Tough Questions

Following on from my attempt to understand Andy Horwitz's differentiation of performances made by visual and theatre arts makers, Dani Tougher has added an important question: how far does the intention of the artist actually matter?

Tougher has worked in cabaret, and I think that cabaret has a particular relationships between the performer and the audience. It is intimate and immediate ('breaking the fourth wall' is not an act of intellectual bravado, but an essential part of many routines), and the intention of the act is mediated, in general, by less layers of dramaturgical complexity...

Sorry - dramaturgical complexity... that is to say, the performer and the creator are often the same person (solos are common), the 'givens' of a performance event (space, time) are more consistent. It's not less work, just focussed more tightly, perhaps...

One of the many interesting (and, unlike Horwitz's essay, comprehensible) paragraphs from Tougher.

We read books such as Alice In Wonderland, now coloured by many different interpretations of the work: theories that the author was a laudanum addict and possible paedophile, prolific film and stage versions of the story, the influences of the British Empire or modern theories on child psychology all affect our understanding of what may have been initially intended as simply a children's tale.

There is still a part of me that is a secondary school teacher, and here's the lecture that I would inevitably give every couple of lessons...

It's not a question of whether a reading of a given text is right or wrong but whether it is supported by analysis.

Pretty short, but probably not clear enough... 

All of the interpretations that Tougher suggests seem fascinating, and that's really the bottom line. The intention may be lost along the way (in the case of Alice, the adaptation of Wonderland  by Vanishing Point was a long long way from a 'simply a children's tale', but if the value of theatre is in the making of meaning, the intention is only one possible 'message'.

And I have left a bunch of stuff unexamined here: you know how much I love this stuff...