Theater and the Zero Sum Game

Photo by mercurialn.

For years, they were telling me to play commercial, be commercial. I'm not commercial. I say, play your own way. You play what you want, and let the public pick up on what you were doing, even if it takes 15, 20 years.
- Thelonious Monk

Dogma is a mighty fine anchor for art but a damned poor muse. In Seattle theater dogmas have reached a point where they are beyond unhelpful, they are toxic. The notion that the entire downfall of the arts stems from the non-commercial model of arts funding is only the most recent trot. That it is completely ludicrous - arts were failing far before there was any such thing as a non-profit corporation in contemporary terms - does not dampen its appeal for people who desperately need a scapegoat to absorb the sins of their own inadequacy. But there are much more obvious problems.

One of the most annoying dogmas I have encountered lately is the notion that shows need to be "commercially viable." I have heard this from various improv theater groups but they are far from the exception. Many Seattle theater groups have professed this, using it to play off their fetish for lazy, dull, sterile theater.

It is absurd for multiple reasons, the most obvious of which is that there is no way whatsoever to predict what show will succeed or how well. There is a long list of allegedly viable, "commercial" works produced by our Broadway establishment that nevertheless tank badly and fail, in fact, to be "commercial." An equally long list exists of "non-commercial" ventures that nevertheless become extremely successful.

Then why all this rubbish about being commercially viable? Because it gives artists license shamefully to underachieve (or even fail to try)? Because it offers a cold salve against the burn of whoring out one's craft? Rationalize it to the skies, but no artist in America lives in a society where they need create in order to flatter the nobility, ennoble the state or pacify the ecclesia. That time is two centuries past. The social role of the artist has changed. The need to create art exists solely as a self-exploration. To quote Hans Hess from Pictures As Arguments:

The difference with modern life is not the function of the work of art, which is unchanged, but that it is displaced from the social sphere to the private sphere... The process of work goes on in the practical world from which the individual separates his identity in order to remain an individual.

If art remains in the 21st Century the process of individuals examining their individual relationship to the world from which they have been estranged - and I think that is a fair summation of the last hundred years of philosophical thought - then they are best to do it with individual honesty, rather than insult public intelligence in the name of the public. The honest individual, as Thelonious Monk says, is herself and plays what she wants and lets the public figure it out in their own time, even if it takes fifteen or twenty years. But the prerequisite is to create something that is worth preservation.

The objection no doubt arises, "Well, I can't wait fifteen years for fame and success." If one is seeking fame and success, theater is the wrong field. That quest is hopeless. But there is a more germane point, which is that artists do not have a right to fame and success. They do not even have a right to earn a living as artists. They have only the right to try. When trying to make a living gets in the way of trying to make a truthful exploration of individuals and the world around them, then either the living suffers or the truth does.

I happen to believe the truth should never suffer, and anyway there are many ways of making a living that do not require prostituting the arts. William Carlos Williams remained a country doctor. Wallace Stevens sold insurance, as did Charles Ives. Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman washed dishes and drove taxis, as did Phillip Glass. Julian Beck and Judith Malina made deeper sacrifices still. Yet they all remained artists, true to the voice that called them.

Many apologists for bad art tout the line of "that's what the people want!" In art there is no such thing as "the people." There are only people. There is no such thing as "the theater audience"; there are only theater audiences. Reasons for being in an audience on any given night vary wildly: personal connection with someone in the cast, offered a free ticket, read the play in high school, heard it was good from someone who hates theater like I do, etc. More importantly, these audiences that support theater are diminutive compared with potential audiences who would support the theater if any given factor were different.

Yet artists who continue to condescend these audiences as though they were mere hoi polloi incapable of grasping the sacred visions of the exquisitely suffering, dreadfully misunderstood, highly cultured artist who is only doing this because schlock sells and needs the money and anyway people aren't nearly as sophisticated as I am or they would have the same exquisite taste as me, you know. Instead of putting together a continuous record of deeply felt works of art they may be initially unpopular but develop a strong following, such artists prefer to create work that, quite frankly, is beneath them. No one tells them they should be ashamed.

But they should. As an artist, there is never an excuse for doing anything less than the best one can at all times. Some artists are genuinely commercial not because they try to be but rather because that is their actual voice. Duke Ellington was commercial and still a fine artist. It is when an artist tries to sound like Duke Ellington because it is "commercial" that signals the end of art. If you're commercial, be commercial. If you're not, stop embarassing yourself and everyone else by trying to be. Your attempts at being commercial are driving away the audiences who like non-commercial theater.

While it is certainly true that the modern artist has been expelled from the comfort of social life that he had while working as a contract laborer for popes and princes, this does not make the purpose of art any less than it ever was: making meaningful work that preserves what is important in our all-too-limited existence as artists and human beings. To chalk up failure to do this as stemming from the need to make "commerical work" is a flat-out lie, and an uncourageous lie at that. Plenty of commerce can be had that still allows artists to keep their dignity. That so many creative individuals cannot find some is preposterous.