Performance Lost

Where Has Theater's Social Power Gone?

BY JOSÉ MACIÁN

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On the first day of classes, while I anxiously took up the rear of a seemingly endless line at the bank, a woman turned to me and asked me a question. She was a short woman, of the baby-boom generation, with thick glasses and dreadlocks. Her question was simple, "Has there been a run on the bank?" I smiled and responded that the economic and political situations of the nation had not yet worsened to the point that would warrant another depression. The woman responded, and a lengthy chat ensued that dealt with politics and world affairs. Finally, my time came to do business with the teller; but before ending our discussion, the woman asked me if I was studying political science. I smiled again and replied that I was in fact interested in theater arts. At this the woman frowned, shook her head in dismay and stated, "Too bad." After leaving the bank the thought dawned on me: Why too bad? This socialist did not believe that the theater was a legitimate tool for social change, and thus not an appropriate area of study for one interested in changing society. She had forgotten that often-quoted misquote of German playwright and theatrical theorist Bertolt Brecht, "Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it."

In my mind, this woman had erected a rampart in the path of millennia of theater history. I thought it was clear to those interested in correcting societal ills that the theater, in all of its forms, was a major tool and source for social change. Throughout history, those who have wanted to influence the minds of men and women have recognized the theater as a powerful medium in doing so. Is this no longer true? Did this woman speak the truth about the death of theater's power to influence and change the world? Could modern theater no longer steer society away from destruction?

goose-stepping is tragicomic

My thoughts raced back to the last century, back to the Germany of the 1930s. There, one could witness the creation of a totalitarian state as theater: Hitler's cult of personality and Albert Speer's choreographed rallies. Performance in the Nazi regime was so important that the roots of Hitler's physical and verbal prowess as a speaker can be found in the teachings of a classically trained actor. This example shows the amount of raw power and force behind theater. In this case, the theater was used as a tool to corrupt society; however, the theater's power can be utilized with an equal force to heal society. Another less insidious case of performance's influence is seen in the year 1601. The Second Earl of Essex paid the theater company to which Shakespeare belonged to put on an uncensored performance of Richard II the day before the Earl led a revolt in London against Elizabeth I. The Earl believed that the play, seen as subversive to monarchy, could help his revolutionary cause. History is full of these examples; every political rally, every major historic event has a performative element to it.

The power of performance in general (the theater in particular) is that no where else, sporting events aside, can one readily get hundreds, if not a thousand people together in one room simultaneously, to react to live actions unfolding before them. This collective presence of energy allows the theater to influence people with a form of entertainment, a creation of beauty and a public forum of ideas. The theater can both represent and challenge the social, political and philosophical attitudes of our world. The theater has the ability to teach the audience about themselves. Playwrights, directors, actors, dramaturges and hundreds of other theater artists can represent society and, in particular, social ills. If this is the case, audiences leave the theater, more educated than when they entered, with a desire to correct the wrongs that were just presented to them.

I must note that in no way is every theater designed with a social agenda in mind. Plays do exist with a purely entertainment purpose. As a broad generalization, the majority of theater after the late nineteenth century can be divided into two categories: the avant-garde composed of experimental, innovative, unorthodox, fringe and subversive theaters, and the commercial stage which is best represented in this nation by the majority of shows on Broadway. Historically, the avant-garde has been opposed to conventional commercial theater as well as social status quos. Yet, the avant-garde is as varying as the two theater extremes themselves. Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts and Gerhart Hauptmann's The Weavers are naturalist works of social criticism. The artistic movements of futurism and surrealism were tied to the extremist political groups of fascism and socialism, respectively. The entire theatrical oeuvres of Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre's The Respectful Prostitute, the Living Theater's Paradise Now, Jean Genęt's The Screens, Samuel Beckett's Catastrophe, the directorial work of Augusto Boal, and Tony Kushner's contemporary epic, Angels in America, are all examples of social theater.

if they don't watch it, they won't come

Despite the possibilities of the theater, its presence in Western society, once integrally tied to everyday life through ritual, is diminishing. This is particularly true in America. Here lies the weakening of theater's social potential. In the spring 2005 edition of The Drama Review, Philip Auslander, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, referred to an article written in 1993 by one of the founders of the contemporary school of performance studies, NYU professor Richard Schechner, heralding the decline of the stage. Schechner alluded to the fact that theater is destined to join classical music "as an historical rather than contemporary art." This prediction was affirmed in 2002 by the National Endowment for the Arts in its Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. In this survey, it was shown that 77.7 percent of American adults did not attend the theater at all in 2002. This is contrasted by the 60 percent of American adults who went to the movies and the 2.9 hours spent in an average day watching television. The theater is losing its audience to the cinema and the home-entertainment industry, but these modern institutions cannot replace the theater in terms of artistic expression. The beauty of the theater is the ephemerality of performance; the theater is live.

What has led to this decline in theater attendance and, in turn, the decline of the theater's power to affect change in society? Besides the fact that attending the theater is not always convenient, I see the reason as mainly twofold. The first explanation for this shift is that the theater has become a principally bourgeois pastime, akin to the opera or ballet. In America, the theater is an elitist institution for a small and privileged portion of the population. The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts supports this claim with the findings that the theater's audience is primarily made up of white middle-aged women who are well educated and well off. These individuals can afford to pay the high ticket prices to attend the disappearing theaters of this nation. Alongside this issue of economic status is the presence of intellectual elitism in the theater. The average American is not taught to understand the "high-culture" of the stage, nor is he/she encouraged to appreciate performance. Many people see the theater as a place of histrionic men in tights and naked woman being dragged through paint and animal entrails. Without an objectively engaged audience, the theater cannot hold sway over society because it cannot make an audience understand what is wrong with itself.

The second dilemma facing the theater is the catch-22 of show business itself and the delicate balance between success and commercialization. Some theatrical philosophers have long held that once the art of the theater becomes commercial - that is to say financially successful - it no longer has the ability to affect change. This was evident to Brecht, who felt that the impact of the theater over society could only be preserved with a divided audience, an audience made up of those who wish to preserve society and those who wish to change it. Ideally, this divided audience will engage in debate that sparks an examination of society. However, this split audience, created by differing social opinions and the unorthodox practices of the avant-garde, usually leads to limited commercial success. Theater as a commercial enterprise will, of course, sacrifice erudite performances in favor of commercially-successful, show- stopping, yet milquetoast plays in order to preserve itself as an institution. Elitism has caused a major decline in theater attendance. This decline in attendance and the prevalence of commercial pabulum onstage has led to the contemporary American theater having little influence over society. The problem for social artists is finding a middle ground between the less popular avant-garde theater frequented by the intellectual elite and the commercial theater of the masses that usually lacks a social purpose.

Theater as revolution

Is there a solution to resurrect the theater in a boldly new form, unleashing the raw power of performance? This is a question that everyone interested in theater must attempt to answer. Paradoxically, change in society, caused by a change in the theater, can only occur with a change in the society. When the theater again becomes accessible to the masses, both financially and intellectually, and when the creators of theater are free from the restraints of making money, only than will these creators once again wield a formidable hammer with which to shape society. A society in need requires a strong avant-garde theater to point out social ills and inspire in the audience a desire for change. In the last decades of his life, another German playwright, Heiner Müller, stated "the slogan of the Napoleonic era still applies: Theater is the Revolution on the march." Perhaps one day the revolution will march again and those in the theater will be just as important to a society as all of its political scientists.

José Macián B'08 is fed up with intellectual elitism.

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