Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
A new journal for theatre minima and organum posts exclusively can now be found here.
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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-
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-
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-
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-
Chris's full essay, again, is available online here.
Posted at 9.09 am in /Dramatists/Chris_Shinn
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Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Better late than never: Australian dramatist Daniel Keene gets the
full-
Posted at 12.24 pm in /Dramatists
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Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Starting today at 10.00am and continuing every Wednesday through the
opening on 5 February 2009, rehearsals for Richard Foreman and John Zorn's
Astronome: A
Night at the Opera, the spring production at the
Ontological-
Posted at 9.20 am in /Dramatists/Richard_Foreman
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Home > Drama
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
18 November 2008 marked the 30th anniversary of the mass death at Jonestown, what the anonymous Wikipedia author calls
"the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-
The event was a profoundly traumatic catastrophe for the American
national culture. Jones and his followers, who had been attempting to
establish their own version of an ideal world, their own
city-
A complete examination into the events and meanings of the Jonestown cult would entail leafing through many pages of letters and documents, listening to taped conversations, and researching the histories of each of that cult's followers. In addition, the theories of any of scores of social theorists, philosophers, psychologists, scholars of religion, et cetera would no doubt be pertinent to a complete understanding of the anomaly of Jonestown and the culture that spawned it. The compilers of this site do not have the resources nor the theoretical knowledge to profess to such a venture. In fact, it would be impossible for us to claim a complete understanding of such a complex event, even with an encyclopedic knowledge of all world thought. Our goal in the compilation of this site is to encourage you to consider the history of Jonestown in light of the mainstream culture around it. If Jim Jones's concept of revolutionary suicide is to be affective on any level it is necessary that we conceive of this (apparent) anomaly as an indicator of problems within society as a whole. Consider the implications of Jonestown as regarding its broader historical era as well as our contemporary world. Remember that those who found refuge in the Temple were seeking, as we all do, a place within a world they felt ill-
equipt to understand. These Temple members were not others; they were us.
And it is, too, a subject worthy of a dramatist working in the
tradition of Shakespeare. Not merely in its external dressing, of course
– certainly it's a broad-
I submit that audiences are not shocked by the fact of Cordelia's death but by its situation and that audiences grieve not for Cordelia's physical vulnerability, or for the physical vulnerability of humankind, but for their own – our own – mental vulnerability, a vulnerability made absolutely inescapable when the play pushes inexorably beyond its own identity, rolling across and crushing the very framework that enables its audience to endure the otherwise terrifying explosion of all manner of ordinarily indispensable mental contrivances for isolating, limiting and comprehending. When Lear enters howling in the last moments of the play, Shakespeare has already presented an action that is serious, of undoubted magnitude, and complete; he thereupon continues that action beyond the limits of the one category that no audience can expect to see challenged: Shakespeare presents the culminating events of his story after his play is over.
In short, the Shakespearean tragedy always extends beyond the events of the play and into the individual consciousness, the individual psyche, and embodies in its language and performers not merely contemplation but the experience of that contemplation as well: tragedy is beyond commerce, and beyond the four walls of the theatre.
On occasion, it may be doubted that the American experience lacks those
historical and philosophical extensions into the past and future that make
possible a Shakespearean drama: our culture insists that we are tethered
to the present and does not encourage us to explore beyond it. Nonetheless
(and so long as some bloggers are desultorily discussing the content – or, rather, the lack of discussion of
content – of the plays presented on American stages), our history
provides the canvas for the dramatic imagination, and events like
Jonestown can be found in it – events that question ideology and the
enlightenment conception of ameliorist progression of human beings. In the
composition of a play about Jonestown, however, there can be no
expectation of understanding, of significance, of meaning: the very
existence of the irrational denies it. Many aspects of Jonestown –
its location in cultural history, the historic and personal forces that
whipped Jones and his community into being, be they calls to social
justice, self-
The most comprehensive book on Jones and the Peoples Temple is the recently reissued Raven, by Tim Reiterman. Mary McCormick Maaga's Hearing the Voices of Jonestown considers the women who helped Jones lead the movement, many of them educated political activists committed to social justice. Finally, there's Shiva Naipaul's 1980 book on the event, Journey to Nowhere, which is a dour but powerful meditation based on original reportage in the aftermath of Jonestown. It is unfortunately out of print.
Posted at 9.05 am in /Drama
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Tuesday, 28 October 2008
David Ian Rabey and Karoline Gritzner of Aberystwyth University in Wales have asked me to pass along the following call for papers:
HOWARD BARKER'S ART OF THEATRE
An international conference, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK, 10-12 July 2009
Deadline for Proposals: 5 January 2009
Howard
Barker is widely acknowledged as a major British dramatist (who has
now had staged, broadcast or published over a hundred plays), director,
theorist, scenographer and visual artist. In recent years, his reputation
has extended to a position of international eminence. Our principal
objective is to bring together as many Barker scholars and practitioners
as possible from their different countries, to explore and analyse the
full range of his remarkable body of work. It has become apparent that
there is a wide interest in Barker's work, principally in France and
America where his productions of his work are burgeoning (a four-
Topics to be discussed in relation to Barker's work might include:
Philosophy and ethical re-
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Howard Barker
Prof. Elisabeth Angel-Perez (University of Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, editor of Howard Barker et le theatre de la Catastrophe and translator of Barker's essays): "Reinventing Grand Narratives: Barker’s Challenge to Postmodernism"
Dr. Charles Lamb (University of Winchester, author of The Theatre of Howard Barker): Barker's pictorial landscapes
Further contributions proposed by:
Prof. Heiner Zimmermann (University of Heidelberg): Visual memory in Barker's drama
Ms. Melanie Jessop (Actress and Outreach Officer, The Wrestling School Theatre Company): Anxiety in acting Barker
Mr. Gerrard McArthur (Actor and Director, The Wrestling School Theatre Company): "Overcoming the Paralysis of Naturalism: Barker's Bodies Making Brains"
Prof. Michael Mangan (Exeter University): Prisons in Barker's drama and theatre
Prof. Dan Rebellato (Royal Holloway, London): Barker's Genealogy of Morals
Dr. Graham Saunders (Reading): The Wrestling School theatre company and The Arts Council archive
Dr. Christine Kiehl (University of Lyon 2): The Paris Odéon 2009 Barker Season: analysis, with interviews with directors
Mr. Jay King (Florida State University): Time in Barker's drama
Mr. George Hunka (Superfluities Redux website, New York): Beckett, Foreman and Barker
Dr. Clare Finburgh (Essex University): Barker's women characters
Dr. Chris Megson (Royal Holloway, London): "'Evidence in contempt': Evocations of Anti-History in Barker's Theatre"
Mr. Daniel Sack (Stanford): "A Landscape Without Maps: Scenography as Character in Howard Barker's The Castle"
Prof. David Ian Rabey (Aberystwyth): Barker's poetry in the 1990s and 2000s
Dr. Carl Lavery (Aberystwyth): Barker, Genet, Kantor and the politics of death
Dr. Roger Owen (Aberystwyth): Barker's address to Dionysus
Please note all speakers and topics may be subject to change.
250 word proposals for presentations (which should not exceed 20 minutes delivery time), with any relevant technical requirements, and any further enquiries, should be submitted to Dr. Karoline Gritzner (kgg@aber.ac.uk) no later than 5 January 2009.
Conference fee and registration details will be confirmed in early 2009.
Posted at 9.09 am in /Dramatists/Howard_Barker
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