Original Practices Part 2 - 8/20/05

Well, the heat index on the Weather Channel at the Shenandoah Airport reads 104 degrees. Now, I've experienced humid weather before, but I don't think anything like this. The most amazing thing about it is that, most of the time, I can't see the tops of the mountains either to the east or the west. The humidity just hangs in the air, and even when it's 100% humidity it doesn't rain!! And on top of all that, it seems that in this part of the Valley there is almost never a breeze. The air just blows across the tops of the Appalachians, stays above the valley, and moves on over the Blue Ridge. Consequently the humidity never moves out. It's hot. But at least I got in 9 holes on the local par-3 course with Andrew and Chris this morning before the heat really hit.

So it seemed a good time to turn on the air conditioning and sit in my lodgings and write a bit. Daniel's much improved; should be back to rehearsal on Sunday, if only to mark through stuff. I took Olivia to the foot doctor and she's coming along, although she still has to work in the boot. Eric Shoen from the resident troupe has his cast off and is building up the strength in his legs. And last night I went to one of the local coffee shops and listened to Paul Fidalgo play some of his music (he was the music director for Planet). He's good, very good. I compare him to Steve Page from Barenaked Ladies, if you want to get some idea of his style. Check out his Web Site and get his free sample download. His album is great as well - I'd recommend buying it.

So why Part Two of Original Practices? Because my good friend Carolyn Castiglia, who's a prolific blogger, pointed me to a blog entry from a friend of hers. He's talking about stand-up comedy, putting forth the idea that stand-up has a more immediate form of audience involvement than modern theatre. The entry reads as such:

To me (standup) can be more immediate than the theatre. The Theatre has become elitist. We can’t pretend to say that “everyday people” go to it. We can say that those are the roots of theatre. For the people. To tell stories of humanity and such. It also seems to be the credo for every major theatre movement that followed. “We’re doing this for the people, man! Taking it back to the streets!" Still, a comedy room is where you will find people from all walks of life, or at least more divergent walks of life than the theatre nowadays. The direct address quality and informality of a stand up room gives it the potential to become more penetrating, more truthful, more immediate then the Theatre. Even though it is theatre itself. It’s the closest thing we have to the origins of Greek theatre.

That’s what it ws at first. Solo performers telling stories. Active audiences. The passive audience is a new ideal. Its only I’d say about a century old when (as a wiseman once told me), “some motherfucker turned off the lights” that the audience became passive. Waiting for the performers to do everything for them. I believe there should be more of a give and take. I believe that exists now more so in Comedy than any other form.

The whole post is located here. There's also a very interesting New York Times article about performers transforming their blogs to one-person shows. It's located here.

I'll come clean right away and say that I don't like about 90% of the stand-up comedy I hear, but that's just a matter of personal taste, and not really the point. Baronvaughn's point is correct; theatre in many ways has lost its immediacy. While the Moscow Art Theatre may have ushered in a radical way of doing theatre for its time (with help from technological developments such as electric lighting), it could not have foreseen the rise and ultimate supremacy of film and television in terms of the audience's preferences. Theatre never had that kind of competition prior to the turn of the last century. I don't think that Stanislavski's intent was to create a passive audience, but that has nevertheless been the outcome.

It seems that, on the whole, anyone who works with the ASC comes to feel that direct audience contact is the best way to do any theatre, let alone Shakespeare. I found that, when you directly contact the audience, every instance and situation in the play is heightened, and the stakes for all the characters become higher. In Much Ado, for example, the characters on stage for the famous "gulling scene" of Benedick bring the audience in as co-conspirators in the trick as we talk to them and take them in with us. Benedick, of course, hides directly in the audience, trying to pretend he is one of them. As one of the members of the Watch, I use audience members sitting on the stage stools as my hiding place while Borachio makes his confession. As Leonato, I plead my case in 4.1 with the audience as well as the characters, as if they were the wedding congregation, and I can feel their emotional involvement. In many respects we don't "perform" Much Ado for them; we experience it with them. You get reactions and responses from the audience which are fresh, spontaneous and truthful to the Nth degree, responses you can't get from your fellow actors onstage while performing the rehearsed play. It's very exciting to work this way as an actor, and I've heard more experienced company members say they can no longer imagine working any other way.

Modern theatre needs to regain that connection with the audience again. We need to trust the 2,400 years of theatrical history which had audience and performers working together to create the performance and the experience. We need to stop trying to be bad imitations of the movies and capitalize on the advantage we have in having a live audience before us. I've always said I don't particularly like the movies because I can't really relate to flickers of light on the screen; I want the live performers there. But last year's experience in SDP and now this season with ASC has made me see the light (pun intended). Stand-up comedy and one-person shows have this element, and it seems to work for them. Perhaps legitimate theatre ought to steal that page of the playbook and work with it. Risky? You bet. The audience has to re-learn and re-capture its own historical place. But if you're not in this business for the risk, then what the hell are you doing it for? -TWL