The world needs theatre…or does it?

I agree with Maggie in her prompt on the ongoing cynicism and apathy that we currently face in our societies, and our art is a reflection of the societies we live in. How do we combat that and bring on a new wave of change? Honestly, I feel that there is only so much theatre and art can accomplish, art is the beginning of a conversation, a jumping off point to begin change or to simply address that there are issues that need to be brought up or that need to be remembered. Photography, music, theatre etc. evoke empathy within us to make us think, assess where we stand on what the art has to say. What I feel the larger problem is, is that we ingest our art, we feel something, and then immediately move onto something that will evoke feeling again, similar to and addict, we get we need and then we wait for our bodies to tell us the next thing we need to be fulfilled. Our society has become to focused on our own personal experience and not enough in the collective whole that we are a part of. The reason why we are like this, in my opinion, is that the higher powers that be, which actually have the power to truly bring about change do not move forward. We write a song about it, maybe have a charity event, or dump ice buckets on our heads to address that there are troubles in the world and then move on. I think that generations have gotten used to the fact that change can only go so far and that until the older generations die off will we be able to take charge of the societies we want to build. There is not enough emphasis on the future and what will possibly be better for generations to come. The phrase, ‘my opinion doesn’t matter’, rings true in some ways, because we all have an opinion that will be negated and then we will move on to our daily life problems that effects us most.

I suppose theatre could continue as it always has as being the begining of those conversations, however the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, so we can’t stand still. I think a good direction for theatres to go in, would be to actually pick shows that have a general mission statement.  For example, we are doing this production of, Clyborune Park to expose the race problems we face in our own city of Baton Rouge, now let’s see how everyone involved in the production supports our mission statement. Too many times theatre seasons are chosen to please the public and to give the theatre itself more notoriety, I am not saying that doing theatre for entertainment sake is bad, in fact I encourage it, but let’s have everyone involved be aware of why we are doing that show, perhaps adding more fuel to the fire will help bring art further into the realm of action and away from commentary and awareness.

Switching gears to wars, genocide and horrific events, I actually feel that theatre is probably the best way to keep a certain awareness to the privileges we take for granted. How do you frame it, who do you offend or not offend? The truth is someone will be offended, it is impossible to avoid, and someone will always disagree and have an issue with the work. So my suggestion would be to take these issues on, half verbatim theatre, half neofuturist. Collect testimonies from people on all sides of a given event, lets say the Holocaust; Jews, Germans, Nazi’s etc and have these testimonies ready for performance, numbered 1-20. When the audience arrives they get to pick the order in which the pieces are performed, calling out numbers of the testimonies. The audience has control of the sequence of events, this way, the writer or director is not allowed the artistic choices of how the event is told, instead you are getting facts from these peoples experiences that aren’t framed in a way of telling the audience what to think or what parts of the event to focus on. These are real peoples experiences being told about a real event.

Is Invisible Theatre the only way to bring about change? Sometimes I think so, people aren’t willing to deal with certain issues until they affect them, or if they are put on the spot and called out for their behavior. Not until we have a personal experience to draw from, can we fight for some sort of change, because we haven’t felt it, and unfortunately people aren’t interested in other people’s pain or issues unless we can relate. Empathy is invoked from a distance, we hear stories and watch the news and feel sad, things shouldn’t be that way and then quickly are forgotten when we scroll though our Facebook news feed and see a funny video of a cat.