Thursday, October 27, 2005
Wanted: Reviews Without Nostalgia
Recently, the NY Times ran an article entitled, "Wanted: A Theater Unafraid of the Power of Images" in which the author, Margo Jefferson, deplored theater's reliance on TV shows and modern music (Mamma Mia! is singled out for particular scorn). The review's premise is that theater's success "came from the vast number of traditions it could draw on and revise: Shakespeare heavy and Shakespeare light; Greek and Roman comedies (they burst into song on the American stage); popular novels, like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "La Dame aux Camélias" ("Camille" in English)."
Theater used to be the source for movies and televsion shows, the review continues. "The so-called golden age of television was built on the work and prestige of Broadway playwrights."
But now--and you can fill in the rest. We live in a degenerate age, and Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams are dead, and there are--gasp--plays based on movies and pop music. It's "galling to see theater lag behind," the review states. "It now leans heavily on film, television and Top 40 music. If the results were fresh, it would be fine. But so often (as with "Movin' Out" or "Mamma Mia!") they look old and leave you feeling blue."
I feel blue when I read crap like this. OK, more accurately, I see red. I wonder what shows this reviewer has recently seen. Is it bad that Richard Greenberg's "Take Me Out" is based on baseball? And "The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow" by Rolin Jones acknowledges computers and is quite modern and dazzling? Or "Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde" is based on court transcripts? OK, full disclosure: I enjoyed Mamma Mia! It wasn't "The Passion Plays," which I guess are to be scorned because they're based on a book called the New Testament. How derivative. (I loved the Passion Plays, as done by Arena Stage, and left the theater with greater insight into both religion, politics and drama than I had had for quite some time).
There's a breadth to theater in Washington today that I find quite liberating. Theater is free to borrow from every medium, and I don't think that that weakens the story or the performances at all. I'm tired of people saying that things were better in the 1950s when Joseph McCarthy screened everything for Communist tendencies and there was rampant anti-Semitism, racial segregation, polio and diptheria. Oh, for those good old days!
Unlike many movies and TV shows that have become formulaic--the adventure story, the romance, the cop show--theater doesn't have to make a ton of money (though it's nice if it does), and it doesn't pretend to stage things with mass appeal. The discussions, readings, musical offerings and intellectual vitality in the theater cannot be matched by television or the movies. Theater can break many more boundaries and challenge the audience in more ways than TV or the movies can dare to contemplate. (Though some TV commercials are quite creative).
If anything, television's reality shows are borrowing from theater. And there's a gnashing of teeth from that quarter--what will writers do?
I think there should be MORE fluidity in the US between movies, TV, art, music and theater. For example, it's a big deal if a cinema celebrity appears on stage in this country. It's not in Britain. These are actors. Sometimes they do live theater, sometimes they're on TV or in the movies, and sometimes they're unemployed. I don't think we should put them into categories, but perhaps that's a subject for a different post.
Anyway, the Times reviewer ends by saying that she liked a play that borrowed from the visual arts. (It's OK to borrow from paintings, but not from ABBA songs. Playwrights, take note).
The Times correspondent says:
"Several weeks ago, I went to Performance Space 122 in the East Village, one of the best places in the city for fresh, resourceful theater. That night I saw 'Christina Olson: American Model,' a dance-theater solo based on Andrew Wyeth's famous painting 'Christina's World.' Like van Gogh's sunflowers, or Warhol's soup cans, Wyeth's 1948 work is so familiar that each new reproduction is like an instant replay.
[snippet]
Wyeth's subject, Christina Olson, was disabled. And the choreographer Tamar Rogoff was absolutely right to give her a theatrical life through dance. (There are just bits of text.) Claire Danes was the right performer, too, with her sturdy, expressive body and luminous concentration.
After all, who has a deeper connection to movement than someone at risk of losing it? Someone who, like a dancer, must push her body and each aching limb, muscle and joint to the point at which the difficult meets the impossible. Video images were used sparingly. Glimpses of trees and a barn evoked the painting. They did not compete with the flesh-and-blood figure onstage.
The space we sat in felt both like a theater and an artist's studio. We were living in the present and the past: the story as it was being danced onstage and the painting as we remembered it."
That sounds like a powerful evening. Was the play weakened because many people knew the painting? I doubt it...the painting was probably just an inspiration for the playwright. I did not know, until now, that Christina in the painting was disabled.
The reviewer ends by saying:
"With the right theatrical elements, something amazing could happen, as it did in 'Christina Olson: American Model.' We could have prototypes for new theatrical understanding."
This isn't new at all--I loved the dance play, "Contact," which contained a vignette based on the Fragonard painting, "The Swing." Using a painting as inspiration was just new to this reviewer. (Don't tell her about "Girl With Pearl Earring"--a book based on a painting! Oh, for the good old days when authors just made things up without having to plagiarize from Vermeer!)
Every performance is new to someone. But I think we live in an age that is freer to explore all dimensions of connecting with a live audience than any that came before. The worst aspect of theater today is all the people who sigh and wish for the olden days. (Operagoers are worse, but I don't hang out with them). Someone get this woman a ticket to the 21st Century, and perhaps a train ticket to DC, and she'll feel better about being alive and being a theater-goer today.
Her full review is online at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/theater/26jeff.html
Theater used to be the source for movies and televsion shows, the review continues. "The so-called golden age of television was built on the work and prestige of Broadway playwrights."
But now--and you can fill in the rest. We live in a degenerate age, and Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams are dead, and there are--gasp--plays based on movies and pop music. It's "galling to see theater lag behind," the review states. "It now leans heavily on film, television and Top 40 music. If the results were fresh, it would be fine. But so often (as with "Movin' Out" or "Mamma Mia!") they look old and leave you feeling blue."
I feel blue when I read crap like this. OK, more accurately, I see red. I wonder what shows this reviewer has recently seen. Is it bad that Richard Greenberg's "Take Me Out" is based on baseball? And "The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow" by Rolin Jones acknowledges computers and is quite modern and dazzling? Or "Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde" is based on court transcripts? OK, full disclosure: I enjoyed Mamma Mia! It wasn't "The Passion Plays," which I guess are to be scorned because they're based on a book called the New Testament. How derivative. (I loved the Passion Plays, as done by Arena Stage, and left the theater with greater insight into both religion, politics and drama than I had had for quite some time).
There's a breadth to theater in Washington today that I find quite liberating. Theater is free to borrow from every medium, and I don't think that that weakens the story or the performances at all. I'm tired of people saying that things were better in the 1950s when Joseph McCarthy screened everything for Communist tendencies and there was rampant anti-Semitism, racial segregation, polio and diptheria. Oh, for those good old days!
Unlike many movies and TV shows that have become formulaic--the adventure story, the romance, the cop show--theater doesn't have to make a ton of money (though it's nice if it does), and it doesn't pretend to stage things with mass appeal. The discussions, readings, musical offerings and intellectual vitality in the theater cannot be matched by television or the movies. Theater can break many more boundaries and challenge the audience in more ways than TV or the movies can dare to contemplate. (Though some TV commercials are quite creative).
If anything, television's reality shows are borrowing from theater. And there's a gnashing of teeth from that quarter--what will writers do?
I think there should be MORE fluidity in the US between movies, TV, art, music and theater. For example, it's a big deal if a cinema celebrity appears on stage in this country. It's not in Britain. These are actors. Sometimes they do live theater, sometimes they're on TV or in the movies, and sometimes they're unemployed. I don't think we should put them into categories, but perhaps that's a subject for a different post.
Anyway, the Times reviewer ends by saying that she liked a play that borrowed from the visual arts. (It's OK to borrow from paintings, but not from ABBA songs. Playwrights, take note).
The Times correspondent says:
"Several weeks ago, I went to Performance Space 122 in the East Village, one of the best places in the city for fresh, resourceful theater. That night I saw 'Christina Olson: American Model,' a dance-theater solo based on Andrew Wyeth's famous painting 'Christina's World.' Like van Gogh's sunflowers, or Warhol's soup cans, Wyeth's 1948 work is so familiar that each new reproduction is like an instant replay.
[snippet]
Wyeth's subject, Christina Olson, was disabled. And the choreographer Tamar Rogoff was absolutely right to give her a theatrical life through dance. (There are just bits of text.) Claire Danes was the right performer, too, with her sturdy, expressive body and luminous concentration.
After all, who has a deeper connection to movement than someone at risk of losing it? Someone who, like a dancer, must push her body and each aching limb, muscle and joint to the point at which the difficult meets the impossible. Video images were used sparingly. Glimpses of trees and a barn evoked the painting. They did not compete with the flesh-and-blood figure onstage.
The space we sat in felt both like a theater and an artist's studio. We were living in the present and the past: the story as it was being danced onstage and the painting as we remembered it."
That sounds like a powerful evening. Was the play weakened because many people knew the painting? I doubt it...the painting was probably just an inspiration for the playwright. I did not know, until now, that Christina in the painting was disabled.
The reviewer ends by saying:
"With the right theatrical elements, something amazing could happen, as it did in 'Christina Olson: American Model.' We could have prototypes for new theatrical understanding."
This isn't new at all--I loved the dance play, "Contact," which contained a vignette based on the Fragonard painting, "The Swing." Using a painting as inspiration was just new to this reviewer. (Don't tell her about "Girl With Pearl Earring"--a book based on a painting! Oh, for the good old days when authors just made things up without having to plagiarize from Vermeer!)
Every performance is new to someone. But I think we live in an age that is freer to explore all dimensions of connecting with a live audience than any that came before. The worst aspect of theater today is all the people who sigh and wish for the olden days. (Operagoers are worse, but I don't hang out with them). Someone get this woman a ticket to the 21st Century, and perhaps a train ticket to DC, and she'll feel better about being alive and being a theater-goer today.
Her full review is online at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/theater/26jeff.html
