Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
A new journal for theatre minima and organum posts exclusively can now be found here.
Saturday, 17 November 2007
Yes, I've read Jay Rayner's 11 November essay in the Observer (UK), "Why is nobody doing the right thing?", about the apparent dearth of right-wing playwrights in the theatre, and I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Rob Kendt on its "nattering on" and his considered opinion that the question is "old and tiresome." For me, the question is about as meaningful as "Why aren't there more right-wing paintings, sculpture, music and ballets?" Contrary to Rayner's conclusion (and as he indicates in his article), there's plenty of room for these seeming right-wing dramatists, from Noel Coward to the late John Osborne in his final decades to Tom Stoppard currently (and, here, David Mamet in one or two plays and Jonathan Reynolds). But if you want to fuss, fuss.
Rob does point up a quote from David Hare that lies buried in the article; I hope that Hare was just having a bad day, because it seems inaccurate and closed-minded:
"Of course there's very little theatre which openly argues a hard-right programme," [Hare] says. "But the dominant strain in most modern art theatre is fatalistic. The tone of a great deal of avant-garde work, in particular, is of prettified acceptance of life's seemingly inevitable hardships. [Really? We've still got the Living Theatre and the Bread & Puppet people here, at least; pretty and accepting are two things they ain't. -- GH] Some of the most famous playwrights of the past 60 years have reacted to suffering by implying there's not much you can do about it. As Beckett said: 'The tears of the world are a constant quantity.' The number of playwrights who believe the opposite -- that the quantity of the tears is adjustable -- is interestingly small."
Unless Hare is reading Beckett's mind, that's quite a statement, though he could always go to Beckett's biography to read about his brave and courageous work through the French Resistance movement and his life-long concern and support for dissidents everywhere from South Africa to Czechoslovakia. Beckett's explicit political beliefs can be read from his actions, not his work, though it's true that an implicit political and metaphysical radicalism, I think, can be detected in his novels and late plays.
More from Rob, and several related links, at his complete post.
Posted at 10.13 am in /Miscellaneous
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