Over at the Steppenwolf blog, Joy Meads wrote a charming post about an audience collective experience of a play with local themes and references that reinforces all those ideas about why art is most effective (and most likely to be supported by the community) if it is art of the community. Not just a well-preserved import.
Though there is a reasonable amount of theatre (and live music, art galleries, etc.) in the region for such a rural area, the people that I work with at the day job do not attend. However, when they find out that I am acting in a play, some of them are even willing to drive 70+ miles to come see me. I think they're not experiencing the arts most of the time because they don't hit home. We work in an institution where we're surrounded daily by an intellectual elite who assumes that there is much beyond our realm of comprehension. And a great deal of the performing artists around town aren't locals - the theatre artists are imported from NYC for a few months at a time, the musicians are bands on tour of all the college towns in America, and even most of the students (offering free and cheap performances of their own) are from far away. The art doesn't make an effort to connect to anyone but the other artists and intellectuals, and it's not made by anybody they know.
But if you ask them about it, they might want to come but have just never been asked. If you tell a story they can relate to, they might come back. If they start to care about what you're doing, they will likely have something (money, skills, time, materials, just good stories) to contribute to the creation. And as Scott points out, we all have stories that need to be told.
Busking at the airport
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I have no patience for bureaucracies that proclaim that they are unable to innovate. It's not that they are unable to do so, it's that they don't want to do ...
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4 comments:
We work in an institution where we're surrounded daily by an intellectual elite who assumes that there is much beyond our realm of comprehension.
Most of my work is about things beyond our realm of comprehension, but I'm supposing not in the sense you're expressing here. I think we've already had that conversation, though.
What do you think is the cause of such - condescension? contempt? - for the communities that support theater artists with the money from their pockets?
The academic community with the 100+ year history of being at the nation's intellectual forefront quite simply fosters a sense of superiority over the lower-class, less-educated, less worldly community in which it exists. I'm not talking about fantasy, I'm talking about human beings assuming other human beings are just not smart enough to "get" certain things. And the people on the receiving end just accepting that assessment. Art is created by and for the elite. And that's a faulty system, in my opinion.
As a member of the academic community, I find myself torn concerning your observation. There was a time not that long ago when the academic community, and the artistic community as well, were firmly worker-oriented. Look at the intellectuals and artists of the 1930s, for instance. But during the 1960s and 1970s, things swung in another direction and it became a badge of honor to be conceptual, obscure, and disdainful. The Theatre of the Absurd fired the starting pistol on that rush to elitism. Academic theatre picked it up, as well as the "art is good for you" approach that came along with the marketing of the newly-formed regional theatres, and pretty soon we had a educational-artistic complex that emphasized inaccessibility. That said, many other parts of the university have promoted workers and oppressed minorities when nobody in our society gave a damn about them.
But I do think that most of our artists are college educated, and are creating theatre for a college educated class of people. We could use an infusion of John McGrath.
Audience condescension is one of my biggest pet peeves, so I'm with you on that, but I question how directly related it is to a lack of local stories or themes.
The stuff I create would often fall in that heady, intellectual place. I make it a purpose of mine not to condescend to the audience, which means I refuse to water anything down. I assume that the audience will either be able to follow where I go or go someplace else that works for them within the world. And I try to make that the only thing I assume about them.
I know that this isn't going to work for everyone, and it certainly won't appease anyone looking for locality in themes or references. And I take exception to any claims of elitism because my work doesn't acheive goals that I never set out for it. (I know that you aren't making that judgement, but when it comes to the intellectualism/elitism argument, the two are often seen as one.)
I guess my point is that there's a difference between assuming a person is stupid and providing something they're not looking for (in this case, but not as a rule, heady intellectualism).
If these artists aren't marketing to the people you know because "they won't get it", it's elitism. If the people aren't going to the shows because it's not that local experience they're looking for, it's just different strokes.
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