KQED Arts: Representation matters. As artists and patrons of the arts, we’re currently seeing great demand for the creation and consumption of work that addresses a plurality of voices and the many ways of being, of living. But when you attend a mainstream theater to see a production that is itself of the mainstream—even as it addresses critical issues and multiple points of view—can it really be said that you’re getting the most representative version of those stories?
4 comments:
“When Did Your Hands Become Weapons” seems like an incredible piece of artistry that I wish I could go an experience myself. This sort of raw passion driven theatre really excites me and the subject matter and diversity that is incorporated into the show can only make it more fascinating to watch. I also think the style of disjointed stories bound together by these women preforming together in this moment really serves to inform the artistry of the piece itself. Even the costuming served to communicate the overwhelming themes of the show, embracing the bright colors and individuality of these women preforming. This show appears to be a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows for both the performers and the audience members, with dark themes being uncovered and explored but an overall theme of hopefulness and making it through the darkness. I would love to see more theatre like this make it’s way into the mainstream and become more popularized, I think any audience members awareness would be increased by just attending this show.
Reading this article made me very interested in this project and made me want to see the piece that these women have created. The group represents a group of women that are not often represented but definitely should be because they have incredibly important things to say and share with their audience. This is not mainstream theater in any way; it comes from a very raw and real place of how childhood trauma and the structure of society can damage women. It does not imply, however, that these women have been beaten down beyond recovery; there is a strength you can feel, even just by reading the article. I hope I can one day see one of their performances because there are incredibly important things being discussed and they are things that are rarely talked about. Even though, as the article says, this may never become mainstream Broadway theater, it still has and should have the ability to reach a lot of people. I do not think that this kind of theater can ever become mainstream because of how specialized and powerful it is. If it is truly authentic, it would be hard to recreate something like this, simply because of how individual each experience is.
This sounds like it would be a very interesting theatrical experience. I think that a piece like this can be hard to do unless you have an audience that is willing to listen. Of course, with a smaller show like this, that has a very specific target audience, I am sure that people who would not be willing to listen would not attend. This piece allows women without a voice in the world to speak out about their experiences and force people to listen. The author says the piece embodies the healing potential of speaking up, speaking out, speaking the truth to whomever is willing to listen." I think that is the importance of this type of unconventional theatre, and I think at the end of the day it is becoming the importance of a lot of theatre in general. Theatre and art are theoretically meant to expose people to things they would not experience otherwise, or at least begin to show people new perspectives. From the sound of this article, it seems like this show does just that.
This article was very powerful to me because it strategically articulated a bias of my I have struggled to comprehend. In my goal is to make my work appeal to those around me I think I have been subconsciously “watering down the narrative to suit the domestic aesthetic.” Although I don't believe this is necessarily the worst thing, I feel as if acknowledging that bias may take it to new places. I also detected that bias at play when later in the article the author describe the show as a series of small vignettes, “a link of equivalent weight to the next.” I found myself thinking that's weird why don't they put lighter scenes in to give the audience a break from all the atrocities. In that moment I myself was wondering why the group of artists did not water down this narrative, when they shouldn’t have to. I hope to take this new awareness with me. Another important aspect in this article is the Why Theater? question. Why not curl up on the couch with your SO and a nice fresh bowl of hot buttery popcorn for the recorded version of a show? This article indirectly hit this point out of the park “there is no fourth wall separating or sanitizing the audience experience. [They] are a tangible part of the performance [their] very presence an affirmation on the importance of showing up for [other people].” Overall this article is beautifully written and encourages discussion on they key tenets of theatrical art.
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