The Theatre of Abuse

Apologies for the previous entry (actual vomit followed by verbal vomit). I'm feeling much better now.

The Theatre of Abuse
My set, my set, my actors for a set...

From the 25th - 28th March, the Hong Kong Arts Festival brings us Oscar-winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty), directing 'a formidable transatlantic company of actors in William Shakespeare's The Tempest.' The advertising campaigns for this production are capitalizing on the fact that it belongs to Sam Mendes. Sure, I see the marketing point they're making use of - big name, big money - but the idea of the 'celebrity director' strikes fear into my theatrical core.

As Steven Berkoff (noted British actor, writer and director) talked about in his recent workshop, theatre should always be about the actors, first and foremost. The director, the props, the set, the curtains, the lights - these things are all secondary in importance. The actors are the core, the beginning and the end of all that happens in the empty space. Berkoff himself proves this in his recent performance of On The Waterfront, which he performed in and directed. The actors were not weighed down with pointless props - only a few chairs and tables were used, and perhaps a gun or two. Everything that wasn't totally essential was mimed - stacks of cash, pint glasses, a saloon bar, an open fire to warm their hands over - none of these things had a physical presence. The changes of scene were suggested with light, with mime and with the changes in energy that the actors brought to the stage. They transported us in a single beat from a roof-top with caged pigeons to the docks to a dark alley at night, and it was beautiful, clean and free from pointless props and clunky set pieces. Once these hindrances are removed, what do we have left? We have the voice, and the body of the actor, and little else to use, or rather, misuse. We have tone, and movement, and gesture, distilled and pure, with no prop or set piece to distract us or hide behind. Isn't this what theatre is really about?

From the audiences point of view, who wants to sit in a black-out for thirty seconds while badly disguised stage-crew wander around swapping sofas and beds and benches in the half light, and we look away awkwardly? The brilliant illusion of reality that the actors have worked to create and transport you to is crushed in this moment.

I am not accusing Sam Mendes of anything clunky and hindered, in fact I suspect it will be an excellent performance. I simply want to say 'beware the celebrity director'. It is a dangerous cult that allows the little man who thinks that, because he has created a little world and controls the people in it, he is some sort of God, and therefore he can use those people as puppets, to ferry superfluous props around onstage, and wait in the wings for a table to be exchanged for another table.


Theatre without Theatricality

Berkoff also talked at length about the state of British Theatre over recent decades, and sadly I recognized much of what he said.

There is a vein of British audience which seeks a theatre without theatricality. That is, people have become afraid, as we are in real life (in that repressed, Victorian-hangover sort of way) of big displays of intense emotion. We shunned it, we felt uncomfortable, we called it fake, and we pointed the blame at the Americans. In fact, we were right - real theatre had left our fair isle and, as Berkoff suggested, the American writers were creating the real theatre.

As I see it, our repressed theatre-goers were then exposed to the 'in-yer-face' theatre of the mid-90's. We borrowed this term from the Americans to describe this new, shocking movement, which was a reaction to the sterility that preceded it. Interestingly, the origins of this movement can be found in the theories of Antonin Artaud, whom Berkoff mentioned and praised repeatedly during his workshop.
So, we subject our reserved, repressed audience of little social plays to confrontation, violence, and the brashness of Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and Anthony Neilson. The result is strange.
We are left with an audience now comfortable with certain types of theatricality. Terrible, brutal physical violence? Yes, non-provocative nudity? No. Domestic abuse? Sure. Spitting in your lovers face? Yeah. Gang violence? No problem! Calling your mum the C word? Why not. But what about devotion to another person, what about sacrifice, and what about those dramatic, poetic Shakespearean love scenes? These can be just as brutal, just as heart-wrenching and explosive as using dirty words and spittle. Heck, Shakespearean actors were spitting all over each other before Alice in Closer was a glint in Patrick Marbers' parker pen!
Yet, these 'classical' extremes we shy away from. We confine them to opera, because that is what opera has become to us - a spectacle, a place for a shrill soprano to lose her mind as hoarse old men shout Bravo! and quaff champagne.

In this, the age of the screen and the celebrity - where attendance to real theatres is boosted by having a soap-opera celebrity star in Sondheim - we try to play these emotions to the cinema screen. But theatre is not about that! Micro-gestures are lost on all but the actor two paces away from you, ends of lines are lost when we whisper - as if overcome by some big emotion that we try to keep inside, that we bravely push down inside us. But remember - even real tears can only be seen by the first two rows. Theatre is not about subtlety. It is not about being 'realistic'. And audiences are perfectly capable of 'suspending disbelief' IF the actors give a good performance, so to try to explain every little inconsistency that happens is madness - it is method acting gone mad. A great director once told me that prior to a scene in a play, a British actor was seen running around backstage. An American actor asked him, what are you doing? And he explained that he was about to enter as a page-boy or some such, and was to be exhausted from rushing there. The American actor replied 'or, you could just 'act' exhausted...'

According to Variety, "This is a beautifully spoken production, every word clear as a bell”. This, and other things, make me sure that Sam Mendes' production will be wonderful, not a clunky clumsy clogged-up facade, not a repressed, robotic echo of a spectacle, of an historical artifact. This quote gets to the root of the issue of what theatre should be, for me: clean and clear, both in word and emotion, and beautifully poetic.