Theatre is...

It being a very hot day, I am too lazy to come up with my own ideas. So I am going to piggy-back on Eve Nicol's thoughts, and see where I go.

Eve just put out a blog post which asked the following question.

“Just what is theatre anyway?”

She goes on to quote Kenneth Tynan. Tynan tends to be the only critic who ever gets quoted in academic circles, so I guess he is a good place to start. 

Waiting for Godot frankly jettisons everything by which we recognise theatre. It arrives at the custom-house, as it were, with no luggage, no passport, and nothing to declare; yet it gets through, as might a pilgrim from Mars. It does this, I believe, by appealing to a definition of drama much more fundamental than any in the books. A play, it asserts and proves, is basically a means of spending two hours in the dark without being bored. . . . It forced me to re-examine the rules which have hitherto governed the drama; and, having done so, to pronounce them not elastic enough. (1955)

Well, Eve notes quickly notes that

One member of the group challenged this by reminding that in the past two years little of the work she’s made has been performed in the dark... Instead her work has taken place on the streets, in public parks and in the earphones of audience members but it is all still theatre.

Although it would be wonderful to think that Tynan, the doyen of many a contemporary critic, had some idea of what he was talking about, the definition fails on more levels than this. Waiting for Godot frankly jettisons nothing by which we recognise theatre. It has a script. It has actors, who have learnt their lines. It is aware of theatrical traditions, which it uses to amuse (the gag about how the biggest insult is 'critic' ought to have tipped off Tynan). Of course, in subsequent years, the site-specific play (not in a traditional theatre), the devised work (no template script), the various mixing and matching of genres (Dance Theatre? American Modern Dance? Verbatim Theatre?) became more important, but even in 1955 it must have been possible to imagine theatre far more alien than Godot.

Unless, of course, Tynan's imagination was otherwise engaged. 

It's worth looking at the mess Tynan makes of the definition. He slips between 'theatre,' 'drama' and 'play' as if they are interchangeable. Eve later ponders

 the only thing you could comfortably call “Theatre” is a building, with an auditorium and seats. It’s not necessarily even for live performance. The US uses “theatre” to describe a cinema.

And she is already three steps ahead of Tynan. She's closer to the definition, etymologically speaking. It goes back to one of the ancient Greek verbs for 'watching,' and it is a place where watching happens. 

The heat is getting to me... but I'd say that using the word 'theatre' to describe the art form isn't that helpful... and I'd say that it is also time that Tynan was replaced by a new critic. I mean, he didn't ever give plays a rating out of pants, or use cats to explain an emotional response...

Come on then, dad...

It's pretty clear that Tynan's time at the National Theatre did for him. Those sad later years spent in sexual exhibitionism as an exile in the USA were the result of the thorough beating he received as 'literary manager' (or whatever title he had, week to week) as Sir Larry Olivier's wingman.

I haven't investigated whether Tynan was a top or a bottom, but he did manage to bring most of those beatings on himself. My litany of hate is matched by Tynan's litany of idiocies during his tenure at the NT. They ranged from championing a play, Soldiers, that insisted Churchill was complicit in the death of an allied leader to shouting abuse at the performances of a rival company. Most people would notice that a three month contract was a sign of a shoogly peg. Tynan imagined low-wages, over-work and being avoided in corridors represented job security.

The only mystery behind Tynan's time at the National is - what made him think it was a good idea? He obviously wanted an ensemble that imitated the one Brecht had developed in East Germany, but forgot that the English (and yes, this is about England, not Britain) aren't wild on authoritarian leadership, and prefer having the bitter argument to excellent theatre. It also removed him from criticism at a time when, over in the USA, other radical writers were reconsidering the nature of journalism.

A Tynan inspired by Hunter S is a considerably more intriguing possibility than the Tynan bickering with dusty old men about being allowed to put on libelous plays. Thanks to his lack of faith in criticism as a necessary process for artist development, he sunk his own career and abandoned the review at the very time it could have been changed for the better.

Fortunately, Tynan makes the case for the critic not moving into producing art - or at least trail-blazes the path that leads to failure. Taking a bit of time off from the NT, he was involved in Oh Calcutta! An early sign that sexual revolutionaries were as capable of making bad propaganda art as political activists, Oh Calcutta! provoked so much face-palming in the audience, the cast thought they received a standing ovation.

When he came back after one leave of absence, he found that he had been (effectively) demoted. Olivier's heir at the National, Peter Hall, couldn't kick him out quickly enough. In fact, he made Tynan's departure a condition of his accepting the post. It's possible to look at Tynan's work during this period and discover some good intentions undermined by lack of institutional support. But Hall's bold insistence implies that, in some quarters, he was less an asset than an ass.

Being needlessly rude about Tynan

This week, I am embracing nihilism. Unfortunately, it is a philosophy that is full of spikes. To embrace nihilism is to feel discomfort at the closeness of the contact. Like any good critic, I have stalked the internet to find a victim. The victim will receive my bile, and my invective will cure my bad humours.

It has to be Kenneth Tynan - critic of the Observer, literary manager of The National Theatre and the man to whom all critics pay their homage. He died, sadly rather young, in 1980, ending a career marked by controversy with some desultory sexual obsessions and writing books about celebrities.

Tynan is held up as the model for the critic, mainly because he was often savage in his reviews and because he was very clever. He was another one of those very English figures, who manage to convince the world that their arrogant sense of entitlement is, actually, a revolutionary sentiment. Despite being easy to spot - Oxbridge education, the establishment quickly making space for them - they seem to slip under the radar of public irritation. Stewart Lee knows what this is like.

To follow Kirkegaard - and what nihilist doesn't? - life makes sense viewed backwards, from grave to cradle. And Tynan's final decade certainly exposes the myth of his 'revolutionary' sensibility. After being kicked out of the National Theatre, he wandered off to America, and his 1979 Show People is an early exercise in the sort of celebrity hagiography that flies off the shelves in the pound shop today. It takes five people - Ralph Richardson, Tom Stoppard, Johnny Carson, Mel Brooks and Louise Brooks - whom Tynan 'admires enormously.' Apart from Stoppard, whom he had supported while in post at the NT, there is little in the book to recall the fierce theatre enthusiast who had become the most divisive name in performance communities. And there might even be a rather unexpected reason for the inclusion of Louise.

Tynan also spent his latter years indulging in some rather too public sexual role-plays. I won't go into them too much - especially since judging such antics is exactly the sort of thing that annoyed Tynan. However, the highly theatrical nature of this adventures do make me wonder whether he was given to handing out star ratings to his sexual partners.

This is, of course, the beginning of a long and bitter series of complaints against a man whose only real crime is to have set a bar for the critic of theatre. In a sense, Tynan is the father of contemporary criticism, and I have to attack him to find my own voice. Think of this of the notes of an Oedipal child who longs to become Orestes...