blasphemed the original story - and you also see how society has created a world where this is something that is seen as despicable, but then real, lasting change doesn't happen.
The other night I went to a talk given by Andy Paris, one of the original members of the Tectonic Theater Project - and something he mentioned, that really struck home, is that we don't care anymore - something's gone wrong, on an essential human level.
Theater, while it can be part of the solution, is also part of the problem. This is portrayed in "Neva", a play set in a post-Chekov, revolutionary setting. It is an interesting concept from the beginning, gets a bit heavy-handed with the historicism in the middle, but then all of that is forgotten when the final monologue is delivered.
To (poorly) paraphrase a section:
"Theater is shit. Audiences are shit. People are dying. And you say you suffer onstage - you don't suffer onstage. I don't want your scripted love! I am sick of love. Give me revolution, give me violence, give me what is real - theater is shit!"
And you are sitting in the audience, watching this. For me, I thought about how theater can be really bourgeois, inaccessible, a spectacle - but then I also know that theater can make a positive, lasting impact.
That brings me to the companies I mentioned earlier. Bond Street Theater works internationally in collaboration with local artists to bring theater tools to communities - giving a space to talk about what is important to them - social issues, health issues, their stories. Girl Be Heard is a very similar concept, with multiple prongs - performance, education, and a space to create, this time for the young women of NYC.
Both of these are examples of how theater can go beyond beauty - it can use beauty, and technique, and scripts, to entertain, but more importantly, to go beyond entertainment and to actually make an impact.
And that is the work I want to make. Not the Broadway spectacle - but the theater that creates a space for dialogue and change.
<3
Recently I have seen two shows, and heard about two companies that reminded me why I believe that theater is important.
The first show was "Laramie: Ten Years Later". The second was "Neva". The companies are Bond Street Theater and Girl Be Heard.
As a theater maker, one of the essential questions I keep returning to is why we need theater - why is it important, why is it relevant, why (and how) can it make a difference.
"Laramie: Ten Years Later" is an epilogue piece to "The Laramie Project", a show which I have written on before. What strikes me in the epilogue is the notion that we haven't done much yet - we have talked about making things better, about changing things, and we are working to change them - but that change is slow, and time distorts more than we realize, even just in its passing - we think that we have forever, and the next thing you now, 10 years have past, with nothing that is markedly different.
This show also juxtaposes the conversations of Matt's mother with the conversations of one of the perpetrators. You see how society hasn't moved, how it has blasphemed the original story - and you also see how society has created a world where this is something that is seen as despicable, but then real, lasting change doesn't happen.
The other night I went to a talk given by Andy Paris, one of the original members of the Tectonic Theater Project - and something he mentioned, that really struck home, is that we don't care anymore - something's gone wrong, on an essential human level.
Theater, while it can be part of the solution, is also part of the problem. This is portrayed in "Neva", a play set in a post-Chekov, revolutionary setting. It is an interesting concept from the beginning, gets a bit heavy-handed with the historicism in the middle, but then all of that is forgotten when the final monologue is delivered.
To (poorly) paraphrase a section:
"Theater is shit. Audiences are shit. People are dying. And you say you suffer onstage - you don't suffer onstage. I don't want your scripted love! I am sick of love. Give me revolution, give me violence, give me what is real - theater is shit!"
And you are sitting in the audience, watching this. For me, I thought about how theater can be really bourgeois, inaccessible, a spectacle - but then I also know that theater can make a positive, lasting impact.
That brings me to the companies I mentioned earlier. Bond Street Theater works internationally in collaboration with local artists to bring theater tools to communities - giving a space to talk about what is important to them - social issues, health issues, their stories. Girl Be Heard is a very similar concept, with multiple prongs - performance, education, and a space to create, this time for the young women of NYC.
Both of these are examples of how theater can go beyond beauty - it can use beauty, and technique, and scripts, to entertain, but more importantly, to go beyond entertainment and to actually make an impact.
And that is the work I want to make. Not the Broadway spectacle - but the theater that creates a space for dialogue and change.
<3
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