I’m currently in grad school, and for those of you who know me, you’ll agree that it’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m one of the last people someone expects an MFA program to accept. My only rational to it is that they didn’t have a plethora of twenty three year old, six foot three tall men auditioning for the program. Oh yeah, I’m also awesome, but that is (almost) beside the point.
I am mentioning this all for a point!
And the point is – the major contrast between theory and practice in the theatrical world. Being at a known, albeit, state research one university they are very proud of their attention to the Richard Schechner soaked world that is performance studies, but frankly, it’s starting to piss me off. There is a serious disconnect between the theorist and the practitioners on the theater world. In an art that implies doing, playing, and all that buzzword crap, there are brilliant people sitting on the side simply commenting on it. As I have expressed before on this blog, theatre is not a spectator sport! Get off the sidelines! The people writing for these research based theatre “journals” baffle me. Shouldn’t it be that there are no rules? Why do we have to define what we do into movements and waves of history and not what they are in the current times? Now, it could be because currently the system is, in essence, fucked. Let’s face it kids theatre, I’m talking real honest theatre, is absolutely dead. It truly exists for tourists and some times I don’t even know if you can call it a pure art form any more. In my opinion a major contributor to this unfortunate/gradual turn of events is the theorist. Theatre is a practical art form. That’s why it’s difficult, there is a necessary ability that makes it so not everyone can do it. There is something else required in the process then pure intellect, and I don’t think it’s “talent,” whatever the fuck that is, but there is something else that many of these people lack. Which is why they aren’t practitioners. What bothers me is that they’re art stems from the analysis of art and not from creation of it itself. To me, that seems wrong, and out of touch.
The Now Theatre to the rescue. I’m hopefully setting up a production of One for the Road by Pinter, plus whatever the brilliant Nic Adams is doing next. We’re basically bi coastal now.
Bam.
Love and licks,
Matt Bowdren
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