Staring Too Long Into the Abyss
November 27th, 2007
The other day, as the Thanksgiving crew was exiting The Deception at The Jeune Lune, I wanted to talk immediately about what I felt were the flaws in the play. It was not that I didn’t like it. The performance was excellent, one of my favorite Jeune Lune productions. However, after years of thinking about narrative, I seem compelled to dissect it at the first opportunity. The program had said that parts of the plot were slightly reworked, to streamline the play. I wanted to suss them out.
My friends were not of the same mind. They wanted to savor the experience of the ending, which i thought was more concerned with painting a stage picture than closing the plot down. I’ve gotten used to liking things even as I pick them apart. No production is going to be perfect. But it ended up stepping on toes to jump right into thinking about things like that.
I started to wonder if my increasing appreciation for painting and photography wasn’t due to the fact they cut out many of the things I now notice and complain about. A single photograph can tell a story, but there is no room in it for any failed narrative twists or gimmicky red herrings. I value things like thesepicturesmy friend Shea shot because while they tell a story, I am allowed to infer much of it.
I got halfway through writing this, and then I decided that it’s more fun being a curmudgeon. It’s not raining on the parade, it’s throwing something interesting instead of confetti, like ground beef. Minnesota needs me to be a curmudgeon. The people in this state often act like a standing ovation is expected for every single performance of anything. From now on, my seat in the theater is my front porch. Get off it ye durn kids. And try to be a little less trite while you’re at it.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Actually, given the amount of thought and effort I put into djing and making music in general, I’m equally ready to immediately dissect music to try and more directly understand which parts didn’t work and why. I feel it’s part of my creative process, and while discussions with other people about the art you’re passionately interested in can be helpful, quite often a person’s first and last judgement will be that they liked it, or didn’t, and they’re willing to stop their critique there. There’s a semi-prevalent belief in society that this sort of analysis of art will somehow ruin the magic, which mostly sounds to me like an extended argument for “ignorance is bliss”. You might need to try finding a webboard more directly suited to this sort of thing, and while you’d have less luck discussing local plays there, there’s plenty of narrative with national or multinational distribution – go find other writers to tear into those instead.
Also, I like your curmudgeonly nature. Your rants are fun, and since you’re actually engaging your brain while you’re going off, they’ve got real content to keep them interesting. Keep it up.