Flux Theatre Ensemble

I know, you've been breathlessly waiting for the next physics inspired theoretical post, wading impatiently through all these Flux updates and Homing Project riffs. Well, the wait is over.

At the Black Playwrights Convening, in the surrounding conversation on Twitter at #newplay, and in recent posts from RVC Bard, Halcyon Theatre, and Parabasis, there has been a fascinating discussion about racial/cultural identity in theatre. Questions about what makes a black play black, about why an Arab actor must play an Arab role, whether casting should be color-blind, inclusive, or integrated, what role race plays in a production where race isn't specified, and much more are being hashed out eloquently.

This connects to me previous posts about the importance of the diversity of audience perspective in creating great theatre, and how that importance demands plays that juxtapose characters of diverse and contradictory perspectives on stage, as well.

I've been thinking of string theory's multi-dimensional model as a framework for thinking about diversity of perception. The extremely short version is that string theory posits a limit to the smallness of matter and energy, an irreducible unit that makes up the known universe. These are strings, incredibly small vibrating units that depending on how they vibrate, manifest all the widely different particles we know.

But of course you can't have a limitless number of possible vibrations, or you'd have a limitless number of particles, which our universe clearly does not have. And as it turns out, what defines the possible vibrations are the number and shape of dimensions.

For string theory to be right, there may be as many as 10 or 11 (or in some versions, 26!) dimensions, 3 of which are the macro-scale we're familiar with, 6-7 which are incredibly small, and that old mystery time makes 10 or11.

Depending on the shape of these incredibly small dimensions, these vibrating strings will create a universe like ours, or a universe with completely different laws of physics. The possible shapes of these dimensions are called Calabi-Yau spaces, and they determine how a string will vibrate in response to its surroundings.

Here's the important part: change the number or shape of the dimensions, you change the range of notes for a string, and thereby changes the rules of what's possible.

Change string for identity and dimensions for experience, and you have the rules that govern character.

The experiences with which we traditionally define diversity - age, race, culture, gender, sexuality, class, geography, religion, aesthetics, health, politics, and so on - all of these are dimensions into which the character's string can vibrate. And as certain characters share certain experiences, we may be able to describe a shape to each dimension of diversity, a recognizable common ground, even as we acknowledge that with each added dimension, the possible range of notes multiplies into an absolute uniqueness.

It is our job as artists to strive for this absolute uniqueness in creating character, especially in a world that for purposes of commerce and control pushes identity into a single dimension.

As it is for a single character, so it is for a single play: the capacity for meaning to vibrate through many different dimensions is part of what makes something great; we've all felt the disappointment of the single note play.

As it is for the play, so it for an audience; and I believe that great art can tear a fabric in the dimension of human beings and actually create new space for the spirit to vibrate; it can literally expand our capacity for life.

And as it for an audience, so it is for a culture.

So while I recognize and respect the need to talk about the rough dimensions of diversity; it is the coming together of a diverse and unique range of notes in character, person, play, and culture that interest me most; and where I feel our work as artists lies.

From dizzyingly small to lofty large, this post: not to worry, I'll return to our middle-world soon. Read the full story

If the audience is as important as the actors in making a play work, why don't we spend as much time casting an audience as we do casting a play?

A backdrop for that question:

This weekend, I was lucky enough to observe the American Voices New Play Insitute at Arena Stage's convening on black playwrights. I was there on behalf of my goodly employer TCG, live tweeting the event @tcg and hashtag #newplay. Also make sure to check out Parabasis, Mission Paradox, 99 Seats and the New Play Blog for some in depth analysis of the event later this week.

At the convening, a playwright was discussing the impact of a racially charged joke early in her play on a primarily white audience. They froze, afraid to laugh; but as marketing tactics paid off and the audience diversified, black audience members who laughed at that moment gave the white audience members permission to do so, too.

What this example illuminates is the potential for a diverse audience to echo and enrich a moment on stage through the conflict and confluence of their different perceptions. You are aware not only of the meaning of the moment on stage, but of the meaning of your response in relation to rest of the audience. And this doubling of awareness and meaning doesn't necessarily distance you from the story, but makes it more visceral and immediate.

For more on how an audience's perception affects a play, check out these recent posts on A Different Case For Diversity, Let Me Down Easy, Quantum Darwinism, and More On Presence.

Which all leads us to the question: if the composition of an audience is as essential to a play's alchemy as the make-up of the cast, why don't we pay as much attention to casting the audience as we do to casting the play?

Obviously, I don't mean holding auditions for audience members; I mean considering the composition of the audience as carefully as we do that of the cast.

So who needs to be in the audience for the play to be fully heard?

Who is the choir for this play to preach to, and who is the power this play needs to speak truth to?
Both that power and that choir should be in the room together.
Who is this play about in the community? Are they represented in the audience?
And who in the community doesn't know about the people in this play?
Because they should be in the audience, too.
What are the conflicts in the play? Have all the sides of that conflict represented in the house.

Now, a theatre can only fit so many people, and we only have so much time in the day. But another take away from the convening was the power and necessity of reaching out to local partners who can advocate for you within the communities that the play needs present.

And with the aid of social media, we don't need to guess at who our audience is and how they think. We can ask. We can discover the complex and unique perceptions of our audience without relying solely on the blunt tools of demographics.

I could be very wrong: it could be our best way is to appeal to a devoted niche from an ever more fragmented culture.

But when I think of the audience I want to write for, act for, and sit in; it is an audience of diverse experiences united in focus, multiplying the power of our mutual awareness through our different perspectives.

Now, how do we make that happen? Read the full story

I wanted to follow up on an idea introduced in my post on Anna Deveare Smith's Let Me Down Easy because I need to lay some groundwork for my contributions later in the week to Isaac's project on TDF's Outrageous Fortune.

Most approaches to encouraging greater diversity in theatre stem from moral or practical imperatives:
-A community should have its full cultural diversity represented by its cultural institutions
-If theatre does not diversify its audience base, it will continue to shrink in vitality
-The field should fairly represent artists regardless of race, class, gender, etc.

These are strong, compelling arguments, but they could apply to any art form; in fact, they could apply to any civic communal activity (and I think they do).

But what if there were an aesthetic case for diversity, unique to how theatre works? That would serve as a rebuttal to what 99 Seats calls the "quality dodge", and provide a theatre-specific motivation to diversity.

This case rests in the ideas put forward on my post on Quantum Darwinism. In brief, the audience's perception serves as a crucible of each moment, evolving the actor towards the fittest choice. If this is true, then the audience becomes extremely important in increasing the vitality of every play and theatre as a whole.

So what kind of audience is best able to provide the most piercing kind of perception? What kind of audience can best evolve a play in the moment of its playing?

In my post on Let Me Down Easy, I argue that it is an audience of diverse perceptions. Perception is influenced by the blunt objects of race, gender, age, sexuality, geography and class; but also by the subtler influences of self-selecting cultural identities. An audience of science fiction fans will react differently than an audience of Wagner's Ringnuts. An audience of die-hard Red Sox fans brings in a different set of expectations than an audience of born again Christians. And as all of these experiences, passions, and identities overlap in a single individual, giving rise to their unique perception; so does a group of these individuals create an audience of diverse perceptions; and I believe an audience with the greatest diversity of perception leads to the most powerful theatrical experience.

It's easy to see how: an older audience member will laugh at the Woodstock era joke that the younger might miss. The devout audience member responds to the character of faith without the judgement of the atheist. And so in an audience of diverse perceptions, it's as if each member has grown more ears. They are able of catching things as a group they would miss as individuals. And what they do catch collectively is amplified by a diversity of contrasting responses.

In this scenario, the actor isn't preaching to the choir or hollering over the town hall but somewhere in between; and will naturally elevate their performance because of the diversity of perception bearing down on it.

What kind of play is best suited to create and engage this kind of audience? A play with a similar diversity of perception. To diversify our audience we must diversify our plays. One of Shakespeare's eeriest abilities is to disappear behind characters of wildly different perceptions, none of which can be said to be wholly right. Writing for an audience that was as diverse in perception as Elizabethan London, Shakespeare smashes together the worlds of nobles, rude mechanicals, fairies, and lovers into a single play.

So a truly diverse theatre wouldn't say, everyone is welcome; a truly diverse theatre would say, everyone is necessary. Read the full story

Two nights ago I saw Anna Deveare Smith's play about health care, Let Me Down Easy. I was deeply moved by the play, and haven't stopped thinking about it, as it touched on many of the ideas we've been discussing on this blog.

First, on Presence: It absolutely mattered that this was a play and not a movie. Throughout the play, Anna's characters reacted to their unseen interviewer; and at other times, the characters solicited input directly from the audience; so that subtly over the course of the play, we became the interviewer, directly participating in the action. The set design captured this brilliantly through column-like mirrors that created a reflecting ampitheatre.

Second, on Diversity: In thinking of how the audience matters, this particular night's audience was notably diverse in both race and age. And while it's stupid to assume that Audience Member X vocally responded to a particular moment simply because of their age or race, very different responses were happening all around me; and that made me notice things in the play I might have missed. Which is to say that a truly diverse audience is one of truly diverse perceptions; and that having multiple perceptions strengthens the quantum Darwinism of live theatre. I hope to come back to this as a way of exploring diversity as a uniquely theatrical need, rather than simply a general obligation.

Third, on Imaginative Empathy: One aspect of Imaginative Empathy that is particularly important to me is its power to shock us with the wonder of a single life, and makes us keenly feel the size of its loss. Anna accomplishes more than that - in the singular insight of the New Yorker review:

Smith is doing more than opening up a much needed discussion about the dying and those who minister to them. The purpose of the enterprise, we realize, is for the playwright herself to learn how to die.

And because we have been subtly led to become the interviewer, we are also learning how to die. (And who wrote those beautiful words, New Yorker? The review is unsigned!) I found myself turning over each word of the end of the play like a rough tool in my hand, as if somehow I could use them to build an edifice of comfort or courage against my end.

Fourth, on theatre as an engine of democracy: The play's great political insight is that health care is not only about public options and triggers; it is also about how we deal (or don't) with suffering and death in our culture. At the heart of the play are two interview excerpts from physician Kiersta Kurtz-Burke and Dean of Stanford's School of Medicine, Phil Puzzo. The first makes clear the cost of treating health care as a commodity; the second exposes one of the reasons our culture chooses to treat it as a commodity - an unwillingness to consider death as the inevitable end of life. Whatever your feelings on the intricacies of the health care bill, facing the human costs of health care failure in our country, and acknowledging the emotional roots of that failure, is one of the unique gifts of this play, and something theatre is uniquely able to do.

It was an inspiring evening, and even though I agree with Alexis Soloski's smart take on the play's failings, what matters about this production overwhelms the flaws. Let Me Down Easy reminds us that while the answer to life's question is death, the answer to death's question is live.

And as I am a juxtaposition junkie, I leave you with this YouTube pitch from the Manhattan Beach Project, a coalition of scientists hoping to end aging by 2029...which may or may not have an impact on the health care debate. Read the full story