Is this currency valid?
13 April 2010
A recent article in the New York Times looks at the world of issue based theatre and the challenges it faces with respect to being truly relevant, topical and contemporary. In the article, theatre critics Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood take a peek at the recent resurgence of topical dramas and discuss what it means (or perhaps whether it’s possible) “for the theater to be truly topical in a culture of instant satire, when this morning’s headlines have by midday been digested and regurgitated all over the Web and television by pundits and comics.”
The question is of course an ongoing concern for us at Studio 180. At the heart of the issue is the considerable amount of time it takes to create a piece of theatre. By the time you devise, produce and introduce an issue based play to an audience – is the issue still a going concern? It’s the sort of dialogue that presented itself when we had the opportunity to remount Stuff Happens earlier this season. In a post Bush era, did the show still have anything to say? It’s a reasonable question but one that we were pleased to discover could be answered in the affirmative.
What’s truly fascinating is that the play, virtually unchanged from its original incarnation, resonated in an entirely new way. After a surge of hope (and perhaps delusion) inspired by the election of Barack Obama, people soon realized that the world was still at war and that the decisions of the past invariably have ramifications in the here and now. What makes the play particularly adept at transcending its own temporal limitations is that it’s not just about the reporting of historical events. At its heart, David Hare’s drama is about major themes ranging from fear mongering and the abuse of power to political corruption and the proverbial “fog of war”.
The ability to tap into something more universal than the specifics of a current situation is what gives a piece resonance beyond the time of its creation. I’m reminded of being jolted by the Shaw Festival’s 2005 production of Journey’s End. Here was a play, some 70 years old, that spoke profoundly about the war unfolding in Iraq. There were no clever theatrical nods to the contemporary correlative – just a story about innocence lost and the madness of war that proved through its simplicity, the staying power of truly provocative theatre.
Of course that’s not to say that plays looking at the specifics of the very recent past are without merit. The Power of Yes (by Stuff Happens’ David Hare) and ENRON (soon to premiere on Broadway) both look at the omnipresent financial crisis with some success and events like The Wrecking Ball do provide artists with the opportunity to be as current as they choose to be – but it is an uphill battle.
What do you think?
Can one be current in the twitterverse? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
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