Politics and Theatre

Hold on, let me show my working here...


1. Walter Benjamin postulated that Nazism turned politics into an aesthetic experience (The Work of Art in the Era of Mechanical Reproduction).

In such works as Bill Kinser and Neil Kleinman's The Dream That Was No More a Dream, Nazism was explained by the fact that "German consciousness treated its own reality - developed and lived its history - as though it were a work of art. It was a culture committed to its aesthetic imagination". 

Hitler's personal history as an artist manque was recalled by commentators like J. P. Stern, who saw the legacy of Nietzsche's conflation of artistic form-giving and political will in Nazism.

The confusion between reality and fantasy in films like Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will was taken as emblematic of the illusory spectacle at the heart of fascist politics by critics like Susan Sontag.

Similar inclinations were discerned in French fascism by Alice Yaeger Kaplan, who successfully solicited the admission from one of her subjects, the film historian Maurice Bardeche, "there is, if you like, a link between aestheticism and fascism. We were probably mistaken to connect aesthetics and politics, which are not the same thing". 

Even the contemporary representation of the fascist past has been accused of being overly aestheticized, albeit in the sense of kitsch art, by Saul Friedland.

"The Aesthetic Ideology" as Ideology; Or, What Does It Mean to Aestheticize Politics? 
Author: Martin Jay 
Source: Cultural Critique, No. 21 (Spring, 1992), pp. 41-61 

Published by: University of Minnesota Press  

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354116 
Accessed: 15-10-2017 17:38 

2. Part of that was the adaptation of theatricality, especially in events like the Nuremberg rallies, which used the spectacle of performance to impress audiences with the ideology (and superiority) of the Nazi state.

  
3. Although theatre is not merely theatricality (the term gets a bit slippery, because it can be used to describe both techniques of staging and an elaborate presentation off the stage), the use of techniques that hide their trickery becomes a bit of a problem when those techniques have been used by a political party towards bad ends. 

4. In the aftermath of World War II, German directors are cautious about presenting drama that is naturalistic, because they are aware of the problems that theatricality has caused. Or, as Martin Jay has it:

In short, politics has to be saved from its reduction to spell binding spectacle and phantasmagoric illusion in order to allow a more rational discourse to fill the public space now threatened with extinction by images and simulacra of reality.

A warning to artists

In the same way as the Conservative government of the UK is corrupted by its connection to big business via donations, avant-garde art is compromised by 'the umbilical cord of gold' (Clement Greenberg) that links its to its patrons.

I am the most important person in theatre.

I am not. But that I am not is a reflection of a fundamental failure within the artistic communities.

Don't get me wrong. When I say 'I', I don't mean Gareth K. Vile, Mad Cyril or even Criticulous. The 'I' in question is the critical cohort - the diverse group of people who write about performance and offer it up to the public. The 'I' is a network of writers, sometimes in agreement, more often in conflict. The critic is the most important person in theatre, if that theatre culture is healthy.

Of course, there is a counter-argument that holds considerable sway. The most important person is the artist. That is the basis of most programming (this artist will attract audiences, reflect well on a venue's identity et c, et c) and funding philosophies. Cash gets handed to the makers, so they can make stuff. Without the art, there is no theatre community.

A more interesting take might be to recognise the audience as the most important aspect, but that's another essay. 

The critic, however, stands at the point of contact between artist and audience: previews are supposed to attract the audience into an event, reviews document and quality assess a particular production. The public discussion about art, although not determined by critical opinion, is at least guided by it. And if a play, a ballet, a puppet show or circus is to have any impact, the conversations that it provokes need to be developed.

Sadly, criticism is frequently stuck in an old fashioned model: star ratings, quality assessment, predictable praise and negative critique. It is reduced by companies into an advert (here's our show: it got five stars!) which both encourages the idea of critical objectivity and distracts from a more thoughtful use of criticism - as a place for public discussion which isn't a mere series of tweets in response to Stephen Fry's latest video lecture.

As it stands, criticism as an art form is not even recognised by funding bodies, which is why I live in abject poverty. It is marginalised by the newspapers, who can always find money for a supplement on the football but rarely for ongoing analysis of artistic events. To be fair, a second division football match can attract a bigger audience than even a major ballet show at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. But it does not offer the same opportunities for the discussion of various political and social themes.

This is an appeal, a rhetorical polemic that rejects my usual standards of dull dialectic for a more direct message. Until funding bodies, private enterprise and theatre companies recognise the importance of the critical cohort, theatre will remain a minority interest. Not quite sure how it is going to happen, but a start would be retweeting me indiscriminately.

And on and on and on...

Is Theatre Political?

More On Calder Street

Glasgow School VI: some questions and a rationale

A few people have asked what this Glasgow School posting is all about, so I thought I would pause for a moment and explain... here's an extract from my proposal.

The question can be divided into three distinct phases. First of all, do artists think that they are a part of a Glaswegian aesthetic, and what qualities do they think this contains?

How is this aesthetic manifested in Glaswegian performance, from individual shows through to the curation of programmes and festivals – and do audiences recognise a particular aesthetic that is shared?


Does a Glaswegian aesthetic exist in practice? What is its impact on the nature of the theatre created and performed in Glasgow?

To clarify a few things: I don't believe that there is such a thing as an 'essential' geographical nature to any artistic endeavours - at least not that I could work out. It is possible that Glasgow has a particular set of social, political, even spiritual qualities that impact upon art, but each artist engages with these through their own, as I keep putting it these days, nervous system.

But I do think that there might be a perception of shared values, and a great many people are going to get some questions in their in-boxes.

I am going to do statistical magic, too. As soon as I work out how to use numbers like a big boy.

Here's a bit more of my proposal...

Reader response theory,  championed by Iser (ed. Counsell & Wolf, 2001: p179), states that 'central to the reading of every literary work is the interaction between its structure and the recipient.' My methodology, a mixture of surveys and conversations with curators and artists is designed to facilitate this dialogue within the Glaswegian performance communities. 

Although the audience is privileged as a 'meaning-maker,' the process begins with the creators and artists identifying their intentions, which then provide  foundations for the audience response and critical analysis.

Email interviews with curators and artists begin the process, based around  key theories, their work's overall identity, and asking how it sits within Glasgow's cultural identity. Olsen's arguments for a semiotic approach (Olsen, 2002) suggest that these answers can provide a framework for the discussions of the work's identity. 

Autobiographical Fictional Critique