On Theatre

Originally meant to be in Purple Magazine's Analog issue

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a play that treated its audience like it was stupid. There is something about engaging with theatre that gives me my dignity back and reminds me of the depth of the world that I live in.

I don’t think theatre is pretentious. Theatre lends its hand to you and if you grab it, it takes care of you. Theatre is generous in an ever growing stingy world, “Short form content” and “passive viewing”. TV shows are being made in a way so that you can watch while you look at your phone. I wonder if short form content is so popular because it is so risk averse? There is so little you have to invest in watching an Instagram reel. If our world is made of only consuming low stakes media, is that the way we start to feel about our place in the world? Studios and streaming services are becoming risk averse as well. Opting for scripts based on existing intellectual property instead of betting on something new. People are tired of regurgitated slop! When did we become such babies? Is AI, Chat GPT, and algorithmic fed content infantilizing us?

When I say Theatre I am talking about an open expanse of experiences. Yes there is Broadway, yes there is off Broadway, and off off Broadway. You don’t have to be rich to put on a play and a play can be put on almost anywhere. There are experimental happenings going on in galleries, studios, bars, houses, and squats. Last month I saw a play called Session, written by Sienna Foster-Sultis and Lily Lady, which took place in a Bowery Hotel room. Permission from the hotel wasn’t asked. We were given strict instructions on how to arrive to the room, “Do not speak to hotel staff”, the stage was the bed. After brewing curiosity through the weekend, some hotel workers came to see the final show. The producer, Petite Mort Magazine, assured them “we waterproofed the bed, don’t worry”. Georgica Pettus’s new play Skyscraper, produced by Acompani, will be site specific as well. I’ve heard whispers about the locations around New York City, possibly staged on a form of transportation, but I don’t want to spoil anything here.

Theatre is not a mediated experience. It cannot be turned into media. If you recorded a production it would not remain a play. Theatre is not media. Chat GPT cannot produce a live theatrical production; it can only produce media, it consumes and spits up media. In theatre the art is unfolding in front of you, live, the art is of presence, you are present. Sure there may be a playbill, but there is no gallery text explaining the philosophies behind the painting. There is no curator pushing for a certain aesthetic to appeal to buyers. There is entirely room for human error and human creativity. No two performances are the same. It is purely in the moment. It is not edited or censored. I am in an audience and we are having a collective experience. We are not viewing the painting alone during gallery hours on a Thursday afternoon. We have somewhere to be promptly, there is a curtain time, there are no trailers. We are in the same room as the people making the art. The art is durational and unraveling before us. A performance is taking place that requires us to be present. Did we forget the present is a present?! When I go see a play I turn my phone off. I lock in. I let myself be taken by the experience.

The last play I saw was Bad Stars at Collapsable Hole, written and directed by Amanda Horowitz. I saw it three different times. Opening night on a date, a second time with my brother, and by myself at the final performance. No two performances were the same. In my third viewing there was a child in the audience sitting across from me . Her being there directly impacted the way I was experiencing the play because I also got to enjoy her reactions to the show. What scared her, what made her laugh, what she was curious about. We were all in the audience together. Together we experienced tragedy, we laughed, and we walked out of the theatre talking to one another about how we felt. It was cathartic. We were unalone.

Theatre has the very touch of a human. You feel the humanness in it. There is room for surprise and error and nuance. Characters are not just bad or good. As media literacy rates turn abysmal, we are beginning to see audience members become unable to deal with nuance in TV and movie characters. Everyone is being syphoned down to “all good” and “all bad” when the very thing that makes us human is to be both. To be human is to be a villain, victim, and hero. Humans fuck, they are messy, they steal, lie, cheat, cry, love, scream. The humanness of theatre makes the stakes feel high. Theatre takes time with its characters, with the human experience. Actors spend months rehearsing their lines, blocking, workshopping a character’s motive, cadence, hubris. In a vintage issue of After Dark, a performance magazine popular in the late sixties, I read an interview with Conchata Ferrell about her role as Gertrude Blum in The Seahorse. She describes that due to the run time of the play she spent the first few weeks tackling her character’s anger and now having mastered that part of her character’s psyche she is able to go deeper into her character’s emotions for her husband. Theatre makes space for time and feeling.

Good art reminds us we are not alone. We are not the only ones to have felt what we are feeling. We can get through the world because people who have felt the way we do have made it through. Theatre is a conversation between the past and the present. Theatre is ancient. Theatre is a form of group therapy. Theatre can put words to feelings in a way we cannot do alone. Where else can one work out centuries old problems of man? How many times has a Shakespeare play been adapted? Theatre has created a space for humans to play with one another, tell stories, and process the world. When we open ourselves up to experiences we get to grow from them, as theatre entertains the audience, the audience becomes open to learning.

Theatre is not just a production but an expansion into the blurry lines of reality and imagination. Theatre allows for experimentation. It doesn’t have to be linear. Imagination is a muscle we do not get to use as often as we like. Imagination is a muscle we desperately need to be using! In theatre there is no AI creating fake buildings in the background. In the recent production of Sunset Boulevard at the St. James Theatre there is no set. There are no costumes. The words they sing make the world around them. I do not need to see props or furniture to know where we are. I am being asked to use my imagination, I get to use my imagination. The production does not think I am stupid because I do not have to be force fed a setting. I am better for this experience. In performance artist Pope.L.’s Hole Theory he writes in section ten, “the imagination is the handmaiden of social action”. The more we are asked to use our imagination, the better we are for it, the more able we are to imagine a better world. When we use Chat GPT or AI are we throwing away a personal right to imagination?

I wonder if TikTok is so popular because it is people’s only access to something resembling Theatre in their lives. Scripts like “get ready with me today” and roles as influencers are maybe the only characters people are exposed to. It isn’t their fault that these are the scripts most accessible to them. Theatre is important because it expands the scripts and characters in people’s lives beyond what is the most popular or most profitable or most safe. I could complain about the way we are forced to consume slop media, and how AI is depleting our water supply, depleting the human spirit. I believe in investing in things I like instead of complaining about all the things I don’t like. Theatre gives me my dignity back because it treats me like the messy human I am, opens me up, lets me ooze out into the experience. Theatre raises its expectation of who I am and allows me to grow. Theatre reminds me the stakes are high. Theatre is a process in activating our imagination. Theatre is speaking with time. Theatre is a practice in creating the world. I will always make time for theatre, to see it, enjoy it, sit, and shut up. Theatre has given me so much. It is a gamble I always make a return on.

Addition: I wrote this in June. Now I publish it in November. I am currently in a run of the show The Wolf is an Endangered Species at 15 Orient. I have spent the past five months preparing for this production. Our final three shows are this weekend. I play Jenny. I am preparing for two performances for Basel in Miami. I am also in rehearsals for the production Paradise Container, a play written and directed by Monica Mirabile and Mara Mckevitt that will run the last weekend of January at Pioneer Works. I cannot explain how fucking fun and exciting it is to be doing all this. I <3 Theatre!!!

Thank you to Bobbi Salvor Menuez for asking me to write this <3xoxox