tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post9020704896145068406..comments2024-01-16T00:39:58.340-05:00Comments on The Wicked Stage: No Time Like the PresentRob Weinert-Kendthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04015688507553252146noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post-14834040196117530552013-06-24T14:58:39.122-04:002013-06-24T14:58:39.122-04:00I hate to waste time arguing against such chin-str...I hate to waste time arguing against such chin-stroky, tautological claptrap but I will say that the playwrights in question do actually address "society" "how we live now" "the culture at large" and "our communal subconscious." If they don't do it explicitly and with some moralistic or journalistic agenda, it's because that sort of state-of the-nation playmaking is increasingly impossible in a fragmented culture. (You can still get away with it in England, which is smaller and more welcoming to the genre.) Do I wish there were more big, important plays on national themes? Sure. Are timid artistic directors and twee-loving professors at grad schools partly to blame? Sure. Is the "larger culture" (that monolithic myth) clamoring for such works of sociopolitical summing-up? Not so sure.<br /><br />But none of this really matters to the playwrights in question, because unless you want to play the zero-sum game of Important Masterpiece or Trendy Ephemera?, we can never agree that a certain set of writers are gifted, trenchant, exciting, worth following and might have lasting power. Then it's just arrogant critical accountancy: totting up the influences, debiting the technical shortcomings, and weighing it all against your own political/aesthetic gold standard. As critics we do it all the time, but this sainting-or-damning business is really rather silly. It's silly for me to do, and it's silly for a blogger to do. Yes there are writers I like and dislike. I just don't try to write history before, well, it's history. <br /><br />In other words, the jester shouldn't play the kingmaker.David Cotehttp://www.timeout.com/newyork/theaternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post-19475649078391272502013-06-24T09:41:24.234-04:002013-06-24T09:41:24.234-04:00Ok, i guess Rob Weiner-Kendt and David Cote know b...Ok, i guess Rob Weiner-Kendt and David Cote know better than the rest of the culture what is truly great, because they're not newspaper critics or bloggers . . . or something like that!!<br /><br />I don't rely on that kind of thinking, though. It's obvious what the current playwrights are missing, but I'll state it anyway: their plays lack an internal engine that maps to the culture's current concerns. To be blunt, the culture isn't actually that involved in the progressive politics that drive most of these scripts.<br /><br />If you look back to the last generation of compelling playwrights (a generation whose last gasp seems to have been Kushner), you can almost always feel some internal dynamic moving beneath the surface of the text that is hard, at first, to fully parse, but that one senses is a valid response to the cultural moment. Shepard, for instance, gives us through a druggy, pop-culture haze the shards of the nuclear family; even Mamet's paranoia at first felt like a resonant response to a masculine culture under assault. Albee is driven by a mother complex; Churchill by a yearning for historical justice; Kane by self-hatred. <br /><br />These handles are all inadequate and reductive; but it's actually the "is driven by" part of the phrase that counts - the sense of some mysterious emotional response manifesting itself on stage is what makes theatre grip an audience.<br /><br />You can't really teach a playwright how to have an inchoate internal dynamic, though, can you; the "depth charge" aspect of playwriting can never be "developed" - and explicit political content wrapped in formal "experiment" isn't QUITE the same thing. And this is a deep problem for the academy - the insistence on diversity undermines the coherent communal subconscious that initially responds to great work, and limits our political discourse to Sesame-Street-level utopian discussion.<br /><br />Hence the current situation.Thomas Garveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02492010718011287860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post-20206063813677700552013-06-22T11:40:58.820-04:002013-06-22T11:40:58.820-04:00Also, remember: the "truly great" can be...Also, remember: the "truly great" can be assessed and immediately canonized by newspapers, magazines…and bloggers. No need to wait for history or critical reappraisal.David Cotehttp://www.davidcote.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post-12019140597061267262013-06-22T09:58:01.440-04:002013-06-22T09:58:01.440-04:00Right, the "culture at large" is invaria...Right, the "culture at large" is invariably only interested in the "truly great."Rob Weinert-Kendthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04015688507553252146noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post-48977168835654127962013-06-22T09:39:45.573-04:002013-06-22T09:39:45.573-04:00I'm sorry, but there isn't a truly great p...I'm sorry, but there isn't a truly great playwright in that long list. That's what is missing; people aren't wrong to perceive a mixed atmosphere of a wide range of talent reaching a mediocre level of achievement. This is one reason why the culture at large has abandoned the theatre - which leaves it open to the promotion of the products of the new-play-development machine. Most of which are pretty good, but . . .Thomas Garveyhttp://www.hubreview.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post-45174039718427874602013-06-21T16:41:06.708-04:002013-06-21T16:41:06.708-04:00Fair point. It's probably the case that becaus...Fair point. It's probably the case that because Feingold's tone so often comes off as, "It was better back then," his upbeat columns stand out all the more. Your excellent piece on Schwartz reminded of this one by Feingold's colleague, Alexis Soloski://www.villagevoice.com/2008-08-05/theater/new-american-playwrights-live-by-the-way-of-the-word/full/Rob Weinert-Kendthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04015688507553252146noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8829734.post-68758162153431464032013-06-21T16:29:18.759-04:002013-06-21T16:29:18.759-04:00Feingold hasn't seen those articles praising t...Feingold hasn't seen those articles praising the current crop of playwrights? (Crop, I suppose, to mean 40-and-under or thereabouts.) I'd be surprised if he actually looked. It's not our job to say, "Gee, there sure are a lot of talented writers out there!" Because there ought to be. It's New York for God's sake. More important, what is it about some of these writers that make them unique? That's what I tried to do with my recent review of Somewhere Fun at the Vineyard: http://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/somewhere-fun. <br /><br />All due respect to Feingold, but for years I've never looked to him to see what was new in the theater.David Cotehttp://www.davidcote.comnoreply@blogger.com