Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Someone Has To Clean Up After Broadway's Creative Destruction
theconcourse.deadspin.com: If you are familiar with the still boyishly handsome but extremely serious actor Ethan Hawke, you know that when stage directions state that a character he’s portraying onstage wields a golf club and then is “seen smashing typewriter methodically,” Hawke will absolutely be smashing the shit out of a typewriter, on stage. And so it was that, in the Broadway production of True West, Sam Shepard’s 1980 seething, sweaty Pulitzer Prize-winning paean to brotherly enmity, Hawke pounds an old manual typewriter to Hades. The shrill, clanging sound of the carnage ricochets off the highest reaches of the balcony, eight times per week.
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3 comments:
In real life, things are broken. Things are burnt, thrown, mangled, stained, and just downright ruined. I think there's a fear in theater of avoiding those things on stage, because in most cases, these moments must be done again and again. Nothing can go so far that it cannot be used again. However, this act of things being destroyed on stage is not only effective for the audience, but for performers, letting themselves go as that character is effective in establishing total realism within a piece. Watching a typewriter get absolutely mauled by a golf club has to be done in such a way that looks completely real. I like the way that the author explained some of these moments, "To watch them do it, is to experience something real, something that cannot be and is not being faked." However, I also need to commend the crew for being able to reset the show so quickly and efficiently. It's one thing to read a script and see these moments, and just say, 'oh this can't happen.' The magic of theater really happens with them. Their reset time is commendable for just being able to roll with the punches, so that all that destruction can happen again.
I got to work on a production of True West in my senior year of undergrad and was curious to see how similar the experiences were in relation to the destructive nature of the show (though I was the lighting designer so I was slightly removed from the whole destructive process which was nice for me to look at it as an observer). More than I expected was done the same way even down to the beers being spiked seltzers. I was mostly curious about the type writer which our production ended up destroying a few of. We also has issues with it being a very intimate space and the type-writer itself being a hazard to audience members while it was being destroyed, it ended up being a really good show. I personally have a strong affinity for Sam Shepard and all his work I find really fascinating so it was cool to see that so much of the production I worked on was equivalent to how Broadway choose to do their production. It’s certainly a show where the actors really do go for it.
This article makes some good points about not just this show and their commendable resets, but about theatre as a whole and how it is differentiated from film. Sitting in a seat and watching people do things live in front of you is an exhilarating experience, partially because of what they mention here. Almost everything in movies now, even live-action movies, has enough CGI in place that you know as an audience member that nothing you’re watching is ‘real’. The acrobatic fights are using stunt doubles and flying wires, the destruction and explosions are computer generated, everything is edited in some way due to the nature of movies. This isn’t a bad thing- it allows us to tell impossible stories that couldn’t happen in real life, and build huge worlds for the audience to explore through watching the movies. But in theatre, everything you see is ‘real’ and happening right there in front of you, with the possibility of things going wrong. The comment the author made about the toast being cooked and the smell and crunch was a really cool point- we talk a lot about immersion and how to create it, but little moments like this are what really makes it.
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