Friday’s marvelous You’ve Cott Mail tipped me off to a very provocative conversation about
experimentation in theater that’s going on simultaneously on two websites. The debate could easily apply to all of the arts disciplines.
It all began last Monday when the Lark Play Development Center* blog invited playwright Theresa Rebeck to write a post called “Can Craft and Creativity Live on the Same Stage?” The headline doesn’t really do her commentary justice, however.
Here is what David Cote, writing on Time Out New York’s Upstaged blog, called “the money quote” from Rebeck’s essay:
This is my worry, honestly: In the current environment, when young writers are being encouraged to stay away from anything “conventional” are we perhaps falling in love with a kind of playwriting that frankly just doesn’t work? Are we judging too harshly plays that do work? And how does the audience fit into this discussion? Does it?
To which I would add two questions Rebeck asks a little later in the essay
Do we think that theater is art only if people don’t understand it?
Can art be serious and popular at the same time?
Cote then revved up the intensity:
I would rephrase this as: Playwrights who don’t learn the fundamentals of story and structure default to experimentation. Or: Those who can’t do, experiment.
Thoughtful and remarkably civilized discussion is taking place on both websites — take a look.
Cote, smartly, also took the conversation into the visual arts realm, remarking:
It’s like you’re an art student and you can’t get the hang of figurative or still-life. Plus it bores you. So after a short time of trying, you give up, start splashing your bodily fluids on gallery walls and–wow–attract hefty commissions. You have neatly sidestepped those irksome craft/content requirements and gone straight to jaded critics and gallerists who are desperate for anything new.
Again, remarkably controlled responses from commenters, including this from someone named “99”:
I wanted to weigh in on one point about your artist analogy: so you’re an artist who isn’t good at still lifes or representational painting, so you try abstraction, performance art, whatever. You not only get commissions and great press, but you get teaching positions. So now you’re teaching young artists, working with the future generation and telling them, “Don’t worry about still lifes. You don’t need that.” And when a student comes along who excels at still lifes, they’re discouraged. I think that’s the greater concern.
99 is exactly right. There’s room in all the arts worlds for all kinds of art, yet more conventional art is usually snickered at as derivative, even when it isn’t.
I applaud Rebeck for taking what is usually an unpopular stance, and credit both the Lark and Cote for trying to keep the conversation going.
Photo Credits: Lark Play Development Center
* A consulting client of mine supports the Lark.