A place to put my musings on art, community, and life because if I keep it in my head, well it hasn't worked out for me so far...why don't you hold it for a spell?
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I am posting this here today because this is the first day of my new campaign, which means...that's right...
PATRONS GET EARLY ACCESS
So no new posts today.
I know.
SO sad.
But, today is just as good a day as any to get started and support me on Patreon!
Today we discuss one of Bevin's spirit jam questions:
What is our responsibility to those we love?
I'll just insert this here and go back to it:
Initial response:
NONE.
My initial answer is nothing.
But, that sounds too harsh.
We have no responsibility to those that we love?
That doesn't sound right.
But, there must be a truth in the gut reaction, right?
So, taking it as a partial truth.
"We have no responsibility to those that we love."
Why?
Because we are our own persons.
We are responsible for making ourselves happy.
That is true of us all.
Therefore, we have no responsibility or obligation to those that we love because it is up to each of us to make us happy.
Okay.
What else?
Considered response:
SOME.
There is some responsibility to the ones we love.
But, what is it?
How do we determine what it is/might be in any given situation? Partial truth:
"We have some responsibilities to those that we love. "
So what might that be?
I think it is an understood relationship.
Something that is crafted and that we can all agree with.
Meaning, those who engage in sex and expect to have a baby have a responsibility to each other.
They expect and, I think, are responsible to one another and to the child to take care of one another, to support one another.
Now, what shape/details does that entail?
I do not know, they could be anything that is agreed to or understood.
The point is that there is a relationship that is entered and agreed upon.
"We are going to be parents. Therefore, we must enter into a paternal/maternal//paternal/paternal//maternal/maternal//(whatever non-heteronormativity you can insert) responsibility.
Final thought:
FRIENDS
Watching the video, I think it is one of the best ideas for responsibility to those we love:
"Treat them how you would your best friend."
What a beautiful idea.
If everyone treated those they loved as if they were their best friends? What a world in which we would live.
The idea of EQUALITY: out the window! The idea is one of FAIRNESS!
I want to contribute to this date/holiday, but only make a fifth of your earning potential.
It is a lavish, extravagant holiday.
I cannot pay for half the holiday.
Can I pay for a fifth?
Fair.
That is what I would expect of friends and of partners who work well together.
No one is obligated to pay for everything.
But, it is our responsibility to do our fair share.
Right?
Doing it the other way round.
I could feasibly pay for this entire holiday, but to have the other person not even so much as offer to help out?
Or have them offer to help and then deny them the ability to do it?
None of that seems fair or friendly.
It is important to allow people the opportunity to contribute where they can and to accept help whenever possible.
So that would be my best answer.
"Our responsibility to those that we love is the same as that to our best friends."
We enter into a relationship, a partnership, a teammate situation where we each contribute fairly to one another because that is what we have agreed upon, recognizing that it is to ourselves that we must turn to if we are unhappy with a situation, but we can always ask for help.
Here is a picture of foxes to illustrate the point:
Today let us discuss genre.
Genre is a way of organizing art into categories.
That is literally it.
Now, we can talk about the different classes of theatre, but the essential idea of genre comes down to just that:
Classification.
Therefore genre is the classification of theatre (or other art forms) into more manageable parts.
SO let us start with the biggies:
Tragedy and Comedy!
You know these masks.
Everybody knows these masks.
I hate these masks.
But, they are perhaps the two biggest and broadest categories of theatre:
Comedy where everything ends for the best for the protagonist: They get the girl, they get the job, they get money, their parents weren't really dead the whole time, and "Everybody lived happily ever after"
Tragedy where everything ends for the worst for the protagonist: They do not get the girl, they end up a pauper and alone, their parents were poisoned, and everybody DIES. THE END.
Now, you may have noticed something about what constrains these two genres:
Everything comes down to how they end!
Does it end happily or unhappily?
Why so much emphasis on the end?
Because until the end, comedy and tragedy are identical.
Why do I say that?
Because of Murphy's Law.
Murphy's Law states:
"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."
-Murphy
What does this have to do with comedy/tragedy?
Everything.
Because it is an innate principle of story:
Anything that can go wrong will.
Look at Romeo & Juliet
A Montague bites his thumb at a Capulet
They fight and people are killed
The families are banned from ever quarreling again
The Capulets throw a big celebration
The Montagues sneak in
Romeo falls in love with Juliet (masked)
They get married
Romeo's best friend is killed by Juliet's cousin
Romeo kills Juliet's cousin
Romeo is banished
Juliet is courted by a new suitor
She fakes her death to avoid another marriage
Romeo hears of her death and goes to her tomb to die with her
Just before he takes the poison, Juliet wakes up and they elope
The families agree to never fight again for the sake of their children
And they all lived happily ever after!
Now, for those who don't know the play, I may have lied.
The second to last point is incorrect.
Textually Romeo takes the poison before Juliet wakes up.
She discovers him and we get a double suicide.
But, that is how easily it all could have gone right!
If Juliet were awake when Romeo got to the tomb, the whole play could have gone differently.
So Tragedy and Comedy come down to the second to last point (otherwise known as the final climax, just before the denouement)
Well...sort of.
See genre also tends toward something called style.
Style is the way in which something is presented.
I just described a comedic Romeo & Juliet.
However, Romeo & Juliet is a tragedy.
And it is: nobody ends the play happily, certainly not the main characters.
Therefore, the play is by my definition a tragedy.
So the play is often designed and acted like this:
Tragedy (classically, I won't say all of the time or even most of the time) is construed as being heavy in tone, therefore,
darker/muted colors with dramatic flashes are used (note the red of Juliet's dress and Romeo's neutrals),
extreme locales or surrealistic sets with intense symbolism (note the fallen leaves and falling down the stairs as opposed to up)
However, if a play could be either comedy or tragedy until the end, it stands to reason that a valid interpretation of Romeo & Juliet might be something like:
Comedy (again tends, not as a rule) is construed as being lighter in tone, therefore:
lighter/brighter colors (notice the pinks and yellows of Juliet and the greens/gold in Romeo)
settings punctuated for comedic/picturesque effect (Juliet is literally sparkling right now)
It is entirely dealer's choice.
It depends on what the artists wish to accomplish with their performance.
Are the themes of destiny/fate of the star crossed lovers to be highlighted and hinted early on, suggesting it was never going to end happily?
Are the themes of love triumphs to be highlighted and that ultimately at any point this could have been prevented if the families had paid more attention to their children?
Thus, when talking about genre it is important to keep style in mind, but they need not be dependent on one another.
Remember genres can be as many and varied and nuanced as:
Tragicomedy
Burlesque
Farce
Light Farce
Black Comedy
Minstrelsy
Or schools of thought like:
Epic Theatre
Theatre of Cruelty
Theatre of the Absurd
Holy Theatre
So what is the point of genre for artists?
I believe it is meant to be a kind of shorthand.
I have had conversations that literally went inside of rehearsal:
"Well, this is a comedy. We all know what that means. Yuck, yuck."
-Unnamed Director
One of my favorite sayings about style came from our discussions on Romeo & Juliet
"We will discover the 'style' through rehearsal."
-Blair Anderson
Because ain't that the frigging truth?
We work on style collaboratively and make it out of whatever stuff the actors/directors/designers bring to the performance.
I firmly believe Romeo & Juliet is a comedy until it isn't.
Therefore, in productions I direct or act in, I attempt to bring that energy to the performance.
I say attempt because there are absolutely those who think antithetically to me.
And that includes the audience.
Some believe R&J is a tragedy and they should be crying for five acts and are afraid when they chuckle.
I have spoken with these people.
So style is something dynamic that the performers/audience collaboratively create.
What about genres?
I don't find them a useful shorthand in my work.
In fact in trying to discuss genre, I am at a loss for what to say mostly because it is an abstract idea.
I can talk for hours about tragedy or comedy, but genre? *shrugs*
Today we discuss Titus Andronicus.
Or at least my favorite bit to illustrate a larger point.
In particular, two noteworthy productions:
One at the Seattle Shakespeare Company:
And one at the Globe:
(You can just hear his balls swinging)
In particular, and I am going to go ahead and shout SPOILERS
Some things happen that I think we need to get out of the way.
There is the rape, behanding, and de-tonguing of the sole virgin in the show (phew glad we started with that one)
Her brothers are falsely accused of murder
Her father has his hand cut off to appease the power mad Emperor
His hand and his sons' decapitated heads are returned to him
This all culminates in what is perhaps the funniest exit in Shakespeare (yes, I am including Exeunt pursued by a bear):
Titus asks his brother to grab one son's head while he grabs the other.
Then, he asks his daughter to grab his hand.
One problem and I will wait for my audience to catch it...
SHE DOESN'T HAVE HANDS.
There, I said it.
Now, I want to illustrate how this was handled in each production:
At Seattle Shakes, Titus is driven to insanity by his grief. He is cold in his comfort, methodical. He asks his brother to remove one son's head. The brother ineptly reaches out grasping at the carrion. Titus takes the other and deftly pulls it off the pike. His brother does likewise. Titus lifts his hand off the pike and puts it in his daughter's face and asks her: "Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth." Dutifully she does so, they cross to center stage, hold a tableau, and awkwardly exit. It was fun. But, was it art?
At The Globe, Titus is driven to insanity by his grief. He is cold in his comfort, methodical. He asks his brother to pick up one of his son's heads (they are in bloody bags, soaking on the floor). He does so. Titus grasps the other with his one good hand. And says to Lavinia: "Bear thou my hand, sweet wench." She looks at him. He gestures at her as if to say "My hands are full." And SHE SPENDS ONE FULL MINUTE TRYING TO LIFT IT WITH HER ELBOWS. Then, Titus, pityingly says, "Between thy teeth." And we see her horror and then her determination as she spends another 30 seconds trying before she grabs it and stands up to the horror of 500 spectators.
Now, if you can't tell...I like the second option more.
I would bet most anyone would (save those with infirm constitutions; seriously, people straight left the theatre at that moment).
WHY?
Impoliteness.
The ability to make things difficult onstage.
See, there is this thing necessary to story: Conflict
Conflict is necessary to story.
It is the antagonistic elements of the story embodied by people, natural/social forces, or things.
It can be literally anything, but it drives the characters towards their conclusion.
The first Titus is a great example of stage business in much theatre that I see.
It seems like great staging: the horror of forcing a putrid hand on his daughter.
But, that is textual!
What did the acting or the directing contribute to that moment?
Nothing.
One actor said the lines written by Shakespeare and passed a hand to the logical place according to the line.
Conflict and impoliteness stem from making such a moment, any moment, every moment as difficult as humanly possible.
What do I mean by this?
What makes story/drama so attractive to audience is the opposing forces of protagonist and antagonism.
The greater the polarity, the greater the story.
So it isn't enough to have someone without hands carry the hand in their teeth because the lines dictate it.
Another example?
There are so many....
When actors die onstage, but the body needs to be hidden, they always manage to fall just offstage.
Or when actors are about to be hanged and although they are "fighting for their life" they willingly step up onto the gallows.
These are opportunities! Missed ones.
I present for your viewing pleasure one of my favorite plays:
THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG! (Yes! That is the actual title)
Why do I love this play so much?
Because Everything goes Wrong!
There is not a moment where anything goes right for these floundering community performers.
And so everything has to be fought for, figured out, and dealt with immediately.
Everything is really, really hard!
And that makes for great comedy and great drama.
SO what are some solutions?
1) Be more like Ella Enchanted.
Are you familiar with the premise?
A young girl is cursed with Obedience, capital OB.
She has to do everything asked of her.
However, she has to do what was literally asked, not the interpretation/meaning behind it.
Makes for a thorny problem when a willful girl sets her mind to it.
e.g. Asked for hot tea, gets it thrown in their face
Sack up and don't do everything that the director or fellow actors ask of you.
At least, don't do it in the way they asked it of you.
You will be surprised at the results.
2) Stop Saying Sorry, Ask Did it Work?
Mistakes happen.
Things muck up.
It happens.
Onstage.
Use it!
Nobody ever did anything great without a little risk.
If you accidentally took a risk and it caused a reaction onstage, exploit it.
Meaning: ask if it worked.
Doesn't matter what it was: accidental butt grab, spilling, tripping, false exit, late entrance.
Find out if it worked and if it did, keep it.
3) Find Out what would Help the Most and do the Opposite
This takes some getting used to and is difficult to phrase without specific examples.
Scenario: You are asked to simulate an assassination. The man is before you, prone, open, ignorant of your premise. You are just that good. The only thing holding you back is your conscience. Damn, damn conscience! You open fire. The scene is done. Alternatively, the man becomes aware of your presence, he fights for his life, running about the room, dodging you and your pleas to just talk. He threatens the alarm, you stop him and now you have the choice to make: kill him or let him go and lose your own life.
Basically, evaluate the ideal, the perfect ending to the scene/activity/moment.
Then, work against it.
Work as far in the opposite direction as you possibly can.
Start there, and then keep fighting.
Let the other people do the work and trust that they will carry you to where you need to go.
This takes practice.
It takes ensemble.
It takes trust.
Not every one will like this and it is not nearly as covert as the other two options.
This is meant to be tried in rehearsal and not during performance for safety concerns.
