Exit Stage...

I had been hoping to have posted my ‘ethics of the review’ before speaking of Sydney Theatre Company’s latest production of Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, though current personal revelations during intermission have impelled me to speak of it urgently.

It appears quite apt that my realisation of how much I despise contemporary theatre came on the day that STC announced its 2012 season line up (with its inclusion of Danger Liaisons and Pygmalion doing little in the way of reviving my then wanning and now dead-in-the-water interest), with editorials not only within this Saturday’s paper but also with a feature in the ‘arts’ lift out. An insightful, if not cynically so, friend of mine was always quick to point out that on the flipside of excitement and attention around something there is always the existence of a lacking of both such things, to the point that such hype must be artificially manufactured. Newspaper articles that appear to be more advert than informative fall easily into this category.

As much as I would desire to make this critique of contemporary (I should say Australian here, as it is the only one I have experienced in any sufficient quantity) theatre impersonal, it is a most personal matter indeed. On being asked by my friends last night how much theatre I had seen I had need to pause in order to calculate. Bought Belvoir seasons tickets since 2006, five plays a piece, two seasons passes to STC, six each, countless Bell Shakespeare productions, the odd independent performance, plus the many sufferable amateur productions I was forced to sit-through for school excursions... probably comes around just shy of or just over fifty. And, as you may well ask, what do I fondly remember out of my half a century of theatrical experience? The list is modest. 

The exceptions themselves can be split into three categories: 

(1)    excellently written plays that would be hard to ruin even if you tried (The Pillow Man, Travesties);

(2)    those with performances from notable actors, whose mere lifting of an eyebrow or twitch of the mouth make it all worth sitting through (Geoffrey Rush in Exit the King and Diary of a Madman, Marcus Graham’s Iago and Jackie Weaver in Death of a Salesman);* 

(3)    productions directed by Benedict Andrews, who is without a doubt Australia’s brightest talent in the arts right now. Who at his worst (The Seagull) is still thoroughly engaging, and at his best (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The City) is sublime, and probably the reason why I ever contemplated going back time and disappointing time again. 

But back to the travesty of a production at hand, that which prompted these reflections initially. The following extract from a letter lifted from today’s paper states it better than I ever could:

‘Wrenched away from its time and social content, Brecht’s script is replaced by fifth-rate pantomime dialogue. Mature playgoers are repelled; young playgoers, alas, accept the vulgarity for what it is, not knowing (how should they?) how completely it demolishes the greatness of the original conception. They applaud the bad because they are not allowed to see they good; they are, simply betrayed – deprived of the chance to appreciate some of the best that great writers for the theatre have to offer.’

Of course my own experience, as one such ‘young playgoer’ was much the reverse. Knowing full very well the ‘greatness of the original conception’ I was horrified by the approving laughter and thunderous applause, assuming rather that it was the mature masses** around me that were ignorant rather than myself. My knowledge comes however, not from experience but rather education. Having quite a few years ago now studied the Epic theatre of Brecht in depth I had for sometime longed to see the brilliance of his words and ideas take shape in the phenomenal action of the live show, their enactment in which being the final and ultimate ends of his mighty theatrical conception. Had I known when it would come it would be in a form so disfigured from the original, from the controversial to the banal, the witty to the smutty, with all its political commentary so heavy-handedly updated to relevant references that all nuance is lost, I might well have been better off, and more content, to stay at home with my transcript. 

For me, above all else, the greatest disappointment comes from the political sterilely of it. Some would argue that this is the natural result of time on Marxism ideology, and thus is a fault to be found in all contemporary productions of Brechtian theatre. Such replies are lazy, *** and likely indicate the point in which this production failed; namely the initial doubting of the relevance of the original material. Such doubts lead them to modernise the material to the point that rather than provokingly questioning its ‘bourgeoisie’ audience it merely seeks to please their affected whims and desire for light entertainment of a Friday night. 

The highlight of my night came well after the shows final curtain. It was had in one of those rare conversations with a group of strangers that you can only get yourself into by accident, and yet have to be willing to stick-out the initial awkwardness of it if you want to reap its benefits. Mine came in the form of four brothers on their way home from that night’s NRL match. When the oldest asked me where and what I had done, I sighed inwardly before I said the words ‘theatre’, recognising the dramatic irony of the situation and anticipating the demoralizing conversation to come. Most surprisingly I sighed too soon, as the boys were fine examples of ‘perfect gentlemen’, whilst being neither physical perfect or pretentiously chivalrous. The eldest in particular showed a genuine interest for what I had seen, making me repeat the title of the play so as he could store it safely in his memory for later, or I can only hope, professing to me that he was attracted to things that made him ‘think’.

I jokingly message my friend later once out of their company that I had exchanged conversation with real contemporary Australian proletariats. On reflection I don’t think it’s much of a joke, and I meant it in an uncondescending fashion. The eldest brother’s natural inclination, one borne purely out of his daily existence rather than being drilled into him from self-referential habits within certain ‘artistic’ trends, towards a search for meaning in that which appears on the surface essentially uninterpretable was exactly what drove the likes of Brecht to write. 

~

A once over of both Belvoir and STC’s programs for next year seasons is adequate enough to confirm that I’ll not be forking out the dough to attend one or any of their many overpriced and overhyped productions (with exceptions naturally arising along the guidelines as listed above, in particular the Andrew’s written and directed play at Belvoir mid next year). Independent and smaller theatre companies I have not the experience to write off, but I’ll likely not be going out of my way attend them either. 

Call me a wanker, a fool and a purist. But I would argue that I’m not as nearly as wanking as those who attend the theatre and enjoy it purely for it being a ‘higher’ art form, that my experience works to offset my foolishness to some degree, and that if desiring both originality and quality makes me a purist, than call me the Richard Baxter of theatre. 

* Anything with Timothy Walter or Toby Schmitz is bound to be enjoyable on the eye if nothing else. Also the work of actresses Anita Hegh and Robin McLeavy has been of a consistently high standard. 

** Despite all their attempts, and likely because those attempts don’t include decreases in price, elderly folk dominant theatre attendance. In general though I find Belvoir does a much better job at getting younger and firmer bums on seats than STC. Something particularly repellent happens to these crowd in productions performed at Sydney Theatre itself, as with last night’s performance, that can’t help but negatively effect one’s experience of the play. 

*** One of the greatest, most influential and respected Ethicists of our time is a socialist, and though he is not pounced about it in any rather obvious fashion, he is able to weave it in seamlessly in with his philosophical commitments in a way that would make Bertolt proud I’m sure. I speak of course of Peter Singer.

An email sent but not received

It happened again that when I came to writing my paper for History and Philosophy of the Biomedical Sciences, whose due date is now quite rapidly descending upon me,  that I again turned to composing an email to an academic that I admire. This time it could be said that the subject of my email is the penultimate academic of my admirations, insofar as she might just be the greatest mind I have had the humbling experience of learning under. 

In a recent survey for my Science and Ethics class I gave the dual compliment-critique that the course content was adequately large in scope and yet did not delve beneath the surface of said width. This comment was no doubt perplexing to my lecture who quoted it in class, followed by the claim that one must necessarily make compromises. 

I raise this point because I believe my request, for both scope and depth, is not so unreasonable. This largely being based on my positive experiences of such in my class run by the very women I referred to above, and whom the email that will follow below was intended to be read by. The intricacies of this course I will not attempt to divulge now, though if I say we started at Nussbaum, went through Elliot and Kafka, ending up at Deleuze, via the likes of Beckett, Bergman, Spinoza and Melville, your starting to get the picture. 

As referenced in the title of my post, unlike my last email which I intended not sending and then ended up doing so (followed by the series of fruitful replies, discussion of which will be returned to a later date), this email I had very strong intentions to send, so much so that I did indeed send it. However, and as I might have guessed, the email rebounded due to a deactivated address. So here I am, posting it all the same to a crowd of strangers (or a vast silence, depending how you choose to read ontological status of the un-read blog), to amongst other things give my procrastination a sense of purpose. 

“Dear J,

I do hope this is not presumptions of me, though it’s likely that it is and that I was already well aware of this fact on beginning this sentence and thus remained, and remain, undeterred. Maybe I’m jump straight to the chase and apologise now for wasting your time and effort, or whatever else makes up your or anyone’s daily existence, asking humbly for your forgiveness for an act I already regret yet am utterly compelled to do (whether it is the regret itself that makes it compelling is another story that you certainty don’t have the time for and I not the stomach). 

I had the brief yet memorable pleasure of being a student of yours in the second semester of last year, whilst attending the course ‘Philosophy and Literature’. I don’t suppose you’ll remember me in particular, though if you’re trying and would wish to place me amongst the many adoring undergraduate faces I’ll say that I was the irrational and rather excitable red-head who did the tutorial presentation on ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Anna Karenina’, who performed rather ‘poorly’ (oh are the days when a distinction was a mark to cry about) on her mid-term paper and came searching to you for answers. You shared some rationally encouraging words and I ended up not going too bad, though vowing quietly to myself that when next I did a subject under you I’d not make similar mistakes (via. illogical argument structure, unclear written expression, and general over ambition [like trying to replace the role of truth in philosophy with the imagination). None of this you likely remember, but I thought it prudent to share, in an attempt to somehow situate this odd correspondence I am attempting to begin. 

On receiving an email in the mid-year break just past from one nondescript male post-grad student about my upcoming participation in the subject ‘Contemporary Political Philosophy’ I was somewhat perplexed, as I had been under the pretence you were taking said class; that being a major, though not the only contributing factor to me enrolling in it initially. After a brief search of the University’s website, I went from perplexed to off-put, as your name had been deleted from the Philosophy Department listing. I happened to walk around in such an off-put manner for a week or so before I wandered my way into the SOPHI office to enquire where exactly in the devil you had gone. A fellow at the reception reiterated the fact that yes you had left the Department and the University entirely; hinting that you might have left the country also. You might be interested to know that he was not at all surprised at my line of questioning but rather more sympathetic, nodding along with me that the faculty had lost a great mind (which probably doesn’t mean much if anything coming from me, so I’ll rephrase it as, a most excellent teacher [which, though it should be, is not a given and indeed a rarity in lecturers these days).

Thus far all that I’ve written has been only a way of foregrounding some concerns of mine which I will now try to articulate (surrounded with a lot of tangential linguistic gesticulation). I guess, above all else, what I’m dying to know is why you left, and though I understand this is a deeply personal question to ask, and therefore rather inappropriate and intrusive of me to do so, I cannot rid myself of the idea that to know why is somehow utterly important to my own future. I myself manically fluctuate from holding the pursuit of academic philosophy to be the essential road to meaning and fulfilment in life, to despising the abstract irrelevance of it all. This leads to the resignation that I’m either just not ‘made’ for it and thus will never attain the excellence that is required for it to provide such an essential meaning, or coincidently that I’m lazy and don’t really try to begin with because somewhere deep inside I hate it all. 

As you might have concluded by now I’ve developed the inconvenient habit of internalising any and all pieces of philosophy I have ever interacting with (including the idea of philosophy in itself). This is probably largely a result from my initial introduction to philosophy through that of existential feminism (something which only the most logically-devoted male analytic would fail to internalise, at least in part), and what also necessarily happens to anything I think about due to my overdeveloped tendency to empathise.

I don’t suppose you can answer really any of this, particularly seeing as I haven’t really asked a question. Why I decided to share these things with you, a near stranger, is still in part a mystery to me, and though I would hate to admit having a lack of intelligent ambitious females in my life to speak with such things about, the near absence of them is probably a contributing factor. I suppose also that I already know the answer: that it is my life, that I will need to go through and experience and work out if it’s meaningful for me or not. That even if it is for you it might not be for me, and thus also if it’s not for you that doesn’t entail that it isn’t necessarily for me.

I wish that I’d sent this email in more concrete of relations, honours student and supervisor perhaps, and that it could have been less about emotional psychological states and more about philosophical concepts and conundrums (still haven’t let go off my fascination with that brief yet precious space between ‘reasonableness’ and ‘rationality’). Please don’t presume that I’m blaming you in any way, shape or form that it isn’t. I know I could of, and maybe, I hope, that I still will in the future, if you wouldn’t be adverse to the idea that is. 

I feel peerless and friendless, with no older wiser more experienced mentor in sight who could possible give a damn about the same things as I, let alone my internal complexes. And yet I feel that it is these very internal complexes which I so despise and thus battle effortless with, that through the fighting I make stronger, working rather to isolate myself from the others all around.

Allow me to reiterate my apologies from above and also that you are under no obligation to reply, though it would be warmly received.” 

You’ll be right to criticise me and claim that this email had little purpose other than to evoke a response out of my x-lecturer, as such an intention I make no effort to hide, neither in the email nor here. I had hopes of her as a supervisor in honours, and then masters and so forth till I collapsed in a heap of blissfully numbing postgraduate research fatigue. Recent conversations with tutors and lecturers alike has got me thinking, or mostly worrying about honours prospects again, and naturally she, and the hopes she had entailed, drifted back into my toxic concoction of contemplations. 

Don’t misconstrue me by presuming that I thought her as being essential to my post-graduate prospects, this is not so at all. But under her and through her I found an affinity of minds and ideas, as well as the living and active example of a ‘similar’ perusing, and successfully might I add, what I had intended for myself in the future. And still do intend.

Lies told in an email unsent*

On nearly concluding a email to my tutor I stopped and realised the absurdity of what I was doing, or at least contemplated doing, stopping not out of complete choice but more out of sheer exhaustion which is the price a sleep deprived student such as myself pays (though considering my marks for what exactly I’m not as yet sure). I thank the lords of British comedy, in particular Mr Fry and Mr Laurie, for keeping me sleepily entranced nights previous, therefore ensuring that I would fall into a deep slumber before I was able to send the accursed email.

All being fair it was not so much the content of the email that was wildly inappropriate but more the sentiment; an unashamed and obvious cry to be intellectually reaffirmed by an experienced male superior. For my humble ambitions to be held tenderly, metaphorically speaking, in the arms of a positive and successful masculine subject, and the affections that would likely ensue reaffirming my own ability to achieve such lofty aims, or at least a positive indicator that I could, if I actually ever got around to doing so (though it’s likely that all I really desired was the affirmation itself and would be happy to sit and dream as if I had did it through the intangible possibility alone). 

If I’m making little sense I apologise both for being incoherent and for the likely fact that I will remain so for the rest of this post, as it seems near impossible for me to squeeze into what remaining space there is the vast catalogue of my experiences, thoughts and desires. That being said one of the primary aims of my beginning this blog was to avoid the comfortable sanctuary of nonsense that I too often descend into, attempting to justifying it with incomprehensible cries of authenticity: ‘life and ideas are complex, why should I bother to put things simply!’ ect. 

I will not hide that to be incomprehensible was my dying aim as of late. This was in part symptomatic of the delight I took, and to a lesser extent still take, in observing others struggle to comprehend rationality the intentional absurdity of my thoughts and actions (keep in mind I was drama student), though to a greater extent and the reason why I now see little or at least reduced virtue in such a method, is that above all else it comes from a lack of discipline. To write ridiculously and in a mildly entertaining manner is not a hard thing for me, I’ll even go so far as to say that for me to not do so is near impossible. Despite confessing above that I like to intentionally obscure meaning in my writing, why I or anyone would do that in a work that is produced specifically to be marked, and therefore adequately comprehended by another, is something of obscured meaning itself. 

This fear was exactly what compelled me to begin to write to my tutor late last night, and in order to firmly secure the impossibility of it actually being sent please excuse me as I quote from the draft of it below:

‘It occurred to me that I forget to mention explicitly the very thing which has terrified me through-out my undergraduate experience, and of which I may have indicated at during our talk yesterday but likely had not the guts to admit. I should probably preface this comment by saying that for every substantial piece of written work I have submitted and then received back, my latest essay marked by yourself not excluded, I tend to in equal parts be both castigated and complimented on for my writing. This oddity has lead me to believe that perhaps my writing is all I have going for me, the true mediocrity of my thoughts hidden behind the faux-intellectual performative way I express them. Or put bluntly maybe I write in such an obscure manner in order to obscure the lack of substantial content being written. Think the theatre of Tom Stoppard, except I’m aiming for rational meaning rather than the lack of it. You say different sets of tools in the same academic toolbox**, but I can’t help but think I’m just waving around a rainbow ribbon on a stick (except I’m too short and the ribbons too long and its getting caught under my heels).’ 

As you may already be aware, semi-aware, unaware or have a vague inkling towards, I am an compulsive liar. A habit inextricably linked to my tendency for artistic flare, general inclination to be caught-up in the spontaneous, or ‘heat of the moment’, and a general distain for truth, as both an ideal and a reality (maybe I’d like to prove that the idealised absence of truth in my own reality is reflective of the truth of reality at large, though inherently that appears to be an obviously self-defeating kind of ideal, [as most ideas of ideals usually are]. The point of that was to say that I lied at least twice in part when I said ‘the very thing which has terrified me through-out my undergraduate experience’: (i) because I’ve been terrified for likely quiet longer than that, as far back and further even than my late high-school methamphetamine induced days, in which writing nonsense whilst drugged to the world got me better marks than the affected crap I managed to spout when sane, and (ii) that to speak of being terrified in isolation is essentially dishonest, as often I was well aware of such behaviour and rather intentionally fell back upon it in laziness and with only five hours left till the said assessment was due. 

To say that such a fear has reached its height of late is no lie and I will again evoke writings past to demonstrate the temporality of such dread. The following is taken from a journal I kept in a bout of inspired discipline, to write for ten minutes both as a way to start and end each day, this particular thought was expound on the night of September 9, 2011, after just finishing the chapter on Oliver Schreiner in Claudia Roth Pierpont’s ‘Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World’:

‘Beavouir said that women are often willing enough to ‘play’ at work, but actual work they will do not. *** Such statement of course evoke in me a sense of embracement and fondness, the later in remembrance of childhood games acting out that or this profession, extending themselves so far as into tangible fantasies of hope of potential careers; brain surgeon, archaeologist and marine biologist come directly to mind, as both equally entertaining and ludicrous in nature.

The embarrassment steams deeper though, leading all the way up to the present, not just of the years and months recently past, but of this moment, this instance of time that we denote as ‘now’. I try critically to examine what actual achievement I may, or at least claim, to have attained in my two and a half years of study (forget school, that lot of bother can safely be neglected to the cannons of self-indulgent drivel, void of discipline or direction) and I ask myself am I merely playing here too, the ‘student’ that is, of ‘philosophy’ nonetheless. And what as I said of right now, this moment within a trite and essentially meaningless routine, am I not playing at the ‘writer’, choosing to speak in a nonsensical shallow manner about daily trivialities instead of beginning the book I’ve always intended to write?’

That fear of the now of course comes to supervene on the now at present in which I write this post, the entry itself an attempt to justify and critique my personal pursuit of writing, encapsulated within it the wider attempt to establish meaning and purpose in my life. Have I done right in sharing these things with others, considering that this post came out of the need to not submit to my irrational desire for affirmation from an isolated male, my rejection entailing in it a recognition of such affirmations being essentially meaningless due to the potentially deceptive way that I went about attaining them, to the extent that I question how successfully I have neutralised such a threat by communicating them instead with a community of strangers, or likely, no one at all.

*in my attempt to be honest I’ll openly confess that it so happens that I did end up sending it, this afternoon though rather then last night though, which could have the effect of undermining this entire piece but considering I’ve spent the better half of this day composing it like I’m going to give a fuck right now. 

**this is a reference to his interpretation of the continental/analytical divide in academic philosophy, something which I had the blissful pleasure of being all but ignorant of till recently (a staunch analytic will say that’s because I had my head so far up continentalisms arse, but then probably not because they’re not huge fans of abstract metaphors or emotional value-judgements, at least not ‘in theory’) though will undoubtedly be exhaustively covered in greater detail in posts to come. Just to briefly clarify in the most simplistic of terms, though my tutor acknowledges the arbitrariness of the divide he is a partial believer in it, insofar as he associates himself firmly with the analytical tradition, if for nothing else but as an indicator of two different types of philosophical analysis (clear, distinct, logical v. abstract, florid, metaphorical), but this is going too far and inadequately into ideas that deserve at least their own post if not five or ten

*** the exact quote as given in Pierpont’s book and taken from the ‘Second Sex’ is: “Women is ready enough to play at working.[...].but she does not work; believing in the magic virtues of passivity, she confuses incantations and acts, symbolic gestures and effective behaviour.”