Theatre of the People

Hi all, I'm currently in Geneva launching The Zanniskinheads and the Quest for the Holy Balls. The big week starts tomorrow so I thought I'd put a blog on with some of my recent thoughts.

Antonio Fava, our director, has been speaking this week at Universities and Colleges around Geneva about theatre and the Commedia dell'Arte. One thing in particular which he was speaking on struck me as being worth much more consideration.

He brought forward his view that comedy today has greatly lost the ability to deal well with suffering. He exampled that in Commedia, virtually all of the comedy is provoked from the great suffering of each character: Zanni who is poor, hungry and tired, but who nevertheless must work to earn food & money, followed by sleep; he must fight to survive, but his survival brings about great suffering in itself. The Lovers, whose great joy at being in love with each other is continually put on the line by obstacles standing in the way of the fulfilment of their love. They live in the pain of loving someone so much, but being seemingly unable to be with them. The Capitano, desperate to be seen as an honoured man, to have the respect of the people and to be exalted as great, constructs his entire persona to conceal his miserably pathetic existence and lives in fear of his true self being revealed. The Old Man, determined to fight old age, to gain much money but to expend little and to continue the love-appetite of his youth with girls young enough to be his daughter. His suffering is vast, as the stories of the Commedia prevent all of these desires from fruition.

The suffering of humanity can provide such rich comedy, and links in with something I believe very strongly: that theatre is for the people, for humans. To engage with suffering is to engage with humanity.
We all suffer, all 6 Billion of us suffer daily be it in hunger, bad employment, shame, love sickness, denial, desperation for money, unfulfilled sexual desire and dreams which seem like they just don't want to come true. Suffering produces character. This is as true for characters in stories as it is for humans in the world, for story itself really is one great metaphor of life. We are the characters walking through our own story-lines, making decisions which affect the outcome of our scenes, and overcoming or giving into the obstacles which manifest themselves in-front of our dreams. If we overcome them, we earn the rewards, If we turn away scared, perhaps we didn't deserve them in the first place.

I think that theatre has been affected by the, what I believe to be, ridiculous perpetuation of 'modern art', which like the chief fashion designer in the Emperor's new clothes has convinced the general public that what is odd, strange, unconventional, unstructured, seemingly meaningless and inaccessible is the art which is the most high-brow, the most desirable and 'pure'. What tripe. Theatre is for the people, to serve the people, to entertain the people, to allow the people to bleed, to engage with the suffering of the people and galvanise catharsis, and to destroy the tensions, fears & doubts of the people through literally God's best medicine: laughter. The Art critic cries "That's all very well, but what will it all mean?" My answer: If theatre serves the people in the way I've described, I don't know how it can't 'mean something', the significance will be evident in the emotions of the people as they leave.

I sense there are many, probably art-house critics, who would say that this is all terrible nice but very old-fashioned. Maybe it is, but maybe it's old fashioned for a reason. Our desire to be 'new' has led our theatre generation down a slippery slope of 'arty' theatre which has not served the people whatsoever. To be creative if life-giving and at the heart of theatre, to find new solutions and collaborate new technology is wonderful, to push theatre into new spaces is refreshing, but all only if the result is that the audience is better served by those efforts. For our 21st Century audience have been made to believe that the reason they don't understand is not our fault, (as Shakespeare's audience believed) but indeed their fault, thus they leave bemused and dejected at being not 'clever-enough' to comprehend the theatre, and don't return for fear of feeling the same way. Thus theatre becomes evermore middle class and evermore empty.

I endeavour to live out these thoughts in our work, and look forward to seeing how the people react to Peenut and Ribbon, the two Zanniskinheads, who in our play immediately fall asleep at the mention of the word 'theatre'!

Blessings,

Christopher