Ultimate Indulgences

Mid-conversation, the lights go down and Simone Weil appears, or at least her hastily-garbed doppelganger, a pacing scourge.  Her challenges carom off the walls with a lacerating ferocity.

She strides off, boots echoing into the silence …

DL: Thank you guys for coming.

Applause …

… and we’re done.  Salut.

Conspirators in Chains

We see Simone Weil’s vision of torture, the prisoners awaiting torture and certain death in the street …

DL: it’s a fairly classical torture scene -

CW: I’ll say!

[sympathy for knees is raised as a locus of both suffering and politics]

DL: Blasted is the other big hit of last year, along with Black Watch.

W11: how is political theatre different from political theatre?

DL: more importantly, how is the situation of being in a theatre political, period?

[précis of Blasted by Señor Krupp ...]

DL: Blasted considers the audience as a mass, as a body – and it considers that classic off-stage dramaturgy isn’t enough.  it’s a different – more adversarial – take on the audience

SS: I liked it, but it didn’t fuck me up.  I spent more time thinking about what a cool thing it was to be pulled off onstage than on the larger political impact

K: (to DL) why do you get frustrated with that response?  why isn’t that a reasonable response to violence?

DL: I have huge questions about – on one hand I think it’s sophomoric, but on the other, Kane had real political aims

W3: I had read it before, and it did fuck me up royally – both seeing it and having it in my head afterwards.  maybe it’s just being sensitized by Tarantino movies, but seeing it on stage does make it much more vivid – it seems like we’re going through it as a culture

MD: I thought it was a tremendous production.  and though it did make the audience aware of their bodies, I don’t think it’s the only play to do that – other plays don’t reduce people to eyeballs.  there’s something that happens in a live space that’s fundamentally different from watching a film

DL: okay, but if you’re shattered by that play, is that what we want?

MD: who’s that “we?”  sarah kane?

DL: but in a play like Blasted there’s a difference stance toward the audience.  is there a difference with regard to that experience than another, less aggressive, less adversarial sort of play? There are a lot of different approaches – a Brechtian one where you want people to think critically, there’s a Blasted one where you leave people shell-shocked – many others – it says a lot about how you think of those people.

W12: now that there’s so much media available to people,  it’s not enough to just put it out there.  there’s a duty to make sure that people see it beyond a limited audience.  people should do what they expect their audience to do.  also, who knows what an audience has been through?

DL: but that’s the Weil thing again – who of us are going to fight in Spain?

W1: what are your responsibilities in showing graphic events on stage, such as rape – especially when there’s a chance there are rape victims in the audience?  but also, I don’t know if you can put the burden of audience interest on the artists – that doesn’t seem entirely fair.

DL: do you have to be an activist or do you have to perform and write?

W7: how often do shows paper the house?  it’s very hard to get anyone to come to the theatre, especially political theatre.

M7: it might be that the job of communicating is less of an issue now – it’s not enough to isolate a cause, because the laundry list of causes seems virtually endless …

PL: but what does theatre do well?  for some of these questions theatre isn’t the right vehicle.  it’s fantastic for conveying an in-body experience, but not for everything else -

Caesura

And David wants to turn the conversation to Blasted … but CW has slipped off to the bathroom, so we’ll wait …

[sidebar on commodity culture/corporate culture ...

corporate sponsorship, profit, non-profit, audience size, cultural cachet, art vs. theatre

it’s actually Totally Interesting, but it takes off at the exact time when I choose to refresh the page and drink my beer … and I fall horribly behind, and it seems impossible to catch up … so there.

Court Theatre

DL: this raises the specter of Mike taking his HTFA monologue to TCG – taking it to the council of elders … can you tell us how it went?

MD:the experience of performing it in the room – for these artistic directors and executives – was actually really hopeful.  the reaction was really warm – and it seemed like these people were able to respond in a way as individuals in a way that they couldn’t as institutional representatives

JH: what is it – what issue – is going to be enough to get these people charged up to do something after seeing a show?  what isn’t happening elsewhere in their lives, or on their stages?  what’s the theatrical topic that would get people moving?

CW: I feel like the HIV/AIDS crisis worked really well through theatre – that there was a wealthy class in the city who really responded

JH: Angels in America is another example.  it seems like the theatre that gets people active is often the less sophisticated, but AiA is a case where there’s a specific sophisticated audience being reached

EK: it’s local – it’s really speaking to a local constituency

DL: so we here tonight are speaking to a local community about local concerns, right?  can we go farther with James’ question?

[CW describes The Civilians ...]

MAD: but there’s also a difference between the way the movement works in Black Watch and the way music works in The Civilians – that the latter tends to undermine the political/social effects, where the former tends to highlight them in a more Brechtian manner

[discussion of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson]

DL: is it really a political play?

W10: it’s set in the White House, and there’s a lot dealing with native Americans – I bring it up because were talking about dumb emo music theatre, because it’s really speaking to an audience of young girls, who love it

M5: there is this basic need to entertain as well – it’s a baseline we ignore at our peril, it’s why people come, it’s why people show up

DL: how do politics and entertainment go together?  no one’s brought up any kind of pied piper idea of using theatre to seduce people.

M5: will ferrell’s piece on boradway -

DL: which is really turning the heads of … everyone who already hated Bush anyway

M5: but there were a lot of people who voted for him – he was popular for a very long time – and not just the one show, there was a lot of anti-bush buffoonery througout the administration

DL tells the story of Babylon Is Everywhere – a right-wing script where spectacle trumped justice … if this thing tonight was advertised as a talk on the 3rd floor of NYTW there would be two people showing up, one with about 40 plastic bags …

W: there are different circumstances, and different levels of courage. how much are any of us willing to put ourselves on the line as audiences of performers?

DL: that’s the Simone Weil question.

G: so often you’re giving the message to people who already have the message

DL: is it a question of guts?  what would an artistic director need to do?

MAD: part of it is the bravery of telling your own story and the stories of others – when you perceive yourself to be a victim of injustice, and how that ignites your bravery, and when you’re in the position of empathy with other people, and how that gets framed – plays like Norml Heart, it did happen, though it’s hard when it doesn’t seem like it’s your own story being told – it makes me think of NYTW and Rachel Corrie …

[précis of the My Name Is Rachel Corrie incident ...]

DL: which leads to the 7 Jewish Children thing – where so much context has piled around it to reduce any volatile reaction …

MAD: but that can also makes people feel cared for, so they feel more willing to participate

M1: if it’s not insoluable, I don’t want to see it – too much political theatre dumbs things down and actually lets the political value out of the room

Immediate Concerns

DL: Coming back to the question of what can provoke action or engagement … how close to home does the material need to be?  Let’s try something a little more local.

[Violetta as the bond trader ...]

DL: You know … let’s being it Even Closer …

[Violetta as literary manger ...]

DL: Let’s bring it EVEN CLOSER … does anyone want a beer?

[confused silence]

DL: I’m not acting!  And we don’t have styrofoam beer – who wants one?

[beer is distributed]

DL: what about the recent trend – at least at ps122 – of handing out beer.  “Beer is the only thing that makes it bearable …” but if we are conceding that theatre’s audience is so small that its effect is small, are we also conceding that the mechanisms of theatre are too complicated?

MD: I have a problem with the whole design of these scenes.  these scenes start with a woman who’s been raped, and then you’re using the same frame to show these next scenes makes them seem impossibly more petty and I don’t agree with that strategy at all.

DL: I think it’ s more about the strategy of documentary theatre

MD: but I think decision to stage them the same way skews things

DL: what about this kind of theatre where the actual making of the play that presents social injustice is founded on social injustice

MD: there’s a huge difference between theatre as an art form and actual institutions – political theatre can still happen, even if a given institution might be problematic

CW: but what institutions are dedicated to fighting injustice?

DL: but they do present these works, like nickled and dimed -

W9: what is your mission statement and what did you do – on SW’s 100 anniversary – to get funding for this?

DL: yeah, but compromise gets me hot

W9: well, why is that okay for you instead of these institutions?

DL: but if ps122 or I are acting in bad faith that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about the instutitions

MD: these institutions also chose to sell out their core beliefs and adopt a corporate model

W9: as long as you admit your own complicity

JH: admitting it is the first step

PL: in this conversation we keep talking about the political as if it were change, as if it were revolution – but it seems like it’s more commonly characterized as recognition, which is a different exchange, with different results

M3: sometimes preaching to the choir is necessary – to be reminded that the struggle is worth it, to sustain engagement and action

MD: there’s also political theatre of the stastus quo – works that are about keeping things as they are, that you’ll be moved, but not too much, and you’ll stay a subscriber and go home happy

M4: I don’t believe the Illinois Gov was changed by the exonerated so much as he detected in it the evidence of a social curve, a momentum that allowed him to make a statement or a public stand – precisely because it’s being backed up in public.

Zachary Taylor Is in the Haus

At the table, and brown-bagging it like a champ.

White Light! White Heat!

As we re-settle ourselves into the booth, Eddie Argos speaks for us all:

“I can’t stand the sound/of the Velvet Underground!

I can’t stand that sound/Second time around!

Once is enough!”

These Big Children

DL: I do want to do one more scene before we break – a different kind of scene, which shows a different perspective, that of the perpetrators planning the coup.  We’ve talked a lot about empathy with regard to these other scenes, using that – and character psychology – as an entry point.  This scene turns that impulse somewhat on its head, simply because what we bring to it – ideas about these men, or men like them – is very different …

[Jeff and Jon stride the Bell Tower for the Very Last Time!]

DL: it’s not a scene that needs updating or recostuming … but still, there’s injustice all around us.  We no longer yell at the stage, or yell when we leave … but Jaffier, he’s something of a perfect audience member … he hears about these atrocities, and he steps up to do something.  Which makes me wonder – when we’re in a theatre – if we’re doing enough?

Which is a good place for an intermission.

Go to the Arsenal

We see the first Violetta scene, a post-Bosnia imagination of the Sack of Venice …

DL: Does that feel less hectoring?  Is there more room?  Does the information change?  Relative to the 2nd courtesan scene, where some people thought things felt forced, does this strike you in a different way?

[The Exonerated, its post-perf collections for legal aid, the idea that somehow the show itself isn't "enough", the desire for authenticity, etc.]

CW: I would say that isn’t about trust, so much as a statement of gravity

EK: but aren’t we elevating it somehow, that the impersonation of “real people” is being held to be more serious than “normal theatre”

MD: well, there’s also a difference between a video, made of pixels, and a theatre piece, which is people in a room

DL: There is a tension between empathy and facts – does the desire to be moved trump the possibility of political action?

W7: it’s also about the audience?  what’s the context?  that would change everything, and is just as important as anything in the play, content-wise.

MD: What would it take to activate this room now?

M1: there’s still a lot of artistry in this – and with statistics – first, we want to know where they came from

EK: But I don’t need to go to the theatre to know that killing a gay man in Wyoming is bad

CN: But aren’t you curious about what conditions could let that happen?

EK: Not really.

PL: But it’s also about attention – you know all sorts of things are bad.  if something in wyoming is brought within your attention skillfully, you’re going to be more disposed to care

DL: Let’s go back to Mike’s question: we are the types to come to this seminar – some esthetes, some are activists, some are in between (or annoyed) – but could theatre enable some kind of political change, in this room?

AML: maybe – there’s no much relevance here, so much with Simone Weil, I don’t see why it couldn’t inspire all kinds of things.

W4: I think it’s telling that the example we came with – the exonerated – is about a powerful person seeing it, not about the masses

MD: but the masses are individuals – audiences break apart

MAD: yeah, there doesn’t have to be a riot for the event to have credence – the revolution could be quiet and take as long as evolution, it can take a long time

MD: though I’m in favor of revolution too

MAD: yeah, but the desire for people to see the change isn’t the best benchmark

W5: the difference between watching movies in a crowd and watching theatre.  an audience’s role in theatre is to socialize our wild natures.  the audience is crucial.  that’s where change happens.

DL: but that’s a utopian visision … the story of the yokel standing up to save Desdemona

SS: it’s also a recent phenomenon to not participate in the theatre – to shout or demand to see things again – that’s changed pretty recently to something much more constrained

M1: yes, we don’t think about people shouting “don’t go behind the arras!” anymore …

CW: there is a whole other world of theatre that people are ignoring, the so-called “chitlin circuit” – it’s a whole other social scene, with relatively clunky characters and dialogue, but hugely interactive audience and totally alive

DL: that raises the idea of partcipation – the model of what we want and how we’re trained …

The Jobs Aren’t as Nannies

The second scene plays out, the nakedness of the pathos enforcing a certain tone shift in the audience – or at least the understanding that outright laughter would be rude – but still any flick of irony in the scene finds a hopeful ripple around the table.  Lights up.

W5: her revenge got lost – the emotional basis of it.

MD: there’s something specific about having a list, in the first scene, it’s more emotionally evocative

W6: also in the second scene, there’s something mitigated about the ending – as if Venice can’t be completely destroyed, that part of the contempory vision means less scope.

EK: the second scene seems like journalism.  with the first scene, you’re dealing with values and morals that seem out of time, while updating just alerts to you a current problem, not a timeless one.

DL: Okay, but what does that involvement in the first scene inspire you to do – save 17th century courtesans?

PL: Does the 2nd version make you save 20th century prostitutes?

W5: well, the whole notion of being “ruined” in the first scene is outdated, and maybe we do need something to be updated

W4: I stop being sympathetic to the 1st courtesan when she starts in on her revenge against other women.  I don’t think the 2nd one is asking the mercs to do anything they wouldn’t do anyway.  I can sympathize with her because it doesn’t have the same consequences.

DL: every time you stage shakespeare this happens: are you doing it with ruffs, or updated (e.g. Ruined) – why make the move to update?

M1: when you update a classic often something is lost.  I think the first version isn’t as overtly political, but it’s more memorable.  You can’t brush it aside like you would a news story.

W5: too often people try update things by just finding a contemporary analogue, but that doesn’t necessarily carry forward the dramaturgy or the language, etc.  just focusing on the content leaves out all kinds of other things, the structure -

M2: Didn’t we just go through the Courtesan scene with taxpayers and AIG?

W6: the second scene takes away options.

DL: But doesn’t it implicate you?

W4: the first one is more emotional, but the second is more political, more Brechtian

DL: some people cite the 1st scene as Brechtian because of historical distance, with the 2nd as more political relevant – it’s two very different views of political theatre.  People who do these adaptations obviously think that the former isn’t enough – they think you need this information.

MAD: but Ruined seems different from updating Shakespeare, which seems to be the impulse of artiustic directors not trusting their audience to make the connection themselves between the play and their lives.  Ruined seems much more about a writer’s imagination, whereas the updating Shakespeare is about people not understanding or distrusting imagination’s role.

PL: Also, with the updating, there’s an enormous contempt for the past – that people can only take it in as costume drama, as estheticized spectacle.

DL: can’t you also say that the urgency of the present overwhelms the spectre of the past …

[further discussion of Ruined, defense of Lynn Nottage, it doesn't depend on Mother Courage, etc.]

DL: Granted.  Another angle on this, trying to bridge the tensions between these two  views is documentary theatre, which has its own conventions …

Nothing but Commands

The actors have been introduced in the short scenes, then we see Jaffier’s monologue and finally the first scene with the Courtesan.  The mood in the room is a little tricky – the comic nature of the first scenes still simmers under the surface into this last scene, so that there are snickers of ironic apprecation to the Courtesan’s revenge

DL: Does this speak to us today?  Does it have any relevance?

[crickets]

DL: No?

[crickets]

DL: Okay, well what if we did it like this …

[and this takes CW by surprise!  so quickly!  back into the white!]

DL: Okay, it’s 100 years after SW’s birth but this doesn’t feel relevant to anyone … so we update it to the 21st century …

[he describes the circumstances for the second Courtesan scene ...]

Short and Jam-Packed, Our Watchwords

As this is the last time these four presentations – David, Colleen, Gideon, and James – are flying by, it’s perhaps worth it to comment on just how much information is being laid out in front of the audience in such a short amount of time, and in what manner.  Each of the four provides a new layer – or two – of context, both about Simone Weil and about Venice Sauvée, often taking their pass at similar bits of information, not unlike different fighter planes strafing the same piece of ground from different altitudes.

Some of this is about simple accretion, about spacing out facts enough for the audience to be able to take them in.  Is it only 7 numbers that most adults can hold in their heads without difficulty?  With area codes did that sphere of comfort expand to 10?  With dramaturgy in the theatre does it expand even more?  What sort of mnemonic devices with regard to plot and character have we all internalized from the hours and hours of narrative that spool through our senses throughout our lives?

When Gideon is talking about Weil’s views of the city and state, are we thinking about MD’s characterization of the Obama Inauguration as political theatre?  When we hear about Weil’s anguished exile in New York, are we thinking of Euripides’ banishment from Athens?  When we hear James talking about Weil’s obsessive tinkering with her text, do we think of the notorious struggles that plagued Christopher Durang after the critical drubbing of Laughing Wild?

Probably not.  But what about when we see two soldiers in conversation with a prostitute?  Are these figures essential building blocks of stories, or do we need to look even more deeply to our assumptions, to scrape off the letters or numbers that have been painted on each side to the wood grain beneath?

Stations on the Hive (Lazzi)

The last minutes are ticking by as more and more people are being fitted into the space – extra chairs around the table and against two walls on platforms – the participatory etiquette of these latter seat always thrown a bit in doubt, as their occupants are outside the light and beyond the strict pale of the seminar’s esthetics.

But now we’re starting.  The music cuts out while David is stranded in the middle of the white box.  He announces the night’s activity as the seminar’s “season finale” where political theatre will be defined the Very Last Time …

And now he’s worked his way around the tables to the black brick wall, lump of blue chalk in hand, asking for definitions …

W1: Brecht

JB: Hey, that’s the earliest Brecht has ever come up!

DL: and that’s the great thing about Brecht – you write him down and then you can forget him!  But okay, why Brecht?

W1: Because he’s one of the earlier proponents of what seems political -

W2: Actually Euripides would be earlier …

CW: Snap!

W3: I just saw a play by Christopher Durang -

DL: But all these people are writing differerent things -

And now MD raises the idea of all theatre being political, which DL tries to encapsulate by writing “CATS” on the wall, which MD takes issues with – or with the snark -and they go back and forth on this in a slightly spiked, slightly joshing fort of way

MD: also political events – the inauguratio, for example

W4: theatre that asks for action from the audience

W5: is there a difference between political theater and social relevance?

M1: is it about trying to make people act politically, or is it insisting on seeing art and experience through a political prism?

DL: Okay … what about results?  Hold that thought …

And we dip here into our programed part of our program …

Tonight Every Question Will Be Answered

It’s the 13th and last official performance of Venice Saved.  The jokes are flying, the mood is just a little giddy.  Outside spring has a descended with a venegance, sunny and breezy and light, so much so that it seems odd to be indoors in a windowless theatre.

Last night’s show is being exhuberantly rehashed, with various audience members being given off-the-cuff nicknames – Plastic Bag Guy, Mr. Hamas, Crazy Angry Lady, Miss Ivebeentogazawellactuallyjusthewestbank – but the mood, however punctuated by head-shakes, is still bouncing and upbeat.  As always, the cast marvels at the rules each audience adopts for itself about when and how people participate, and the spectacle of individuals working themselves into a lather.

And over what?  This is exactly what the cast can never quite understand, because they are in and not out, and the audience is out alone.

Thank you for coming. Write back soon, PS Simone Weil

Simone enters. 

People laugh.

Two people are leaving.

Again, we feel the need for a different speech–her speech tonight does not (nor should it) address all that has transpired here. I think SW’s real response would be much more nuanced, much more gentle. I do not think she was so bitter towards others. Tonight she may have said something different.

Do you want your art to be exquisite?

We have not talked about the city–the city that must perish.

Thank you for coming.

Silence.

**************

Weil might ask: What is a Seminar without a series of papers submitted? What is discourse, politics if it does not generate a conversation in kind? What is art if it does not inspire more art? Empathy between art and audience? The generosity of this two weeks of Venice Saved: A Seminar inspires in this writer, and no doubt others, a desire to respond generously in kind with a series of written records–monuments in writing–of this fabulous and not only fabulaic performance.

Clapping.

Orderly leaving.

All are beaming down below.

Torture 101 aka Guilt

Damn!

The kneeling foursome.

I can’t remember–did Weil write this scene? Or did Gordon? How on earth did she envision such violence? Gordon has adapted it.

Scene is over. DL introduce Blasted/Artaud….Jon’s rundown on Blasted.

The bottles on the table are half empty.

Comments on Blasted:

It was not a theater where you could get up and walk around, the eyeball eating of Blasted, the references to Bosnia. This is not enough! The horrors of war–so Sarah Kane–she shot them?

Jess watched Blasted–people walked out of Blasted. She watched. 

To throw shit at the audience as a way to activate the audience–Molly’s critique of this supercilious and boring perspective.

Theater as a question of bodies.

What good is that? That masochism. To make people pull a lever for democrats. Molly is heartfelt.

Grand Guignol. When does it stop being fun and start being political theater?

What about catharsis? Nietzsche…

Zachary starts up–he speaks! He talks about the bewilderment of going to Blasted. Zachary talks about the programmatic nature of the Kane play’s justification–it did not activate him. He had respect for the actors. He felt put off by the experience. 

There was a content expectation–were we paying, at Blasted, to be induced to vomit?

The beautiful foreigner felt that her body was invaded through the state, by watching Blasted.

Someone says–then, why not go to a therapist?

She says here, in the US, she feels people do not feel “it,” she wants to feel her role in it.

DL seems to cotton to the idea of the woman being penetrated by the shock of Blasted. Did you feel empathy or disabled, able to act?

Molly says that the beautiful foreigner sounds like Simone Weil. You felt like you were at war–you felt the pain of others. It is obscure as to whether Molly means this as a compliment.

Yes, she also felt the pain of the person sitting next to her.

But why would you want to feel at war? Molly is deft with her edge. 

Because we are at war!

It’s red blood!

We need the theater….so we can feel things.But I wonder, do we really have to feel everything, all at once, for it to be real? Isn’t numbness also a feeling?

Thank God–the hand signal has passed! The discussion, while fascinating, and while evolving somewhere interesting, is still somehow strangely exhausting. I am aware, as Audience, that I want someone else to control the form, to give my brain and my flying fingers a break, as much as I have Radical Empathy for the discussion. Only the Director’s resumption of his directive role, and his Hand Signal–the unbreaking of the hierarchical frame between performance and audience–can relieve me of the strain of trying to control what I cannot control. 

I’m a journalist–so what would make her not get that feeling from journalism? The journalist is acting as therapist to the beautiful foreigner–we are very concerned about how the beautiful woman feels. How can we help her feel?

Fascinating to think how far-reaching the triumph of the therapeutic has penetrated–even to the journalist.

The Times reports on it, but we do not feel it, I do not feel it, even when I see the images. I had to see the images from other journals–Finland, Czech, Germany, all the languages I speak, beautiful incognita continues. 

Why not Al-Jazeera. The journalist’s rejoinder. Hmm, maybe not so interested in being Beauty’s therapist after all…

Clearly more refined people don’t all feel it the same way, the subtext here.

Bearded man also weighs in about how some people feel some things, some don’t.

Gaza Woman is about to speak: let her!

The bearded man returns, though

–what do the people in power think? How do they notice us? How do we get power to pay attention to us? How do we get to them? Ask them to-make them–read our blogs? How can we act like those people? The people with power are different from us.

Ah yes, as the Beautiful Foreigner is different from us, too. Ukepay.

Gaza speaks–the value of feeling the presence of the Other sitting next to you.

The purpose of political theater is to go into a room with people who think like you and who are experiencing it with you..

Religion is political theater! There are even envelopes there so that we can give money if we are moved, like a Caryl Churchill play!

But religion does that through guilt. Has guilt come up at all in relation to this experience. Do we look at these images for purposes of suffering? Apprenticeship to suffering? Guilt? 

DL rephrases: people go to see political theater out of guilt or to experience the pleasure of guilt and the pleasure of safety. A psychological and emotional and ethical double bind.

The conversation evolves: guilt and action. What kind of action does guilt inspire?

Guilt can inspire a sense of connection: Guilt has caused something. Can bad faith be useful? Can guilt cause the good?

We speak of layers of guilt. Who came here because they felt guilty–does it influence production as well as spectatorship?

What about form?

What about morality? Linda invokes Simone–they are on a first name basis, but she has sentimentalized Weil’s life. (No, she was not a political martyr! She was a very ill, hysterical, bright, tortured woman.It is we who want to shortcut through this and adopt her as an easy-bake do-it-yourself create your own political martyr. Read the Cahiers before you invoke sweeping claims like this about Weil!)

Elizabeth want s to talk about duty, and how it motivates us as a concept–the citizenship issue, as particular to Americans. A journalist is not a stenographer.

We move to discussions of what’s the difference. You feel something, but rarely do we ever feel empathy. If you see someone suffering, you feel waves of feeling, but you do not feel empathy. The empathy is an effect (or is an erasure) by virtue of form. 

Disempowering rituals?

You are disempowered by paying money to theater.

What about to therapists. Are we disempowered by paying money to therapists? Are we disempowered by paying money for nourishing food? For iPods? Would barter be any better?

The question arises: Is Weil a journalist? The life gets in the way of the work: she can’t get out of her own way in order to write a better play–but who cares, when it is her commitment which was important. Makes me think of Hitler’s paintings.

*

Molly’s swain interjects: Can we talk about the scene we saw? (Many minutes ago now…)

And, in another radical move tonight–David allows us to swerve backwards in the discussion, another first–he is openly transgressing the predictions made earlier about the patterns of his own directorial behavior.

The word “waterboard” was used to make us feel implicated, guilty. We are Venice.

What if there were a scene where torture is needed (what does he mean?) 24. A few people raise their hands as having seen 24, violence. 

Can we please get a nuanced view of torture, asks the general from West Point.

This conversation could go on and on, and could continue to engage and amuse and challenge us–it feels as if, tonight, there is so much to explore. Many of the forms constraints have been disregarded, and the organism, the polis of this room, has been able to populate itself with a richness of ideas. This is the point at which we could continue, for another few hours–what would happen if we were allowed to do that? What would this conversation become? Would all of us speak? Would I forget to write?

We really do come back to this later

Lights off–or it’s not theater, says DL.

Brilliant timing!

David cuts to Black Watch 3! ABout non-profit theaters–shushing Linda of NYTW….will it provoke her? Was it written to problematize exactly what she does and how she does it, the way she does it? 

Coriolanus even gets a laugh here–Coriolanus has already been mentioned by this crowd. It already has resonance. 

Do I have to go to Germany to do my job, (Linda)?

DL references the break–ActUp, debts, strikes, and Rachel Corey when it didn’t happen–as the most viable kind of political theater. Is it political theater only when it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do?

All in the Family comes up.

David protests “television?” is not theater.

Man says no, political theater–All in the Family–it transforms consciousness and culture. It gets regular people to talk.

CW: the room is often so full of discussion about theater, but the discussions become strident, hostile, theater is broken down–all the discussions become destructive towards theater.

What Linda is poking at…a play about Kabul is the politics of theater–theater about politics is political theater?

Bad theater. Hollywood? Clifford Odets. It’s exciting to be able to take things to task: is David Obama for Theater? It feels dominated by the few. There is sophisticated interaction–but it is not divided up well. I wonder what David Barlow is thinking. Or Zachary. Or Eileen. Or the many other faces I see out there. Why do some people feel as if they are allowed to speak, and others not? Why are the non-participants not speaking? What are they thinking? 

 

I left the theater and moved to Gaza. And I felt just as useless there! She says. It’s not only one event happens–even in action. Doing a political play that doesn’t get a result is not a failure–it is a moment in time.

You cannot measure the changes in peoples minds.

The notion that reality tv is theater–and that we are addicted, in this country, to theater.  There is a basic humanneed for theater–we cannot afford theater at 50 dollars a pop, but we can afford tv. It’s elitist to say that theater is only a live experience.

Talk to Iraqis, or see a play about Iraqis, or get up and move around–and a person gets up and moves around!

You are super unusual! Man walking around…so walking around in theater is a radical act. How bizarre that something not bizarre should be bizarre.

How do we behave when we are watching, how do we behave as a citizen in a public space–home theater, tv, vs. in a theater.

Insulting the actors.

Insulting the audience.

Locking the audience in the gallery.

TV directors making a “captive” audience so you are glued to a screen. What’s the difference between tv and theater?

There is no difference in the show, says Linda, when we do not watch the tv, what the audience says is irrelevant. We can affect the action as audience.  (We can?)

Bearded man has long comment. It gets impossible to take all of this in.

Let’s do Torture!

(Not live torture, he says)…Dang! Is this the point at which someone should jump into the ring bearing a broken beer bottle and say “Torture, let’s talk about torture”? Some crazed member of the audience?

We can come back to that later

I have cheated, and asked CW what the secret signal for SW’s transformation is. I won’t tell you what it is, but I will look for it.

The break is over, and all have returned.

And David makes the bold move of returning to a previous discussion (!) and offering beer (!) at the beginning of this act.

There is a din! A noise of imbibing, akin to the imagined tortures of Plautean slaves (sic). The man, DL, has a coffee and a beer in front of him. He is drinking from both. He notes the irony of the costly bottle openers, and the only affordable beer needs no opener…

He links to Linda’s comment about preaching to the converted, and gives a brief comment on what documentary theater is–and then foregrounds the closer world we are discussing now. Will BlackWatch 4 work without BlackWatch 3? I am not sure the links will be clear enough for the audience. What if the documentary “screens” gave the same rape of Venice statistics, while Violetta-as-Wall-Streeter talks?

Stalwart James stumbles charmingly!

David then, boldly, targets Molly–Complicated enough?

Molly says yes; her mind is so busy, she says, it is hard to not be involved intellectually as well as empathetically–as opposed to Rape is Bad.

David then steers in Linda–who says: what is the action of this? Linda says Brecht can’t be political theater viewed as successful–he is too philosophical. So is this, she says. too abstract. Act Up did something.

The architecture of the conspiracy

David cues the Renault and Jaffier scene, in light of…I’m not sure what? Observing the unities? It sheds light on the notion of specificity in reference to terrorism.

I realize I am nervous that people can see me up here, (I know they can hear me typing)–and will they read this and note my critique of NYTW’s stance? The farce of Rachel Corey? The farce of holding a CC play and only inviting the rich and those who you can trust to agree with you to see it?

I wonder if the discussion will become more meta–there is much possibility here. We need a JQ in the audience for that.

More couples cuddling in the audience. Who knew this would be a Date Movie?

*

Molly finds this scene boring, straightforward–Gideon chimes in, to defend it; and now all the actors are stirred up. In fact, nothing is straightforward. Sometimes we identify with these conspirators, sometimes we don’t–do we know what to think? Does Weil know what she’s doing is the question.

DL is in comfortable terrain. He has the audience involved, he has argument. He hangs back and lets the discussion take place, and tonight, he can trust the audience–it does. He has helped it to have a life of its own. Instead of a test of endurance, he can actually forget that he is playing the role of the director–he has allowed the discussion in many ways to self direct. Over time, it will solve its own inequities. He is trusting in the object of theater being made here.

Jaffier as the ideal audience member: Jaffier listens to this painting out of the horrors–and the horror is so effective, and he decides to save the city.

Faint applause.

He decides to save the city because of what he has seen and heard.

A break!

Earned!

Radical Inconvenience and Radical Empathy

Can we draw any conclusions about the Bonjour Chien story as it nudges the spectator, as SW did ?Life as political theater vs. political theater? asks DL.

Linda, who did the Churchill play, and is here from NYTW, the controversial, is pointedly asked by a respectful DL: What did you want to get out of the audience?

Linda says–we just wanted to respect Caryl’s wishes.

David doesn’t believe it:

Surely you wanted to do the spectator some good, Serene Majesty?

Linda says “it’s” about the relationship with the artist. So NYTW is about the relationship with the audience. Interesting to know.????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Linda invokes what she calls the “conversation” with NYTW and Rachel Corey. And Caryl Churchill. Sounds satisfied, sure, and justified. 

Now where are the voices which were so critical of NYTW last night? Why are we all being so polite tonight, even David? Where is the openness? Linda drags in the large topic of  Israel–what would Israel say?

Is it possible to pay the royalties and not stage the play? Why stage the play then? Why have to endure the 7 Jewish Children Play–funneling money to Hamas. Oh Israel–the conversation opens up. A strong and intelligent critique of the play; the sending of money to Hamas. A lot of us here are critical of Israel. Inbal Djalovski, where are you? With your radical politics, with the school we are talking about opening in Gaza? Send specifics, send people, not money.

ACG says we are talking not about political theater anymore, but about politics. Can political theater be anything more than interrogatory? Is there any substitute for a logical discursive: I do not consider this theater (he sez) it is a seminar.

A chorus ensues! I can’t even track it!

But we are in a theater right now!

But we have paid our admission!

No, it’s Just a Seminar. And now political theater is any old gathering that talks about politics.

Young man says political theater is supposed to plant seeds.

What is enough? Does political theater make us do something?

Molly talks about the personal politics of transformation: Radical Empathy.

I want to be a good artist but also have fun and eat burgers.

Who did she help by starving herself.

Political theater is notoriously boring: we get hit on the head. South Pacific, West Side Theater are also political.

Linda says— when it happens.

David has to intervene, to let a considered man raise his point, and David wends that back to “updating.” West Side Story with Israelis and Palestinians.

Theater and art–art is political no matter what–it sounds like Matt Dillon whispering down there–

James brings up the Importance of Being Earnest in Singapore.

We listen to the white-bearded one. How interesting. There are many people speaking, but many people here not speaking, too.

This is smart…but it does feel a wee bit like a French tv show with no commercials and 4 versions of Philippe Sollers.

David slaps on a scene!

When we need a break from this! Well tim’d!

**********Meta Comment on NYTW, A Play for Gaza, Sarah Kane and the effectiveness of the Absence of the Play, etc…

Not to sound disrespectful, but there is a larger irony here which we learned about last night, and which became radically clear to me, at least as a listener, tonight. Last night, there was some intelligent, and severe critique of the easy, sloppy politics of the New York Theater Workshop in reference to its recent benefit for the Caryl Churchill “Play for Gaza.”  From what I understand, while the spirit of this play is to give voice to the disenfranchised, and to somehow “inspire” activism–most readily by Churchill’s own caveat, i.e. the play may only be performed if no admission is charged and if, instead, the audience is directed to donate to a non-profit trust which directly benefits Gaza–it cultivates the antithesis of what theater can potentially do in collaboration with its audience. In this instance, NYTW undermined the very politically salvific nature of theater it presumed to promote, i.e. despite the seemingly liberal politics of its do-gooding stance in staging the reading of a play for no money, and for inviting audiences to take the action of donating for a cause. 

Why?

Because, to paraphrase what someone said last night, the NYTW only invited a very select audience, an genteel audience of whom they could be sure–presumably sure of their financial potential as donors, and sure of their political views. While there was a “discussion” after the play, a carefully moderated one, this discussion had no surprises, of course. Everyone agreed, everyone politely discussed their levels of nuanced agreement, no one is embarrassed, no one is uncomfortable, and no one is offended. Perhaps, in situations such as this NYTW event, because of this surety, people feel both so guilty and simultaneously absolved for having the “right” political views, they of course give money, maybe even more than the NYTW imagines they would have had the conversation….

…been open to a general public?

…been allowed to occur without careful moderating, selection, discreet censorship? Had there been real risks and real generosity in allowing a spectacle to take place, and allowing the audience to experience authentic discomfort, confusion, disagreement? Had non-profit theater organizations been able to imagine theiaudiences more generously…

The nature of Venice Saved: A Seminar is that indeed–the performance is uncomfortable, tedious, at times disappointing, at times maddening, but it only ever is what it is in the truth of the moment. A group is engaged in varying levels in a process of performance and also of politics. The fact that the form, and the direction, of Venice Saved: A Seminar allow for the “unknown” to  occur leaves open the possibility for theater to turn into reality, for politics and art to create a genuine, resonant effect. There is an acknowledged and an unacknowledged hierarchy present in Venice Saved: A Seminar; however, there is also a willingness to trust the performers, the audience, and whatever other varying conditions collaborate with the performance of the play–brilliantly appropriate because it too is open ended; SW’s play, too, is a fragment which has de facto trusted history (and us) to “read” and to understand for Weil what she may have meant.

Venice Saved: A Seminar is political theater while the NYTW-model of political theater does not trust the “polis,” the audience, does not allow them to struggle, does not tolerate their process. The New York Theater Workshop staging of “A Play for Gaza” is not a “workshop” model, but a “showroom” model.  Political theater in a democracy must be about the work, the process, the experience of a work, an audience, and time as they collaborate and unfold. As Venice Saved at PS 122 is.