What counts as theatre? That's one of the issues debated by bloggers this week. The discussion was kicked off by Chloe Veltman at Lies Like Truth. Veltman is unhappy that The Tao of Everest, a lecture given by a British corporate motivational speaker, has been chosen for the San Francisco Fringe festival. Because this festival is "unjuried", the show selection is by lottery and it is possible for anything to get in. As Veltman points out, the "openness of the fringe format is what makes the festival so much fun", but she asks whether set criteria shouldn't be in place to judge what is and isn't eligible for application. After all, "unless it's somehow an ironic, twisted or otherwise theatrical take on the corporate presentation genre, surely a straight corporate presentation should be excluded from the lottery for inclusion in a fringe theatre festival?".
The tricky thing here, of course, is that, as with any art form, it is almost impossible to define what the word "theatre" does or does not mean. And it seems that the core of Veltman's objection is not that this show is a kind of lecture, but rather that its primary audience is the employees of Ernst and Young. It is on this point that Andrew Horwitz at Culturebot takes issue with her. He points out that "corporations already fund pretty much all art in America anyway" and he goes on to state that the theatre is "clinging to an anti-corporate 'us vs. them' mentality that is both self-defeating and largely irrelevant in this day and age". Nonetheless, my instincts lie with Veltman – theatre may be forced to rely on corporate money in order to exist, but that does not mean that it has to embrace corporate values on the stage.
Horwitz has used this debate as a springboard to launch his long and engaging Manifesto for the Theatre. His argument focuses on the twin issues of how theatres are run in administrative terms and how artists should make decisions about what they choose to explore. It's well worth a look.
On the subject of manifestos, George Hunka has published a rather more cryptic set of thoughts about what theatre is and should be. His 95 Sentences About Theatre explore a range of different subjects, but particularly relevant to the debate about the corporatisation of theatre is number 23: "Should we not stop pretending that in allowing the corporate mind to enter the theatre space we are questioning it? Our acceptance of it precedes its very entry."
In other news, David Jays at Performance Monkey is mulling over a dance show he recently saw at the Roundhouse. He says that the show "followed gig rules" and he adds that, "An almighty band thumped on the gantry, while most of the audience throbbed towards the stage with moshpit fervour."
It all sounds rather exciting – and sparked a response from Andrew Haydon. Jays evidently prefers his theatre to be more sedate. He is sceptical about the idea of audience involvement and says "guess what? Silence isn't a bad way to experience theatre, dance or music ... these activities are about putting the thrilling boom of your own ego on hold, fairly briefly, and paying attention to something else."
Jays has a point – you wouldn't want someone jumping out of the stalls and offering to buy the cherry orchard for Madame Ranyevskaya. But one can pay attention to something without remaining entirely passive – after all, the crowd at a gig are hardly ignoring the band that are performing. What would be genuinely exciting would be to find a way to harness this spontaneous energy in an audience and channel it in to the story being told on stage.
We finish this week with a history lesson from the Obscene Jester. He is discussing chautauqua, a kind of old-fashioned American theatre which aimed to "educate ... audiences with performative lectures [on subjects] ranging from history to science, the arts to politics". Apparently these performances eventually died out because they were unable to compete with the rise of circus and burlesque. But it is good to see that this 19th-century form of entertainment, which he describes as being like a "proto-Wikipedia", is able to find some sort of revival – albeit in the 21st-century blogosphere.
