The Curtain 47: Vulnerability in Art in 2020 đ¶
The Curtain 47: Vulnerability in Art in 2020 đ¶
How reality, art, and social media converge.
Hi friends,
Welcome to The Curtain, a weekly newsletter exploring theatre, culture, media, and the future. Itâs written by me, Gus Cuddy.
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Welcome to a special Wednesday edition of The Curtain. I was traveling across the country yesterday (đ·), and wasnât able to get it out.
Obviously, this coronavirus is very scary, and should not be taken lightly. Please stay safe.
Last night I saw Marin Theatre Companyâs production of Love by Kate Cortesi (which is on the Kilroysâ List), which my partner Mari is in. Itâs an excellent production if youâre in the Bay Area.
Vulnerability in Art in 2020
Recently Iâve been finally attempting to read Karl Ove Knausgaardâs My Struggle series, which is a massive six volume set that is basically one incredibly detailed, somewhat mundane, yet strikingly vulnerable (to the point of embarrassment) and addicting memoir. In the first volume, Knausgaard spends at least 60 pages recounting a single night of trying to get beer for a New Yearâs Eve party. Itâs exhaustingly thorough and detailed, flipping a microscope onto himself in a way thatâs somehow both cringe-inducing and fascinating.
Knausgaardâs books have become a literary sensation, especially in his native Norway. His success , I think, speaks to a broader trend of blurring the lines between reality and art. As Iâve written about before, this is a time when we have art that is increasingly intermingling with reality and social media, to form some sort of weird triangle. Everything bleeds into another thing, and the three inform one another:
âThe duty of literature is to fight fiction. Itâs to find a way into the world as it is,"Â Knausgaard says.
Presenting life-as-is in all its mundane but tremendous tragedy is not necessarily anything new. Chekhov was doing this at the turn of the 20th century. In the preface to his version of Uncle Vanya, adapter/director Robert Icke quotes Chekhov (in what I believe is his own translation):
Life must be exactly as it is, and people as they are. Not on stilts. Let everything on the stage be just as complicated â and at the same time just as simple â as it is in life. People eat their dinner, just eat their dinner, and all the while their happiness is being established â or their lives are being broken up.
Something about the magnifying glass of the stage, of art, can make the regular everydayness of life heartbreaking.
But Chekhov was more subtle about how he revealed himself. Today, we can longer separate the art from the artist. Itâs telling that one of the most persistent recent tropes in theatre Iâve seen is the playwright-as-character. We have to remind ourselves that the artist is often inseparable from what weâre seeing before us.
This merging of âactivism and aestheticsâ as Richard Brody put it in his decade in review piece, is about combining the personal and political and turning them into vulnerability. In a way, this is the culmination of part of the mission of Jean-Luc Godard and the filmmakers of the French New Wave, who saw films as being united with the lives of their creators, as well as the social and political climate at large.
In an age of hyperlink consciousness where our lives have become less and less private, the individual artist who finds new ways to explore being vulnerable will continue to be the most fascinating.
Notes from the week
Theatre and COVIDâ19
A Broadway usher has the coronavirus. Unfortunately, and I donât say this lightly, Broadway needs to have a mass cancellation. This pandemic is going to hit theaters really hard, and Iâm not sure what the solution is yet.
Meanwhile, Scott Rudin is making ticket prices $50 to all Broadway productions heâs a producer on for the rest of March. (There is something really awful about this.)
A Strange Loop is going to Woolly Mammoth (and maybe Broadway?)
Hereâs the piece in the Washington Post:
âIn a first for the Districtâs singularly iconoclastic theater company, a new musical with Broadway dreams will be produced in Woolly Mammothâs D Street NW headquarters. With performances to begin Sept. 15, the show even has a New York producer whoâs vying for a home for it in one of Broadwayâs 40-odd, highly sought-after theaters.â
Emptiness and the Coronavirus
Scary photos from this great collection in The Atlantic.
Clarkisha Kentâs âKent Testâ
Love this test from Clarkisha Kent:
Tracy K. Smith on Poetry
Enjoyed Ezra Kleinâs interview with poet Tracy K. Smith:
Poetry is the language that sits really close to feelings that defy language. Poetry nudges some of our feelings of joy or confusion or desire toward feelings that we can recognize and describe
Our job: flatten the curve!!!!
Wash your hands, try not to touch your face, and stay home if youâre sick.
Assorted Theatre News
Recommendations and Notes
I recommend the absolutely wild Suicide Forest by Haruna Lee, which is having an encore run at ART/NY. It really hits hard on the vulnerability I wrote about this week.
I liked Endlings a lot more than reviewers it seems. The production is flawed, but the jarring, disjointed tension at work in the play hooked me in, especially at its end. I think itâs tremendously written by Celine Song. But itâs definitely a precarious act that threatens to tumble under the weight of its own invention.
Sanctuary City by Martyna Majok is worth seeing. I enjoyed the first half of the play immensely, and thought Rebecca Frecknallâs direction had a crispness, lightness and physicality to it that felt alive. Itâs the second half of the play where I started to have some questions, about both the play and production.
End Note
Thatâs all for this weekâthanks so much for reading!
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As always, you can access the entire archive here.
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See you next week!
-Gus