Re: RAT Politics and Theatre

[Audie McCall <audiemccall@yahoo.com>]

I read this as far as "problematizes".  Then I had to
stop.



--- Impacttheatre@aol.com wrote:
> I believe that any theatre- even the most heinously
> commercial Broadway 
> Musical- can be political when read as such.  The
> definitional authority of 
> what is or is not political- particularly when
> dealing with collboratively 
> created texts such as performance text, wherein the
> playwright, director, 
> designers, actors, etc all have a hand in the
> production of the text- rests 
> to any real or useful degree with the "reader" of
> that text.
> 
> The collaborative nature of theatre and the fact
> that intention in these 
> cases is more or less unknowable problematizes the
> notion of whether any 
> particular performance is political activism. 
> First, the term "political 
> activism" needs to be defined- no small task.  Then
> each performance needs to 
> be assessed- read- within those parameters.  So
> again, we're forced with 
> leaving the defintional authority squarely with the
> reader/consumer of text- 
> even when that reader is the director, or one of the
> actors, or what have you.
> 
> This can only result in a multiplicity of readings
> with no real consensus.  
> What seems like activism to one person may read like
> self-indulgent crap to 
> another.  Bear in mind that both of these people may
> be in the show, in the 
> audience, or consuming the written text or
> descriptions of it (as is the 
> current case with Living Theatre) years or even
> decades later.  With an older 
> text, one has the fortunate position of being able
> to add to one's reading 
> the "fallout" of the production in question.  But
> the varied opinions about 
> this may just serve to further cloud the issue.
> 
> So what's the answer?  It's political activism to
> you if believe it is.  
> Basing the activism upon political or social results
> is unfair in that much 
> activism goes largely unnoticed; or is condemned,
> ridiculed, or recuperated.
> 
> Melissa Hillman
> Artistic Director
> Impact Theatre
> P.O. Box 12666
> Berkeley, CA 94712-3666
> 
> (510) 464-4468
> http://www.impacttheatre.com
> 
> "Planet Janet" plays through June 10!
> 
> 
> 
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