Earlier this year I wrapped up my Metcalf Internship studying Artistic Direction from the incredible team at The Theatre Centre. One of the many many things that drew my focus throughout the internship was a series of essays from Metcalf fellow, David Maggs. His most recent essay, Making Things Better Anyway, had me shouting “yes, YES” back at my screen as I read.
Are we ready to put audiences, rather than artists, at the centre of our practices, processes, and curation? And, if so, what does that mean? I resoundingly agree with David that we are overdue for a cosmic shift in how we make and develop art and performance. But I want to be extra careful about (re)defining the terms as we go. Centering the audience does not have to mean diluting nuanced expression with populist entertainment. Though I don’t think David would suggest such a thing, it would be too easy to misinterpret the diction of such a statement. Especially as our “post”-pandemic ecology makes audience development a humongous practical focus of producing. But what if plain entertainment were used as a vessel for social good? Look, I don’t hate joy. But David’s essay talks about the gap between what (political) art is doing and what it could be doing. Our artist-involvement in the climate crisis (or any crisis) tends to be about messaging, trying to fill a knowledge gap that doesn’t really exist, rather than about action. Every time we try to raise awareness we are forgetting that cultural events are activities and that it is action, itself, that is needed. But we seem unable to bridge the culture-making gap, the gap of (in)activity that we are falling into, without reconsidering how we make art, not merely why we make it. I grew up in a radically Catholic household. When conservatively stressed by the better good of the secular world, in that house, in that childhood, we prayed. We also prayed for people who needed help. This is a phenomenon called "spiritual bypassing." Rather than pursuing functional action, we meditated in community with focused and repetitive thoughts. I need to re-read Ranciere’s Emancipated Spectator. In Canada, we tend to train and reward actors as artists of emotion, playwrights as artists of dramatic action, and directors as artists of image. All of these tendencies, no matter how brilliantly holstered, continue to situate the audience as passive NPCs. Their participation is only circumstantial and hardly even necessary but for the benefit of the artist. Yuck. As long as our process of theatremaking relies on the creative skillsets listed above, used to highlight but not act upon the complex struggles of our present time, we are asking our audience to be subjugated to us. We are presuming to be better than our audiences. Every mettled theatre artist knows we are never—ever—better than our audiences. And don’t get me wrong, I know that we want nothing more than to love and honour audiences. We’re in agreement about that. But, unless love is an open, vulnerable, two-way street, it ain’t a healthy relationship, baby! I’ve pontificated on it before. Despite my criticisms, we absolutely have been recognizing symptoms of this and been desperately tripping over ourselves to innovate the form. Theatre has been trying to lead the just culture wars of identity politics and pointedly benefitting any use of digital and emerging technologies. But all that has merely adjusted the trappings of making art, not the essence of it. Spiritual bypassing is not merely short of its goals because of its inactive uselessness, but also problematic to a community because it encourages silo'd thinking and causes the nuanced complexity of understanding multiple approaches to a "problem" to become much more difficult for someone to see. When we literally repeat ourselves to ourselves, when we voice litanies to pursue good, we train our brain to focus and not to question or explore. I'm worried that, despite the very best of intentions, theatre is also becoming too narrow. Not only too narrow in its pursuit to necessarily uplift good things, but absolutely failing to explore how best to uplift those things. And how doing that today is different than it was yesterday or will be tomorrow. I may have been failing to finish some creative projects and certainly failing to impress people at pitch-meetings because I am trying to fight against the narrow expertise of my training and not see theatre as an artform of emotions or dramatic action or beautiful images, but trying to see theatre as an artform that occurs within the experience of the audience. It isn’t even on stage. The stage is just a tool. The play occurs literally inside the audience’s psyches, bodies, communities, etcetera. Consider Tim Crouch whose work has asked audience volunteers to (help) tell the story. Consider Darren O’Donnel who art-ified social interaction. Add Brecht to the mix, who asked us to put contemporary political metaphor before emotion. What if these were all taken together and, together, taken one step further? I think I’m writing this blog after David’s essay from a desire to move out of theory and into praxis, out of spiritual bypassing and into our muscles. And, hell, I’m going to fail at my own demands (but if it weren’t a process rather than a destination, it wouldn’t be so worth pursuing). If you’re in Toronto, maybe consider going to The Theatre Centre tonight to see work.text. I’m unable to make it to the show so you’ll have to tell me about it. The piece uses playful, voluntary audience action to build and enact a unique performance that becomes critical of the capitalist vice of a workday. I love poetry and emotions and action and images as much as anyone (I even put Karl Paulnack's beautiful argument for it right in the middle of my linktree) but work.text seems to me the much more interesting and affecting future of relevant theatre-making. I had time to write this because I’m sick. So I might not make it to much of the MTSpace's Impact Festival here in Kitchener right now either. But hopefully I’ll see you there before the end of it and you can tell me how wrong I am. Ha! A final articulation. We’ll never develop how unless we can articulate why. If you want to make art for your own benefit—fine, please do! If you want to make art for the benefit of others—don’t tell them about the climate crisis (or any crisis), ratify their expertise on the climate crisis and provide opportunity for activity and metaphor to become movement and action. And, if you can, include plenty of joy. That's it. If that makes you nervous, I ask, do you trust your audiences? If you don't, should they trust you? Maybe you've got half the equation down. But, like I said, love is best as a two way street. And if the pundits are otherwise critical, invoke the scientific method. Okay, that’s my soap-box for the day. Memento mori, my loves!
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