A Book to Write: Walt Whitman and American Drama

I have an idea for a book I’d love to write sometime. It would take a lot of research but could be really fun and very readable. It’s a study of the legacy of Walt Whitman and his poetry on American dramatic history. While I would obviously spend time discussing plays that reference Whitman directly (Angels in America being, of course, one of my favorites), I would spend equal or greater time discussing plays that seem to respond directly to Whitman’s legacy--like the “radical hospitality” (John Muse’s words) of 365 Plays/365 Days, or the plays of Sam Shepard or Gertrude Stein. Imagine chapters exploring these various motifs as they are explored and developed in American dramatic history:

• Walt Whitman’s radical inclusiveness (the listing impulse)

• Other qualities of Whitman's poetic output, as they have dramaturgical correspondents/descendents

• Walt Whitman’s vision of America (what America means to him and how that vision is found again and again in American plays)

• Walt Whitman’s vision of masculinity, which relates to…

• Walt Whitman’s vision of queerness (how the Whitmanian construction of queerness has a lasting legacy in American GLBTQ theatre—a needed response to all the attention paid to the Wilde legacy)

• [is considering Whitman's own theatrical self-presentation too much?]

• Walt Whitman’s vision of the theater (Whitman loved the theatre: explore how he constructs the theatre in his poems, and how the history of American theatre has lived up to, realized, or betrayed his vision)

In addition to researching everything about Walt Whitman and everything about American playwriting, I would also need to research what I can about Whitman’s legacy, how he has been constructed throughout the history of American popular culture, in order to discuss the “influence” question in specific terms.

I should totally write this book in, like, 15-20 years and become totally famous and get reviewed in The New Yorker because it’s so original and beautifully written!!

A Book to Write: Hamlet Plays

I would love someday to write a book about the influences of Hamlet on world cultures and on later dramas. There have been hundreds (at least) of “Hamlet Plays” since the original’s premiere in 1600. What is it about the figure of Hamlet that keeps artists and philosophers coming back to him again and again for models of their own consciousnesses?

I might argue, perhaps, that the interpretive openness of Hamlet the play and Hamlet the character is partly what permits them both to be re-appropriated and always made relevant over time. The fact that we don’t know why he delays allows us to put into his story whatever we want depending on our own social circumstance.

A potential layout of potential chapters:

Chapter 1—Who’s There?
A chapter on the play Hamlet itself, offering some theories about the play’s reception in 1600 England, with its relationship to revenge tragedy. And, were alternate versions of the play performed throughout history, like with Macbeth, so that we need to contextualize what we mean when we say Hamlet in the rest of the study?

Chapter 2—Even though most of the juicy stuff begins in the Romantic age, there must be something interesting in the 17th and 18th centuries. Find it and write about it. Maybe Life is a Dream? I don’t know how influenced that was by Hamlet… ☺

Chapter 3—Russia: The influence of the Hamlet figure from Turgenev (essays, etc) through Chekhov (Ivanov, The Seagull); remember to consider the specific translation Chekhov would have seen when he first saw the play in his homeland.

Chapter 4—Germany: The influence of the Hamlet figure from Kleist (Prince of Homburg) to Schlegel to Hegel to Brecht (Baal); German Romanticism baby!

Chapter 5—Poland and Czechoslovakia: The influence of the Hamlet figure from Witkiewicz (The Water Hen) through Mrosek and Gombrowicz (Amy Boratko, I think, is writing her dissertation on this very subject)

Chapter 6—Postmodern America (or Postmodernism in General?): Consider the proliferation of Hamlet plays since the 1960s, including Ludlam (Stage Blood), Stoppard (Rozencrantz and Guildenstern…) and Müller (Hamletmachine). I’m not sure whether I should focus on America (and consider film versions, etc), English-speaking countries (so include Canada: Slings and Arrows; and Stoppard), or the Western world (thus Müller, though we’d have to differentiate this from Ch. 5). The point of a tighter study could be Hamlet as "Theater" (i.e. when people think of The Theater they think of Hamlet, as though its content were irrelevant); of a broader study it could be Hamlet as Postmodernist (the way he was a Romanticist in Ch. 4)

I don’t know where to put Pirandello, but he goes somewhere in here.

You might end up with an intellectual history of Western Europe just by tracking Hamlet and Hamlet plays throughout!

Towards an Ontology of Art

Art is that which is arranged. The artistic quality of a thing lies in the way in which it is put together—the order of objects, the arrangement of its shapes, the choice of its colors and sizes, its placement in space. Everything, then, can be art. All art objects exist on a scale from the pragmatic to the aesthetic. The pragmatic arrangement is devised for a practical purpose, to achieve a function, usually in the realm of the physical or the economic. The aesthetic arrangement is devised simply to be perceived, usually in a way that is pleasurable (the issue of “aesthetic pleasure” is too big for this already hubristic blog post). It may have functions in the realm of the social or the political, but these are merely the results of the perceptive pleasure it evokes. The main difference in whether something is considered art or not is exactly that, the way it is considered.

Let us consider a sign on a shopping mall storefront. Let us say that it reads, “Joe’s Hardware.” Now consider the sign in the front of the store as an art object. Its pragmatic purpose is to dictate to spectators (mall shoppers) the identity of the store and, hopefully, indicate what is inside. All that is necessary, then, is for the sign, which let us say is in a black-and-white block-letter sans serif font, to hang in a perfect horizontal above the entrance to the store. This would be an art object that is wholly pragmatic. Mall shoppers don’t think too much about the arrangement of the pieces of the sign (except, perhaps, “how dull,” but that’s because most storefronts are no longer wholly pragmatic), but the pragmatic goal of the object is achieved. Shoppers now know what’s inside the store.

Now let us consider the exact same sign, with the same boring font reading “Joe’s Hardware,” in the middle of a museum. Suddenly and almost magically, the sign has become a wholly aesthetic object. It has no pragmatic purpose anymore. Instead, it exists to be perceived. Its very presence in the museum tells us as much. Whether the sign should be more floridly decorated is a matter for critical taste but is not relevant to the sign’s existence as object.

But that’s easy. Let’s go back to the mall, and let’s change up the sign. Let’s say it it still reads, “Joe’s Hardware,” but let’s say it is now a 3-dimensional entity composed of letters and a hammer. Let us say that, by a feat of mechanical engineering, probably by a technician from the Disney store, the sign is animated, so that one of the letters continually slips from its position on the sign and is continually nailed back up by a hammer. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it’s pretty rather than tacky. Now not only do mall shoppers know what is inside the store, but they find themselves standing and looking at the sign long after the pragmatic information it is designed to convey has been processed. One shopper, distracted momentarily from her noisy children, exclaims, “That’s a work of art!” What she means, of course, is not that the sign has ceased to serve a function, but merely that it has moved along the art object spectrum closer to the aesthetic. It is both pragmatic and aesthetic, and wholly neither. The fact that it is pretty only helps its case as an aesthetic object, because the sign does not pragmatically need to be pretty to convey the message that there are tools inside the store.

Of course, the pretty 3-dimensional “Joe’s Hardware” sign probably has the added benefit of bringing more people into the store, and the makers of the sign probably expected this when they spent the money to create it. But this is a secondary effect. The shoppers wooed by the new sign are not coming into the store simply because there are tools inside. They are also entering because they enjoyed perceiving the sign, and they want to see if there is more pleasure to be found within. They might buy a hammer while they’re at it.

So, everything is art, because everything is arranged, but some things are more aesthetic than others, which are more pragmatic. The ontological journey from arrangement to art does not necessitate a consciousness behind the arranging, but of course it always evokes one in the popular imagination. That is why even natural objects may be considered “art.” Though every tree or mountain has a slew of pragmatic functions that necessitate the arrangement of its parts—and scientists have devoted their careers to explaining every single aspect of the natural object in terms of its pragmatic function—we cannot help, at times, simply enjoying the perception of the object, the arrangement of shapes and colors and sizes. And so we say something like “God”—or if we prefer “Nature”—“is an artist!” And we are right, except arguably for the God part.

The crafty reader will have surmised by now that the very term “arrangement” could be rephrased as “form,” and it follows naturally that if art is that which is arranged, therefore art is that which has form. This argument plays itself out in the course of theatrical history. The theatre has outrun many of the qualities that were once seen to define itself—story, narrative, character, the proscenium—but it has yet to outrun form. Even the postdramatic theatre is arranged. Even improvisation, even Happenings, are arranged—they are arranged on the spot, but they have form nonetheless.

To that playwright colleague of mine who once asked, seemingly rhetorically, “isn’t having a good story all that you really need to have a good play?” The answer is no! Story is an available tool for arranging, but it is not the thing itself. It is not art. Art is in the form.

A Cartoon Illustrating the Necessity of Formalism

(since I can’t draw, I’ll have to write it out as a playscript)

FRAME ONE: “CONTENT”
(A mother and a child are in a park. The child has misbehaved. Perhaps he has thrown all of his orange juice onto the grass. The child has a history of throwing orange juice onto the grass, and the mother has told him many times not to do it again. The last time it happened, she said she would yell at him if it happened again. Now she has to follow through)

MOTHER: (in a calm voice) What did I say? Did I say I would yell at you if you did that again? Well I am yelling at you. I am yelling at you right now. Don’t ever do that again. Do you like it when I yell at you? I am yelling at you, and you deserve it.

FRAME TWO: “FORM AND CONTENT”
(same scenario as Frame One)
MOTHER: (shouting at the top of her lungs and pointing her finger at the child) WHAT DID I SAY? DID I SAY I WOULD YELL AT YOU IF YOU DID THAT AGAIN? WELL I AM YELLING AT YOU. I AM YELLING AT YOU RIGHT NOW. DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN. DO YOU LIKE IT WHEN I YELL AT YOU? I AM YELLING AT YOU, AND YOU DESERVE IT!

FRAME THREE: “FORM”
(same scenario as Frames One and Two)
MOTHER (shouting at the top of her lungs and pointing her finger at the child): AND SO EVEN THOUGH WE FACE THE DIFFICULTIES OF TODAY AND TOMORROW, I STILL HAVE A DREAM! IT IS A DREAM DEEPLY ROOTED IN THE AMERICAN DREAM. I HAVE A DREAM THAT ONE DAY THIS NATION WILL RISE UP AND LIVE OUT THE TRUE MEANING OF ITS CREED: "WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL!

Epilogue: The child in the second and third frames does not repeat the same transgression the following day. The child in the first frame, however, does.

A bonus question for the reader: If you replace “child” with “dog” in these three scenarios (and orange juice with feces, let’s say), in which frame(s) will the dog learn not to repeat the transgression? Why?

Towards a Formula for the French Avant-Garde

Wagner + France = Symbolism

+ World War I + Jarry = Dada

+ Freud = Surrealism

+ psycho-religious catharsis = Artaud

+ World War II + Well-Made Play = Ionesco/Absurd

I think this is very clever. :)

Upon listening to "Rose's Turn" for the umpteenth time

The musical theatre is Aristotelian!

All musicals are about being recognized and known!

Every female character in musical theatre wants to be beautiful!

“Rose’s Turn” is the apex of the musical theatre form and also the beginning of the anti-musical. “Rose’s Turn” negates the principles of theatrical fantasy that ground the musical itself. Just as there are no more songs in Gypsy after “Rose’s Turn,” so the musical can never be pure again after Gypsy. The form begins its nose-dive into the theatricalism and anti-theater of the 1960s and 1970s. Eventually what was once a thriving form became a style that has then bred anti-musical-theatre-style musicals (Urinetown, Spamalot, The Producers, Bat Boy—how much more decadent can one get?).

And so, yes, the musical theatre began to die when Ethel Merman sang “Rose’s Turn,” and now it is dead, in the sense that it is no longer vital. But that does not mean that music in the theatre is dead. Nor does it mean that the musical theatre will not have many heirs, certain characteristics of which are already being suggested in concert-plays like Striking 12 and Passing Strange and in the through-sung theatre operas of See What I Wanna See, Rent, and most promisingly, Caroline, or Change.

Nor, incidentally, does it mean that great musicals do not continue to be written that employ the same forms and impulses as the musical. Legally Blonde and Wicked are two of the most commercially successful examples. Grey Gardens and Light in the Piazza two of the most critically successful. There also continue to be great well-made plays, great melodramas, and even great neoclassical dramas. This does not mean negate the fact that these forms are dead.

To throw a wrench into the works, imagine being a musical theater queen in 1959, ten years before Stonewall, and seeing “Rose’s Turn” for the first time. Consider how that experience is harder and harder to recapture as openly gay men are assimilated into normative society. The reasons for a form to die are cultural as much as they are aesthetic.

I do not have time to develop these thoughts. But perhaps I could write a dissertation on anti-theatricality in the musical theatre. It could include a theory chapter on the form, function, and phenomenon of musical theatre. Then a chapter on Kander and Ebb and Bob Fosse. Then a chapter on Sondheim. Then a chapter on musical theater since the 1980s and the “death” of the musical theatre. Then an epilogue that is a manifesto for new forms.

Now that’s an idea!

Pure Form in (of?) the Theatre

One of the great things about graduate school is that it is very possible to be discussing the same question from two different angles in two different (but related) classes simultaneously. One of these fortunate collisions took place for me this when I read both Joseph Chaikin’s The Presence of the Actor and Ignacy Witkiewicz’s “On a New Type of Play,” the former articulating the principles of the performance group The Open Theatre, the latter articulating the basic principles of the Witkiewicz’s imagined Theatre of Pure Form. The question both try to answer is—what is the “pure form” of the theater?

For Witkiewicz, the question is a frustrating one, doomed from the start, because theater is inherently a bastard art, lacking basic materials for formalism. He describes the problem as follows: “pure performance in time is possible only in the world of sounds, a theater without characters who act, no matter how outrageously and improbably, is inconceivable; simply because theater is a composite art, and does not have its own intrinsic, homogenous elements, like the pure arts: Painting and Music.” All we can do, he seems to argue, is to approach pure formalism as best we can, like a Zen “impossible task” that makes us stronger and better for the trying.

But hindsight reveals that Witkiewicz’s problem was staring him in the face. “A theater without characters who act” is indeed impossible, and that is why Joe Chaikin, in his search for the essence of theater, landed on the actor’s presence, the space between the actor and the audience, and the sounds and gestures that the actor makes as the essential building blocks of all theater. In other words, the space between the actor and the audience is the pure form that Witkiewicz, in his effort to unite the theatre with the formalism and Cubisms of music and visual art, could not find.

It is telling that Witkiewicz called his art a “Theatre of Pure Form.” The name suggests that there may yet be a theatre “of” something other than “pure form.” Chaikin, on the other hand, may be said to seek the Pure Form of the Theatre, or a form of which the theatre can be no other.

It just so happens that I am also reading Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre concurrent with both these performance theorists. Lehmann, in his neo-Hegelian glory, suggests a development in theatremaking from a text-based dramatic theatre to a formalist postdramatic theatre. Witkiewicz and Chaikin place themselves nicely on a continuum that leads ultimately to Kantor and Wilson. Indeed, Witkiewicz’s theatre of pure form begins as text, as a written play that is staged by actors and a director. Chaikin’s theatre, on the other hand, begins with the actor, out of whom sound, movement, and text are all generated as co-equal parts in the artistic whole. Purity, therefore, is within his reach as it is not, and never could be, within Witkiewicz’s.

Audience=Dumb? A Thought Experiment

Here is a description of a performance event, O.A.P. by performance artist Ursula Martinez, from the introduction to Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre:

“O.A.P.… investigated her [Ursula’s] own fear of growing old while also exploring gender as performance… In a memorable scene, ‘old Ursula’ donned high heels and make-up and turned to the audience asking whether anybody would like to kiss her. During the embarrassed silence that followed, we were left to decide whether it was just the distance to the performer on stage or the image of old people as non-sexual beings that prevented us from volunteering to kiss her.”

The translator of Lehman’s book, Karen Jürs-Munby, uses this moment as an example of how performance can “destabilize the spectator’s construction of identity and the ‘other.’” The example, however, depends on a certain idea of spectatorship as a willful surrender of agency, that being in the audience means being unwilling to invade the world of the performer, and therefore to act in a meaningful way. Now, for sure, there is an awful long history of this theory of spectatorship proving itself in practice—the exceptions are so rare they are history making (the riot it provoked in the theater is one of the reasons A Doll’s House is so famous today). And many dramatists have used this theory to exploit the spectator as a metaphor for the kind of obsequious, politically dormant populace most susceptible to totalitarian dominance (Information for Foreigners one of the more obvious examples, Cabaret one of the more commercial).

BUT, I can’t help but think, when reading about this moment in O.A.P., what would happen if an audience member (say, me) were to have stepped up to the actress and kissed her. One can imagine such a spectator (say again, me) having read up on performance theory and understanding what Ursula was up to, and so deciding to subject the play itself to an experiment. Would Ursula have awkwardly smiled and continued the show as though the kiss hadn’t happened? Would she have walked offstage and ended the performance? One thing is certain, the basic theory of spectatorship on which her entire performance rests would have vaporized. And wouldn’t her anger and frustration have opened up new room for inquiry—for example, into the role of the performer in creating and manipulating the spectator, on the dependence of the performer on the spectator for his or her very existence.

One might argue that it is Ursula’s very intention to subvert and therefore destroy the passive spectator, and that in doing so her play is brutally anti-theatrical, aiming to undermine the very conditions of the theatrical event itself. If this argument were true, however, Ursula would celebrate a kiss from a rebel spectator like myself. My suspicion that she wouldn’t, however, speaks to my suspicion of the anti-theatrical, or at least the anti-spectatorial, impulse itself. I wonder what Lehmann will have to say on this issue as I venture into his book…