I saw TMLMTBGB at the Neo-Futurists on Friday night. It’s an aesthetic that’s dangerously close to my own tastes.
I think it’s interesting that while the regular Chicago show has an always-changing menu of old and newly-written plays, any educational institute requesting permission for the rights to the show seems to be negotiating use of their pre-existing, printed plays. In other words, you’re primarily trying to get access to the written content, rather than necessarily to the methodology of production or even the corresponding aesthetic. (I’d be interested to find out how the Neos feel about the licensing process and what demands they assume – another question to throw on the research pile.)
I’m assuming the reasoning is at least partly pragmatic – anyone want to try and license a concept based in an aesthetic, based loosely on 25 rules for good theatre and without a script? – but the division between text and performance form (at least, such as it exists in my head) points me to what I like so much about TMLMTBGB: that it’s theatre as live event, that it’s performance which recognises that it’s performance.
In Greg Allen’s words:
Rule #11: Create true theater. A show should never fail to answer the question “Why is this theater?” Theater is live performers in front of a live audience. Never forget this. If your show can be put on television or turned into a movie without losing something, you have failed.
Theatre making doesn’t always have to be highly introspective or deeply reflexive, but there should – at the very least – be some understanding why what you’re doing is theatrical. And part of that process is challenging your assumptions: naturalism, realism, a box-set, narrative etc. etc. are not somehow how the “default” settings for theatre – just (historically) recent and culturally specific popular forms.
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