Category Archives: Other places

Other places: Edward Bond, Tony Kushner, Vivocraft and more

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Perhaps, as dramatists become older, they become both more laconic and more direct: What can they possibly have to lose? It’s true of Edward Albee (now 82) in his recent interviews; it’s also true of that other Edward, Edward Bond, six of whose plays are being revived during an “Edward Bond Season” at the Cock Tavern Theatre in London. (“All power to the Cock,” says a snickeringly ebullient Lyn Gardner.) An interview with Bond, now 76, appears this week at the BBC Web site, where Bond discusses this “Bond Season” and his own place in the current British theatrical scene:

Why doesn’t my stuff fit in with what happens in UK theatre at the moment? This is because I think UK theatre has abandoned its responsibilities. It’s not appropriate for our times. …  I think the work in the British theatre at the moment is not good and I don’t think people really understand much about the possibilities of theatre. I’m certain they don’t rise to the crisis of drama that we are presented with.

He is even less enamored of the current offerings of television. The entire interview is here; an earlier, undated interview with John Tusa, even more pugnacious (and in which Tusa takes considerable offense), is also available on the BBC Web site.

Bond is not the only playwright to which a theatre has devoted a season; there is also, as we all know, the Tony Kushner season currently underway at the Signature Theatre Company. Recently New York magazine’s Jesse Green took the time to spend a few days with the writer; his profile appears in this week’s issue and is available online here. Green describes the Signature Theatre Kushner season as “hagiographic” and notes its contribution to the “canonization of Saint Tony,” and contributes somewhat to that same hagiography and canonization: “Well, Williams was a pill-popper, O’Neill a drunk, Brecht a womanizer,” Green writes. “By the standard of the modern playwrights in his own pantheon, Kushner really is a saint: the soul of probity, kindness, and social engagement. And though he has certainly lost friends, he seems to have spent his professional life seeking to disprove Auden’s dictum that real artists aren’t nice: ‘All their best feelings go into their work and life has the residue.’” On the current administration, Kushner has this to say:

And the LGBT community, what are they, we, looking for? Yes, we’ve been asked to wait a very long time, asked to eat oceans of shit by the Democratic Party; we’ve been 75 percent loyal for decades without a wobble and without a whole lot of help from these people. And it’s important that somebody keeps screaming; the trick is how do you scream, and who do you scream to? If we’re dissatisfied with these Democrats, let’s get better ones instead of fantasies about mass uprisings that are going to resemble the October Revolution. Yes, it might sometimes feel good to throw the newspaper across the room. There’s much criticism of Obama that’s legitimate. He backs down on things, he waffles, like on the mosque, and you wince. And I consider his decision to appeal the Federal court ruling abolishing DADT to be unethical, tremendously destructive, and potentially politically catastrophic. But is Obama really supposed to say, as the first African-American president, that same-sex marriage is his first priority? Clearly he believes in it; he’s a constitutional scholar. It’s not conceivable to me that he believes that state-sponsored marriage should be unavailable to same-sex couples, even if he has religious scruples. But do I think he should have lost the election for the chance to say he supported same-sex marriage? No. Given that we would have had John McCain and Sarah Palin, I would have said, “Say anything you need to.” So if he’s moving very cautiously, with two wars he’s inherited and a collapsing global economy and the planet coming unglued — Okay!

The entire interview is available here. (I’m somewhat surprised the blogosphere hasn’t picked up on this, but there you are.)

Speaking of the dramatic and theatrical blogosphere, at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center this coming Monday 25 October, New York picks up where Melbourne left off; on the heels of the Wheeler Center’s “Critical Failure” conference comes “Condition: Critical,” a panel discussion moderated by David Cote (Time Out New York) and featuring comments from Jeffrey Eric Jenkins (the Best Plays yearbook), Claudia La Rocco (WNYC and The New York Times), Rob Weinert-Kendt (American Theatre) and Jason Zinoman (The New York Times). “There’s no denying that blogs, Twitter and shrinking media budgets are taking a toll on this once-honored vocation [theatre criticism],” the Web page for the event offers. “What is the difference between reviewing and criticism? Can online platforms lead to a resurgence of long-form criticism, or can they re-define the triad of artist, critic and audience member? How have the aesthetics of blogs affected the language of criticism? What are new models for creating and disseminating criticism?” To paraphrase Mark Twain, the trouble begins at 6.30pm; admission is free; the Segal Center is at 365 Fifth Avenue in New York.

Finally, in the “Books Received” department, something chilling. In fiction, Dr. Frankenstein and his loyal henchman Igor cheerily exhumed the bodies of the dead for their experiments, but this fiction was based on fact. In his new novel Vivocraft: Letters from a Getman, Eric Saks provides a fantasia of contemporary “resurrectionists,” freelance bodysnatchers now in the pay of the genetic technology industry rather than medical schools; his lead character travels around the world to collect rare genetic material from the living and dead alike. (How much of this fantasia is fantasy and how much truth is for the genetic technology industry to say; Mary Shelley didn’t make it up, either.) Post-Shelley, Saks’ style marries Robert Lewis Stevenson to William S. Burroughs for a freewheeling parody and satire of capitalism and consumerism, infused with a laconic eroticism. Saks promises a multimedia version of the book soon; the print version is now on sale here.

Good housekeeping

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You missed a speck

UPDATE: Interestingly, judging from his comments below, Cameron Woodhead has just mentioned at Alison’s Theatre Notes that he is starting his very own theatre blog (whether it will be under the umbrella of The Age or on his very own bat remains to be seen). If you can’t beat ‘em …

***

Just doing some sweeping up around Superfluities Redux. Note that all of the recent posts on the history of American drama now have their own category here; I’m glad to see that these entries are getting some traffic, but then the academic year has just begun and all those undergraduate survey courses in American drama are getting underway (beware, professors, of plagiarists! unless it’s you who are doing the Google searches). Fear not, regular readers: the usual suspects, including Samuel Beckett, Howard Barker, Theodor Adorno, George Bataille and others, will return to these pages next week, and these short essays on American drama will become somewhat more sporadic.

Keen-eyed readers will also note that the “Organum” and “Critique of Tragedy” entries are no longer available through the main menus, although existing links to these individual entries should still be active. Much of this material will be published in a revised form in Word Made Flesh, coming in just a few months from EyeCorner Press.

My corner of the blogosphere operates as a gift economy — the writings here intended to be available, without cost, to the reader, and I receive no remuneration for them either via either a publisher or advertisers — and so it took some consideration before reaching the decision to archive these online versions, which after all have been available for free since the projects began about five years ago. But as second editions of books come out, their first editions go out of print; because the book will contain heavily revised versions of this material, it will constitute, if it’s only a first edition in print, a second edition in reality.

I have been fortunate in that this gift economy has worked so well. Although I’ve received not a penny for the writings here since its inception almost seven years ago, I have received other, far more valuable gifts, not least those remarkably close friendships which have formed between me and my readership; these friends are among the most perspicacious readers of Superfluities Redux, but they’re far more than that to me.

I had this in mind while I was reading Chapter Two of the Croggon/Woodhead contretemps in Australia; the debate that began at the Critical Failure conference last week has spilled onto the pages of The Age, for which Woodhead is the chief drama critic, and into the comments section of several of Alison’s posts, including Alison’s review of Martin Crimp’s The City. Most recently, Woodhead published in his column in The Age an essay called “If you’re a critic on the internet, everyone can hear you scream,” a sort-of denunciation of much of the dramatic blogosphere. A few excerpts:

In the face of my internet silence, the blogosphere proceeded to hate me in ways that have multiplied and gone viral and feral. To be fair, I’ve had the odd defender on there, too. …

A global community of such critics has flourished, and the best theatre discussion it produces is lively, informed and illuminating, though it is no coincidence that our brightest online critics have worked — or do work — in more mainstream media.

On the internet, everyone can hear you scream. And with no editor to rein you in, the responsibility that comes with online criticism is terrifying.

More than one print journalist has fallen from grace by failing to observe ethical standards in public discourse, especially on social media. …

Considered reviews are all very well, but ill-considered and intemperate flaming is, alas, much more likely online. And in the blogosphere, there is no ink — the stain won’t wash away.

The two media — newspapers and pamphlets; print media and the internet — should complement as well as compete with each other.

What they should not do is race to the bottom, defaming critics and journalists who operate in one medium or the other, discarding critical thinking and the ethical dimensions of public discussion along the way.

I quote so extensively from Woodhead’s article not because I disagree with it — I don’t, really — but to point out that deleted from the excerpt above are several divisive comments on Ms. Croggon’s “misrepresentation” of Woodhead’s opinions (that unforgiving Internet allows you to judge for yourself on whether he’s been misrepresented or not; a video of the panel discussion is here).

That Woodhead has devoted 750 or so words to the controversy in his newspaper column — for which he has presumably been paid, generously or not as the case may be — points up one of Alison’s more cogent observations in her original piece for ABC’s The Drum Unleashed blog: “What the internet means for the old-fashioned print critic,” she said, “is the end of institutional authority. That so many of these critics mistake institutional authority for critical authority says everything you need to know.” The shade of a respected publication, as well as a hand in its pockets — whether it’s The Age, Time Out New York, or The New York Times — provides comfort and protection, along with that putative authority. How nice for the old-fashioned print critic.

Unfortunately, the readership makes this same mistake, but it’s upon this mistake that these critics rely for their continuing status. Like Woodhead, I have been the subject of “ill-considered and intemperate flaming” (“the blogosphere proceeded to hate me in ways that have multiplied and gone viral and feral” as well; next time you’re in New York, Cameron, I’ll buy you a drink), but unlike his situation it has not come from bulletin-boards or unpaid individual outlets like this one, though there has been some share of that, but from that institutional  media upon which print critics (and increasingly online critics, such as those who write for The Guardian) depend for their authority. As part of his responsibilities as editor of Time Out New York‘s theatre section and its blog “Upstaged” — which have far greater circulation figures, online and in print, than Superfluities Redux ever did — David Cote was paid, received financial remuneration in some small way, for his flaming, as Woodhead is being paid for his contribution to the “You started it/No, you started it” argument into which the current debate has devolved. I’d also like to know, per Woodhead’s statement that “with no editor to rein you in, the responsibility that comes with online criticism is terrifying,” who edits editors like David Cote. In a gift economy, this can be accounted something of a theft — of reputation, if nothing else — in the pursuit of what? defensiveness? rationalization? money? entertainment? whatever.

I wouldn’t bring this up except that Woodhead’s also right in that attacks like this are indeed “stains that won’t wash away.” I have a thick skin, but it is not made of steel; although David’s piece was published in July of last year, a friend and well-respected director and playwright here in New York recently brought it to my attention again recently, and although it caused me no pain, it was embarrassing; it’s hard enough getting on in this gift economy without having this crop up again and again.

But this is thankfully rare. I’m not sure how much Woodhead thinks about these attacks against him when he writes for print publication in The Age or deposits his paycheck. I must say I don’t think about Cote’s piece much either as I continue pursuing Superfluities Redux, prose style and all; no mainstream print publication or paycheck for me, however. And I’m afraid the rest of the blogosphere will have to answer for itself to Woodhead’s arguments. I continue to possess, after all, the gifts that I receive — and these are beyond all price or measures of popularity.

Flat against the sky

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It is an increasingly rare pleasure to come across new blogs that offer interesting, long-form writing about theatre and drama, but when it comes it’s a pleasure nonetheless. Sarah Grochala’s Flat Against the Sky is one such blog. Ms. Grochala describes herself as a “theatre writer,” a PhD student at Queen Mary College, University of London, and the winner of the 2007 Amnesty International/iceandfire Protect the Human Playwriting Competition for her play S-27.

Though I’d normally be reluctant to recommend a blog based on a first, single post, I feel safe in doing so here. Her first entry on the arguments for and against “immersive theatre,” “Shopping,” is a nuanced and knowledgable offering:

The arguments for immersive theatre as liberating and empowering make a lot of sense to me intellectually, but I don’t quite buy them in real terms. This is because I often find these performances don’t make me feel either liberated or empowered. They make me feel highly controlled. I’m not a deliberately disruptive participant, but sometimes I have gone “off script.” Seeing some movement on the other side of a large snow covered room during Before I Sleep, I struck out across the drifts to investigate, only to be sharply reprimanded by the theatre police. I dutifully returned back to the path. A very linear path, it should be noted and exactly the same path that everyone before and after me will have followed. In this situation, I don’t feel that I have agency. I feel restricted and oppressed.

As you’ll see when you read her entire entry, this is far from the only facet of her complex response, but it is well and truly delivered. Her blog promises to be a fine companion to Chris Goode’s Thompson’s Bank of Communicable Desire, another long-form idiosyncratic blog of unique interest to theatre writers and others.

Offer Ms. Grochala your welcome to the blogosphere, and encourage her (as we all so often need the encouragement) to continue on.