Re: RAT Politics and Theatre

[The Independent Eye <bards@independenteye.org>]

	"Theatre as political activism" and "theatre as political" are two different issues, I believe, and both depend on definitions.

Sure, any play, even "The Fantastiks," is political:  It collects a group of citizens in an audience, shows them a story in which human decisions are made that impact on the characters' lives, and promotes certain values.  That it's all done as entertaining fantasy is the strategic technique, not unlike Aristophanes, Giraudoux, or the SF Mime Troupe.  What makes it odd to call it political is the unlikelihood (though I don't know this) that Schmidt & Jones had anything remotely political on their minds, and that it simply reinforces conventional values.  But reinforcing conventional values is certainly a political act.

But political activism is what we call actions that push *against* the prevailing order of things, and that usually has to do with intention.  Aristophanes now still has a political message, but usually he's just staged as "fun."  In his own time, "Lysistrata" or "The Acharnians" would have been equivalent to a national telecast of a pacifist play as the Nazis were invading New York; and he was attacking prominent people viciously (i.e. with comedy), e.g. Cleon, Euripides, Socrates, with those people likely in the audience.  Now, relatively speaking, the plays are an artifact. 

The questions underlying "Where do theatre & activism meet?" are really, "How effective is theatre as political activism?" or "Does political activism destroy theatre?"

Both of these are complicated by the overwhelming force of commodification.  Here, we've just debated the pros and cons of Karl Marx for 18 bucks, so, however you feel about that, it's not news that anything - Marx, the Brooklyn riots, revolution in France, you name it - becomes a commercial product unless it stays on the street corner.  It's pretty much a given that anything proclaimed by the critics as "revolutionary" isn't.  Being *about* a political issue is what's usually meant by political theatre.  "Yep, causes me to think, and isn't she a good actress?"

My own perspective on the first question is that, mostly, "political" theatre can be socially effective in one of several ways.  First, it can preach to the choir.  The choir, today, is very much in need of preaching.  It's called "entertaining the troops."  Big puppets in a parade might attract spectators' notice, but they don't change viewpoints or voting patterns - what they do is rally the troops, like marching under a flag.  That has nothing to do with changing anyone's viewpoint:  it's just the same as giving a big party for your volunteers - it really helps to draw people together.  Essentially, that's what the Mime Troupe does, and I'd imagine that's what the Howard Zinn piece does.

A second way is bringing issues into consciousness.  That happens rarely - usually it's only when the media have made it a big deal that someone writes a play about it.  But it does happen, to a degree.  Cat mentioned A HATFUL OF RAIN.  In 1975, we created a one-act play, DESSIE, about child abuse & family violence; it happened to be at a time when this was just starting to enter into the media consciousness, though we didn't know it, and soon we were doing hundreds of performances cross-country - it was in our repertory 1975 to 1984, about 600 performances.  I'd say it had political effect in several senses.  First, like a candidate coming to town, it generated press features.  That promoted awareness of these issues.  Second, every performance was followed by a discussion, which sometimes went on much longer than the play, and out of this a number of volunteer organizations were born or were strengthened.  Finally, it brought a number of people (those who'd hang back to talk to us till everybody'd left) to confront their own domestic situations.  In this case, I think the play was effective because there was *no* issue jargon or obvious viewpoint in it: it was simply a totally excruciating 45 minute character portrait that gave people a huge emotional shock and then opened the door to (craftily, if I say so myself) guided discussion).  That stuff happens once in a while.

The second way is to insinuate yourself very subtly into changing the vocabulary of the debate.  Most so-called political theatre *reinforces* the untenable categories.  That's where "theatre for the troops" and "theatre for the public" really have contrary techniques - as Cat describes in the Mumia rallies.  The conservatives have become extremely skilled at this: as The New Yorker noted, for every reactionary act Bush commits, his vocabulary becomes more liberal, even quoting, for godsake, Dorothy Day - he's coopting liberal jargon and thus rendering it utterly meaningless.  Or standing under a sequoia tree, and promising to preserve it - as if that's the only significant environmental issue.  

How do we do it in our own terms?  One small example.  For us personally, a significant issue is the social stigma and political discrimation against people in non-conventional relationships, whether they be polyamorous, multipartner, gay, or otherwise - it impacts on us, on offspring, and on many friends.  We created a short piece that's part of our show HITCHHIKING OFF THE MAP called "Truth."  It focuses on an older, very conventional couple whose daughter is living as part of a bisexual triad.  The mother knows this, the father doesn't; just before the mother leaves to visit the daughter, who's having a baby, they get into a quarrel and she tells the father.  But suddenly, the daughter's "lifestyle" isn't the issue:  the issue is that the mother's kept it a secret.  ("I never told him what he didn't need to know.")  And they're confronted with their own distrust of each other's ability to hear truth, the withheld secrets and feelings in their own relationship.

The first time we played this, it was for a polyamory conference.  Predictably, it got huge response from people who'd gone through the wringer of deciding whether to tell their parents about their relationships.  But since then, we've played it in regular theatres, in churches, in settings where the vast majority of the audience are straight, monogamous, and who sympathize strongly with the father and mother.  And they connect with it strongly.   Obviously, it works theatrically because we present the people with great sympathy. and it deals with people's natural worries about their kids, about the rapid changes in the world, etc.  But I'd also argue that it has a political effect, even though nothing in it *directly* promotes a particular lifestyle.  Indirectly, yes, it sketches a positive picture - the woman says, "They say they love each other, as if that mattered.  She acts happy about it!" - and the parents arrive at position of acceptance.  But the important thing is that it shifts the issue from the daughter's lifestyle to the parents' own.  They're intelligent enough to realize that she's ahead of them in basing a relationship on truth.  Reframing issues, shifting the viewpoint, is something theatre does extremely well.  

(In the example Cat cited about the Mumia street theatre, it sounds as if the players didn't choose the right means for the right audience.  Their piece might have been quite effective for a "rallying the troops" function, but then you've gotta play to the troops.  To reach a street audience, you have to connect with how *they* think and shift the issue from "Free Mumia!" to seeding doubt about the fairness of the trial - it isn't only radicals who mistrust the government.)

And the third mode of political activism in theatre is simply that the company, or the artists, bear witness by what they are and how they operate.  That's what I most admire about Judith Malina - she just keeps doing it.  When I saw The Living Theatre's "Paradise Now," it didn't change my political views, but it certainly impelled me to take radical action in creating our first ensemble.  And the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, which mostly presents a very conventional resident season (with some notable exceptions) in a tiny Pennsylvania town, which isn't remotely a "political" theatre, stands extraordinary witness to both the concept of the "citizen artist," real involvement in the life of their community, and to the sophisticated practice of ensemble-oriented theatre.

It's a fertile question.

Peace & joy-
Conrad




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