Superfluities Redux
A Theatre Surrounds a City:
Vienna's Burgtheater
Superfluities Redux |
A Theatre Surrounds a City: |
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Tuesday, 13 April 2010 "Change the world, it needs it"
UPDATE: David Mamet's response to
issue-
As much as I admire some of his work (Edmond, Oleanna, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Cryptogram and his film adaptation of Rattigan's The Winslow Boy), I had almost given up on Mamet, I admit, and perhaps this is the case of a stopped clock being right twice a day. Nonetheless, the full excerpt is here. In today's Guardian piece "Can political theatre change the world?", Dan Rebellato discusses the avalanche of explicitly political plays opening in the United Kingdom as the election season gets under way. Rebellato has written one himself, he says (And So Say All of Us, for Radio 3), and considers the efficacy of political theatre in changing a political culture:
I wonder if the question that the title of the essay raises isn't, in fact, the wrong question — if, moreover, the question itself doesn't stack the deck in a way. All theatre is political in the sense that it is created, is produced and presented, and operates within a culture's existing economic, cultural and moral ideology: the beauty, pleasure, stories and metaphor that Rebellato cites all have their political dimensions (who determines beauty? is something a social or aesthetic "good" just because it is pleasurable? and certainly stories and metaphor, and those who create and distribute them, have political intent). And one could dissect the politics behind yesterday's Pulitzer Prize drama award for weeks, as I'm sure the blogosphere will. But that's an implicit politics; what of agit- But there is "the world," and there is "a world." If a theatrical experience has any effect, it is upon the perspective, the world, of the individual audience member. Calls to mass political activity aside, real change first occurs in the consciousness of the individual: a play which speculates on different experiential and cultural possibilities for the lone spectator, a play which speaks to that spectator, may lead to a new view of the world and one's place in it — and suggest, finally, a different way of acting in and reacting to that world, a manner which might be reflected not only at the ballot box but also in the close intimate relationships he or she continues to maintain in that culture. One might suggest that this is personal, not political; but politics and cultural expectation play a role in our interpersonal relationships as well, the way we treat others, the recognition of others' suffering and pleasures — the most intimate details of our private lives. Complex questions all, with no simple answers (and simple answers are what radical, progressive, conservative and reactionary politicians and propagandists love best). Theatre may not change "the world." But it may change ourselves: each of our worlds, one at a time. More about political theatre here. Posted in /Guardian |
