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Wednesday, 03 December 2008
Christopher Shinn:
Is American theatre up against a wall?
In the latest issue of the Index on Censorship, Christopher Shinn writes
about theatre and self-censorship in the post-Bush age. He cites
the Rachel Corrie and Corpus Christi affairs as indicative
of a trend towards the trivialization of theatre, unlikely to end with the
election of Barack Obama, which may continue "regardless of who is in the
White House and how the recent financial crisis changes the structure of
our society." Chris writes:
Clinton's centrism laid the groundwork for the Bush presidency to move
the country radically to the right. In the Bush era, the Democratic party
maintained a vocabulary of opposition while essentially continuing its
Clintonian centrism (as its support for the Iraq war made clear, to give
just one example). Barack Obama, despite his progressive rhetoric, ran a
centrist campaign for the Democratic nomination and seems unlikely to
change the parameters of the debate or commit to major progressive policy
initiatives as president. ...
Although there are individuals currently doing innovative and
courageous work, I think that, broadly speaking, American playwrights have
fallen victim to what has happened in the culture at large: the
oppositional voice has largely disappeared and been absorbed by the
dominant ideologies of our time – free market, apolitical,
militaristic.
Sadly, it is hard to see how a country whose two major parties agree on
so much, and whose wealth has become an expectation for its citizens, is
going to transform itself into a more equitable and peaceful place, and
one more tolerant of and interested in politically oppositional art.
Global markets have changed Hollywood forever, and non-profit
theatres will continue to need the support of the ruling class to fund
their existence. Writers who wish to make a living wage from their writing
will likely continue to self-censor in order to be produced at these
theatres and to remain viable in Hollywood.
Are there any realistic grounds for hope? Could a change really come?
Will an Obama presidency or the aftermath of the financial crisis help
spur a change? In the aftermath of the Rachel Corrie affair, the
fact that so many theatre artists would only privately communicate their
support and agreement with me is both the tragedy, and the hope, of our
current predicament as American theatre artists in the newly
post-Bush era.
The complete essay is available as a .pdf here.
Formally, Chris's work is firmly within the tradition of
post-Ibsenite realistic and naturalistic dramaturgy (and Chris may be
the finest young American writer dedicated to working within that
tradition; that he was selected to adapt Hedda
Gabler for its upcoming Broadway production is evidence of that);
because he is something of a formal traditionalist, his words here have
particular force.
While I agree with many of his points, I also feel that he doesn't go
quite far enough. As American dramatists have internalized the Hollywood
aesthetic and ethos, the imaginations of these dramatists have become
spiritually and voluntarily crippled: the unending call for "good"
storytelling (what preconceptions lie in that modifier "good," and where
do those preconceptions come from?), the requirement that even our darkest
plays contain some measure of "entertainment" (a weasel-word,
allowing us to define it in whatever way we choose), the emphasis on
audience as collective, the facile psychologizing of characters rather
than an incisive exploration of their spiritual and physical conditions,
the purpose of theatre as an arena for ameliorist progressive politics and
"hope" or "courage," whatever these are (and however little these abstract
and falsely-comforting qualities have to do with the human truths
that the theatre can uniquely exhibit). These are all questions that
speak to the social and cultural ends of theatre, and represent a ruling,
oppressive ideology both above and beneath their surface.
I'm sure that Chris is right in that "there are individuals currently
doing innovative and courageous work," but I'm not sure there are as many
of them as we might like to believe. Many of our playwrights don't choose
to abjure the current production system, but to join it: to "change the
system from within," though being within the system in the first place is
the surest way to become co-opted by its cultural and ideological
preconceptions, almost without knowing it. They want access to the big
stages that the institutional theatres represent, and having determined
that their own individuality is primarily the product of collectivist
social forces, cheerfully and blithely join that collective ideology and
collective mind. It certainly means that they no longer then feel the need
to explore those darker recesses of the self, since they've rendered those
recesses philosophically (and theatrically) irrelevant. But this
irrationality breaks free: in Mumbai, in Iraq, in Jonestown, even at a Wal-Mart in Long Island. Ameliorist progressive
politics, with a nod to collectivism, is a blinder to this irrationality.
It's the excavation of this irrationality that is missing from our stages,
but so long as the current ideology remains at the center of our theatres'
cultural mission, it will continue to go begging.
Chris's full essay, again, is available online here.
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