Entertainment vs. Art

Go Big or Go Home?
With all the hype around Harry Potter run amok, Scott Walter's post on Harry Potter and Classist Nonsense and the comments got me thinking.

I always find it interesting that when a discussion of high vs. popular art and commerce vs. art come up, Shakespeare is put up as the high art symbol. In his day he was ridiculed by the elite, for being lower than Marlow or Jonson and being simply mass entertainment for the dregs and groundlings. People still try to say with his education there is no way the historical "actor" William could have ever written those works.

I'm not saying that 400 years from now the Harry Potter books won't be up on a museum pedestal (haven't read one yet, though I'm sure I will when my son gets a little older), but time has a way of weeding out works--for better or worse. Many of Shakespeare's plays are more entertaining than much that followed, so they stayed around. When's the last time you saw a production of The Poetaster?

So when all the "snobs" out there making the distinction between high and low art are long gone, if the planet's still around, people will make up their own minds about what is significant, as they see fit. Much like we do with old Bill Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Though I would argue that putting something on a high art mantle kills it, as it does with "Classical Shakes-peare" I mentioned before about being shussed for laughing during a cultural outing/production of Troilus and Cressida. The people around me were there to show their culture by sitting at the theatre. I was there to watch a show. We get ourselves into trouble when we try to recreate great works like a museum exhibit, it sucks the life out of them. Peter Brook would call it the Deadly Theatre

In a somewhat related note, an interesting thing that I've noticed lately is that your typical 16 year old actually has a far better time with Shakespeare than your average 40 year old. For someone who listens to hip hop, the heightened lyrical language isn't the barrier it was, while four people taking for two hours in a quasi-realistic apartment is sheer boredom.

Watching kids is one of my favorite things as an artist, and as a person. They have no filter for niceties. If the are bored, they won't politely make it through and give a standing ovation. Kids check out and move on. Friends of mine told me that as a parent you look at things differently. I thought they were full of shit. Well as Tony Jr. is nearing his first birthday at the end of the summer, it's true. I see things and myself differently. It's hard to explain if you're not there. But when I go to the book store I look at kids books for him, movies I want him to see. They tend to be my favorites from when I was little. We recently got Robin Hood, The Sword in the Stone and The Secret of Nimh on DVD, probably more for me and Jenn as for Tony Jr. Rewatching them brought back memories from what I loved as a child. Big, epic adventures that would carry me away in my imagination. I didn't care if it was a mouse or a fox, and the adventure went on long after the movie had ended. Remembering the stories I loved as a child and that I want to pass down to my son has reaffirmed my belief in what I think is missing in so much of the theatre I see.

Scott says:

We shouldn't be writing about Harry Potter as a way to get people to read more highbrow stuff -- according to Harold Bloom, Potter is valuable only if it leads young people to reading Kipling's racist 19th-century Jungle Book or Just So Stories. Anyway, we shouldn't be writing about Potter as a gateway to high art, but what we ought to bedoing is combing every word of Rowling's books to figure out where the magic is -- how does it work? And then we ought to be figuring out how to create similar magic on our stages.

I couldn't agree more. So much of what I see has lost the magic, the larger than life qualities, the entertainment that brought people to theatres for thousands of years. I am bored with plays about "real life." I have a feeling most of the population is. We have sucked the power of imagination out of so much of what we do. Scenic design that is the perfect recreation of a living room, or an irish bar down to the coasters, doesn't show me talent. It shows me budget. It does not spark my imagination. It doesn't take me away.

I am not arguing for the classics to be done exclusively. Holding on to the past is helpful if it gives insight into the present and future. We can learn and understand why something worked in the past, taking into account the context in which it worked. We can look to Shakespeare, and many others to see why they were successful.

Somehow we got the notion that art was different from entertainment; that art, that theatre shouldn't be entertainment, pandering to audiences. No one wants to be bored. This does not mean theatre should not challenge ideas, perceptions, beliefs, the status quo. It does mean the banner of "art" should never be used as a free pass for boring an audience. It is not location specific, boredom in Rives Jct., MI is the same as boredom in NYC.

I have heard that there is too much competition for an audience's time now: work, movies, tv, concerts, the internet, bars. That assumes that there was no competition before the advent of film: no music, no carnies, no dog/cockfights, no bear pits, no pubs, oh yeah and there was no work before the technological age. There has always been competition for audiences, though the competition has changed over time. It is worth noting that I don't know of a time that there was such an enormous gap in the price of seeing a show versus other options. When faced with competition there are two ways people tend to go. They either become more like their competition--or, use the strengths that the competition cannot provide, to their advantage.

Looking to the past I can see guidance for the future:

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

This is not reality, use your imagination and I'll take you on a journey such as you cannot get anywhere else. An experience you can't get in your boxers or staring at an unmoving screen. A big, epic adventure that will carry you away.

This is what, for me, is missing from so many productions of so many plays I see. When it left so did the people in the stalls. O, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, break from reality and give a reason for people to return.