Advisory Council member Leigh Bienen has recently been working hard to recruit leading theatre artists to join Meridian 180. Plans are afoot to showcase the question of how the theatre arts might be relevant to Meridian 180’s mission, at our upcoming Global Summit in Brussels May 19-21. Across The Meridian asked Leigh to take a moment to explain her vision of how the mission of Meridian 180 and the mission of the theatre might speak to one another. She contributed the following essay.
Theatre is about putting strangers together in a defined space, not necessarily a place with walls, and asking them to listen, for a time, and to respond. It has an educational component, but w keep the audience’s attention if it is a rant, or a scold, or preaching from an assumed position of authority.
Theatre is: speaking directly about something the artists and the writer and the audience cares about. The speech is limited; the topics are limited; the time is limited. There will be an emotional component: pity, fear, consolation, love; that takes people to where they weren’t before.
Theatre is in real time, and escapes time. Theatre is about being with people together silently in a communal space, where everyone watches and hears the same things, but experiences them differently.
Theatre is listening to the world outside our own heads, and because it is constructed, artificial speech, fake speech, it must sound plausible as actual communication, before it becomes truthful.
Theatre is about putting strangers together in a defined space, not necessarily a place with walls, and asking them to listen, for a time, and to respond. It has an educational component, but will not keep the audience’s attention if it is a rant, or a scold, or preaching from an assumed position of authority.
Theatre is: speaking directly about something the artists and the writer and the audience cares about. The speech is limited; the topics are limited; the time is limited. There will be an emotional component: pity, fear, consolation, love; that takes people to where they weren’t before.
Theatre is in real time, and escapes time. Theatre is about being with people together silently in a communal space, where everyone watches and hears the same things, but experiences them differently.
Theatre is listening to the world outside our own heads, and because it is constructed, artificial speech, fake speech, it must sound plausible as actual communication, before it becomes truthful.
Theatre is a communication between theatre artists (playwright, actors, director, scene and costume and sound designers, producers) and the audience, a communication bounded by time, place, and occasion.
Theatre has always been, since the Greeks and before, a celebration of life, joy, and tragedy, and a place for ideas and emotions not allowed elsewhere.
Theatre is a pact, between the artists and audience—whether the audience is two, ten, or a hundred or a hundred thousand— that what is being witnessed will not last forever, although its impact may linger. Theatre will make us cry, squirm, laugh, consider the truly awful and make briefly tolerable the contemplation of death, our own and that of loved ones, and that of our enemies. The pact between audience and artists is that the unbearable part won’t last too long, and perhaps will be entertaining, or even funny, laughter making the rest bearable.
Theatre is always and ever about politics, about where the power is, about who is telling whom what to do, and the consequences of defiance.
Theatre, like Meridian 180, is interested in big questions, questions of survival, as people, as a planet, as many different societies, and the big question: how to talk about these things meaningfully.
Theatre is always now, and always seeks to engage us with all five senses and more: the heart, the mind, the eyes, the ears, touch, and the stomach, and especially the sexual parts.
The bringing of news, which used to be one of theatre’s prime purposes, has gone elsewhere. The instantaneous communication of live images is revolutionary, and so theatre has incorporated that. Theatre tells us what is important now.
Because it is live, because theatre creates the illusion that we are living our lives along with what is happening on stage, theatre communicates at a deep level, in real time. Theatre is like reading, except that you are never alone in the theatre, which is part of its ability to inspire.
The audience will judge the people on stage, and what they are doing, although they may be evil, or vicious, or foolish, pitiable or heroes, they will be recognizably human, even when they are animals or extraterrestrial beings, they will be ourselves. Theatre is pretend, which is more real than the actual real, thus it is the perfect way to communicate about the unthinkable, the impossible, the incomprehensible: Hiroshima, Fukishima, Dachau, or the mindless slaughter and torture of one group of human beings by another, which is always going on somewhere on our burdened planet, even if we don’t yet know of it.
In spite of being communal in its essence, theatre is about the individual, and what the individual can do. There will always be a moral center, not always identified as the point of view of the writer.
Theatre is alive, and it is always about hope, something that inspires us, something that has more than the literal communication of ordinary speech. Theatre always tells us that we can make the world a better place, that we need not tolerate stupidity or incompetence, or corruption or cruelty among ourselves, or in those who are in a position of power.
Theatre teaches us not to be again sleepwalkers into a future of disaster, not to be among those who watched without comprehension or protest as countries and generations in the recent past marched to slaughter and self-destruction, senselessly.
What do theatre and Meridian 180 share? Both ignore boundaries of language, national border, space and time. Both have communication as their fundamental reason for being. Both ask questions, and both are premised upon hope, that there will be a future, and something can be learned from the past, in the present, and we must go on.
By Leigh Bienen, Northwestern School of Law