Lecture Notes (b)

(unedited.)

allegory/representation--storytelling/narrative: pure abstraction
What are they telling me, what is real, what is super-real?

Certain physical gestures are imprinted, are meaningful or significant in western society--how can this cultural memory affect meaning onstage?

At what point does academic or legal writing become poetry?

The classical form of theatrical representation is absolutely respected--but it is hollow, and like the hermit crab, we may walk around in its empty shell. (who said this?)

Tragedy should be detached from disaster and real life awful occurrences and situations-tragedy implies much more than the slaughter of innocents, but requires the invocation of deadly sin, not just horrible weather or insanity.

The definition of art precludes chaos--art is intentional.
yet inclusion of chaos may be intentional. dramaturgy may include chance.

philosophy and theatre are venues for removal of the mind from the mundane and functional--these areas offer the opportunity to reflect on the nature of being and even to call into question or negate established thinking and concord to that end.

-why do we reject narrative?

why does art seek purity of form--why are we obsessed with escaping representation, when in any instance art IS representation? Are we ashamed of the falseness of art? It isn't real. It won't be. The moment art becomes real it becomes functional, it becomes architecture or product design. A beautifully functional object is an appliance. A tool. A beautifully functional set of movements is a maneuver, not a dance. Analysis of art is the process of shoving your head into your head.

The bauhaus tried to make the human form an abstraction. varying degrees of success. (Surely after a while they gave up and admitted it was dance?) How do you make a human being abstract without hurting them? To what extent is this ethical?

People outraged at what a production isn't--what the observer believes the production failed to do, failing to realize that what wasn't there was never intended to be there.

We must recognize that art cannot be life, and art cannot exist without some medium, some means of communicating itself to the observer. Why then do we belabor the pure form, the medium-free ideal? After a while this becomes a religion--eternal pursuit of an impossible, useless, inhuman, unreal ideology.

If it is real, is it theatre anymore?

When does sensationalism cross the line from catharsis to experience?

Public execution is, or at least historically has been, a form of entertainment. But at the end, the executed does not take a bow. It is real. But is it theatre?