AMERICAN THEATRE: I want to start with love. I suspect there is at least one love story in your life that blazed the trail to this very magazine page. Maybe you loved the way lights felt on your face, the blindness as you looked out at the invisible audience bank. Maybe you love backstage anonymity, the chaotic machinery and runaround that keeps a performance seamless. Maybe you were seven and loved the first play you saw. Back then you probably loved it more than you understood it. Remember how glorious that was—immersion in an experience you didn’t necessarily understand? Why do grownups cling to “getting it”? What a small, unadventurous parameter for experiencing art.
3 comments:
Wow. This article is beautifully written and artfully addresses some of the industry's, and the world's greatest problems. I want to take a moment to praise the author. She feels such a great weight for everything she puts onstage; she thinks about then moral implications for each line, word even; she outshines us all when it comes to reflecting on how each piece affects the world. She is able to predict what not only what reviewers will say but how their race and perspective will change that. She takes responsibility for her actions, which is most of what I ask these days in these comments. People are constantly trying to avoid blame, weather it be blaming a deaf actor for your own mistakes or publicly denying a sexual harassment complaint. I appreciate how eloquently she puts to words many concerns of working on a show focusing on a different group of people from her audience. How can the show relate to the audience and still give an actual realistic picture? How can you work to change your audience to reflect your show? How can we navigate the complicated topic of cultural tourism? As a new bookmark on my computer, this artful reflection on some of her years as a theatre playwright addressed issues in a skillful and tactful way.
This is a very beautifully written article, and I think I feel what Hudes is feeling on a much smaller scale. We all go into theatre because we love it. I grew up loving theatre but never having the opportunity to work in theatre until I got to college. I remember when I came home for Christmas my freshman year, I went to see a show with my mom, and the way I saw the show was so hugely different from the way I had seen every other Broadway show for the previous nineteen years of my life. Once your eyes are opened to theatre, it is hard to not be overly critical or overly analytical, and it has become very hard for me to just sit back and relax and enjoy a show. Additionally, it's amazing how your perception of a show can be changed so much by working on it. Two summers ago, I stage managed a production of Pippin that was an absolutely nightmare. Before that experience, Pippin was one of my all time favorite shows, and now I can't hear the opening chords of Magic To Do without having a visceral reaction.
This speech took a very honest and heartfelt view of theatre and the negative side of working in the field. Theatre in my mind sometimes feels like an addiction, you get these moments of pure joy and adrenaline but then you can see how it wears on you and your health the more you dedicate yourself to it, so I think it can be really dangerous. I appreciate the strength and honesty this women would’ve had to go through to take a clean break from theatre, I don’t know if I would be able to do that. This article was also wonderful in that it brings up the negatives of the field we work in. I think people have this idealized sense of creating art being new and expressive, but we still want to be able to sustain ourselves and this commonly means feeding into some hierarchies that are repressive and against the “ideal” theatre we believe in. It’s about balance in more ways than one and balancing life, morals, health, and values in a theatrical career isn’t easy.
Post a Comment