Words, words, words

I had the wonderful opportunity to talk to an acting student in Milan who I met (through Facebook, of all things) while working on my Global Theater project this past semester. She asked me why I was in Berlin, I explained, and then we started talking about theater and the theater I've been seeing in Berlin in comparison to that at home. I talked myself in circles, and still couldn't manage to explain why what I was seeing here (this was before Elektra, I'll get there in a second) was so good, and why what was at home couldn't compare. In some ways, it has to do with taking risks- but Elektra took risks (big ones) and failed. So it wasn't risk taking, though as we've discussed there's a financial component to the ability to take risks here as a result of the massive government funding of the arts versus the almost non-existent funding at home. What was it? Schaubuehne's Hamlet was extraordinary in its truth, in its grounding in... something...

This is what I discovered. Every time I get close to explaining why extraordinary theater is extraordinary, I run out of words to explain it, because it's something just beyond the scope of language. It is immediate and transient; simple and intricate at the same time. It's much easier to explain why something doesn't work than why it does. For example: I can easily explain why Elektra was so odd (to me, apparently not to the reviewer at the Financial Times). The costuming is the first thing that needs to be mentioned, because with sequins AND feathers AND nearly neon colors AND men wearing skirts over suits, it's the first thing that one has to get past. As with much of the play, it comes down to being illogical or unnecessary. It doesn't make sense for the set and the costumes to be what they were. Not only did they present a disjointed picture because they didn't go together, they also were simply impractical with no reason to be. Elektra in a suit with four-inch (plus) heels she can barely walk in doesn't make sense. A set consisting of narrow step-like platforms is impractical, and more so when all the women are wearing very high heels and their skirts are larger than the width of the platform. It's not that a set or costumes can't be impractical, it's just that one needs a very good reason for them being so, and there was no explicable reason. The same applies to cross dressing characters. If you're going to put men in skirts and Elektra in a full suit with tails, you'd better be saying something about... something, anything. Everything needs to have reasons (even if the reason is "we're doing something nonsensical because it makes a point about x"). It's not that things have to be logical, but they have to have purpose. Even dadaism has a purpose or a point- it's very point is to have no point.

But a "good" play isn't necessarily one in which the director, the designers, or even the actors have made "good choices," to borrow a phrase from our training. A show can have all these things and still not reach the level of Reise! Reiser! or Hamlet. It's not necessarily impeccable acting or a flawless script or incredible design. Extraordinary theater speaks to something deeper. The reason Hamlet was so incredible was not because Ostermeier is brilliant, or the design was incredible, or the actors were fantastic. All of these things are true, but there is something beyond that which somehow happens as a result of all these things mixing. That something is what we call art, or artistry. It's the shift between entertainment and art, when a play has the capability to speak to something deeper in an audience which is human in essence.

Theater (and other performing arts, but particularly theater) is the most fleeting of the arts. Certainly a script can be recorded, but each production, and even more so each performance in a run, only happens once. Each moment happens, and can never be repeated. A painting can be hung on a wall, a piece of music can be written down and recorded for perpetuity, a sculpture can be displayed in a museum. Architecture can stand for hundreds or thousands of years. But theater is like life, there's no way to rewind it or look at it again or repeat it. Which is why good theater (and in typing that it came out "god" theater the first time, which I think is a bit of a Freudian slip given I think religion and art serve essentially the same purpose, but that's another book of a blog post) is so deeply moving. As it is happening, or just after it has happened, there is some sense of the fact that it can never happen again, that you've had it and all you will have of it is your consciousness of it. And good luck writing about it, or explaining it, because with a really good piece of theater, your words won't suffice.