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I am not celebrating the beginning of the new millennium until New Year’s Eve 2000 when the new century properly starts. Just so that’s clear. I can’t forego thousands of years of the Western numerical and mathematical system just because the rest of the country needs an excuse to spend more money, drink more liquor and probably, in some places, riot and burn cars.
Still, whether celebrating the end of something or the beginning, it seems timely to check in with prominent people in the arts to chat about the most important developments of the last 100 years and what they anticipate will come about in the next century.
Up to the task are two pre-eminent men of the theater in our town, Jack O'Brien and Tom Hall, artistic director and executive director respectively, of the Old Globe.
Both agree that technical advances, especially in the last 10 years, have influenced theater, "coupled with," says O'Brien, "the stage's determination to be more like film and less like film.
"The computer, the microchip, is the most liberating and the most encumbering device because with more options, people become more consciously ambitious in design."
O'Brien points out that 20 years ago, the Globe's Christmas hit musical "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" would have been impossible as it was presented. Now scenery moves are preprogrammed on a computer and, with the aid of small motorized units built in, scenery comes and goes, revolving at determined speeds as locales change quickly and seamlessly.
"The whole world moves now," O'Brien says. "The whole perspective moves, not just the actors."
Film vocabulary of fast cuts, close-ups and fewer linear treatments — "No more nice little three acts following one another in progressive time" — have made audiences more visually sophisticated, O'Brien says. "The downside is that the use of all this, when it is forced upon an audience, takes away the audience's imagination," adds Hall.
Referring to actors, O'Brien says, "In the last 20 years, there has been a decline in technical capability. They are no longer able to use their voice and their body." He marvels in passing at how Lincoln and Douglas were able to hold hundreds in thrall during their debates without microphones or on-screen projections — in the open air at that.
"Their economic dependency on film and TV has robbed most actors of the ability to manifest a wide range of expression," says O'Brien. "Time compression also has changed abilities (of actors) and tolerance (of audiences). Any soliloquy from Shakespeare is a single focus throughout. Now, we must move the actor 11 or 12 times during the soliloquy or the audience won’t hear them." O'Brien labels this feeding of the audience "eye candy."
Concerning the business of audiences being unable to "hear" actors unless their eyes are engaged, O'Brien points out that theater is about the spoken word. He reminds us that only 40 or 50 years ago people did not say, "I’m going to see a play," but rather, "I’m going to hear a play." This distinction is lost on modern theatrical audiences, especially in light of such production-oriented hits as "Phantom of the Opera" and "Miss Saigon."
The commercialization of the theater for O'Brien and Hall is a foregone conclusion. "The artistic side is totally dictated by its economic restrictions," says O'Brien. "We used to do plays we wanted to do just for the sake of the work. The only things that get done now must have some assurance of financial return." He looks for name players in order to get an audience and notes how ticket sales go up when he has a "star." By this he means a film or television star; stars as such in the legitimate theater are a thing of the past.
"There are no writers writing, no composers composing (for the stage) out of their own artistic experience," O'Brien says, and points again to being swayed by the need for commercial success.
Hall says, "What starts as some of the greatest art of our generation, if it’s commercially successful, becomes product." "Pavarotti and The Three Tenors," he says, are a case in point.
Says O'Brien, "This changes the dynamic. We face a hard reality of art and economics at the turn of the century."
"The regionals (regional theaters) are the last bastions of chance," says Hall.
"But less and less," adds O'Brien.
O'Brien holds out some slim hopes. "One thing that could happen in a new century would be the appearance of a vital or unlikely figure on the scene, an actor or a writer — or a president."
"JFK did more for the arts in this country than anyone before or since," says Hall. "He was the only one who validated the arts."
As a result of these trends, O'Brien points out that we are losing a huge chunk of the literature. The Greek playwrights are gone, so is a lot of Restoration comedy, the Jacobians and George Bernard Shaw, among others. They are too long and too demanding for current audiences.
But more important, says O'Brien, "If we discovered Bach's B Minor Mass today and we all tried playing it on our kazoos — assuming we could all play — we'd soon stop and throw it away because we haven't the instruments — the actors — to do it. Performance pieces need to be interpreted; without actors, they are dead."
"I have a theory that the theater will find a position in the next century," says Hall, "that will create a place where people can come together and bear witness to the vital experience of being in a room with 600 other people listening to the spoken word." O'Brien speaks of people wanting to get away from what technology, i.e., television, brings such as, "the excruciating death of a child in a small Southern town.
"I’ll go out on a limb," he says. "I think theater is going to have a huge revival. I think that in our ever more hermetically sealed, preprogrammed, self-consciously edited society, the unimaginable presence of a single unrestrained talent let loose on the stage is going to be at a premium. The testimony of real-life, spoken speech is one of the great experiences."
And yes, we’ll still make more technological advances. "It’s what we’re good at," says O'Brien. "It’s revolutionizing the way we think."
To which Hall says, "But it often does not advance the experience."
An author, lecturer and consultant, John Willett has critiqued music, dance and the arts for more than 17 years.
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