Creating Theatre

Having pondered for some time on this issue, I wondered whether the concept of Schrodinger’s catflap had any meaning.  The famous 1930′s thought experiment, designed to illustrate conceptual problems of particle physics, seems to have entered the popular imagination, at least in some circles.  After extensive research – well, I looked at a page on Wikipedia – I don’t think anyone has contemplated the possibility of a catflap phenomenon, though novelists have looked at aspects such as Schrodinger’s cat sitter.

The original experiment, if I understand it right, is that a cat is in a sealed box, with a hammer and a vial of cyanide connected to a random button on the outside.  If one button is pressed, the cyanide is, or isn’t, activated. The cat is either alive or dead.  However, the suggestion was that certain sub-atomic particles enter a third condition; which in the metaphorical cat’s case would be neither-alive-nor-dead-ness. Herr Schrodinger wasn’t impressed – the cat was a comic way of dealing with the problem.

My own little thought-experiment, as part of thinking about creative process, comedy, clowning and the like, was to think that if Herr Schrodinger HAD a cat, then it is likely he’d have a catflap. But since the cat is a metaphor anyway, then the flap is also a metaphor. But for what? I realised, crucially, the flap would have to be in the box itself.  We now have four conditions, rather than Schrodinger’s three (with all respect, ignoring Terry Pratchett’s equally comic suggestion of “Bloody Furious”). These would be: 1) Alive 2)Dead 3) Alive-or-dead 4) Gone out to chase small birds, without anyone knowing.

Bingo.  Here we have it.  The mystery solved.  What the cat-flap represents is the condition which actually is at the heart of clowning – the arrival of some totally unexpected turn of events which completely mess up the nice orderly plan. It is a comic version of the Uncertainty Principle, but applied to everyday life.  The nearer analogy is the Law of Unintended Consequences, closely related to phenomena such as Sod’s Law and Murphy’s Law. Perhaps the most interesting example is what has become known as the Streisand effect – if people try to ban information, it only becomes more well-known.

In fact, in theatre we are used to dealing with unintended consequences.  Not for some time have we used a formal pre-planned blocking unless rehearsal time was very short.  The whole notion of rehearsal has been to open the imagination up to other possibilities.  “Right, let’s just try this, and see what happens …… “.  Rehearsal is a cyclical process, some of which is about creating deep learning, but also looking out for happy accidents, serendipity moments.  Crucially, although one can prepare for these realisations, they are, by their nature uncontrolled.  And this is part of their beauty. The ability to recognise and make use of unplanned outcomes is at the heart of creativity, and skills needed by modern economies.

Which doesn’t preclude the notion that, like Schrodinger’s clever cat, that the damn thing will just get away from you when you’re not expecting it.

Here’s a short bibliography, which might constitute a set of ‘memes’:

Richard Florida, in The Creative Class, postulates that creative people are driving urban regeneration, and indeed the modern economy. Cultural diversity, rather than being a problem, is active ingredient in the ‘funkiness’ of an area; attracting the gay community adds to the number of creatives in an area.

Charles Landry extends this idea to the UK, creating blueprints for regeneration.

Peter Drucker, in a number of books, argues from a demographic perspective that the 21st century will be a knowledge-based economy where the 20th was based on manufacturing.

John Kenneth Galbraith argues for a new reading of class divide: those who are secure and have a vested interest in the status quo; those who are insecure but still being funded by the system;  those who are marginalised: unemployed, casualised labour and so on.

Ken Robinson argues for creativity in education to be taken seriously, as a third objective alongside literacy and numeracy.

Richard Sennett points out the effect of a privatisation of experience and of craftsmanship under late capitalism.

Clay Shirky is pointing out that Web 2 and other development mean that patterns of organisation are changing under the influence of technology in “Here comes Everybody”.  There are important implications in quality judgements that result from the development of current information technology.

What to make of this?  Well at least it explains the changes that are happening in the arts, from some of the zeitgeist.  I think it also indicates part of a fundamental shift in the emphasis in society; one can even read into this the recent credit crisis is a result of a change in economic model.  Intellectual property rights in the age of mash-up become problematic.  And all the time the working classes know something’s going on, and are in fear of joining the marginalised and are tempted to retreat into nationalism.

From an arts perspective, the traditional model of being driven solely by aesthetics won’t quite hold.  It requires a high level of patronage: by the aristocracy, by the State, by big business. There are at least three aspects of quality, of which aesthetics is only one.  We should also add social impact – this is the basis of the duality that Tessa Jowell was exploring in her essay, the Role of Government in the Arts, which lead to to ACE’s arts debate.  And of course, there has for thirty years now been an attempt to measure the economic impact of arts actvity, both on a macro-economic scale, and as a measure of a model of successful arts organisations.

As artists – perhaps in this context I should say creatives – there is a responsibility on us to start measuring our work and make more explicit our intentions artistically, socially and commercially.  We are living through a fundamental social shift.  It’s not enough just to live through it, or even just to comment on it; we have to embody it, going beyond description into demonstration.

The power of a metaphor.

There is tradition, in western thinking at least, of trying to put ideas into categories. Just as donkeys are different from horses, knowing the difference is useful if you’re trying to work out how to pull a cart; similarly, working out false logic is useful in the search for truth.  And truth helps us to decide what reality consists of – if I can be allowed an –ity in this case.  In many ways this can be helpful, but is less so when we are dealing with more complex ideas.  We also fall into errors of category; none more so when we are dealing with metaphors and legends, stories and narratives.

As a stage management tutor, I have been working with material metaphors all my working life.  A teapot is a teapot, something to make a brew in.  Put it on stage it takes on a life of its own, and whether it is brown earthenware, or ornate silver, or something for a dormouse to sleep in becomes more significant, because of what it says to the spectator. Shining blue light on someone can be taken as moonlight; or as proximity to a neon sign, or a warm summer day depending on context.  Everything put on stage will be read as a message – and actor who can’t find their shoe will still go onstage on cue, and we will all try to work out the significance of the missing footwear – it becomes for many a metaphor of unpreparedness, which might be true for the actor, but was not intended for the character.  At its best, theatrical metaphor can become a thing of real, sometimes unbearable beauty.

The point here is that the metaphor and the reality are there together – their categories are not an either/or, but a more/less relationship, much fuzzier than we might think.  Theatre people talk of a suspension of disbelief, but it is more complex than that.  As audience members we are asked to hold two incompatible truths in our minds together, and mostly we do. You are sat in a warm room watching skilled people pretending to be other people. Jack is climbing a beanstalk, while the actor climbs a rope ladder. And for the stage manager, I’m also aware of a series of other truths and realities which are also concurrent, while trying to empathise with what you are feeling and with what the actors are trying to do; knowing that a lighting change is about to happen; and that the bar staff need to know when to pour the interval drinks.

All of these are realities, but different ones.  In everyday life the power of the metaphor, and of the sign, surrounds us, and pervades family life, social life, personal and professional relationships; and as importantly, our interior life.  One of the benefits of  the wisdom that age brings is the recognition that there is a difference, but it is not one of pure category.  Father Christmas is pure metaphor; but a reality too, at least for the six-year-old.  To love someone , and to tell them, involves layers of reality and metaphor; of association and reference; but also ambiguity and equivocation that has kept poets busy for centuries.

Where does this lead? I had an exchange with a Christian colleague recently where I said I could accept Christ and as a metaphor: her response was that for her Christ was experience.  I’m aware that there is a difference.  What I’m exploring here, I think, is that experience itself can be metaphor – a metaphor that gives life itself meaning, and can motivate people to undertake extraordinary journeys, to work in dangerous places and with the outcast. It becomes the only way to express its own truth.  The mistake we often make, is not to recognise the metaphor.

While much of the time there’s a load of crud on my bookshelf, such as french atlases and camping directories, cookery books and playtexts, there are some books I can’t face putting up in the loft; either because they are too important or because I haven’t finished reading them yet. Here’s a selection of what appear to be the most important / formative. They are also the ones I find myself recommending on a frequent basis.

Senge, P et al Presence London, Nicolas Brearley, 2005

Asking questions about humanism and leadership.  Senge is better known for “The Fifth Discipline” – his description of the qualities of mastery is, er, masterful.

Gardiner, M Critiques of Everyday Life London, Routledge 2000

Traces ideas of the individual quotidian experience through Surrealism and the Situationists to de Certeau and Dorothy Smith

Benjamin W trans Zorn H Illuminations London, Pimlico 1999

(Contains The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction – 1936 Discussion of the ‘Aura’ of artwork among other things)

Boal, A Theatre of the Oppressed London, Pluto 1979

The interchange of culture which is needed to cope with asymetric power relationships, through class or other difference.

Fo, Dario trans Emery E Mistero Buffo in Plays One London Methuen 1992

Totally delightful mix of performance and lecture on medieval clowning

Brook, P The Empty Space London Penguin 1968

Devastatingly great analysis of the process of theatre. I was bowled out by it, and went to see the White Box Dream expecting to see it put into action. Maybe he’d moved on; maybe I was reading something else into it.

Sennett R The Fall of Public Man London Penguin 2003(new edn)

Insight into contemporary and historical attitudes to being and doing in public.

Sennett R The Corrosion of Character (The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism) New York, Norton, 1999

Sennett R The Craftsman London, Allen Lane 2008

First of a trilogy on material culture. This guy is tapping into the zeitgeist, trying to work out why it feels like it’s all going wrong, in the midst of material wealth.

Huxley A The Doors of Perception London Penguin 1959

On the nature of mystical experience .

Berne, E Games People Play London, Penguin 1967

Transactional analysis. Explains a lot about why people often act in strange ways. Performed as a play in the 60′s.

Campbell, J The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

An attempt to chart the ‘monomyth’ – te psychic blueprint of human development as expressed through religious symbolism.

Shlain, L The Alphabet and the Goddess (The conflict between word and image) Penguin 1998

Associations between Logos and Eros; monotheism and mother goddess worship; changing technologies; images and iconoclasm.

Bakhtin, M The Carnivalesque in Storey, J Popular Culture and Cultural Theory: a reader.

Explanation and enquiry into the role of the demotic in performance.

Looking at performance now, I’m exercised by what the world of performance is about. It feels as if it’s changing – witness Mark Lawson’s recent comments in “The Guardian” where he discusses the relationship between TV and stage acting. But it’s not just about the relationship with TV but all of the mediated world. The extent to which young people (in particular) use mobile technology to interact with the world. The use of the IPod (and before it the Walkman) to create a soundtrack to lived experience, and by implication subjecting it to alteration.

Modern performance has a tendency to blur distinctions between actor and audience; performer and technician; scenographer and scenographee (to coin a neologism). The impact of opening out the culture of British arts allows in carnival, street performance, music festivals, rock and gospel into the canon of performance. the role of the writer is challenged by devising; Forum theatre subtly undermines authority in other ways.

The debate started by Tessa Jowell’s 2004 essay and the Arts Council centres round a dichotomy between aesthetic and instrumental views of the arts. The response from Demos is a little more nuanced.

However, it might be useful to regard theatre now as a number of projects. These might be an approach to defining contemporary genres. Here is a suggestion (the list isn’t meant to be complete):

• exploration and transmission of a heritage
• new writing that explores the state of the nation; or the human condition (what Aleks Siertz famously referred to a “Me and my mates theatre” – New Theatre Quarterly (2004), 20: 79-83 Cambridge University Press
  Copyright © 2004 Cambridge University Press)
• Theatre for young people, and theatre by young people.
• Theatre from communities (whether geographic, ethnic, of gender attitude or sexuality)
• Music-based theatre and opera
• Dance theatre and physical theatre

Further thoughts

• Theatre event as an expression of culture
• Theatre and reality
• Changing definitions of quality