Re: RAT, The dramaturgy of...

[nick <nick@ratconference.com>]

At 01:04 AM 1/18/01 EST, DennisLMo@aol.com wrote:
> isn't there really an enormous amount of talent in t.v. really. i mean  
>some of that writing. wow. they be so witty on frazier and the experimental  
>theatre wing of hbo gives us tah dah the SOPRANOS.

The best TV writing over the last few decades has been in that laugh track
always running in the background beneath those sit-coms.  How subtle those
intermingled guffaws and giggles have become? Even when it's not there it's
there, the sound of the ancestor chuckling in back of the head. The laugh
track haunts the TV viewer incessantly.  Some Grandpa Hee-haw offstage
somewhere in his tomb coaxing those hysterical horselaughs from Bart and
Lisa as they watch Itchy and Scratchy blow each other up.  The Simpsons is
docudrama is the American lifestyle.  The family rushing home from
work/school/shopping flop collectively on that couch in front of the TV.
Of course something bad should happen when they land there.  Some big foot
should step on them or the couch should sink into a collapsing floor or the
TV should swallow them up.  Each episode the viewer expectantly waits for
some new intro to the old laugh track.  Hee-haw.  Hee-haw.  All television
is the Itchy and Scratchy Show.  In fact, all narrative writing is.  Create
the Itch in the reader/audience, then Scratch it.  On to the next episode.
Unreal as unreal can be.

Seals, too, can be trained to applaud and bark when you throw them fish.
All those Fat Fucks plopping down on that Simpson couch with their TV trays
demanding more for their entertainment dollar.  Aren't they aware that the
laugh track is going to kick in any second now?  That big clown foot is
going to come down on us all.  Or as Artaud knew, the sky can still fall.  

Theater could start clubbing the baby seals for their furs.  Make costumes
from them.  Walk the earth as evil bad ass with the mark of Cain on its
forehead.  It could do that.  Something film and television and books and
all the other mediums can never do.  These products, like fish food, can be
"distributed."   But they can't walk their own talk as the wrighters and
performers can and do.  

Theater is dangerous in this way.  It carries reality in its holster like
six-gun justice.  And for this reason Theater still rules the Wild West of
art and imagination.  The dimwits arrested the puppets in Philly this year
at the GOP Convention.  But Carlos always escapes detection.  His dojo is
backstage at Theatre Double. "Acting is a martial art.  Step within the
presence.  Walk the walk the gods once walked.  Animate the Icon."
Homeless Elvis is Carlos' most apt student.

Working high above the Sistine Chapel floor, lying on his back in the
scaffolding, Michelangelo's brushes against his truest audience.  His
canvas is the ceiling is the metaphysical sky itself.  The artist literally
has his back turned on the groundling audience of one.  Pope Julius II is
lessor supreme, commissioning Michelangelo first for his own tomb, then the
chapel ceiling.  But perhaps the Landlord also knows that a "falling star"
could appear as a "shooting star" to some other Landlord elsewhere in the
universe.  And vice versa.  So which gazebo roofs the metaphysical
audience?  No matter, the opinions of Kings and other groundlings are never
tallied in this art.  

Of course the groundlings are always present, some even in box seats.  But
the most worthy and revered audience is also the competition.  Rival
reality, its winning arrow is already in the target center.  Yet Robin
Hood, the Zen archer is able to split that bull's-eyed arrow with his own.
Crafted grace, Theater engulfs its time and place.  And the sky holds
another day.

--nick