She strides off, boots echoing into the silence …

DL: Thank you guys for coming.

Applause …

… and we’re done.  Salut.

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 -

[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.

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

[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.

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

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

Once is enough!”

[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.

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 …

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 …