Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
A new journal for theatre minima and organum posts exclusively can now be found here.
Wednesday, 09 January 2008
Recommended Reading: Battling Bond
Alison reads Edward Bond's interview at the Guardian (UK) today, and her interest is piqued by a little terminological problem:
Bond was speaking of a production of his play The Woman, which he directed at the National: "I went back to see it after it had been playing for a week and the actors were doing it as if it were Tom Stoppard. They were doing 'theatre.' But drama is not 'theatre.'" You could almost hear his disgust.
It seems that Bond has a very specialised definition of "theatre," one that comprehends the entire art form as, heaven forbid, a kind of meta-Tom Stoppard play. But his comment gave me pause, because this distinction between "drama" and "theatre" is one I've heard many times before, and almost always from writers.
Some distinctions are useless and some useful; in terms of art and criticism, precision counts. News reports that point to "a dramatic rescue attempt" or "a tragic death" or a politician striking a "theatrical pose" use the words "drama" and "tragedy" and "theatre" in a rather looser manner than theatre critics or practitioners might.
Even then, there's more to it than meets the eye, as Alison's post and its associated comments indicate. My own view is there as well.
Posted at 12.58 pm in /Guardian
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Wednesday, 09 January 2008
A belated welcome to Christine Evans, who's been writing writing.performance since last February and just popped up on my radar, thanks to Ben Ellis. Ms. Evans is an Australia-born playwright who has spent the last seven years in the US, which gives her a unique perspective onto the health of theatre, performance and criticism in both cultures.
She's just back in Australia following a reading of her new play, Trojan Barbie, at the Cutting Ball Theater in San Francisco and a production of her play Weightless at Providence, RI's Perishable Theatre. Back in November, going over the reviews for Weightless, she wrote:
I sometimes wonder how Beckett or Ionesco or for that matter, Sarah Kane or Howard Barker would have fared trying to start their careers in the American theatre. From the responses of many reviewers to anything but what Mac Wellman calls the "American well-made" [play] (referencing the deathly Scribe of 19th century France famous for wooden and formulaic "well-made" plays -- hugely successful by the way) you wouldn’t think that there was already a long tradition of non-realist theatre in [the US].
Nor (from the way people talk about "political theatre") that there is a robust tradition of politically engaged theatre that takes a non-journalistic, poetic approach. This is notably the case in the Latino theatre where Maria Irene Fornes' influence is enormous -- I’m thinking of Cherrie Moraga, José Rivera, and many, many others including newer writers like Quiara Alegría Hudes and Marisela Treviño Orta. It's also true of many African-American writers such as the astonishing Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks and newer writers like Marcus Gardley and Christina Anderson -- and also since at least the 70s with Anglo-American writers like David Rabe. There just isn't room to count the ways.
Posted at 9.06 am in /Miscellaneous
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