Friday, November 14, 2014
Theater about Theater
HowlRound: There are some terrible playwrights on Broadway this season. The worst is probably Mrs. Penelope Sycamore in You Can’t Take It With You who began her playwriting career when a typewriter was delivered to her house by mistake; she now alternates between tapping away on her war play, her labor play, and her sex play, Sex Takes A Holiday.
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As the article explains, theater about theater is almost as old as theater itself. Its presence is something I have been aware of, although I have never given much thought as to how it might impact Broadway's success and live theatre in general. An interesting point that this author brought up is the idea that considering the decreasing interest the American public has in seeing theater, producing Broadway revivals of theater about theater "felt almost like a declaration of surrender." Characters in plays making fun of the acting profession reads to me as a little self deprecating, but harmless, although this article has opened me up to consider the bigger implications. Not only are patronizing, comical portrayals of playwrights and actors indicators of artists' fear for theater's survival today, this article suggests that these portrayals are only hurting theater more. The author suggests that the play "Dinner with Friends" may be "much fresher" were it about doctors, rather than actors.
Theater about theater is an art form about understanding and exposing the people who are striving to understand the world around them. Theater is like no other art form. It is the one place that allows an audience to take a step back and get a sense of the big picture on just about anything issue. And only them do we begin to see that everything is not always as simple as we want it to be. And it's only human to be curious about how the magic behind the curtain comes to life. The industry of theater has many sides and sometimes the drama behind the set can be just as if not more interesting that what is going on in front of the set, like the story depicted in Noises Off. It's sad to see that so many play written today about theater are coming to not be well received by their audiences. But such is life not every story is happy or exciting story or a story you can take something away from.
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