Talking Back - Or Not

Playwright David Mamet has actively denied a post-play discussion of his work Oleanna, a 2-person play about the encounter between a college professor and his student. The play has the usual Mamet tension in power relationships and his powerful use of language to invest the characters. The production was mounted by Outvisible, a small Equity company in Detroit that focuses on powerful small-cast plays.

I really think Mamet may err in this. If you can't resolve the play for yourself sufficiently, you likely will dismiss the experience.

(Hogarth, Theatre Royal 1861)

Post-performance discussion is a common practice, particularly with smaller companies, when the play involves challenging social, moral or psychological perspectives. The company seeks to deepen the experience of the play by allowing - and helping - people massage the social and moral behavior of the characters. Typically, the discussion audience remains in or returns to the seats after other patrons depart.

One of the principal actors may join the discussion, but in truth, their perspectives on their character can complicate the response. Their perspective is narrowly individual, not contextual. The audience experiences the effect, not the intent. Directors very rarely participate (they have moved on after a show opens).

A moderator offers a preamble and does traffic control. In a large group a few people have something to say and people drift away. In a small group the discussion can be more intense.

Mamet's perspective is that the discussion truncates and settles the complex experience he tries to provoke in his plays. It may be true. One usually leaves a visceral Mamet play filled with troubling voices and thoughts about relationships, and about the moral perspective of the story. If one is familiar with the play, the nuances of the particular production are certainly on one's mind.

The question is whether the talk-back experience deepens or resolves those dilemmas. Mamet doesn't want them resolved. He wants you to be troubled all the way home by what you experienced.

People sometimes want help with a resolution. They want to make sense of what they've seen. Unless they saw the show with friends and share a drink after, they are left to massage the play's perspective with their seat partner or on their own. That is what Mamet wants - for you to be troubled.

I think he may do a disservice to his work by denying the post-play discussion. Not everybody stays for it - only those who feel a need to talk about it. The talk-back can become tedious and the audience drifts away. In the best experience, one comes away with a richer perspective on the ideas and dilemmas of the play and it's characters.

If people want or need to talk about it, and they can't, they may dismiss the experience. Even with plays by Mament, it's usually easy simply to put it out of mind as you navigate traffic home.

It's an hour's drive to a play in Boston. Personally, I am impatient with talkbacks and never stay. Diane and I agree that if we are still talking about the play half-way home, it was a good one.

26 May 2017

Theatre Designers' Collections

If you are a designer of any sort, you once had a file cabinet full of images. Shown is one of three file drawers of my "tear files." For most designers of all kinds, visual ideas rarely spring full blown to mind and we often need a stimulus. One of the things we once did, and I'm sure many continue to do, is collect images on paper to stimulate one's creative efforts. We still subscribe to magazines in paper.

In the case of a theatre scenic designer, you have a given subject. If you are at all methodical, you jot down a handful of image ideas as you re-read the play and a preliminary list of requirements. You reflect on discussions you have had with the director - the goals, themes, interpretation, and the feel and spirit of the show on stage. Directors' own requirements may be evolving, so this goes with you to every design and production meeting.

I discovered in discussions with architects and engineers regarding upgrading facilities, they carefully maintain "the requirements list," which they use to drive their design work. I jumped on that wonderfully rational approach and adopted it for all of my design work. I had it at every meeting and made certain it was current. ("So now you need to be able to do this and not that?") It lay beside my sketch pad and at the top of the drafting table. (Pencil work precedes CAD in the design phase.)

At some point, you have to begin thinking about the look of the show. And you have to enable the director's work by giving them a "machine" for the play.

Blind alleys and random effort are a waste of time. That means writing on a sheet of paper all of the current known requirements of the play and the director, and keeping it updated. This is your requirements list. You can bounce around possibilities, sketch outrageous responses and imagery, but you have to get a sense of what matters and what the director needs to be able to do.

Next, or perhaps before, I go on the hunt for things that will "trip your trigger." Colors, images, architecture, places, creative efforts of others. That's what the tear file is for.

Today, one can load hundreds of Google and Pinterest images on a topic search, and spend a couple hours ploughing through the collections. It's helpful for the stimulation of possibilities but it is limited by your search terms. It also tends to shortchange illustration, which is closest to what we do.

My practice was to avoid other stage designs, particularly of the same show. It's a creativity fettish; I want to solve the problems of the show myself, with the director.

For several decades I collected design resources - art books, illustration annuals, and tear files. I have files labeled for periods, countries, cities, illustration style, furniture, etc.

We still take magazines on paper in our house. Among them such visual resources as Smithsonian Magazine. Image collections on paper are probably an analog relic, I surmise.