What Shutting Down Theaters Can Teach Us About Opening Up Possibilities

22 Mar What Shutting Down Theaters Can Teach Us About Opening Up Possibilities

I’m pleased to share a guest blog post by Dan Friedman.

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Jesse Green, the chief theatre critic for the New York Times, recently published an article, “Should the American Theatre Take French Lessons?” about demonstrations across France, which have included protestors breaking into and occupying locked-up theaters across the country. They’re demanding the reopening of the theaters and the return of live performance.

This defiance of the quarantine may strike many of us as misguided and dangerous.  As Green points out, “by a strange quirk of political culture, the push for a return to normalcy at all costs that is the calling card of our [the U.S.’s] right wing seems to be a progressive position there.   The protesters—mostly students and actors and other theatre workers—frame art-making as a matter of both liberty and labor. They see themselves as frontline workers; one of the signs they carried read: ‘Opening essential.’” At the César Awards, the French “Oscars,” two weeks ago, Corrine Masiero, a noted TV and film actress, stripped off her costume, which resembled a bloody donkey “to reveal the words, ‘No Culture, No Future’ scrawled across her naked torso.”

Green’s intent in reporting on this was not to endorse the demand to open the theatres, but to point to the importance the French place on theatre and the arts in general.  As he wrote, “What the French protests challenge us to consider is that the arts are neither an indulgence nor a distraction; they are fundamental not just to the economy but also to the moral health of a country. They are worth marching for.”

I couldn’t agree more. The theatre (and its progeny film and television) is one of the major shapers of how we see ourselves, others and the world. It’s one of the most important ways that we look at our social relations, challenges and conflicts. It provides us with a (usually) non-violent way to play with new possibilities. If, indeed, our culture is our future, and I do think it is, that raises another question, one that the French protestors are not, apparently, asking:  “Who is creating that culture and how are they doing it?” In France and much of the rest of Europe, theatre and the arts are primarily funded by the state. In the U.S. commercial theatre, film and TV are for-profit businesses and non-profit theatre is primarily funded by corporate foundations. In both cases, theatre is, for the most part, being created for us by specially trained artists funded by the state and/or big corporations, and then sold back to us in the form of tickets and/or commercials.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, it does tend to skew our ways of looking at ourselves and our world. The theatre, film and television being produced on both sides of the Atlantic tends to offer resolutions to personal and social conflicts that assume that our societies don’t and can’t fundamentally change. Television, especially, glorifies the police, the FBI, the military, as if these agents of the state could resolve conflicts that are unresolvable under the present conditions.

Are there exceptions? Happily, yes. But inspired by the militancy of the French theatre workers, I return again to a dream of mine, and like to imagine that once the pandemic passes, there might be more of a possibility that we can together make it happen.

In addition to returning to the established theatres and movie houses, why don’t we all begin to create our own theatres? Theatres where we can tell our stories, share our experiences, express our views of the world. Let’s come up with new resolutions to the problem we face, or, even better, create plays without resolution, plays that open doors we never even knew existed rather than slamming closed the door we know all too well. Why not create our own performances in which we can play with possibilities not dreamed of in the state and corporate funded theatres?  Since our culture is our future shouldn’t we all be playing a more active role in shaping that future?  Shouldn’t we organizing hundreds, indeed thousands, of grassroots theatres all over our country and our world?

It has happened before. In the 1920s and ’30s millions of working-class folk in Europe, Russia, China, Japan, the U.S. and many other parts of the world organized themselves into small theatre ensembles and created their own political skits that they performed on the streets, at union meetings and political rallies. That’s a part of our cultural and political history that has been “whited out” of our collective memory, and it’s not the only example of people creating their own theatre outside the confines and funding of state and corporation.  As someone who helped to found and lead the Castillo Theatre, a community-based theatre that has been creating new performances with and for ordinary people in New York City since 1983, I assure you it can be done.

You needn’t be intimidated about performing.  Everyone can do it. It may not look or sound like the acting on stage or screen, but so what? Nor need you be stopped by the challenge of writing or devising new plays. Everyone can tell a story, particularly if you do it with other people. You can start by getting people together to tell stories to each other and work it from there. Of course, it won’t be easy. There will be many logistical, financial, creative and political challenges.  Anything worth doing is usually going to be hard—especially if it’s new and challenges what’s “normal.”  But the alternative—culture as usual—leaves an awful lot to be desired. When you create culture rooted in your experiences and feelings, you will have an effect not only on your own development, but also on the development of your community and the world. You’ll be part of creating a different future, one that includes us “ordinary people” as creators of culture. If you’re interested in taking up this challenge, I’m eager to help. Feel free to reach to me at danfriedmannyc@gmail.com.

Dan Friedman is a founder and Artistic Director Emeritus of the Castillo Theatre in New York City.  He is on the faculty of the East Side Institute and managing director of its podcast, “All Power to the Developing.”  His book, Performance Activism: Precursors and Contemporary Pioneers, is due out later this year from Palgrave Macmillan. To learn more about Dan Friedman go to www.danfriedmannyc.org