tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post6302774551024445168..comments2023-09-20T14:34:21.102+02:00Comments on Postcards from the Gods: Writing what you knowAndrew Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05568061302451610140noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-89832581787203954882007-07-17T17:43:00.000+02:002007-07-17T17:43:00.000+02:00Talking to Terrorists would have had less attentio...Talking to Terrorists would have had less attention if it had been made up, but it also would have had considerably less value - this isn't a question of authenticity but of how evenets in the theatre relate to the world outside that time and space and, particularly, to events outside that time and space. TTT <I>is </I> evidently both journalistic and autobiographical - journalistic because it is reporting events which have happened, and autobiographical because those events are people relating their own stories.<BR/><BR/>You watch the play with a keen understanding that what you are seeing is <I>re</I>presentation - it would be a fairly pointless exercise all round if there wasn't an understanding that what you are watching is a repeated performance, but that at some point, someone actually did say those words, and when they did so the relationship they had to those words was very to different to the one that the person who is saying them in front of you has to them.<BR/><BR/>Interestingly, in the context of TTT the "by" in "by Robin Soames" means something very different to the "by" in, for example, "M.A.D. by David Eldrige", which is a bugger if you've invested too heavily in a market for stable meaning...alexfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-68983962872023680872007-07-13T23:29:00.000+02:002007-07-13T23:29:00.000+02:00Fascinating stuff, Andrew -- thanks particularly f...Fascinating stuff, Andrew -- thanks particularly for pointing out that piece of David E's. <BR/><BR/>The impulse to autobiographical reading is of course doubled when the writer and performer are the same person. Even close friends have been shocked by the events I narrate and the feelings I discuss in <I>Kiss of Life</I> and <I>Nine Days Crazy</I> -- they had no idea that I'd done those things, that I felt that way... Which of course I hadn't and don't.<BR/><BR/>But this whole discussion, particularly from David E's standpoint, is shadowed by (to me) a gripping paradox. Lazy autobiographical readings -- actually, we shouldn't call them lazy, a lot of them are much more strenuous than assuming no such correlation -- are merely a subset of a larger assumption that audiences make, which is that a play is something to be decoded: that it arrives in disguise, and the job of the spectator is to unmask its true meaning and release its interior value; that the writer has a message which, though it may be expanded into a two-hour play, could actually be boiled down to three well-known phrases or sayings. That art, in other words, is essentially decorative. <BR/><BR/>This assumption is of course applied just as much to the kind of work that I make in ensemble settings, which is avowedly designed to support multiple interpretations or to present unresolvable or insoluble predicaments or to signify uncontrollably at a pre-linguistic or subrational level, as it is to the contemporary well-made play, as it further is to the work of Pinter or Churchill or Sarah Kane somewhere in the middle.<BR/><BR/>The problem is, what supports and nourishes this unhelpful and interferent set of assumptions is the ongoing canard of sole authorship. Where a piece is collectively made and owned, it sits much more comfortably with the idea that it will contain multiple perspectives, none of which will necessarily dominate. Whereas the single-authored play -- I'm talking just as much about the <I>auteur</I>-driven piece that Eldridge despises as the author-driven work that he unswervingly promotes -- is much more likely to solicit an audience's cross-reading, in which the (distinct) voice of the play is mapped onto the (singular) voice of the playwright, like the out-of-focus stare-through that makes a stereoscopic image yield an illusory depth.<BR/><BR/>The market for stable 'meaning' (a constellation which I agree absolutely includes the prestige value of 'authenticity') absolutely permeates both our artistic and our critical cultures, even at this hundred-year distance from first-wave modernism. Biographically determined reading is just one facet of that economy, and its circulation is only possible because we cling to the idea that artworks are made by individuals. Which may just about be true of novels or paintings but is utterly, demonstrably, irretrievably fallacious in the case of theatre.<BR/><BR/>In other words: if Ian Shuttleworth is reading through David Eldridge's work to the real David Eldridge behind it, that's because that's what David Eldridge has taught him to do, by standing conspicuously behind his work with a big sign saying "I am David Eldridge". (Metaphorically.) Compared with the massive, fundamental, politically dubious faultlines of that situation, Shuttleworth's attempt to read biographically is a trifling nuance of etiquette. ...But of course great battles have started over less than that.Chris Goodehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17993698000314709291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-38693549113834171982007-07-13T20:14:00.000+02:002007-07-13T20:14:00.000+02:00Agree that authenticity is not all that important;...Agree that authenticity is not all that important; the play should be judged on its merits. An ‘authentic’ play can be bad, just like a work more removed from the life of the writer can be. The authenticity or lack of shouldn’t make a difference to the judgment. However, naturally people will speculate about the autobiographical content, that is simply our lust for information about other people, it would be a boring world otherwise.<BR/><BR/>As for critics, sitting on Mount Olympus and making impartial judgements, critics are people who have experiences just like anyone else, we use this experience (whatever that may be) whenever we read their reviews. Everything we write has something of ourselves in it, but criticism is especially ripe for this. I’m sure Saint Joan tells us something about Shaw, even though the subject was historical and far removed from him.Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17789034764982239963noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-28575243647474478812007-07-12T19:01:00.000+02:002007-07-12T19:01:00.000+02:00You'd think so. Although I have a sneaking suspici...You'd think so. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that "authenticity" is still a much-fetishised concept. I think sme people may well rate a play which uses actual lived-experience far more highly than something with similar (and obviously this is unqunatifiable) levels of dramatic achievement that is simply made up.<BR/><BR/>It's interesting that Stafford-Clark is credited with saying plays are "autobiography or journalism" - I wonder how much interest Talking To Terrorists would have had if it had all been made up...Andrew Haydonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05568061302451610140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-67536961444531046082007-07-12T18:46:00.000+02:002007-07-12T18:46:00.000+02:00Isn't it the case that the extent to which a play ...Isn't it the case that the extent to which a play is biographical is an interesting curio from the point of view of how the work was created, but ultimately irrelevant to any assessment of the quality of that work?danbyehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16494254738251052106noreply@blogger.com