Re: RAT solipsism/vanity

["Donna Sherritt" <ohbelladonna@hotmail.com>]

Funny--I actually have a picture of Jesus laughing here in my office.  No 
kidding.

Here's another exhortation:  what about the radical idea of artists actually 
getting involved in the community?  I'm not talking about going with your 
friend to the cast party of the show s/he's in.  I'm talking about getting 
involved in education and community outreach.  Schools, adult education 
facilities, charities, juvenile detention facilities, churches, etc.  These 
places are often screaming for artistic/cultural/vocational activities.  And 
there is often *pay* involved for the artist (not that you should do it for 
that, but not that you shouldn't).

I'm convinced that theatre artists get frustrated with the lack of 
understanding in the community, and respond by only talking to each other.  
We are so good at wiping each other's noses and shaking our sympathetic 
heads in communal disgust.  If we spent some time with non-theatrical 
institutions within the community, I wonder what would happen to our work?  
Perhaps some of the solipsism and vanity would disappear.  We just might 
create something -- not a sitcom or movie of the week -- but something that 
has meaning and is understood by our community but isn't banal.  Something 
that is truly theatrical in the sense that it is a communal expression of a 
communal need, live, in person, irreproducable, and even necessary.  As 
theatre artists, we often get so bogged down in trying to convince the 
community that it needs us, we often forget that we need them.  A little 
ivory-tower time might be useful, but not all the time.  We don't need to do 
plays all about how miserable we are.  We could actually find something like 
joy and beauty in an experience like this.

Besides, getting kids to like plays might increase your ticket sales in 
about ten or fifteen years.  I had to add that tag.

donna


>From: Rebecca Gray <smith@avn.com>
>Reply-To: rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
>To: rat-list@whirl-i-gig.com
>Subject: RAT solipsism/vanity
>Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 11:16:28 -0700
>
> >done.  "There's room for everything," I say cheerfully through tight 
>teeth.
> >But I see an awful lot of theatre that might as well be
>
>done in an isolation tank; in a bedroom, in a bathroom, in a more
>appropriate venue for masturbation
>
>doesn't the box office serve to keep performers/performance groups,
>notoriously (and sometimes beautifully, sure) self-absorbed, "honest"? OK
>the money encourages commoditization = commercialization = sell out (hmm)
>BUT THERE ARE TWO SIDES to the coin, ain't that the saw
>
>people will come. People, and not just friends from your acting class or
>your extended family, will come and /give/ when you /give/ them
>(what is it we give? the touchstone manifest, the safari of the soul,
>ENTERFUCKINGTAINMENT? WHAT'S SO WRONG with entertainment???!!!!)
>(/why/ is it that /artists/--and art--are--are expected to be--/tortured/
>"have you ever seen a picture of jesus laughing/do you think he had a
>beautiful smile/a smile that healed" etc. is pain really the only gauge of
>worth ? for too many actors it is that's why there's BOX OFFICE to pull the
>introspector out of her own little hell and into the world)
>(a world that deserves entertainment)
>
>If we x out the Exchange, we (can't help but) lose contact, in my opinion,
>with theater's nascent condition and real significance: The Church for the
>Expression of the evermorevaluable Understanding of what it is to /be/ here
>
>

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