…”art” about cancer, AIDS, lice, sexual abuse, schizophrenia, people who smoke weed, divorce, hokey and vaginas!! I’ve had it with contemporary crap theatre! I grew up with theatre and I still love it but every time I’m looking for a play to go to it’s something like the aforementioned or an “adapted” Shakespeare play meaning that some “trained” actors get on stage and they show you how wide their mouths can be, how much they can “project” their voices and how hard they can slap their thighs (very hard, believe me!) Oh, you can also go to slapstick shows or to improv (which, I’m sorry, doesn’t qualify as theatre) and, occasionally, I’ve seen some very intricate physical theatre plays where the actors are always running around, changing roles and costumes very quickly, singing and saying stuff that I can’t remember, the same way I don’t remember their faces or the name of the play because it didn’t really mean anything and there’s a lot of other stuff that I need to spend my time memorizing.
Theatre MUST be intellectually driven! Something has to be real behind the illusion so that when the curtain falls, you’re not left empty handed, you have that something to bring home with you. Like the light of the burning candle on Easter night, the one that you take home after everyone left the church, Jesus included (in the Greek Orthodox Easter tradition, on Holy Saturday, everyone who went to church has to light their candle from the Holy Light given by the priest during Resurrection and, after the whole ordeal..um..I mean the Mass is over, they have to bring the candle home still burning. Light, the opposite of darkness, is the symbol of the divine, knowledge, spirit and other bright stuff like that.)
I miss those times when, after the applauses, spectators would quietly leave their seats, without looking at each other, hiding the tears from their eyes. Those are different kinds of tears, not tears because poor little Susan was abused by her uncle.
Please, theatre people, don’t bring your dirty underwear on stage. There are lots of places where you can turn yourself inside out, your psychologist’s cabinet is a good example…
PS: I’ve noticed a trend in Canada – the college trend. People don’t go to university anymore. Writing essays and reading books is not really that cool. Instead, there are all kinds of professional schools, some of them are colleges, some are private studios (they’re all, really, just businesses that offer very little training in exchange for a lot of money), that promise to give students the perfect super intense training they need in order to become professional actors. I made the mistake to waste some time and money in such a place. The one thing that bothers me the most is that young people who go to these places are being taught that it’s ok to be an instrument, a piece of voiced meat on stage that is moved around by the director. After a few generations of actors “trained” like this it’s not surprising that most plays are about abuse of some kind.
Unfortunately, in this country every thing is about business! and theatre is a business too, it needs its audience who happen to be interested in hokey, schizophrenia, psychopaths, murder ( for some strange reason people just love to see it more and more!!) vaginas and last but not least, musicals!!
People are worked out so much everyday that their brains just can’t take it anymore, they need something simple which tingles the surface of their brain which is already numbed by the long hours of dry, continuous work.
Ok, but what about that idea that the public can be educated? Aren’t people interested in murder, psychopaths and so on because this is all tvs and theatres put on? I hate meat, you know, but if someone feeds me just meat for, say, 20 years, there’s a big chance I’ll need it for the rest of my life. There’s also a chance that I’ll hate it and I will never want to see it before me but I think the former has more of a chance of happening.
If people are interested in bussiness why do they choose to do theatre? Why not work in a bank?
I think that exactly because people are “numbed by the long hours of dry…work” they should be provided with a different sort of art. I didn’t necessarily call for heavy stuff, just for something decent, aesthetically pleasing and with a bit of a message behind it. C’mon, that’s not so hard…
oh, and what’s wrong with musicals? i like musicals!