Do we need theatre?

In my pre-show state I am often extremely messy and inarticulate, and it's the perfect time to re-examine what theatre is. Throughout the process, as perhaps with all art, the question of why I am doing this continually arises like an annoying neighbour. It is torture. If you are asking the right questions, they are immense and unanswerable, and their very dissonance splits the head.

But of course if I didn't think it was necessary why would I do it?

Theatre, I want to prove, is not what we think it is. A contemporary understanding of theatre will lead someone to confuse theatre with its devices or technologies: it is lights, it is a stage, it is an audience and an actor. It is, of course, not these things. (These things are... these things. A light is a light. A stage is a stage. And so on. And you might well reply "but then, a Theatre is a Theatre", to which I would reply, no it isn't. A theatre is a space, like any other. Yes it is a space designated for theatre. It is not 'theatre', per se.) These things are physical objects, and theatre is not a physical object. That is to say, nothing about theatre relies on any one element of our physical existence.

So what is it then.



One of the funny things about studying theatre is that all of the people in books, plays included, talk in ideals. This holds even when they are giving concrete examples (it is particularly true for Stanislavski, whose seminal text "An Actor Prepares" is pure example). What they speak of never exists in reality. Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt, Boal's anti-oppression (which he revised later in his work to a less ideal process), Gratowski's spiritual Poor theatre - they exist in some other realm.

The other funny thing is that in reality, theatre compromises heavily. It is not just imperfect - it is sickeningly corrupt.

All artists know the ecstatic feeling of revelation contained in a beautiful idea, equal to the sickening feeling when they look upon their own work and seen that the result is just a festering lump. The actor, repeating again and again the words in their head, turning them over to examine them closely, delighting in their cultivation and equisite form, only to finally, courageously, speak them in some rotten, disappointing grunt, and deflate.

This essential form, the ideal of the imagination and its repulsive reality, can be twisted into whatever form for whatever end but it remains the essence.

The next obvious question is what application this abstract conception of theatre might have to our lives today.

Ok, on the surface, I am myself also skeptical here. Immediately, it is apparent that there is no practical application. If there was a practical, real-life application, then it would exist in the real world and be obvious.

But here we see the problem. Theatre certainly does exist in the real world, it's just that it exists as this vomit, an underbelly to the purity of the idea.

So is theatre then a valid form to house the beautiful ideas and shocking, shitty form of the human being? Yes, ok, we can take this as a starting point. We must still try to apply this metaphor to its real world counterpart, to make an argument for why the collective experience of this ideal/shitty is important in this present time (for that is what I am trying to do here).

I don't say this just to be oppositional or annoying, I say it because it's the truth, and I think now I have proof, and I hope to have more later.