Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
A new journal for theatre minima and organum posts exclusively can now be found here.
Friday, 25 April 2008
Embracing Kink
(See entry for 27 April)
In this week's Night Planner, there's a little bit, I hope, to make you think. I know I did; and to think again, and then once more. Though this thinking centered more on issues surrounding theatre and drama instead of theatre and drama itself, these ancillary issues also approach the supposed responsibility, utility and interpretation of art, and so always worth a moment or two of consideration. And given that there are panel discussions galore coming up, perhaps you'll stop in and offer your own perspective.
In a ruminative mood, then, a highly selective, prejudiced look at a few upcoming productions, along with other items of interest:
Saturday, 26 April: Post-
Armed with pre-
show discussions and supplementary dramaturgical materials, The Program roams from theater to theater, providing context to audiences at selected experimental productions. In the fine arts, museum- goers feel welcome at even the most abstract, difficult shows: docents, catalogues and wall text reach out to new viewers. But in the theater, we get tossed in front of the avant garde with little preparation.
Speaking as one who finds wall text at abstract, difficult museum shows an often irrelevant and sometimes condescending experience and who profoundly doubts that this kind of contextualising is anything but the imposition of a curatorial and critical ideology upon the work of art, not to mention its audience, I'm skeptical too. (And, for what it's worth, I've seen two of Jay Scheib's shows without any instruction – I'm sorry, "preparation" – as to his aesthetic or his process and I think I made it through both just fine.) But preparation you'll get tonight, as Time Out New York's theatre editor sits down with Shaw and Jones to talk with Untitled Mars director Scheib. And there's "maybe a glass of wine" involved, Cote says. The Program begins at 7.00pm; the Play begins at 8.00pm. Information about Untitled Mars here; as far as The Program goes, it's free. More information through PS122's general info number, 212.477.5288.
Sunday, 27 April: Today at 4.00pm (and running through 4 May as
part of PS122's Best of the Boroughs festival), Japanese playwright
Yukiko Motoya's Vengeance Can Wait watches a couple as they
"come to understand the 'kinks' in their relationship – and embrace
them." Motoya's play is influenced by anime and manga; the translation
by Kyoko Yoshida and Andy Bragen is directed here by Jose Zayas. Tickets
and schedule information here; it's a co-
Monday, 28 April: The April 2008 issue of the online journal Hyperion contains Mark Daniel Cohen's new translations of poems from Rilke's Neue Gedichte and Der Neuen Gedichte anderer Teil, a conversation with Richard Foreman by Fulya Peker (as well as the text of her play Requiem Aeternam Deo: A Play for Everyone and Nobody), and an interview with theatre director Wlodzimierz Staniewski. A good night's reading here.
Tuesday, 29 April: At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Andrei
Belgrader's production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame runs through 18 May, with an
all-
Wednesday, 30 April: Beginning today and running through
Saturday, 3 May, the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center plays host to the PEN World
Voices Festival. The seven associated events and panel discussions
about theatre are all free and open to the public. The
afore-
The interesting note here, of course, is that the titles of these
panels assume that there is such a thing as an artist's or a writer's
responsibility to anything except his or her own vision and work –
that somehow this vision isn't enough, and that without some kind of
explicit instrumental political or cultural intent the work is somehow
lacking. It's the artist's responsibility to extend the reaches of his or
her own imagination, to spring beyond them – to be culturally and
politically irresponsible in denying any kind of ameliorative
political or ideological certainties. This work can fail or succeed just
as easily as work that claims to be beholden to one kind of cultural
functionalism or another. And the risk of solipsism – whether a work
is hermetic, arrogant in its self-
An art of theatre disclaims any responsibility for culture or politics even as it examines most intently cultural and political concerns – its interests are elsewhere, its vision darker, perhaps – but a panel discussion examining that kind of theatre doesn't appear to be on the horizon this week.
Posted at 8.33 am in /Openings
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