Theatre and Culture from Scotland, starring The List's Theatre Editor, his performance persona and occasional guest stars. Experimental writings, cod-academic critiques and all his opinions, stolen or original.
Plato wasn't keen on art: he said it's like pretending to be God, and it's only a pale imitation of reality, anyway. He thought that the real action was in this spiritual realm, where the perfect form of everything existed. Even the world as we experience it is just a phantasm compared to that. This is what annoyed Nietzsche, and ought to frustrate materialists and atheists all day long. Plato postulates a spiritual zone that is better than the physical world. No wonder Christianity has a soft spot for Plato. He didn't mind a bit of music though: he reckoned that good tunes had a positive effect on the soul - if the beats were legit. We were saying, when we spoke of the subject-matter, that we had no need of lamentations and strains of sorrow? True. And which are the harmonies expressive of
sorrow? You are musical and can tell me. The harmonies which you mean are the mixed or tenor Lydian, and the full-toned or bass Lydian, and such-like. These then, I said, must be banished; even to women who have a character to maintain they are of no use, and much less to men. Certainly.
The big idea here is that listening to Lydian music encourages sorrow, and that doesn't help a man become a become. Unsurprisingly, Plato likes his music to have an educational purpose.
The Piano Concerto No. 14 in E flat major (Mozart), as performed in Transatlantic Crossings, probably fits in with Plato's thoughts on 'useful' music. The classical styling - by which I mean the order and zippy melodies that aren't too fussy - and the virtuosity demanded by the score - have a firm manliness. Even when they are played by a woman, Gabriela Montero.
When I say 'manliness', I'm talking about a notional quality that has nothing to do with willies but probably exists in Plato's World of Forms and is utterly without gender.
In the next place, drunkenness and softness and indolence are utterly unbecoming the character of our guardians. Utterly unbecoming? And which are the soft and convivial harmonies? The Ionian, he replied, and some of the Lydian which are termed “relaxed”. Well, and are these of any use for warlike men? Quite the reverse, he replied; and if so the Dorian and the Phrygian are the only ones which you have left. I don't think he'd have liked The Novelist, an MC I saw up The Art School. He wasn't do the Ionian thing, but all that shouting he did - mainly to predictable, sparse beats - seemed to require drunkenness to be appreciated. Actually, Piazzolla's Three Pieces for Piano and Strings sound like they'd fit the Ionian bill. Lively and effusive, they have a relaxed, cool energy, and swayed a bit like a pissed-up invertero. The Novelist, and Kode-9 who was headlining, might actually fit into Dorian or Phrygian modes... they are kind of macho, and while the MC was shouting his head off to no great end, Kode-9 throws down sinister electronic beats and a rumbling bass that makes me want to watch The Warriors.
All of these people talking about Bach like he’s
God’s left hand… you know what it is, right? He wrote the book on tempered
keyboards. It’s like, before Bach, composers just did what they liked, any old
scale will do and hey, if I want a harpsichord solo right now, I’ll have one.
It’s the birth of the age of the enlightenment, innit, the time when art
decided it was more important than religion, and science was the only game of
truth in town…
Yeah, I like Bach in small doses, like a Ricercar
à 6 as part of a well-balanced
menu. You know, maybe to cleanse the palate before I tuck into some meatier
fare. Maybe some romance, maybe Three
Pieces for Piano and String by Piazzolla. Give me
some of that tango-influenced swing, baby, and hammer on the bass and piano
like they are percussion.
You
know what we forget so often? That classical music is a story. That the
movement from polyphony, through opera to the massed orchestra of Mahler and
then into Matthew Whiteside working to get his compositions out on the street:
it is history made visible through flashes of lightning… or a rattle of thunder…
and events like South Atlantic Crossings or
Sound Thought tell the story from a
different perspective. And the story is that people keep moving, only finding
places now and again to stand and grasp at solid ground.
Those
people who say Bach is special: they’re only talking loud and saying nothing.
Without history, with context, it just some sounds. In a good sequence, but it
is this sequence that matters. And it won’t stop with the last note.
In
my dreams, I am talking to Plato, and when he is not talking about Aristotle
being a total ass, he’s like: you gots to listen to the right kind of music
man. All that rock’n’roll going to destroy your soul man and I know you thinks
that’s cool…
But
have you seen the state of the world lately? Sure, we didn’t treat the slaves
and the foreigns right in fifth century Athens, but I didn’t see any nuclear
bombs in the hands of a maniac when I went on my holiday to Syracuse. I’m not
saying Donald Trump is stupider than Pericles, but I am saying that the worst
thing Pericles could do is head-butt someone.
He
did have one hell of a forehead.
Anyway,
I don’t think Trump will bomb anyone. It just comes across as an ass-hat to
show off in front of his new mates. Get him in the Oval-Office, and it’s going
to be like the end of The Candidate all
over again.
“What
do we do now?”
“Well,
The Donald, why don’t you take Little Donald to the opera? Music soothes the
savage beast after all. From the way you’ve been carrying on, I don’t think you’ve
had your hole lately. Abstract sounds sculpturing air into architectural orders
might assuage that raging boner for death.”
Mildred Pierce reporting... In the autopsy of Aristotle, I cut away the surrounding flesh to reach the organs in which were contained the biles of tragedy... in the adjacent ward a similar operation was performed on the still living body of Plato. His screams disturbed the sleep of Reason and bought forth monsters named Fundamentalism and Common Sense (the latter roared in a Scottish accent). Tattoos on the scraps of skin cast away described music in cursive script. Dr Benway, reanimated solely to overlook our procedures proceeded to pick up the bloody tatters and intoned over the rhythmic ripping of our scalpels. "All the skills gone out of theory, these days. Why, I remember the time I performed a deconstruction without footnote one... but that was in a different narrative and besides, post-modernism's dead." Benway determined that our investigation gambles on the wrong horse. Neither Aristotle nor Plato cared for tragedy in itself, even if the pair of them wandered and wondered in the Pure Land and nobly rejected the practical use of philosophy. The aesthetic genealogy that we hope to describe deliberately denies their intentions, grinding up techne and ousia into a mush that can be feed to the toothless. "You want to understand an idea, you gotta chew it, swallow it whole then regurgitate it like a cow on the cud.Cut and paste works for a computer, but you need to cut up to expose the hegemonic thought." At this point we reconsidered our employment of the good doctor Frank and his lightning machines. McCoy gently gathered the disparate and broken flesh, spreading it out across the gurney and categorised each piece. The Phoenix applied fifty shades to the assemblage, offering it a monstrous parody of reincarnation. "Music... music... that's what they understood. It isn't the (redacted) (expletive deleted). If poetry is closer to philosophy and therefore better than history, then music when it dispenses with the word is closer again to Universals because more abstract and (at this point the text is broken or lost)." In the office next door a single tone for six hours - that's all it took to recognise a twinned truth. The body responds to sound, or women respond to bass, and experimental soundscapes are really fucking irritating. Especially if the frequencies are not pure and have been downloads in less than 320. Weaponising music is an adaptation of Plato's belief that sound can be used to train the spirit. The music of the age of enlightenment addressed the potential spiritual benefits of order and scale. It follows on from the Renaissance's rediscovery of classical texts via the Islamic diaspora (diaspora or empire or da'ar al-islam). If music be the food of love, will be please turn it down. We don't need cross-infection in the operating theatre... Footnotes: Well, Well, Well: a composition by Matthew Whiteside, which resolves into a minimalist motif of Irish music, two forms Whiteside has denied, previously, as influences. The title refers to the artist's surprise at their emergence.
Oh sing, goddess, sing, and please tell me how Aristotle and Plato had such a terrible row About the status of drama and tragedy's role, And the relation of acting to the political whole. I'll send you, oh Vile to the library's nook And seek out the magic of Wiles' short book. He discussed Theatre and Citizenship: His chapter on Athens will reward a trip. I think that I've found it, on page one and forty. Plato explains that theatre's well naughty. Tragedy's blasphemy, Plato's contending It upsets the order he spent ages inventing. On page forty two, Wiles gets down to brass tacks. Read the quotation, which Vile unpacks... Plato defines tragedy as essentially the representation of a fine and virtuous life, and pictures himself as a dramaturg who will realise in the political constitution which he has devised a more authentic mimesis of the good life than any itinerant poet could provide. So, tragedy shows the best way to live But why go to theatre when Plato will give A much better pattern in the state he's invented A poet's poetics are a version demented. When Plato talks tragedy, he's talking of the song Certain types of music are morally wrong Tooting on the aulos is banned in The Republic Because it offers ecstasy to the general public. But he has a problem with the stories that they tell (the gods having a time of it, giving people hell). If poets want to stay in Plato's ideal city They need to stop showing good men being shitty. Wiles isn't always clear on page number forty three Suggesting Plato did not like cult of celebrity. It's not so much he did not like the old dramatic art But worried that the crowd were swayed by an actor's slightest fart. But what if we ignore Plato? He doesn't like democracy, he doesn't like the vote. That's because Athens made Socrates scape-goat For the chaos of the period after Sparta kicked their ass. The basis of his objections are the kind of thing they cause In democracy and tyranny, alike, theatre breaks the laws Actors can be paid for, and thus the rich can use The magic of the drama to put across their views.
One of the most important strands in Unflattening is Sousanis' concern with the routines of education. From the first image, he imagines education - and by implication, society itself - trapped by the past, following paths that have been well-worn by previous scholars and, consequently, limiting the possibilities of research and perception.
Perhaps Sousanis' main worry is the assumption that 'the word' is more important than the image. In Judeo-Christian culture, the primacy of the word could be traced back to John's Gospel, which associates Christ (the manifestation of God in the physical universe) with the logos.
The privilege afforded to words manifests across anglophone culture: Christian fundamentalism stresses the literal truth of The Bible (an obsession reflected or originating in the status of The Koran in Islam), the primacy of the script in theatre (thank you, Shakespeare), the oaths sworn in the legal system, Plato's collected works (despite Plato's ambiguity about the written word). Sousanis recognises this hidden assumption, and counters that words can be enriched by images - not as illustration, but as a competing and complimentary presence. He draws an analogy with the way that academic training, through an emphasis on appeals to authority (footnotes, accepted boundaries of discourse), reduces education to a rote process. Unflattening itself is an example of how words can be challenged. The placement of words within a comic book text, and their relationship to images, attacks their simple semiotic reading. Rather than 'a word' being defined within its own system (by other words), it shifts into a conversation with the image and the overall design. It also contains a powerful expression of how words define experience without drawing attention to themselves. In the chapter Strings Attached, a happy puppet suddenly realises how their actions are determined by invisible guides... but far from being discouraged by this revelation, the puppet realises that awareness of the strings suggests a new way to play.
Jamie James' disappointing The Music of the Spheres seems to serve a dual purpose: a slightly more intelligent historical survey of an underground philosophy, and an explanation of why music these days isn't very good. Kicking off with a study of Pythagoras' fusion of mathematics and music, it postulates that before The Industrial Revolution/The Birth of Modern Science, music was composed as a reflection of divine mathematics. These mathematics, identified by Pythagoras and Plato, then recognised by a variety of familiar Dead White Males, including Bach and Newton, provide the structure of the Universe.
The Romantic movement, with its emphasis on 'the genius' ruined all of this, leaving contemporary classical composition obscure and overly-intellectual: he names Xenakis as a prime culprit.
In spotting a paradigm shift between the music of Bach and Beethoven, James makes a fair case for a change in the function of composition. Bach, and even Mozart, held down jobs and churned out tunes for cash. Beethoven, Paganini and Liszt sold themselves as artists, and for the later, relied on their superstar status to pack out venues.
Without examining the cultural and social shifts in any detail, James does describe the movement from the composer as employee to the composer as entrepreneur. That's worth noting, but his scholarship is frequently limited - for example, he recounts the myth about The Goldberg Variations having been named after a particular player. Even Wikipedia questions this.
But the idea that the variations - alongside much of the music composed before those bloody Romantics ruined it - reflect a universal set of values - is common place. James' problem is simple: although he rejects the idea of the 'romantic genius', preferring to create a mathematical harmony as the gold standard for composition, he plays into the idea of genius by ascribing hidden wisdom to Mozart, Kepler, Plato, Bach and the boys.
Even before I get to the similarity of The Music of the Spheres to stupid hidden history books, James fails to rid himself of the taint that he claims is ruining music (his last words are 'how we long for silence.').
And the role call of Great Men will be very familiar to fans of the Masons. Hermes Trimegistus gets a shout out, so do Newton's alchemical writings, the scientists who defended heliocentricity (reflecting the barbaric authority of the church, natch).
Let's apply Plato's objection to two particular plays: Euripides' Bacchae and Spoiling. One's a classic, the other a recent Fringe First winner from The Traverse. There's is plenty of mimesis in both of these: actors pretend to be a king and a god, a government minister and a sinister civil servant respectively (the themes of power and corruption are big in both). The Bacchae goes into a mythical past - a reality not like the one its audience knows, in which a wine god can get everyone pissed up by magic and soldiers spring from sown teeth: Spoiling is a mythical future in which Scotland is about to become an independent state (yes, that is still possible...). But these are both alternate realities and not the mundane reality of any audience (fifth century Athenians might have had some religious fundamentalists, but we can assume that they knew that they were watching a play).
Okay, that last bit gets close to a tangle. But there is lots of mimesis to spare... Where Plato is most bold is in saying that the authors do not understand the characters that they represent on stage. Euripides does not know about kings, or gods. Writer John McCann has not ever been a pregnant foreign minister of a fledgling state. The mimesis of these characters must be inaccurate. That is a tough standard to get past, and worse for a critic. The critic, who might complain that Pentheus doesn't act like a monarch is likely to get hit by the same objection. But even two thousand years after his death, Plato has a point. Given that Spoiling also made a bunch of predictions about the triumph of the YES campaign and the subsequent rise of a woman into power from nowhere, its mimesis is flawed. It is this flaw that makes it less vital after the vote than on the night before, when I saw it. The Bacchae fares a little better - with no corresponding reality, it is not exposed by history. Plato's more general objection to mythological art - that it represents the gods as a bit naughty - now comes into play. Efforts to the contrary by contemporary directors, The Bacchae has no clear moral... there is the suggestion that Pentheus deserves his punishment, and that it is all about how repressing natural instincts is bad. That's fine, but Dionysus is cruel. Justice is one thing, but wiping out a family is not exactly a moral victory. To defend both works on this grounds needs something more than an attack on the forms. Plato's statement that art is deceitful wins. My career is over...
It is pretty easy to just ignore Plato's thoughts on theatre. Both the printing revolution - which brought his works to international attention - and the internet - which allows clowns like me to give their opinions on them - could be regarded as having changed the relationship between the self and the world to such an extent that Plato's understanding of consciousness belongs to an earlier, and defunct paradigm. Equally, there are plenty of tricks to get past his objections to theatre: made in his Republic, they are related to his metaphysics of Perfect Forms, a system that has been rejected. Instinctive rejection aside, it is possible to deconstruct the Ideas Realm Plato develops as a foundation for knowledge (I think I am right in calling it an epistemology, a system of understanding) on Plato's own terms. This is a battle that I don't have the correct weapons to wage (like a sharp understanding of Plato's dialectic), but I shall take the possibility on faith. However, as a theatre critic and someone with a sympathy for Plato's majestic project and ambition (I won't call myself a Platonist, lacking the necessary appreciation of his complex thought), I can't just leave it. It bothers me that Plato, while respecting the skill of the actors, and knowing plenty of the the great classical dramatists' work, would banish them from his ideal state... even if his ideal state is one I would not fancy inhabiting. Tom Stern identifies three objections to theatre. In one: as a work of art, they are detached from the Forms and are just not good enough. If the Form of a chair is the perfect version beyond understanding, the chair made by a carpenter is an imitation - but at least you can sit in it. The chair in a painting, or a poem, or a king in a tragedy, doesn't even fulfil the purpose it was intended for. In two (and one can be dismissed as a consequence of Plato's metaphysics, which no-one uses anymore): the artist doesn't really know about what they describe, except on the surface. So they are giving false information. For bully's special prize: people are stupid and use the arts to define their understanding of life. It's a bit like those people who copy soap opera characters. Theatre can be a bad influence. I don't think Plato can be ignored for being a spoilsport. His worry about humans mistaking the surface for depth are consistent in The Republic, and if his belief in truth is a bit old fashioned, it calls to a high respect for human potential. His distrust of theatre is a distrust of distraction - and just like his famous cave story predicts television (sort of), his worries about theatre as deception are trenchant in an era when surface often trumps depth. On one level, I can imagine Plato's opinions on Strictly Come Dancing. All the celebrity nonsense, the voting, the pairing up of acts, the tacky choreography and the objectification of the dancers would drive him to a rage. He'd hate the false 'liveness' of the weekly event, and decry the artificiality of the project. But he would be more than a disappointed contemporary dance fan (or, to switch to X-Factor, a fan of Eric Clapton bemoaning the product line of modern pop). He is questioning the notion of authenticity itself itself - and finding it absent in the material plane. It is a simple step from Platonism to a gnostic vision of reality, in which materiality itself is suspect. So Plato isn't just picking on theatre: it is a symbol of a problem
with all arts (you can't get off with Botticelli's Venus) and, from here, reality itself. And he is taking theatre seriously: it does change people's minds. In this sense, he respects art more than those defenders of video games who argue that playing Grand Theft Auto doesn't turn players into wannabe gangsters. The problem is mimesis: theatre is an impersonation of the real. Mimesis - again, as Stern describes - is tough to translate, but includes the ideas of copying and imagination. And Plato is quite correct: the king in a tragedy is not fit for purpose, and can tell the audience nothing.
Both Platonists and fans of Keanu Reeves in The Matrix struggle with the possibility that the world as perceived is not the same as reality: beyond this veil of tears is another, more authentic realm that determines events. Theatre - and art in general - poses particular problems for these thinkers, since it adds another layer of unreality to the illusion, distracting from worthwhile goals (ascending towards true wisdom and trying to understand what went wrong in the rest of the Trilogy respectively). Plato went so far as to suggest that actors be booted out of his ideal state, lest they encourage an outbreak of mimetic mockery.
Ganesh and The Third Reich is not unique in addressing this problem - ever since Brecht described 'the fourth wall', directors have been refusing to ignore the audience and get them involved. Back to Back's particular strategy is not to chat to the crowd - aside from a few sneaky smirks and narrative links, they remain within the bubble of the stage. Instead, they divide their story into two. One's a grand adventure, involving the elephant headed god nipping down to have words with Hitler about the appropriation of a certain Hindu symbol. The other is scenes from the creative process, with the director doing his own tin-pot number on the cast.
This division allows the company to delve into the issues behind the action. Worries about appropriation of other cultures - Australians doing Indian mythology and European genocidal dictators - doubts about the abilities and exploitation of the actors, who have perceived to have disabilities and discussion of power hierarchies become a lattice of philosophical debate which supports the mythical drama. There is no attempt to lend realism to the Big Story. Instead, critique of the work is built into the production through a layering of different modes. They even toy with the staged scenes of their rehearsals, identifying them as scripted.
The particular problem of theatre's spectacle, a distraction from the real, is addressed in a Brechtian manner, by making the unreality clear. It provides a curious detachment from the action. The scene where Ganesh finally confronts the Fuhrer is tense, but more from the argument between Hitler and the god than for any plot reasons. The impact of the show grows over time. It places ideas in a coherent order, falls back from emotionalism.
By deconstructing the performance, Back to Back side step the problems posed by Plato, encouraging a cerebral engagement as well as an emotional one. Rather than covering the real with another layer, it encourages a reflection on what is represented, and dissolves the notion of authenticity.
On the other hand, it is pretty cool to see Ganesh face down Hitler.
Ladies and Gentleman, It's The Throwdown Of The Ages. The One Size Fits All Battle Of Minds In Which Everyone Must Take A Side. We Have Seen Them Fight Over Theology, The Ideal State, The Nature of The Ideal And Just About Every Other Topic That Would Define Western Civilisation: The Individual Blows Of Their Fights Have Become The Paths Of Western Philosophy. Against These Two Men's Epic Ruckus, Aquinas's Entire Corpus Is Merely A Kick In The Balls Of Monism. Betrand Russell's Complete Works Become a Sneaky Punch In The Ribs.
In this specially arranged amphitheatre, modelled on Herod Atticus' patch up job on the one at the bottom of the Athenian Acropolis, these titans of though meet to sort it all out for all time.
In the red corner, carrying the weight of Abstract Ideals and a City State of Philosopher Kings on those broad shoulders, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee's PLATO.
And in the blue corner, dragging along the categorisation of everything he could get his hands on, the late tutor to the Great Alexander: iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt's ARISTOTLE.
Plato saunters to the centre of the ring, nonchalant yet determined. He fixes his eyes upon his opponent and begins to speak, slowly and carefully.
"Why is it exactly that we are fighting?"
Aristotle looks at his feet. "In The Republic, you make the claim that the actor is a dangerous character. In your ideal society, a man who changes his roles at will upsets the balance of the state, in which everyone has their predetermined place. However, you do say that you'd be happy to hear a counter argument, since theatre remains pretty popular. I've got your answer."
Plato is nonplussed, but keeps his tone even. "It could be that," he drawls. "Or maybe Vile is messing about again, reluctant to actually do his essay."
"Interesting split infinitive there," Aristotle counters. "From the man who is acclaimed for his prose elegance."
"I split my infinitives far less than you split the entire Universe into categories."
"And it is just like you to get metaphysical about the battle, rather than look at the cold, hard material facts."
"Here's another characteristic of my thought." Plato chuckles. "I'll ask the questions. Why did you slip The Poetics onto the end of your Politics?"
"You started it. Your condemnation of theatre comes as part of a description of the perfect society. I am following your lead, and examining the social impact of theatre. Neither of us has a particular interest in pure aesthetics."
"Probably because the discipline doesn't turn up until Kant has a crack at it. His idea of the sublime - perhaps followed by Heideigger's interest in the uncanny - goes some way to account for the popularity of theatre that neither of us could acknowledge."
"You claim that the theatre has two weaknesses, two dangers. One is that it presents the gods as doing bad stuff, the other the problem of the actor's art. The first applies as much to Homer, Epic Poetry: you rememdy that by making up your own myths whenever you need them. That suggests a rather pragmatic attitude to religious narrative, especially for a philosopher who frequently invokes the divine."
"Neither of us had much time for the state religion. I was burned when they killed Socrates for 'corrupting the young' and encouraging belief in strange gods. You ended up running away from Athens to tutor a barbarian prince."
"Abstractions, again. Back to the fight. Where you argue that drama is a form of mimesis, an imitation, you make it bad by definition. Since you are already claiming that the physical universe is a mimesis of a pure form, an artistic copy is a further remove from the truth. I make a few strikes against that."
"So, the man who loves biology so much makes a stand for lies?"
"Not lies. Drama - and this goes for poetry in general - can use the myth to get away from the specifics of history, the detail, and look for more general patterns: the universal. A good play - and I mean Sophocles' Oedipus Rex - doesn't tell the history of a particular mother-loving monarch, but suggests how such a matter could play out."
"For most of us, contrary to a line in the play itself, sleeping with mummy isn't a concern. Are you making these mythological stories some kind of psychological drama?"
"I am not that interested in the content of the stories: it is more the structure that intrigues me. The way that Sophocles works through the process of revelation. That is universal."
"Let's hear about the complex plot, then."
"That's when two ingredients are added to the catastrophe - which every tragedy needs. The 'reversal of intention' (peripeteia) and the recognition (anagnorisis)."
"If we stick with Oedipus, I guess the peripeteia is when Oedipus tries to get information about his past: he thinks it will clear his name, but it goes a little wrong... then he recognises who he is. That's why the play is so good: it is essential a horror story, and the climax is when the hero looks in the mirror, and realises that he was the villain all along."
"Precisely."
"And this is the best way of doing it? The protagonist - the hero - experiences reversal and recognition? Where does that fit into Medea?"
"Er... well, Theseus intends to reconcile with his ex-wife and it goes wrong?"
"He's the antagonist. What about The Oresteia?"
"It's a trilogy."
"Yet it has something at the end that fits your description.It resolves various plot threads in a coherent manner."
So - the earliest theories of theatre appear to be found in Aristophanes. It's not the best start: nice and early (the Big Three of Athenian tragedy have already done their thing, but it is close enough to the beginning to make it a prime source), but from the pen of a comedian. Sure, Aristophanes wrote plays, but I don't trust him. Look at the hatchet job he did on Socrates in The Clouds.
There are a few places where Aristophanes explores the idea of theatre: The Acharnians, Peace, The Frogs... most of the time, he is having a crack at his contemporary, Euripides. He is more sympathetic to Aeschylus, an earlier, now dead, author (in The Frogs, he wins what Carlson claims to be the most serious discussion debate about the function of drama). It fits in with Aristophanes' socially conservative attitude. Aeschylus had a genuine vision of Athens as a the locus of an inclusive, just society (The Oresteia is like an advert for Athenian jury duty) and was part of the generation who kicked the Persians out of Greece in a moment of panhellenic enthusiasm.
Marner goes on to connect Aristophanes' critique of Euripides to Plato's notorious joke in The Republic (when he says that he's kick actors out of his ideal city. Notice he is going to kick them out after they have done the performance...). Both Plato and Aristophanes express concern at the impact of 'poetry' (that is roughly equivalent to drama, at least as far as this study goes) on the moral character of the city. For Aristophanes, this means liking Aeschylus better than Euripides - prescribing the correct sort of theatre. For Plato, it means watching the plays, thanking the actors, then sending them off to another city.
Sorry, I can't take either of these critiques seriously. First of all, Aristophanes is chiefly known in the twenty-first century as the author of a bunch of plays about sex. There have been attempts to claim that his Lysistrata is some kind of feminist classic, but the main scene involves a striptease routine outside a temple. It is a bit like Benny Hill pausing as he chases his Angels around a park in their skids, turning to the camera, and reminding the audience that they better not cheat on their wives.
As for Plato - didn't he start his career as a playwright? Then a wrestler (or vice-versa)... and have you noticed the format of his dialogues? Very familiar to anyone who has read a play. While there is a more serious explanation for Plato's fundamental dishonesty that invokes his concept of the Noble Lie, the nature of dialectic and the form of The Republic itself, I'm happy enough to say that the quality of Plato's prose, as well as his persistent use of allegory, would get him kicked out of his ideal state.
To be honest, although I am a big fan of Plato, I don't have much interest in his aesthetics, such as they are. He is subsuming a genuine discussion about the nature of poetry to his broader agenda - and slips in critiques of contemporary pagan religion to bolster his attempt to get a rise out of the reader. The same for Aristophanes - he is playing to the crowd.
Like everyone else, I have to start with Aristotle. But, as Carlin points out, that's a pain too. The text we have is a mess (all those books of Aristotle are pretty much notes by his students - and looking at the way I take notes, we are lucky that he doesn't have a few more chapters that repeat 'I am so bored' in different font sizes). I also think that Aristotle was just trying to argue with Plato, and make a case for the 'morality' of drama.
It's not that I don't think the Greeks are worth reading (well, Aristophanes and Plato are)... it is more that I don't think these are serious attempts to grapple with theatre. But I shall recite the Aristotle theories in my next post, for the sake of form...
Tonight: Tramway's comeback continues with a triple threat of existential action: The God, The Good and The Guillotine.
You are joining us now in our fortress of solitude, somewhere in Glasgow. With only three hours remaining to curtain up, Gareth K Vile and Eric Karoulla are your pre-show commentators.
Looking over the programme notes, what grabs you first, Eric?
The title. I'm guessing you want a bit more than that?
Yes.
It seems like another rule of three. And I don't know why these words have been picked. Then again, it's a work in progress.
Let's start with the good. I believe that you know your Plato better than I do... doesn't that give you something?
For Plato, good would be related to virtue, and probably the truth. I have a question. We all assume that when someone says the truth, we assume it is a concrete reality- but everyone has their own reality, so how do we agree on what set truth?
Thanks, Eric. Nice easy one, there. We don't. For example, my truth is that we are talking about a piece at Tramway. Your truth seems to be "can I catch Gareth out with a very difficult question." I would like to remind you that my job is to be the obnoxious interrogator. You are here to contrast with me, being the being of charm and common sense. Given that, why don't we have a look at the Tramway website?
Sounds good.
Good. And God too, perhaps...
The Good, the God, and the Guillotine is a theatrical concert about belief, mortality, and morality that steals from the aesthetics of the gig, classical recitals and animation art. Questioning existence itself in a theatrical concert for three performers, three laptop musicians, and a reactive scenography of lights, objects and animations, The Good, the God, and the Guillotine is a dramatic and atmospheric exploration of our tangled relationships with technology.
Against a background of live, shifting animations, The Good, the God and the Guillotine responds to Albert Camus’ 1942 powerful novel L’Étranger (The Stranger). Prototype Theater (UK/US: ) are collaborating with the musicians and composers of the MMU Laptop Ensemble aka MMUle , lighting designer Rebecca MK Makus and animator/illustrator Adam York Gregory to create this music-driven performance that uses digital technology to craft an intertwining of song and narrative. Funding Credits: The Good the God and the Guillotine has been commissioned by Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (Lincoln), Manchester Metropolitan University (Crewe) and Tramway (Glasgow). Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
You've been having a cheeky wee keek at Guy Debord'sSociety of the Spectacle. Was that because of this show?
Sort of. I started looked at works that might explain why we are looking at our relationship with technology. For example, the exhibition at the CCA is looking at our relationship to the economy. There's a lot of doubt going around.
Yes. But why did you drag up a French anarchist who is notoriously difficult to understand?
He was recommended to me by a friend who is an anarchist. He was talking about situationism which started in France in 1957. And it only survived fifteen years - it escalated in the 1968 riots in Paris.
And it was very influential on Malcolm McClaren when he arranged the Sex Pistols. I am not sure we are helping anyone with this. So far, I took us up one dead-end with Plato.
Plato resounds very strongly in Debord. He keeps talking about representation. I actually took notes.
Yes. I am noting that this disaster is on my blog, not Eric's Trip. I am all for experimental criticism, but this is just rambling. But. Here's the punch-line. I was trying to imitate the way that football commentators do the build up for a big match on TV. And I think we are as incoherent and irrelevant as they are.
Yeah, probably.
Still, we managed to mention the show, and print out the preview from the website.
But the preview doesn't tell you very much.
No, but at least it didn't get lost in banter about Plato. Shall we just leave it?
Most of the time, I call myself a Platonist - which makes those frequent comments by women that they would like to remain “platonic friends” all the more ironic. In reality, this means that I once read The Republicand got over-excited by the deconstruction of ideas: in practice, I wander about shouting that we are all living under a delusion enforced by the tyranny of television, which Plato clearly predicted in his parable of the cave.
Quite how this impacts on theatre criticism is open to question. Apart from those difficult paragraphs where Platoexplicitly rejects the presence of actors in his perfect state - luckily, I think he was joking most of the time – Plato didn’t set out a specific approach to performance. It is a far cry from his jilted student Aristotle, who ruined theatre criticism by insisting on all sorts of perfections and strictures, mainly to get back at Plato for dismissing theatre, but also to justify his subjective opinion that Oedipus Rex is the best play ever written.
Perhaps the reason that Plato didn’t spend time deciding how to analyse and undermine theatre is that he was a bit touchy about his past. It says on the internet somewhere that Plato had been an unsuccessful playwright before meeting Socrates, who tried to cheer him up by taking him to a party. Given that he went on to write most of his philosophy as dialogues – so similar to the central scene in most Greek tragedies where the competing visions fight it out before someone’s mother rips their head off – and that his writing is littered with allusion to poetry and tragedy, it’s not unreasonable to think that Plato’s anti-drama stance is more notional than serious. Frankly, it is just a relief that Plato didn’t leave us with a huge body of dogmatic opinion to test performance.
The little Plato that I read in the Beginner’s Guide, however, is instructive. He does blather about the age-old battle between poetry and philosophy every so often, but that seems to me an unnecessary division between genres - the sort of thing Aristotle was far better at, anyway. His most famous pronouncement, that he would ban theatre from his ideal state, mostly on the grounds that it is a lie, deserves a little investigation.
First of all, Plato explicitly admits that the actor is a skilled professional: he even goes so far as to say that he would praise them before booting them out of the city. He then acknowledges that the theatre’s threat is in the impact it might have on the citizens, what with its portrayal of good men being done over by the gods, or the promulgation of ideas that don’t fit in the proto-totalitarian machine that he appears to be advocating.
Since he said all this in the context of defining his perfect society – and contradicting himself from chapter to chapter on everything from women’s rights to the right place for dancing girls at a dinner party – it strikes me that Plato took theatre far more seriously than most modern political thinkers. I checked out most of the manifestos at the last election, and they contained platitudes about the necessity of state support. Assuming that we can count politicians as “thinkers” in any meaningful respect, they accept the liberal idea that “art is a good thing”. They probably have some theory that it can be used to promulgate social cohesion.
I’ve watched a great deal of performance, had a few tragedies in my life, and agree with Plato. Art is fucking dangerous. Music persuades youngsters that rebellion is a good idea. Pop music sells shoddy consumer products. If art had no impact on our behaviour, there would not be adverts in the cinema. The very environment of art makes us vulnerable to persuasion.
As it goes, I don’t believe Plato wanted to kick the artists out: even if he did, his ideal government is pretty much the model for complete state control, so we can reject many of his conclusions. If he hated tragedians so much, he wouldn’t have quoted them so often, and imitated their style. It is better to think of him as a satirist than a philosopher, and have the salt handy. I think that this passage is more a melodramatic allegory, emphasising the importance of art in shaping opinion, and also its potential as a counter-cultural force.
So this is where my Big Theory comes in. When I taught Plato – once, in a last minute panic revision session at a Masonic School in Hertfordshire – my students suggested that the “Noble Lie” is the clue to Plato’s entire philosophy. I was drinking wine in a cloister, watching the sunset and surrounded by occult symbolism cast in stone: the perfect moment to adopt a teenager’s hunch as a foundation for my entire belief system.
Having spent most of The Republic detailing the hierarchies of a super state, based on reason, Plato slips in this little cheat. Social cohesion will not be developed through rationality. Instead, he makes up a major bullshit, something to do with DNA and precious metals, and some character having a daytrip to the afterlife.
Never mind that the story is less plausible, and open to less amusing jokes, that the ones about Zeus seducing women disguised as a golden shower: Plato has just undermined his entire project for a rational state. If a philosopher did that these days, he’d get a bad review in The Guardian, get an article in the Daily Mail with the headline EXPERT SAYS THINKING INCREASES CANCER RISK and end up as a MEP for UKIP. Back in the day, it meant that thousands of earnest men in bed sheets built their world view around it, ignoring Plato’s early invention of surrealism.
Reading Plato is like having a big argument with a dead man. You can’t negotiate details, push him on finer points and, after a while, it starts to stink. The Republic is an infuriating mess of contradictions, all of which are internally coherent. It makes you think.
And that, I contest, was his point. The Republic isn’t a handbook for the ideal state – even Plato mistook it, had a little political adventure and nearly ended up dead. It is a text-book for teaching dialectic – resolving problems through argument. Frankly, the dialectic in the book is terrible: Socrates and a bunch of cheerleaders. It’s the dialectic in the mind of the reader that is the point.
So that’s it. Platonic criticism is about a dialogue. I needed a thousand words to say this, claim a heavy duty precedent just to prove I am not a moron. And a Platonic Performance Criticism engages with the relationship between form and function, grapples with the issues of a Performance not its relative quality – which is why I either ignore things like “good direction” or get names wrong – and exists in the point of contact between audience and event.
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