Western Civilization has enjoyed three (maybe four) major dramatic periods.
Greek - 78 years, 484 - 406BC
Aeschylus 525 - 456 BC, Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound, Oresteia
Sophocles 495 - 405 BC, Oedipus, Antigone, Electra
Euripides 480 - 406 BC, Hippolytus, The Bacchae, Medea
Aristophanes 448 - 385 BC, The Wasps, The Frogs, Lysistrata
Elizabethan - 40 years, 1587 - 1625
Marlowe 1564-1593, Tamburlaine 1587
Kyd 1558-1589, Spanish Tragedy 1589
Shakespeare 1564-1616, HV 1589 - HVIII 1612-13
Fletcher 1584-1625, Rule and Have a Wife 1624
French - 40 years, 1637 - 1677
Corneille 1606-1684 - Le Cid 1637, Polyeucte 1642
Moliere 1622-1673 - Precious Maidens Ridicules 1659, Imaginary Invalid 1673
Racine 1639-1699 - Andormaque 1667, Phedre 1677
The Golden Age of Spanish Theatre probably belongs in here somewhere, and someday I’ll get around to it, but right now I know almost nothing about it save Calderon's Life is a Dream.
The Age of Social Drama began in 1877, with Ibsen's Pillars of Society, and remains the standard.
The Age of Social Drama – 101 years, 1877 - present
Ibsen- Pillars of Society 1877
Arthur Miller - All My Sons 1947, Death of a Salesman 1949
Tennessee Williams - A Streetcar Named Desire 1947
Edward Albee - Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? 1962
Angels in America - 1990
Social Drama has produced good, possibly great dramatic plays, but none qualifies as a masterpiece on par with Oedipus or Hamlet. The past century enjoyed a golden age of comedy, but my focus is on drama, and the drama of the past 100 or so years pales in comparison to the major dramatic periods of the past.
Presently, we are in a theatrical dark age, by no means the first. The theatre has gone dark if not dead for long periods throughout history. One thing is certain: the most influential and dominant theatrical form of the past one hundred and twenty-eight years, Social Drama, worn out due to over use and abuse, intellectually and financially bankrupt, bored, boring and decrepit, is in a big sleep. The theatrical cycles we’ve seen since the ‘70s indicate a rudderless showboat:
Dramas – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Glengarry Glen Ross, “Master Harold” …and the boysMusicals – A Chorus Line, Chicago, Sweeny Todd
Musical spectacles – Les Miz, Cats, Starlight Express, Phantom
Musical revivals – A Chorus Line (Sept. 2006), Chicago, Sweeny Todd
Jukebox musicals –All Shook Up, Good Vibrations, Movin’ Out, Lennon [And many, many more]
Dramatic revivals – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Glengarry Glen Ross, “Master Harold” …and the boys [To name a few. There have been over sixty dramatic revivals on Broadway since 1990]
Staged musicals movies – Urban Cowboy, King of Hearts, My Favorite Year, Sunset Boulevard, The Lion King, Beauty & the Beast, The Color Purple, Two Rotten Scoundrels, Monty Python [To name a very few]
Occasionally, panning for gems pays off – August Wilson’s great cycle comes to mind. And there are others – we all have our personal favorites. But I’m hard pressed to name one that has had the popular impact of, say, Nirvana’s Nevermind.
Sadly, we do not live in a time when theatre is a vital form. Film, TV, pop music, games, the internet – these are vital. The fact that theatre now turns to Hollywood for its ideas says it all. Tragically, we do not live in an age that can accommodate tragedy. Tragedies are the product of optimistic societies; optimism can cope with tragedy. Pessimistic societies require comedies; when you think you're living a tragedy, a little laughter goes a long way.
What the hell happened? Where did the theatre go wrong?
We theatre folk are always blabbing on about how, when it achieves its potential, nothing holds a candle to the impact of live theatre. Why then must we subsidize our audience? Why do so few commercial theatrical ventures fail to recoup their investment? Why get ideas from Hollywood? Simple - the theatre is not living up to its potential.
To ruin an art form all you have to do is give it a grant.
The theatre went horribly wrong in the ‘60s, when, instead of competing with film and TV for audience share, it turned non-profit and began subsidizing a new, smaller, but better audience - an audience of intellectuals, almost exclusively white, who like to consume stories that reflect the homogenized, suburban mall quality of their lives.
Great stories are made to be told to the largest, most diverse audience possible. They are forged in the furnace of competition. They give their audience what it wants. That’s why most of the great storytellers of our time work in film and TV. Great artists are drawn to the most vital forms available.
Something must be going right, right? Well, yes. The top and bottom of the theatre are alive and well. At the top, Cirque du Soliel produces shows costing hundreds of millions of dollars that earn billions; at the bottom, Greater Tuna has been running continuously since 1982, with seventeen productions in North America last year. Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding, Late Night Catechism and others with one or two in the cast, no set and good New York reviews thrive. The only person thriving in the middle is my personal hero, Tyler Perry, who writes for a tight knit, theatre-starved community, sells out almost every show and has earned more than $60 million since 1998 producing plays. Think about it. A writer-performer who found a niche, built a community, sells out, makes a huge profit and has never been reviewed in the New York Times. Put another way, Mr. Perry is earning millions while Broadway is losing millions. Mr. Perry's theatre has all of the hallmarks of a vital theatre - it is popular and, within his community, vital. Most importantly, it pays its way and then some.
I believe that the theatre can once again be a vital form, that what is broken is its business model, and that once you know what’s broken you can set out to fix it. Looking at Tyler Perry's success is a good place to start.
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2 comments:
Are you suggesting here that the "new" model of theatre (Burning Man is your example) might be less centralized in one person, say the playwright or director and more of a group creative effort? (I refuse to say "play by committee.")
If so, and holding to your Burning Man model, would not the organizational model be something of a dismissal of a storyline as we know it and incorporate a more loose interpretation of "story", such as "every event is a story" or "everyone has their own story to tell" and then pursue it by exploring our modern interpretation of what we identify as pagan ritual?
The resources, talent and passion Burning Man crews have are what I admire. They seem to be able to self organize around an idea, some ideas being feats of engineering and logistics, and realize that idea not for material, but for emotional and psychological gain. What if that kind of effort can be rallied around a story? Someone has to be the keeper of the story and have yes/no final authority, but that has to be true for a successful Burning Man crew or any endeavor.
Open source software works much the same way. A huge number of people dedicate untold man hours to developing Linux out of nothing more than pure hatred for Microsoft and the glory of achievement, but one man is keeper of the, the, whatever the hell it is that is kept.
Star Trek New Voyages, a group producing, with Paramount's permission - so long as the don't profit by it - new episodes based in the reality of the first series. The love of the story drives them, and their success - Walter Koenig revisits Chekov who dies in their most recent episode - is, for a labor of love, stunning.
I'm taking a stab at building a community that will produce mind-blowing theatre. I think that great stories can be realized and a little money made, that what passes for professional theatre these days is mostly dumb, and that past models, Elizabethan theatre for one, married to current models, Linux meets Burning Man, among others, using available technology will make my vision a reality.
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