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Thanks, Conrad, for your generous intro of me
and our common travails
in hometown Lancaster, PA, where the Bible Belt loops over the Mason-Dixon Line in an outpost of reactionary civilization such as you do not generally find north of Richmond, VA. What Conrad doesn't say, and may not know, is that when he and Linda came to town with the Independent Eye it inspired me to give theater a try. I'm sure glad I did! Otherwise, I don't know if I would have found anything in life or the world to that would have sustained me through the suicidal years between 45 and 60. By the way, I now live in Norfolk, VA, where a strong native will to reaction is offset by the magnificent wild seas that surround us on all sides. Anyway.... I've been interested in the discussion on
institutionalization of the
creative impulse, as in forming ongoing theater companies. Most RATS, it seems, defend this as at least necessary, if not noble and even, in some cases, sort of glorious, like acts of heroism in the culture wars. Each to hier own, of course. But.... The best, and foremost, example I know of the
case against institution-
alization is the Christian church. A dynamite story teller and spiritual genius named Jesus created a tremendous inspiration, collecting a rather large ensemble of 12 travelling players around his revolutionary and original work but getting himself (and several of his ensemble) killed by the state in the process. Then the marketing machine stepped in, and look what happened once they got organized! True, they've sold a hell of a lot of tickets, put a lot of asses in their seats, generated tremendous sums in donations, and given countless successors good livings. But can anyone say the resulting institution bears any acceptable resemblance to the original creative impulse from which it sprang? Instead, it's churned out whole libraries full of rationalizations for why compromis- ing the vision has been necessary, noble, glorious, and even the best thing for the world and
society. I can't buy that!
Theater, especially on the fringes, is something
like religion, particu-
larly for those who practice it. Many of us have prevailed upon churches to serve as institutional umbrellas for our early work. I have, as part of my own history of compromise, until I either got censored or kicked out. To move into the company of accepted institutions in a community you've got to have a pro-institutional attitude. No slips of the tongue, no calling a spade a spade. Diplomacy, what Conrad calls the elaborate mating game (great phrase!) of currying favor and producing optimistic charts and graphs, is the measure of your artistry. I think it's naive to expect your enemy to
supply you with the weapons you
need to win the war. The American Indians found
that out with the Winchester
repeating rifle. America today is unfriendly to the arts because the truth hurts, and our culture is caught up in such enormous
lies that it can't afford to support the truth, which the arts have the duty to
at least strive to express. When a theater becomes an institution, it accepts
some part of that condition to tone down the message--to market itself, in fact,
as just one of the gang. That would be good if the gang we're talking about were
the human race. But in City Hall the human race is generally distrusted and
feared. Am I wrong? Or just paranoid?
I guess I believe in guerilla theater, after
all. Strike, and pull back.
Strike, and pull back. I think Daniel Dafoe does it really well, among actors types, but not everyone is so well positioned as he for the task, or else we all have our own little corners of the world to operate in and have to make the best of it. Which is okay, too. Just fine, really. From the trenches,
D.D. Delaney
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