MeyerBros

things we think

the details (a response)

5 Responses to “the details (a response)”

1. eric Says:
   

   September 24th, 2006 at 3:25 am

   i do recognize that i am distorting the concept of the ombuds (man or woman), though not exactly in the way you are understanding me. when i say ‘for the edification of the artists invloved’ i do not mean ‘as a voice for the artists involved’. i’m not sure my idea would work, but i’m basically thinking of an internal critic. i was distinguishing that from a reviewer since a reviewer is mainly concerned with communicating to the audience, while this position would exist mainly to communicate to the artists (including the artistic directors). like an ombuds, therefor, in speaking to the organization on behalf of… something else? he/she would be a voice for… what? maybe the mission statement? that’s where i’m not sure it holds together…

   personally, i don’t see anywhere in chuck mee’s statement that he refers to someone else ‘finishing’ his plays. in fact, he sais, ‘i like plays that…’, not ‘i like to leave my scripts before i hand them off…’. and he says clearly that he feels like rough edges feel more like real life. he does talk about putting it all (’with some sense of struggle remaining’) into a classic form ‘or some other effort at civilization’, and i’m with him on that. i think the interplay between clean, polished beauty and a rough, jagged aesthetic creates a great and complex dynamic, and i think the collaboration between chuck and anne explores that. i have also heard that chuck is continuously pushing anne to try rougher and less polished things (such as chikens walking through between scenes, and open viewpoints sessions in shows).

   i am all for attention to detail, but i believe that artists like vangough, matise, vonnegut, picasso, miro and klee (some of my favorite visual artists), painting with broad strokes, crooked lines and jagged edges, care as much about detail as anyone else. they just have a different understanding of how detial should be handled - an understanding which is much more filled with sharp edges and a sense of randomness and play than your average da vinci. the question i want to explore is: how does that translate into the theatre?

   the jagged edges that i left in Danny…Sea I had every intention of leaving - but not every intention of creating. They were accidents that we happened apon and I was glad to keep. accidents that are not clean and polished, are sometimes even a bit jarring, but that i find add a complexity to the work. i’m not calling for lazy art, or asking for less time in rehearsal, but i think there can be something very powerful to leaving a work unpolished, with some of the raw material showing through, and what i’ve read of chuck mee seems to speak to that as well.

   it’ll be a great question to ask him more about if i can ever get this little meeting lined up…

2. michelle Says:
   

   September 25th, 2006 at 1:18 pm

   Some quotes from a TDR article about Chuck Mee, by Erin Mee (his daughter, who has directed his plays):

   “The text is anywhere from 1/5 to 1/38 of the experience….my father writes text for a performance in which what he has written will be a fraction of the total experience. He sets up a situation that requires the director, in turn, to elaborate on what he has written.”

   “….He leaves it to the director to decide who will ‘write’ 40 percent of the play.”

   “One of my father’s principal qualities is in being open to other’s contributions — both structurally, and in terms of content. He goes out of his way to make a place for ‘other’ people in his work.”

   These are the sorts of things I was referring to when I wrote about my impression of Chuck wanting others to collaborate with him to help him “finish” his plays.

   As for the chicken walking across stage that you refer to, SITI’s chicken was actually very logical and polished in a lot of ways! (It made sense with the rest of the show, and it did a slow walk across that wasn’t jagged at all.)

   When I’ve heard Anne and Chuck talk about his “pushing” her, it hasn’t been about being rougher or less polished, but about putting things in just because she like them - about having more fun! And it was particularly with the Bob Rauschenberg piece, because that’s what Bob Rauschenberg was like - so it was a process that made “sense.” (Although Chuck is quite likely attracted to Rauschenberg for that very reason, so it’s also a process that makes sense with any of his plays.)

   Having worked with me, I’m sure you know I appreciate accidents and jagged edges as much as you do. However, I think it’s important to be clear that we choose which accidents and edges to keep. It is a much less random process than I felt your original post implied. In your second post, I feel like you’re saying many of the same things I was… so we agree!

   Chuck is a collage artist (which I consider myself to be as well). But some of what I was reacting to in your original post was the implication (I thought) that nothing is purposeful. A collage still has a “logic” of its own – it’s just not the same logic as a traditional landscape painting or a “well-made play.” I would say the same thing about many of the artists you mentioned. There is still thought put into how things go together (in fact, maybe even more so) – it’s just a different approach to putting things together. I believe that even if we leave jagged edges, they are purposeful edges, and therefore we have found a different way to “finish” the play.

   For more fun Chuck reading, I’ll post part of his manifesto, from the same TDR article I quoted above (a section that I think speaks to how we choose to structure our plays as writers – and, I would add, as directors and actors):

   “…Whatever else it may do,
   a play embodies a playwright’s belief about how it is to be alive today,
   and what it is to be a human being—
   so that what a play is about,
   what people say and how things look onstage,
   and, even more deeply than that,
   how a play is structured,
   contain a vision of what it is to have a life on earth.
   If things happen suddenly and inexplicably,
   it’s because a playwright believes that’s how life is.
   If things unfold gradually and logically,
   that’s an idea about how the world works.
   If characters are motivated by psychological impulses
   that were planted early in a character’s life in her childhood home,
   it’s because a playwright believes
   that’s what causes people to do the things they do the way they do them.
   Or,
   if a character is motivated by other things, in addition,
   or even primarily motivated by other things—
   by the cumulative impact of culture and history,
   by politics and economics,
   by gender and genetics and rational thought and whim,
   informed by books and by the National Enquirer,
   given to responses that are tragic and hilarious,
   conscious and unconscious, ignorant and informed at the same time—
   it’s because the playwright believes
   this complex of things is what makes human history happen….”

   (All quotes from TDR 46:3 Fall 2002)

   (By the way, did you follow the link to the Anne Bogart article I put in my post? It’s another interesting one…)

3. eric Says:
   

   September 25th, 2006 at 5:00 pm

   i do like that Anne link. I also like the actual quote that the headline is pulled from. “I don’t have a vision. I have values.” is pulled - the final “Maybe.” is dropped.

   we do agree - something i’m sure comes as a shock to everyone reading this. my only complaint is that you haven’t linked to or loaned me that TDR article yet.

   i’m not sure how i gave the impression in my original post that anything should be done without intention - though you enter fuzzy lines when you begin talking about something like Nick Loewen’s most recent paintings, which he describes as questioning the concept of creativity itself. intentionally unintentional, you might call it - just that we should re-examine what it is we intend.

   but now i will push that further. why must we always have intention? i think you are playing it a bit too safe and defensive in wanting to be sure people realize we have a skill and training and vision. Anne mentions in one of her books (neither with particular pride, or regret) that a final performance for school was performed drunk - with great audience and professor response. i’m not advocating drunk theatre, and see huge potential for bad theatre down that road, but i’d like to remain open to the idea that intent is not always the end-all of artistic quality. What would actually be the theatrical equivellent to Nick’s spilling old paint on found ‘canvases’ with as little artist involvement as possible? sometimes a random process can be intentional. where does that leave us?

   i think we could go around in circles on this, but the point is i’d rather openly explore the potential for rough theatre than tone it down and defend it as ‘just as intentional’. rather than focussing on which mistakes to keep and which to cut (’editing’) as the primary artistic endeavor, i’d like to focus on cultivating the right atmosphere for positive mistakes to take place (’inspiring’). un-edited work teaches us something else about ourselves and the ways we think.

   from working with me, you should also know that i am entirely aware of the dangers of mis-understanding, and the need for precision and repetition as part of good theatre practice. however, i think it’s important to be clear that yes, we’re talking about mistakes and randomness playing a part in creativity, and we’re talking about jagged edges, and mis-understandings and all that ‘bad’ stuff. because yes, we think it’s important. sure, we’re talking about creating a context for a certain sort of controlled randomness - randomness in context), but it’s still a factor so let’s name it.

   of course, with a script such as ‘Danny’ there was more controll and less randomness than there might be in another piece. To say that the bridal set was random is off base, but as Kyle pointed out in the talk back, I did focus more on creating the context than editing the content. Sure, that’s simply because I liked some of the jagged edges that are in there, specifically in the characters. we built a world in which (i thought) the characters “broke character” on a regular basis (as per Beatrice and Benedic in GC’s Much Ado - though in different ways), but in such a way that it expanded the potential and the depth of the production. yet my first instinct was to ‘clean it up’, as though i would be remiss not to, because it didn’t fit some culturally ingrained aesthetic of phsycological purity.

   i do resonate with chuck on doing things because you like them - though that’s something i fight with on a regular basis when i feel under pressure. it becomes hard for me to play and i can shut down. i’m working on that. i also love what he says in that quote you pulled.

   thanks!

4. michelle Says:
   

   September 25th, 2006 at 5:41 pm

   um… I did give you that article. Back in Brecht class. I can’t link to it, but you can find it at Project Muse by searching for “Mee”. You (and by “you”, I mean anyone reading this - not just Eric!) should read the whole article - it’s got a lot of good stuff in it.

   On a different note, I don’t need - or want - people to “realize we have a skill and training and vision.” If that’s what you got from what I wrote, I’m doing a terrible job of expressing myself. If people are thinking about my skills and training, I’m not doing my job as an artist. I want them experiencing the story, the art, the environment, etc. And afterward, ideally I want them responding to that experience, not to our “skill” in pulling it together.

   I’m not talking about skill or training or vision at all. But yes, I am talking about intention - and yes, the intention to be random is still an intention. Nick’s paintings are a great example of that. So is a lot of dada art/performance. So are a lot of other things. But to pretend there is no intention is like pretending there is no bias in journalism.

   I’m not saying we have to have intention, I’m saying we already do have intention anytime we make art. We can’t avoid it. I’m just asking us (me? you? everyone else?) to acknowledge that it’s there - to acknowledge that we have - and make - choices.

   Also - I’m surprised to hear you say we “broke character” in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. I don’t think we broke character at all, so I’d be interested in hearing how you thought we did. And I’m very glad you didn’t “clean it up,” whatever that meant to you!

5. eric Says:
   

   September 25th, 2006 at 9:22 pm

   right on. admit our intention because there’s no way to not have it. i like that. (and the jab at ‘unbiased’ journalism). we absolutely agree - and (to be honest) you know the sources we’re quoting better than i do (you introduced me, at least, to chuck mee). and, may i say, on several counts, well put.

   and when i say ‘broke character’ i’m using quotation marks to achieve the same purpose. i agree that you never really broke character, but i’m not sure i would agree with that if i believed that “characters are motivated by psychological impulses that were planted early in a character’s life in her childhood home”. from that stance, i think maybe we did ‘break character’ in our staging of the play - and are the better for it.

   aren’t semantics slippery?

   the ‘defense of skills’ bit came more from something you said to me out loud - about people misunderstanding in such a way that they no longer respect our work as work. i think you did say that, and ment it, and i agree with you.

   and we just talked in person again - and you were able to point out how Nick (and other visual artists) edit through deciding which pieces to show (even when he is not editing piece by piece) in a process that would translate to our rehearsal process. brilliant.

   and that is a very different philosophy from many directors who want to shape every little movement out of their own notes and preparations - or aim for a slowly developed psychologicaly motivated clean, sterile (am i biased?) world…

   boy, though, i love these conversations.

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