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commentary (Re-posted from SVT site) ³I write plays because I hate theater² - Peter Handke, Playwright, 1970s. We pin our hopes on fans of live music. Make no bones about it, we have our eye on those nightclubs, those concert arenas, and those football stadiums, filled with thousands of people of every type, the smartest audience in the world. There you will find those people paying high prices, and working things out on the simple basis of supply and demand. You cannot expect to get fair conduct on a sinking ship. The demoralization of our theater audiences springs from the fact that neither theater nor audience has any idea whatıs supposed to go on there. When people in live music establishments buy their tickets they know exactly what is going to take place; and that is exactly what does take place once they are there: highly trained persons developing their own peculiar powers in the way most suited to them, with the greatest sense of responsibility yet in such a way as to make one feel that they are doing it primarily for their own fun. Against that the traditional theater is nowadays quite lacking in character. If theater is to have a social function, directed towards changing the world, it must begin by making people adopt a totally different attitude towards theater. In its own field the theater must keep up with the times and all the advances of the times and not lag several thousand miles behind as it does at present. Theater must not only want to provide the spectator with an experience, but also squeeze from him a practical decision to intervene actively in life. Naturalism - kitchen sink drama - hamstrings some major artistic capacities, notably the imagination. A bad stage performance is not just one which, by contrast with a good one, makes no impression. The impression made may not be good, but an impression is made nonetheless: a bad one. In the arts, if nowhere else, the principle ³if-it-doesnıt-help-at-least-it-doesnıt-harm² is quite mistaken. Good art stimultes sensitivity to art. Bad art damages our perceptions; it does not leave them untouched. Most people have no clear idea of artıs consequences, whether for good or for bad. They suppose that a spectator who is not inwardly gripped by art is not affected. Quite apart from the fact that one can be gripped by bad art as easily as by good. Even if one isnıt gripped something happens to one. Good or bad, a play always includes an image of the world. Good or bad, the actor shows how people behave under given circumstances. A jealous person behaves in a certain way, one gathers, or this or that action are the result of jealousy, for example. Furthermore the spectator is encouraged to draw certain conclusions about how the world works. If he behaves in such and such a way, he hears, he must reckon with this or that result. Obviously, artistic appreciation of this sort is not without effects. It weakens the good instincts and strengthens the bad, it contradicts true experience and spreads misconceptions, in short it perverts our picture of the world. There is no play and no theatrical performance which does not in some way or other affect the dispositions and conceptions of the audience. Art is never without consequences, and indeed that says something for it. Theater needs to take responsibility for its actions. It needs to promote active, rather than passive, spectatorship. Theater needs to celebrate the fact that it is live and not pre- recorded like the movies or TV. Theater needs to make its audience ask vital questions about that which the audience takes for granted. And above all, theater needs to stop being boring and start to be relevant and interesting. Because right now we are bored with theater and would rather go see a band. |