Salad
Posted October 21st, 2009 by Sean WilliamsI am a blogger who is deeply in love with live theater.
Let’s just consider that perspective for a minute. If you were to write a play about a dog show, I would be very interested in watching the play, even though I care nothing about dogs or dog shows. When I go see plays about subjects near and dear to me, I do get the double joy of getting to see a play, and also getting to be immersed in a world that I find fascinating, but you can write a play about almost anything, and just being in the room is exciting for me.
(Can I just be honest and say… I care nothing for animals. I don’t understand why people have them in their houses. I think if medieval man could jump forward 800 years, the first thing they’d say would be “wait… you have heat, you don’t eat them and you spend vast sums of money keeping them fed… WHAT? YOU PICK UP THEIR SHIT AND THROW IT AWAY?… the future is madness, and I want to go home…”)
This love of theater isn’tt true for a lot of people. I would say, this isn’t true for most people. There are an awful lot of people who go to the theater out of a sense of obligation, out of a feeling that there is something here that needs to be “supported”. I’ve mentioned this on the blog before, but I’m reminded of people saying “I need to get out and see more plays, and watch less TV,” as if “PLAYS” are good for you and “TV” is junk food. The former is something difficult to swallow but ultimately enriching, like salad, the latter goes down easy but will make you fat and lazy.
It is what it is. We’re not gonna start producing plays that are half an hour long, during which you can eat and talk to your friends, and which you can watch sitting on a comfortable couch. A play is gonna take a while, you really should be mostly quiet during them and, real estate being what it is, you’re not gonna have a lot of leg room. I have no solutions for these problems, the media aren’t comparable, despite the fact that playwrights are being hired to write for TV.
But there is something inherently worthwhile about being in a room with a couple hundred other people, experiencing the same thing. The fact is, we don’t watch TV in a vacuum, we’re desperate to share the experience with our friends, we actually want to be in the same room with them for it. One doesn’t walk away from the end of a TV show and believe they have had the entire experience, they need to talk some shit, to re-hash the stuff that worked and didn’t work.
When it comes to live theater, my perspective is shit. When I walk into a theater, my head shakes up like a snowglobe, and most of the time I spend there, I’m just elated. The truth is, all that needs to happen for me to enjoy myself is that the people doing each job respect their own work and the work of the others there, and I’m already happy. If there’s obvious talent and skill, then I’m transported.
When any one of the people involved shows disrespect – and I’m not talking about a lack of talent or a lack of skill, but an actual disrespect for the job they’ve been asked to do – then the flakes in my snowglobe settle pretty quickly and I start getting annoyed. If the actors don’t know their lines, if the director hasn’t created an actual play… if the playwright is lazily falling back on tropes or cliches, then I don’t just get disappointed, I start feeling insulted.
It’s difficult for me to get my ass to a play, and I know it’s far more difficult for most other people. It’s not just kids or night jobs or needing to wake up early, the fact is that plays start at 8, and people get done with their jobs between 5 and 6. It’s not possible to get home and get *back*, and if someone does it, then you have to honor that. Most people are used to eating dinner either five minutes before curtain up or a half hour before curtain down, or something in between. So, when people shit on their audience by not working hard enough in creating the play, I’m not just mad for myself, I’m angry because of what it’s doing to our reputation as an artform.
BUT… even if people have very little talent, if I can see the work they’ve put in, then I’m transported. I don’t think for a moment about the missed meals or the babysitter or the painful amount of leg room.
So, you’re not gonna get an unbiased view here. This is my blog where I just basically barf our how I’m feeling, and I love even average theater. Sure, you can dismiss my opinion, I’m not a reviewer, I’m a *FAN*, I’m not supposed to tear things apart, I wouldn’t know how to even if I were asked.
If I tell you, on this blog, that something is bad, then you better believe it’s awful. But if I say that something is good, then just keep in mind, what that means is that it’s *articulate*, that everyone has done their job, that their passion for a well made piece of theater is evident. But it doesn’t mean you will like it. I happen to love a well-made salad, and I probably prefer it to a giant chocolate bar, but most people are gonna be happier with chocolate, and that does, in fact, make my opinion essentially useless.