Recently reading Jonathan Kalb’s Great Lengths, his book about marathon theatre productions, I began to muse about the idea of excess. In recent years it has been not only excessive length which has captured the imagination of artists, but also excessive action, excessive volume. In 2007, the live band of Theater of a Two-Headed Calf’s Drum of the Waves of Horikawa provided an extremely loud musical accompaniment. Drew Baker’s 2008 composition Stress Position, written for Marilyn Nonken, electronically amplifies a piano played at ffff in an effort to test and even exceed the toleration of the audience’s hearing. In 2009, John Zorn’s score for Richard Foreman’s Astronome was played so loudly that the Ontological’s ushers puckishly distributed disposable earplugs to audience members as they entered. And recently, Howard Barker has been exploring the notion of plethora in new plays and essays that similarly test the audience’s abilities to construct theatrical and dramatic experience.

What is perhaps ironic about all of these is that in an effort to overwhelm the sense of hearing, they fail, are doomed at the outset to failure — the performer is in the same room as the audience, and what would overwhelm the latter would overwhelm the former. So long as the performer continues at that volume, it remains humanly tolerable, if challenging (though only somewhat; these 50-year-old ears aren’t perhaps as sensitive as they used to be, and you’ll please forgive me if I ask you to speak to me a little louder). In most cases, this just becomes loud noise, loud enough to be tolerated, its extension over time becomes not illuminating but tedious, if annoying.

This kind of extremity, combined with an extremity of duration, design, and gesture, intends to overwhelm the individual spectator, and at the same time dissolve his individual identity into that of the collective of the audience. It is pertinent to ask at this point, then, whether this excess is a genuine insight into the noise-filled urban culture in which it is presented or it is merely a reflection of that culture — if it is art, once again, reduced to being a mirror of the world rather than a window into what lies behind it. The noise, the excess, makes it extremely hard to think — that is the intent behind it; we are instead to experience, as merely one atom in the pool of the collective audience, this monolithic excess, our own personalities erased, reduced to mere hearers rather than individual agents of perception. The experience of nuance is difficult, if not impossible. It is art — theatre and music — as steamroller.

Compare, at the other extreme, John Cage’s landmark 1952 composition 4’33″. In this brief work, composer, performer, and auditor collaborate to shape the impure silence and stillness of the performance space in time, contemplation, and gesture. (The title of Cage’s most important book, Silence, is not ironic.) The experience of 4’33″ is as disciplined for performer as it is for the auditor; additionally, it is impossible for the performer to shape the experience of the individual hearing it. The chance operations involved in the work are the possession not only of the performer but also the audience; the performer cannot dictate, in the end, what the audience is to hear. She can only attempt to shape it as the center of the visual experience of the work, provide alternatives for attention, rather than dictate the eradication of nuance. In recent years, even the stillness and silence envisioned by the piece have become intolerable to some, who have interrupted these performances with, in one case I know of, political statements — as if 4’33″ represented a kind of aesthetic and political quietism; the collective bursts into the experience of the individual once again, interrupting and undermining individual reception.

In terms of excessive length, the most recent example is the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma’s Life & Times. The first four parts of this very long work (which may, in the end, reach 24 hours) can be experienced either as a marathon or sequentially. This requires, obviously, a major investment of time (and in some cases money) for anyone who wishes to experience it as a whole. Because of this, it raises the question whether or not the audience for this experience is composed of a rather peculiar elite: an elite that can afford the time and the money to see it. After all, time spent with Life & Times is time not spent someplace else, at work, with family, or at even another play. Through its excessive vision and practice, is NTOK actually alienating and shutting out that portion of the audience that does not have the temporal or economic resources to attend?

And it is perhaps a question of resources. What I am left with, in the end, is a question about whether the theatre should concentrate on doing more with less once again, instead of more with more (or, in the worst cases, less with more). We are constantly reminded of the extent to which corporations and governments are co-opting swathes of land, of money, of natural resources that might be better left to the conservation of smaller groups. When theatre artists attempt to similarly exploit those resources — of sensual tolerance, of attention, of individual agency, of time, of money — is it not just as arrogant, just as authoritarian? Is it not yet another imposition of the collective or the dictatorial artist upon individual consciousness and the ability to make sense of the world? If we are encouraged to conserve our planet’s resources for the use of others, artists should consider conserving these resources for the use of other artists and their audiences as well.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to visit the anechoic chamber at Cooper Union. It was an extraordinary experience: in filtering out all noise, even the echo, one hears the pulse of the self. It is unique, even disturbing — but for all that, it encourages the person in the chamber to genuinely feel and hear the unique rhythms and pulses of one’s own bodied experience. I’m not suggesting that art necessarily attempt to imitate explicitly this experience. But it is an alternative to some art — which, at times, is like standing in a subway tunnel as two screeching, speeding trains collide in front of you in slow motion.

For an alternative vision, see “Theatre as sanctuary.”

Like it or not, for most Americans Broadway is this country’s center of theatre and drama. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars are invested in Broadway shows every year, catering to natives and tourists alike. Even those who can’t visit New York go to their regional theatres (when they go at all) usually to see plays or shows which have had the imprimatur of a Broadway production. In this sense — whatever sense that is — Broadway is a success, but other kinds of success are questionable. Gross receipts on Broadway shows continue to rise, as do ticket prices, but so do costs, and it’s hard to get precise figures on just how much of these receipts constitute net profit — whether Broadway is a success even in capitalistic terms remains an open question. Some individual Broadway shows do indeed return profits to their investors, and these are trumpeted in the press; but similar accurate figures for the Broadway sector itself seem elusive. And for a very long time many critics and practitioners have debated whether Broadway shows constitute any kind of aesthetic success at all.

Because of this, the TEDxBroadway event held on 28 January bears some minor interest to observers of American drama and theatre. And I say minor interest because there doesn’t seem to be much there, except perhaps as a demonstration of how language in the service of high-flown self-congratulatory rhetoric can be utterly emptied and devoid of content. I didn’t attend the event myself, but various reports about it are interesting studies in narcissism. One of the event organizers, Broadway producer Ken Davenport, has conveniently put together a list of quotes from presenters, which he calls “takeaways,” from the event at his blog. Among them:

“Everyone on Broadway is a gambler. So there’s only one reason to produce on Broadway. To have fun. Best way to have fun? Do something good. Really good. Roll yiour dice on excellence.”

“Make every seat in every theater a great seat to allow for the intimate exchange of ideas between each artist and each audience member.”

“I have friends that believe the sippy cup is the end of days. Our pretentiousness regarding audiences that are seeing shows for the first time (tourists, etc.) simply stands in the way of growing and sharing our business.  Populism has its own manifest destiny and we need to embrace it.  Embrace the sippy cup.”

“School + Broadway = Infinite Possibilities.”

“Broadway needs to take the storytelling aspect of what we what do onstage and take it to the lobby. Even the bathrooms.  Start the experience of your show at the front door.”

“Marketing is the gift-giving business.  We’re giving the gift of Broadway.  And we should impact those who never come to Broadway as much as those who can.”

“Art and technology are two sides of the same coin.  A world without art is not a world worth connecting.”

Presumably more objective, former executive director of the American Theatre Wing Howard Sherman wrote about the event for the Los Angeles Times. Sherman reported that the main theme coming out of the conference was that “A better Broadway can be achieved through access for, engagement with and connection to the audience,” which should earn the TEDx conference a place on the cover of next month’s Duh! magazine (though I would like to know just what that “better” means).

But Sherman also reports on what is for me the most revealing comment made by a presenter at the conference, which Davenport somehow failed to include among his takeaways: Adam Thurman, the marketing director of Chicago’s Court Theatre, let slip the real issue when he said, “We need more people who love us.” This is less an idea or takeaway than a pathetic cry for attention. The nice thing about self-love is that it’s almost always reciprocated; the nasty thing about it is that you can never be sure if the object of your affection really deserves it.

With slowly declining national interest in the televised Tony Awards and even in fictional representations of Broadway on television like Smash (an intriguing recent report on that show’s internal troubles can be found here), one can understand the somewhat desperate air that seems to surround events like TEDxBroadway.

Not that the TEDx events generally aren’t susceptible to ridicule themselves, as the brilliant parody Onion Talks demonstrate. But a word that is frequently associated with these events is “smart.” I had always assumed that by “smart” was meant intelligent and insightful — and having watched a few of these energetic but for all their flash conceptually empty mini-lectures, I couldn’t agree. But then I realized I was wrong. By “smart,” I now think, was meant “trendy, stylish, superficial,” and not intelligent or insightful at all. By that score, the TEDxBroadway conference succeeded in spades.

Despite the provisional obituaries that continue to be written about the Modernist project, some publishers and editors keep the flame alight. The newest among them is Contra Mundum Press, established in 2011; and in the few short years of its existence, its books have attracted a significant amount of attention. A few weeks ago in the Guardian, Nicholas Lezard approvingly noted (“exquisitely thought-provoking”) its new translation of Marginalia on Casanova by Miklós Szentkuthy, and CMP’s current offerings include new volumes by and about Robert Kelly, Fernando Pessoa’s Philosophical Essays, a book of writings by director Elio Petri, and — quite soon — a collection of texts by Richard Foreman, for which I had the privilege of writing an introduction.

“CMP is dedicated to the value and the indispensable importance of the individual voice. … Our principal interest is in Modernism, but works of innovation, vision, and genius from any era will be considered for publication,” the publisher’s mission statement reads in part. In a recent issue of the Brooklyn Rail, publisher Rainer Hanshe discusses CMP and its aims at much greater length. “We hope with Contra Mundum to persist in opposition to many prevailing forces, powers, and trends. The press is informed by a particular aesthetic and vision, as well as a desire for new horizons,” Hanshe tells Andrea Scrima. He weighs the pluses and minuses of the print-on-demand model on which CMP is based, the necessity for a continuing dedication to translation, and a variety of other issues, all of which are worth your attention.

CMP is also now the publisher of Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, which re-launches this month with an issue featuring new translations of Rene Char and others, an essay about Thomas Bernhard by Andrew Utter, and reviews of various books, including my own review of David Ian Rabey’s English Drama Since 1940. The publisher promises that issues of Hyperion will be published on a regular basis from here on out. Enjoy.

I’ll be bundling up later for the first of my two visits to La MaMa ETC over the next few weeks: tonight, for Simona Maicanescu in Lars Norén’s new production of Wallace Shawn’s The Fever, and at the beginning of February for The Foundry Theatre’s Good Person of Szechwan, with Taylor Mac and directed by Lear deBessonet. I recently wrote about the Shawn play here and the Brecht play here.

It feels good to be getting out and about again, even if I have to brave 20-degree temperatures to do it. See you at the theatre.

Given the day, it may be appropriate to conclude with Maurice Ravel’s La valse (1920). In his Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, Carl Schorske writes:

At the close of World War I, Maurice Ravel recorded in La valse the violent death of the nineteenth-century world. The waltz, long the symbol of gay Vienna, became in the composer’s hands a frantic danse macabre. Ravel wrote: “I feel this work a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, linked in my mind with the impression of a fantastic whirl of destiny.” His grotesque memorial serves as a symbolic introduction to a problem of history: the relationship of politics and the psyche in fin-de-siècle Vienna.

Although Ravel celebrates the destruction of the world of the waltz, he does not initially present that world as unified. The work opens rather with an adumbration of the individual parts, which will compose the whole: fragments of waltz themes, scattered over a brooding stillness. Gradually the parts find each other — the martial fanfare, the vigorous trot, the sweet obligato. the sweeping major melody. Each element is drawn, its own momentum magnetized, into the wider whole. Each unfolds its individuality as it joins its partners in the dance. The pace accelerates; almost imperceptibly the sweeping rhythm passes over into the compulsive, then into the frenzied. The concentric elements become eccentric, disengaged from the whole, thus transforming harmony into cacophony. The driving pace continues to build when suddenly caesuras appear in the rhythm; the auditor virtually stops to stare in horror at the void created when a major element for a moment falls silent, ceases to act. Partial paralysis of each element weakens the movement, and yet the whole is moving, relentlessly driving as only compulsive three-quarter time can. Through to the very end, when the waltz crashes in a cataclysm of sound, each theme continues to breathe its individuality, eccentric and distorted now, in the chaos of totality.

Below, a performance of La valse by the Orchestre National de France. Leonard Bernstein conducts.