Very thoughtful and interesting essay by playwright Walter A Davis at
Counterpunch on the Rachel Corrie controversy at the New York Theatre
Workshop - many thanks to George Hunka for the link -
http://www.counterpunch.org/davis03062006.html
In part:
The purpose of serious theatre can be stated simply-to challenge the
audience to examine everything that they don't want to face about
themselves and their world. Theatre is that public space with a
unique purpose: the public airing of secrets. Other public
institutions (Churches, Political forums, the Media) are dedicated
primarily to something else: the celebration and perpetuation of
ideology, the programming of a mass audience with the beliefs, ideas,
and feelings they need to internalize so that ideology will secure its
grand function. That function: the creation within subjects of the
conditions that make it impossible for them to understand their
historical situation. Freedom, if there is such a thing, depends on
overcoming the vast weight of ideological beliefs that have colonized
one's heart and mind.
The artist is the bad conscience of a society who calls ideology into
question by representing all the ways in which it poisons our lives.
The role of serious drama is to represent the disorders of its time
not in order to relieve or "cathart" our dilemmas but to make it
impossible for us to any longer ignore them. Rilke's "You must change
your life" is the "message" that any great drama delivers as a blow to
the psyche of its audience. To appropriate a phrase from Albee, the
purpose of serious drama is to "get the guests." And not I add
primarily by getting them to change their ideas about some current
political and social situation. Serious drama strikes much deeper.
It is an attempt to assault and astonish the heart, to get at the
deepest disorders and springs of our psychological being, in order to
affect a change in the very way we feel about ourselves-and
consequently about everything else. Going to the theatre can be a
dangerous act. One risks discovering things one doesn't want to know
about oneself in a way that makes it impossible to remain the person
one ways before a play eradicated one's defenses and shattered one's
identity.
(Excuse the gaps - I can't get up the energy to pluck them all out.) The
whole thing is worth reading.
There's petition to protest the decisionto cancel/postpone/whaever the play
is at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/nytw/ and more links on my blog
http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
All best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
|