Christmas Eve Thoughts About Theater

Merry Christmas to anyone reading this blog who celebrates. Also, Happy Hannukah to my fellow Jews who are now four days into latkes, driedels, and other arcane artifacts of Judaica.

Just wanted to throw out there that my friend and I have been talking along lines that were started by me and my father about the future of theater. My dad's view (from the perspective of a computer programmer and the founder of a tiny internet startup) is that the problem with theater right now is its inability to scale--there are high costs getting in and an artificially limited return (a 99 seat theater can only make Ticket Sale x 99 x however many nights--and Showcase Code might add further limitations, etc. etc.). His solution, as an internet guy, is to follow the logic that created Theater on the TV and create Theater on the Internet. Richard Foreman tried something like that this month, live-streaming rehearsals of his upcoming play.

There's something to that, and there's something not to that. After all, the one thing the theater has going for it is liveness--which is why I'm objecting to fourth-wall twentieth-century isolated creations (by the way--my own productions so far have failed to do that to a certain extent, although Orchestration was one such experiment--I kicked the audience out of the theater at the end. It made more sense in context). Broadcasting over TV or over the Internet kills that in the same way that the fourth wall does: it crystallizes it, and kills the danger of doing something dangerous.

Of course, Saturday Night Live, Whose Line Is It Anyways, Mock The Week, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report still manage to capture something of that. They have live audiences, and they're responding to their live audiences to allow a bit of chaos.

So that's one route to go, in terms of scaling.

But another place to look is the music industry. Music has two prongs: one is the music itself which, like film, is a recorded product easily distributed; the other is the live performance, the concert. In music both of those scale. Why? Because we in America have a concert-going culture. So local concert halls, if they have a good enough reputation, can count on being full on a Friday night. And they can bring bands on tour.

Why does this system work?

1) Bands are easy to tour: a decent concert hall will have most of the equipment they need, so they just need to bring themselves, their support team, and their instruments.
2) Most bands are not tech heavy or visual heavy--so long as the acoustics are in, the rest of the show is purely their musical talent.
3) Concert halls are simply fun places for young people to be: they can do whatever they like while the music is going on, and they can drink copious amounts of alcohol if they so choose. It's a social event as much as it is a music event.


So if theater ensemble wanted to tour the way bands did, they'd have to do a few things:

1) They'd have to strip away all of the complicated technical elements so as to have the simplest set-up possible.
2) They'd have to have a flexible set-up that doesn't require a formalized system of etiquette.
3) They should be comfortable with an open bar.
4) They'd have to be in conversation with the audience.

Who does this? Improv groups. Jazz ensembles. Rock bands. Stand-up comics. All viable forms of performance. A stand-up comedian does not rely on internet or television broadcasting to survive (although once he becomes successful, this is a viable way of becoming a huge figure). An improv group doesn't need lights and sets to make their comedy funny. And rock bands don't mind trashed audiences. Any theater ensemble that can shed the dead weight of tradition enough will find itself light enough to travel, and light enough to be viable.

Of course, there needs to evolve a system to handle this sort of touring. Small music halls or Improv performance spaces can accommodate other forms of performance, so long as we assure them that it is worth their while.

Riffing About Riffing

Riffing in jazz and rock is the chance of the musician to break out of the melodic and rhythmic structure of the song. Nowadays, jazz and rock tracks are limited by their structure; a single melody and rhythm. Because there is a single melody, a single prevailing rhythm--I'm talking most popular jazz and rock tracks, not avant-garde jazz and prog-rock, etc.--it is difficult to spend more than three or four minutes on the same idea. The lyrics, the build in emotions, the complexity of that single melody/rhythm can prolong it, but basically: one idea is limited in length.

I'm a theater person, so I like to ape what I see and apply it to theater. And theater, really, is the same way as music. Aristotle came in with what he called unities: unity of action, unity of time, unity of space. What Aristotle didn't demand is unity of tone/theme, or unity of character. Of course, in his splitting Tragedy from Comedy, he created the implication of a unity of theme/tone.

I don't know when exactly the concept of unity in character arose--perhaps it was always there, perhaps the psychological rise of naturalism created it--but to a certain extent, that became limiting. I know this because I think unity of character is what hobbles Shakespeare productions. It is not so much that the plot hits monotony--it's that with a unified character, it becomes difficult to hit all the different marks that Shakespeare leaves. A dour, depressed Hamlet (who is defined by dourness) simply cannot get the gravedigger scene, or the relationship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or the scene where the play is presented to King Claudius. Nor would a comic Hamlet (I don't think anyone's ever tried to play Hamlet completely for laughs)

That carries into unity of tone. A dour Hamlet doesn't want to break the "mood" of the To Be Or Not To Be moment. If I were designing the play, I'd try to make it really funny right before "to be or not to be," if possible. I remember a production of Romeo and Juliet that I was once in whose major success was grasping the fact that the first half of Romeo and Juliet is a comedy. At the point it was written, Shakespeare had not written any tragedies. And nobody at the time knew how Romeo and Juliet ends. So straight up until Mercutio dies--even past the point where he is stabbed and is bleeding--the classic Shakespearean comedic devices are employed. I mean, for crying out loud, what does Mercutio say after being stabbed? "Call for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man!" Mercutio literally doesn't notice that things have become "dramatic." Suddenly he collapses, and there--then the tragedy starts, and the audience (and characters) realize the impact of what they've been doing.

If you play a Shakespeare play with a unity of tone, or a unity of character, you have to abridge. It will be too long. People will "get it." Especially since they know the ending. You might protest that there are many layers of language to explore--but if you're following a unified tone, or a unified character, you're not really exploring the language. Even in the same speeches, Hamlet goes from ecstacy to tragedy, from mania to depression, to absolute cool calm. This is not the place for a unified psychology, a logical progression of thoughts. If anything, Brecht understood this point best when he angrily denounced this unity of character in his Alienation Effect In Chinese Acting. Man is contradictory.

A sidenote: this is something that I first saw as a huge flaw in the otherwise well crafted, gripping, (and sometimes one-tone) Battlestar Galactica, a show that I highly recommend. No I have not seen the original yet, but I will eventually.

I liked this disunity of tone and of character best when I saw Patrick Stewart's Macbeth, and the now-infamous sandwich-eating scene (for those of you who haven't seen it... well, go and see it). The scene is such an odd deviation of tone and of character for Macbeth (without straining reality--because reality deviates in tones and of characters, as my day today has proven to me).

So why am I talking about this with riffing? Well, because... you should riff. If you've got a show that's got one tone going on, or one character, you need to find a place to riff. A place to drop whatever structure of the play is going on, and put in something that doesn't fit the play. David Herskovitz, for instance, would throw in places where the play falls apart--actors forgetting lines, etc. etc. If something breaks the mold of the play, steps right outside for a bit to play with new tones, new ideas, etc., then you won't have to worry about time; it might take up more time, but it will prolong the audience's interest.

Even in an "established" text like Shakespeare is open to riffing. There's plenty of riffing to go in between or around the lines. But if you've written your own work, are working on something new--leave room for riffing! Please. You wouldn't do it on the recorded track (i.e. the script) but you'd better do it when it comes to concert time (the performance).