I have mentioned Randy Gener’s critical work on this blog in the past, and I’m glad to be able to point the way to Mr. Gener’s own Web site, in the theatre of One World, which recently underwent a redesign. I have a very high regard for the work of Mr. Gener, a former senior editor of American Theatre magazine and the winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2007-2008, and am glad to see that it is now appearing regularly on the Internet through this blog; recent entries have included items on “rasaboxes” (a new form of theatre training developed by Richard Schechner), Lynn Nottage’s play Ruined, and a unique look at Pina Bausch and photography. Mr. Gener holds himself to a high standard in this long-form journalism — perhaps a model for young theatre journalists — and he provides an extraordinarily broad perspective on world theatre.
His blog comes to my attention on the eve of the eighth anniversary of Superfluities Redux (1 October marks its formal birthday) and engenders some brief thoughts about the theatrical blogosphere, which has, over those eight years, evolved to a certain extent. Mr. Gener’s blog, a showcase of his own individual work, is a bit of a throwback to the first generation of theatre blogging, in which individuals took advantage of the new medium to develop their own thinking in common with others (the comments sections of blogs have always been a central feature of the form, differentiating them from print journalism and encouraging conversation). But with age comes change, and eight years defines several generations in the Internet age. The second generation of blogs was more collaborative in nature (Leonard Jacobs’ Clyde Fitch Report and Time Out New York’s “Upstaged”) and exploited the overhyped potential of the new medium; these did not last long, eventually undermined by their own attempts to generate controversy and more numerically significant readerships through bluster and insult. Over the past year or so, a third generation has emerged: Arena Stage’s Howlround and 2AMt, the first theatre blog to be based on a Twitter feed, appear to have been indirect responses to the controversies engendered by Outrageous Fortune, the 2009 book that elevated doubts about the relevance and structural integrity of the American theatre to a screaming pitch. Groupthink can be just as insular and exclusive as individualthink, to coin a clumsy phrase, and when under the aegis of an institution like an “American Voices New Play Institute,” runs the risk of becoming yet another institution that keeps some individuals out and others in.
While the first generation of bloggers may have appeared to be solipsistic to a fault, this third generation beats them by far. These blogs are written by various individuals speaking to other various individuals within the profession, a form of inside baseball to which neither of the first two generations were immune. But those first two generations also presumed a general readership, not merely a readership among dramatists, directors, designers and performers, a presumption which this third generation does not share. A glance through the posts at both of these blogs indicates that the role of these journals is to circle the wagons in a sense, and both demonstrate a fear that theatre continues to lose its audience — they both assume from the outset a culturally, politically and socially instrumental role for an art form which, at its best, mitigates against social instrumentation in seeking to touch the individual spectator. What is lost too in this third generation is the individual voice, a voice defined in the first generation by the maintenance of these blogs by individual writers exclusively.
So Mr. Gener’s individual voice then is again welcome, as is that of British critic Dan Rebellato, author of the fine 1956 and All That, whose Spilled Ink blog just opened recently and featured a few days ago a fine post on the individual playwright’s responsibility (and the abandonment of that responsibility in some cases) for the “dramatic shape of the evening.” Despite the obituaries being drafted for the medium by those with their own careers and egos to promote (“I can’t think of any blogger but myself who is unafraid of courting controversy,” writes the author of that draft death notice), Mr. Gener’s and other blogs are still taking up the slack that print journalism is leaving behind. Parabasis, one of those first-generation blogs, has announced an upcoming “special issue” on the late American playwright Lanford Wilson, which will feature essays and remembrances, a project which may not have a potential outlet anywhere but on the Web. And just this morning I turned to my Google Reader to find this excellent post by Alison Croggon on Shakespeare’s politics as part of a review of a production of Julius Caesar, in which she writes:
As Shakespeare can demonstrate, theatre is a powerful simulacrum of the political. Indeed, politics is often pejoratively described as “theatre”, mostly by people with little interest in theatre itself: if politics is mere “theatre”, then it is considered to be with without meaning, a dumbshow of empty gesture that has nothing to do with “reality”. There is, however, a profound relationship between politics and theatre: theatre, as a conscious simulacrum of reality, mimics how politics itself is a show of simulacra, a series of simulations. Politics is a primary maker of simulations that stand in for reality, claiming to be the thing itself, and which at last infect the real with their own reality. Another is art.
You won’t find this in your local paper either, and I’m guessing not in too many of these third-generation theatre blogs. But it is written, as Mr. Gener’s journalism and criticism is written, not merely for the practitioner but as a thoughtful bridge from an art to a spectator, doing the best that criticism can do. And it remains in the blogosphere. I’m delighted to still find it here, as healthy as ever, and to offer a little of my own.
Many thanks for the pointer, George. Good to see you still plugging on too. Aren’t you up to eight years now? I know TN has been going for seven, which seems amazing.
Thanks for the kind shout-out, George. I’m hoping that starting with the Lanford Wilson issue we can build towards doing this sort of thing with some regularity, alternating between Issues with specific artists (not always theater) as their theme and Issues with some broader topic.
Alison: Yep, that’ll be eight years on 1 October. Ah, those Wild West days — and good to see you plugging on too. But what else to do?
Isaac: My pleasure. I’m looking forward to the Wilson issue.
The paragraph of Allison’s quoted above (assuming you don’t believe Allison herself is a simulacrum) is mini dialogic tour de force: the terms, such as “theatre,” “politics,” “simulacrum/simulation” and “real/reality” take on new meanings through every twist and usage. She also hits on a fundamental point: it’s useless to pretend politics is NOT theater. The most successful politicians/parties, whether dictators or democrats, understand the theater of politics (and sometimes the politics of theater, if they’re patrons of the arts). It’s a reflex to accuse some individual or group of “mere political theater,” but our political discourse acknowledges politics as theater. We speak of a candidate’s good or bad “performance,” or of a politician being “on script” or knocked “off script.” We note the “opening act” of a “political drama,” of a candidate “making an entrance,” and political events are scarcely over before we call in David Brooks and co. to function, essentially, as drama critics assessing the “performance” of various “players.” (Brooks is usually pretty good at it, actually.)
The famous Kennedy/Nixon debate is an example of one “actor” better understanding the importance of a good performance. Nixon literally didn’t want to wear make-up. Nixon is, I think, an example of someone whose successes happened despite a lack of understanding of politics-as-theater. The Checkers Speech is a classic failed performance: it’s always been treated as a farce, even by people sympathetic to Nixon’s political positions, whereas he intended it be a straightforward recital. Those of us old enough to have seen him recall how awkward Nixon was in any public situation, in contrast to, say, Ronald Regan, who was a “real” actor before he became a politician.
Some of Barack Obama’s difficulties appear to arise from his being better at monologue than dialogue (in this sense, I’m speaking theatrically, not in a Bakhtin sense), or at least, that’s how it appears. Obama is impressively theatrical in speeches when he is alone “on stage” (he reminds a lot of Morpheus in his monologue in “Matrix Reloaded”), but seems less comfortable in “ensemble” situations requiring interaction with other “players.”
Oops, I got onto a “soapbox” and started playing the role of the deep thinker making multiple connections among seemingly disparate phenomena. But to get back to George’s point, you’re right that the blogosphere gives space to someone like Allison (or George), who in another era would have faced probably insurmountable obstacles to finding an audience, and thus would probably have been “uhneard, unrecognized, unremembered.” Murder most foul, I say!
Terrific post, GH. Now, I just hope that some blogs will update their rolls with a link to Randy’s site.