Category: Analysis

Analysis

Performing Patriarchy: Re-Examining Consent in Contemporary Theatre

Posted on by Thtrthts

            Few contemporary playwrights’ names provoke ire like that of David Mamet. His plays are renowned for their controversy: New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich wrote in his 1992 review of Mamet’s play Oleanna, in which a college student wrongfully pins on her male professor a string of increasingly damaging sexual abuse accusations, that it “is likely to provoke more arguments than any play this year.” When I noted on Facebook that I was reading Oleanna, a handful of theatre friends descended on my comments section to express both distaste for the play and author as well as a desire to leave Mamet and his work behind as a relic of the past. 

            But in the theatre world, Mamet is ultimately a rule, not an exception. Rather than being a smear on an otherwise progressive art form, he is a culminating product of a whole history of sexism in the industry. As Jesse Green acknowledges in his 2022 New York Times article, “Is It Finally Twilight for the Theater’s Sacred Monsters?”, many of America’s most celebrated theatre artists and educators were also notorious predators. Green calls attention to the verbal abuse, physical violence, and sexual harassment these “greats” committed, largely unchecked, in the name of creating their art. Though the fact is plain, the article wavers on its meaning: Green seems to hint that the issue is not individual but institutional, that theatre as an art form is inseparable from a culture of caustic abuse and sexual coercion. For example, he notes an “overwhelming correlation between the most acclaimed achievements of the American theater and the lordliness, the fury, and the cultlike subjugation that allowed [Sacred Monsters like] Robbins and Fosse and Kazan and Strasberg,” and writes that “without monstrousness, we do not have what we have been conditioned to think of as the theater itself.” Despite this, he ends the article with a plea to make contemporary theatre’s newest holders of the Sacred Monster mantle “the end of the line,” implying that the issue is individual after all, and will be resolved when no Sacred Monsters remain.

            By the end of Green’s article, we find ourselves scratching our heads. Why exactly is Green pronouncing this era’s twilight? If the issue is institutional, then it’s far from being solved; if it is individual, then we know from the stories of abusive entertainment bigwigs breaking the front pages daily that the issue persists. Green himself doesn’t quite seem sure– he writes, “Our theatrical world may have softened around the edges, but… [it] is fundamentally as harsh as it was in its supposed glory days.” And, indeed, it is.

            That’s not to diminish the strides that are undoubtedly being made, nor the victories hard-won by union organization and movements like #MeToo and TimesUp. Intimacy directors and choreographers are slowly becoming standard amid heightened attention to consent on stage and screen. Perhaps more than anything else, the tone of the conversation is shifting: theatre is increasingly branding itself as an inclusive “safe space.” But to what extent does the depth of practical reform in the industry match the rigor of these tonal platitudes? The result may be something of a blind spot: generalized assertions that theatre is a safe space run the risk of ignoring the reality that American theatre has rarely been safe for most people, for most of its lifetime. Even if the “Sacred Monsters” are dying out, their shadows remain. 

            Green may have equivocated, but his pronouncement that American theatre is synonymous with monstrosity is one that resonates. Theatre has been far from a safe space for a long time, and the issue is not one of individual immorality. As Green rightfully identified, the problem is baked into our industry— codified into the art of acting, and of acting pedagogy, through a century of teachings by many of our most famous and beloved monsters.

To understand how this problem became synonymous with contemporary theatre, it’s necessary to start with one man who revolutionized it. 

            Konstantin Stanislavsky so thoroughly reconfigured our understanding of acting that his ideas effectively mark the beginning of the modern epoch of theatre. In his book The Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods, Richard Brestoff positions Stanislavsky as the first key acting teacher in theatre history after an only cursory mention of the ancient Greeks, a brief nod to Roman rhetorician Quintilian, and a short introduction to Delsarte. Having covered some two thousand years of theatre history in a few succinct pages, Brestoff spends the next hundred or so exclusively discussing Stanislavsky and his most loyal students.

            It may seem unlikely, but the monstrosity Jesse Green believes is inextricable from the art of theatre may also begin with this great teacher. In “Willful Actors: Valuing Resistance in American Actor Training,” Kari Barclay explores the psychological and theoretical roots of certain elements of Stanislavsky’s system of actor preparation, and the implications these hold for actor consent. This system aimed at developing (among other things) a highly naturalistic style of acting, derived from a focus on emotional experience and a desire to create an empathetic link between the audience and the actor. In the book Great Directors at Work, David Richard Jones cites a central preoccupation with “truth” in Stanislavsky’s creative process: If the actors did their job by acting with “emotional authenticity,” the audience would believe their struggles, feel empathy for them, and be moved by the production. This was a critical tenet of Stanislavsky’s system: seeking a reliable, calculated way to coach actors towards this esoteric goal. As Jones puts it, he spent much of his life’s work attempting to “methodize the finding of truth” (32).

            Of course, defining “emotional authenticity” isn’t a precise nor an easy task, and what a “truthful” performance entails is inevitably subjective. Nonetheless, Stanislavsky chased what Brestoff calls a “drive to codify a method to achieve truth” (28). This quest was taken up and, as Barclay argues, perverted in execution by interpreters and acting educators who followed in Stanislavsky’s footsteps. In an effort to develop truthful performances “free from inhibitions,” Stanislavskian disciples Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, and other American “Method” teachers imparted their own subjective and sexism-drenched influence on their students. Barclay points out a preoccupation with gendered expectations of “free will” (inspired in part by patriarchal overtones of 19th-Century American Transcendentalist settler masculinity) among these teachers (130). Male actors expressed this patriarchal will as subjects, claiming stalwart freedom to express and follow through on desire. Conversely, female actors were taught to express this will as objects, performing emotional and especially sexual vulnerability. Any hesitation on an actor’s part to perform in a way that upheld these patriarchal scripts was pathologized as an insufficiency of craft which would hold performers back from “true,” “uninhibited” acting.

            This isn’t to say that Stanislavsky’s intention was to devise a system which purposefully objectified women, nor that Stanislavsky’s system— or even Strasberg’s Method— is inherently sexist. The methods themselves can transcend this sexist messaging, and teachers like Uta Hagen and Stella Adler made it their lives’ work to prove it. In such intensely hierarchical settings such as 20th-century theatre, however, where acclaimed teachers like Strasberg unimpeachably ruled, the privilege of mediating and enforcing something as mystical as “emotional authenticity” granted easily-abused authority.

            Strasberg wasn’t alone. Sanford Meisner, creator of the eponymous Meisner technique, also used “spontaneity” and “believability” in similar ways: 

To demonstrate the principle of action and reaction… [Meisner] pinches the arm of one of his male students, who gives an “ouch” and pulls away. Then he turns to a female student and puts his hand down the front of her blouse to touch her breasts. When she giggles and exclaims, “Sandy!” Meisner asks the class if that was an honest reaction. They nod yes. (Barclay 123)

Barclay notes a “mixing [of] eroticism with pedagogy” that occurs in midcentury theatre history. This mandatory performance of sexuality for the male gaze reflects a number of facets of discrimination’s storied history on Broadway and in the theatre industry at large. If an appeal to a discriminatory white male gaze was required to succeed in the industry, then female actors must perform certain elements of conventional femininity. Ryan Donovan’s 2023 book Broadway Bodies explores the physical conformity this engendered, creating a Broadway that was and remains overwhelmingly white, thin, non-disabled, and conventionally attractive. And, as the book explores, the problem hasn’t necessarily gotten better with time: in some ways, the average “broadway body” has become more homogenous than ever before, due in part to economic demands placed on performers to be not just able but “hyper-abled” and prepared to do it all (Donovan 53).

            The way these methods are abused by individual unscrupulous people are critical to examine, but perhaps even more critical is an understanding of how these systems open the door to abuse. Wielded with hierarchical authority by various Sacred Monsters over the last century, the privilege of moderating “truth” has been used to uphold a hostile hegemony. It can continue to be used, both intentionally and accidentally, to do so, unless the art form as we know it changes. Discarding the contributions Stanislavsky or Strasberg made to the acting canon would be both impossible and misguided. However, recognizing the ways their entrenched methodologies empower the unquestionable director to police patriarchal supremacy can help us understand how to make the theatre process more ethical for all.

            Theatre is regularly hailed as a “progressive” and “liberal” space, but the industry is as dominated by outdated trappings of bigotry and patriarchal dominion as any other. The modern expressions of these issues in theatre may not be as easy to spot as the examples Green raises when pointing to the behavior of the Sacred Monsters. Bigotry has not vanished from theatre, however the implicit influence it has on the industry has become frustratingly diffuse. The result is a culture of quiet coercion which can be difficult to identify, let alone discuss– or, even more critically, address. In episode 10 of the Find Your Light podcast, theatrical intimacy professional Chelsea Pace explains one manifestation of this coercive environment:

…We’re told all throughout our training… [that] the first rule of theatre is “yes, and”… you know, “you’re always auditioning”… We get all these messages about how we have to be easy to work with. …[Actors] start to feel like being easy to work with means saying “yes” to everything, and by saying “no” or “hold on a second,” we’re being hard to work with. (22:06)

Pace illustrates one way actors are implicitly— almost invisibly— dissuaded from asserting their boundaries. Actors are not explicitly told they cannot say “no,” but an industry culture in which “no” is quietly discouraged reigns. As Pace goes on to discuss, the problem is compounded by fierce industry competition. If saying “no” in an audition to an action which goes against an actor’s boundaries may prevent them from being cast, an actor is forced to choose between compromising their boundaries or compromising a chance at employment. Much as actors in Strasberg’s studio might be discouraged from saying “no,” thereby allowing their inhibitions to get in the way of their “authentic” acting, modern actors are discouraged from saying “no” even though the industry presents it as an option.

            The problem is broad, impacting actors at all levels of the industry. In an article for The New York Times, Laura Collins-Hughes writes, “Whole generations of actors have been trained to believe that the only acceptable answer to a performance challenge… is yes. Drawing a red line is not an option.” She quotes Broadway intimacy director Claire Warden: “We are having to, at a fundamental level, subvert the conditioning that all actors are put through — right from like, high school acting — which is that… if I say no — to anything — I’m being the diva. Or I’m not dedicated enough. Or I don’t want it enough.”

            The coercive patriarchal hegemony enforced by Strasberg, Meisner, and many of their male colleagues did not vanish with the end of the 20th century. While these Sacred Monsters may no longer be around, plenty of new ones have arisen. Worse yet, the Sacred Monsters themselves are not requisites for coercion to occur— all it takes is a lifetime of conditioning in “the way theatre is,” as Warden indicates.

            In some ways, these monstrous ideas are all the more universal and ingrained now that these Sacred Monsters are gone. Rather than their influence waning, many of these acting teachers have become household names whose ideas have been disseminated in books and classes to acting teachers worldwide. As their ideologies proliferated, they became semi-synonymous with the very arts of acting and theatre. Meisner technique and Method acting are ubiquitous. Several decades’ worth of actors now hold these strategies— and the philosophies behind them, with all their roses and thorns— as a sort of “common sense,” even if they don’t necessarily know who or where those ideas came from, or what biases their originators may have held. Because these ideas have become so widely propagated in American theater, actors who are not aware of the history and ideology behind these methodologies might assume that they are crucial to the art. And as they are increasingly fed narratives that “theater is a safe space,” they may begin to believe that these lingering shadows of sexism and predatory behavior are the way the art is supposed to be. Left unquestioned, the taking for granted of these practices makes actors vulnerable to abuse— in fact, they explicitly encourage this vulnerability, raising a lack of personal boundaries as a matter of craft that must not be tampered with. 

            Essentially, the implications for actor consent that Stanislavsky inadvertently made a central feature of his system, which were then used in more explicitly coercive ways by some of his predecessors (such as Strasberg), have been dispersed in a more covert, but no less impactful, form to actors worldwide. And these ideas are not limited to professional actors or high-level students training for professional careers: these ideas are, as Warden points out, present in every level of actor training, trickling down in insidious, nigh-invisible rivulets to the level of hobbyist teens and pre-teens participating in their school musicals. While Green celebrates a safer new progressive era in the industry, closely assessing the ways these messages operate under the radar will be necessary to create an industry– and overarching theatrical culture— which is truly safe.

            This is very much the kind of thinking that David Mamet critiques in Oleanna. The play is rather hostile to the nuances of sexual coercion, presenting a scenario which is outlandish in exactly how clear-cut it is, and presenting a main antagonist, Carol, whose complaints are absurd in their transparency. This is not a world in which sexual violence is something complicated, the roots of which are spread through an stealthy network of implicit messaging— this is a world in which sexual violence is a blatant falsehood. 

            Mamet situates college student Carol as a sort of feckless anti-intellectual, existentially confused and looking for easy answers. She is hopelessly lost in John’s class; even though she is “doing what [she’s] told” by taking notes and following the lecture, she finds it impossible to parse anything from the course material to the very reason she’s in school (Mamet 4). She complains that John’s use of language is obfuscatory: “What are you talking about? What is everyone talking about? I don’t understand. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what it means to be here” (36). John’s attempts in kind to elucidate her are taken by Carol as flirting, and she files an official complaint with the university. These complaints are unfounded: Carol has read sexual meaning into words where none exists, and Mamet makes Carol’s position as the antagonist abundantly clear by having her continuously change her story. By the end of the play, she is insisting that John raped her, twisting the language (as she had previously accused John of doing) of the law to suit her purpose: “You tried to rape me. I was leaving this office, you ‘pressed’ yourself into me. …under the statute. I am told. It was battery. And attempted rape.” (78). 

            Frank Rich, a Broadway icon in his own right for his long tenure as theatre critic for the New York Times, wrote that the play “rightly condemns” a certain “intellectual conformity,” acting as “an argument against fanatics… who warp the crusade against sexism, or any other worthy cause, into a reckless new McCarthyism that abridges freedom of speech and silences dissent.” In this play, the woman speaking up about harassment is the villain, and the man who has been accused is the true victim— the twisted power dynamic, and the elastic turns this dynamic takes through the course of the plot, are what set the play apart.

            The grim irony of such a play presented on Broadway is that the upper echelons of the performing arts world so notoriously grapple with the opposite power dynamic. In her book Rape at the Opera, Margaret Cormier explores this problem in the adjacent world of opera performance. She opens the book by noting that, “in the opera industry, singers can be particularly vulnerable to predation and abuse by their superiors and mentors given the stark power differential in rehearsal rooms and teachers’ studios” (3). However, real-world abuse isn’t Cormier’s focus— instead, she dissects the prevalence of sexual violence within the narratives that make up the classical opera canon. The book is about fictional violence, but Cormier finds it necessary to point out that while real violence isn’t at the center of her study, it is undoubtedly related: “engagement with the experiences and points of view of more opera practitioners will no doubt enrich the continuing work on the politics of operatic production” (3). Cormier spends the rest of the book assessing the intricacies of fictional depictions of violence across a number of opera productions, highlighting the real-world “rape myths” the productions either disturb or reinforce with their unique presentations of the characters and situations. 

            If interpreting the text of Oleanna this same way, the play appears almost prophetic to a rising #MeToo movement speaking against harassment in the entertainment world. Mamet positions (as does Frank Rich) the wrongfully accused John as a sort of reversed Sacred Monster— a man who simply attempts to help a student discover truth. He has no ulterior motive, his words mean only what he says and nothing more. This is what Carol points to when she says of the complaints she has lodged with the university, “You think you can deny that these things happened… that they meant what you said they meant… we don’t say what we mean. Don’t we?… But we do say what we mean. And you say that ‘I don’t understand you…’” (Mamet 49).  Some of the comments John makes to Carol are slightly off-color— and Carol certainly interprets them as such— but John did not mean them that way. There is, patently, nothing at all monstrous here. And the play explicitly exonerates John; It’s clear that he did not really commit the crime Carol accuses him of committing, since we have seen the interactions which she alleges were inappropriate and it is abundantly clear to the audience that they were not. (Even Rich notes that the play “might be a meatier work if its female antagonist had more dimensions.”) By the play’s end, John’s only crime comes on the final page, when he snaps and beats Carol. Mamet sets this up as a sort of natural consequence of the last three acts: Carol acknowledges the beating with a meek, “Yes, that’s right” (80).

            By making Carol’s position so flagrantly false, Mamet defends the thinking that makes the Sacred Monsters so unassailable. Sure, perhaps John says a few things he shouldn’t, but he is not a predator. Carol’s insistence that he is automatically aligns viewers against her. The power dynamic never quite shifts so that Carol is superior: even when she is unquestionably calling the shots in the script, the fact that she has falsely accused John makes her platform impossible to take seriously. Mamet establishes an accuser-as-liar narrative (a narrative that is popularly spread in the real world, too) which, by its utter falsehood, grants Carol our contempt and John our sympathies, so that any misgivings we may have about him are forcibly discarded. One could draw a connection here between John and, say, Lee Strasberg— if it can’t be proven that Strasberg meant to sexually harass his students, did he really do so? Strasberg, like John, is a seeker of truth and knowledge, and to mischaracterize that search for truth as Carol does is a grave sin. In this lens, is Strasberg a villain, or are the real villains those who would read indecent intent into his teaching? Any act which cannot be fully clarified as intentional and openly abusive can be dismissed as a failure of the accuser— did they simply fail to understand the truth of the situation? Strasberg and John are both positioned as those who mediate truth, their accusers facing an impossible uphill battle.

            Drawing comparisons between Mamet’s play and real-world cases of sexual harassment isn’t far-fetched, as publicity surrounding the play’s debut often centered the connection between it and the then-timely sexual harassment trial between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas. Though Mamet insists he wrote the play before the trial took place and that it did not directly inspire any element of the play, Rich writes in his review that it is “an impassioned response to the Thomas hearings… As if ripped right from the typewriter… it could not be more direct in its technique or more incendiary in its ambitions.” Media coverage pointed to two things: how it bore striking similarity to the still-fresh court trial, and to how it asked audiences to “make up their own mind” about harassment. One feature asked, “who is harassing whom in this two-character drama at the Orpheum?” and presented opinions from six theatre-going respondents, debating the guilty party in the play. 

            Exploring the mythologic narrative of false sexual harassment and rape accusations, Cormier writes, “When women accuse powerful men… we hear again and again that they are doing it for attention or out of spite,” pointing out that “this kind of false allegation is exceptionally rare in reality, but dominant in the kind of stories we tell about rape” (26). Mamet presents one more, adding to the vast pile of stories of this kind, painting an image of sexual violence in broad, messy strokes which obscure nuance. The complexities of real-world harassment and assault are smoothed over. The result is a depiction that is largely unlike reality, but that claims to represent and comment on the real world as if it did so accurately. While Rich presents this as a sort of intellectual exercise of free speech, Cormier points out that such stories come at a cost: conventional rape myths put “real-life victims… in the position of having their own stories doubted based on their resemblance to [fictional stereotype]” (18).

            While it is an author’s prerogative to write the stories they wish— as Mamet and Rich so ardently defend— fictional narratives have the power to shape and direct real-world opinion. Oleanna presents a narrative which openly scoffs at and invites skepticism over sexual harassment allegations, eschewing fine shades of complexity in favor of caricature. In many ways, Oleanna represents exactly why it is so hard to discuss the implicitly coercive messages the theatre industry struggles with: whereas many express an eagerness to leave the Sacred Monsters in the past, and to step into a more inclusive future, they are unwilling to observe the more covert ways monstrosity continues to color the art of theatre. The men who threw things at actors in vengeful rages and operated busy casting couches— the most obvious monsters dominating the industry— are, perhaps, becoming a relic of the past. But maybe in our rush to kick these monsters to the curb, we’ve failed to spot the less obvious ones, as well as the narratives they’ve weaved, clinging stubbornly to the industry. Only when we are willing to appreciate the nuances of hegemony woven into the fabric of the art will we be able to begin the work of undoing that influence. 

            As Jesse Green implies, the issue of abuse in theatre, then, could be viewed as inherent to theatre as we know it. The emergence of the director as the arbiter of what is “true” in acting created an environment in which directors were given unilateral power to extract a performance they deemed “truthful” from actors at any cost. As these directors were primarily white men, this often meant that “truth” reflected certain elements of white male hegemony. Any performer who acted in a manner incongruous to this sexist standard was therefore acting incorrectly, which is a problem the director is both obligated and entitled to correct. These ideas are understood now as something closer to common sense than codified acting technique. Stanislavsky’s quest for truth is now the blueprint, for better and for worse.

            It’s easy to forget that this quest is a very recent development: only about a century old. The Stanislavskian approach to acting isn’t going anywhere, nor necessarily should it— but it is important to remember that these precepts we accept as second nature to theatre are not timeless truth, but rather fluid, changeable practice.

            Theatre’s sexual harassment problem is both individual and institutional. It was explicit in the methodologies of and the cults of personality surrounding our most famous acting teachers. It remains implicit in these systems and in the hierarchical structure we are still struggling to imagine theatre without. In Great Directors at Work, Jones acknowledges both the newness of this model and the way it has rewritten theatre as we know it: “…the historical fact [is] that directors have become central to modern theatre… and modern theatre is no doubt more sophisticated and more artistic for that change” (12). When he goes on to write, “When we need a new system, we will certainly create it,” he is expressing the sentiment dismissively, it’s practically an aside as he transitions into discussing the intricacies of that system and those who formalized it— but what he unwittingly acknowledges in saying this is the reality that theatre can change, and one day we will be the arbiters of that change, whether we can imagine a better alternative at present or not.

            While celebrating the end of the Sacred Monsters may be premature— perhaps even detrimentally so— Green was nonetheless right to note that theatre is in the midst of an evolution. As movements like #MeToo change the ways American society as a whole thinks about harassment, theatre practitioners are increasingly seeking ways to make theatre safer for all. These conversations must account for bigotry’s uncanny ability to hide in plain sight. Like Green implies, it’s not good enough to half-heartedly “cancel” our monstrous forefathers— they are no longer the problem. The problem now persists in our own work. Understanding the roots of our theatrical practices is necessary. Closely assessing our methods to dismantle the hegemonic, hierarchical, and ultimately harmful influences we have been fed is critical to ensuring they are not thoughtlessly passed on.

            Theatre’s consent problem may be inherent to the art at present. However, it does not have to be. The industry is far from being out of the woods, but with care and an eye for complexity, it can begin to free itself from the shadow of the monsters who made it.

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Analysis, Theatre

“Dear Evan Hansen” is Good, Moral Ambiguity is Lost, and Media Literacy is Dead

Posted on by Thtrthts

The following is a slightly edited version of a Facebook post I wrote after seeing the show live for the first time in early 2023. This post is a different style than many of the analyses posted on this blog– because it wasn’t originally written for this blog. Read the exaggerated tone with a touch of humor… it was a late-night Facebook ramble. 🙂

Tonight, I saw Dear Evan Hansen, and instead of having a normal person’s response of, “yeah that was good,” I have written an essay.

Dear Evan Hansen gets a lot of shit because the entire story is centered on a kid who lies, and in the worst possible way. To quickly summarize the plot: Evan is a teenage boy who working through ongoing mental health difficulties. His therapist gives him an assignment to write a pep-talk letter to himself each day, reminding himself that the day is going to be a great one. One day, he writes a letter to himself about how, actually, the day is awful, and he’s really depressed. But this letter is misplaced and found by Connor Murphy, a troubled teen, who walks off with it. Connor kills himself shortly later. When the letter addressed to “Dear Evan Hansen” is found on his person, the family assumes this letter was his suicide note addressed to his good friend Evan. The complication is that Evan has never really met Connor– they are not friends. But seeing the comfort Connor’s parents take in the idea that Connor had any friends, Evan quickly fabricates the lie that they were BEST FRIENDS. Naturally, the lie spirals out of control, getting bigger and bigger until Evan inevitably has to come clean. The drama of the plot hinges on Evan maintaining this lie through higher and higher stakes.

This show has pivoted from being quite popular act its initial release to being pretty popularly hated. The complaint is always “this show sucks because the main character is a completely unlikeable dickbag who tells a humongous lie to win a girl.“

The problem with that argument is this: the fact that Evan is not totally likeable is the point.

How do I know that? Because NEITHER IS ANY OTHER CHARACTER IN THE SHOW.

Every character in this show is seriously flawed. Every single one is incredibly selfish.

Evan’s “friend” Jared is only nice to him because his parents and Evan’s parents are friends, and Jared’s parents threatened to stop paying for his car insurance if Jared was mean to Evan. Jared is a total asshole who says some really shitty things throughout the first act (but we’ll come back to him later).

Evan’s other friend Alana is explicitly capitalizing on Connor’s suicide for attention. The plot very openly acknowledges this. She very explicitly acts like she knew him personally and that his death was deeply affecting to her, when in reality, Alana did not know Connor at all.

Evan’s mother, Heidi, is often emotionally immature and seeks validation from her son. (We’ll come back to her, don’t think this is the last word here!)

Connor’s family are all also selfish, we see many shades of this in their grieving process— his mother selfishly seeks comfort from Evan, who she also believes to be grieving; Connor’s dad selfishly believed he could do no wrong as a parent as long as he provided for Connor’s survival needs; Connor’s sister Zoe selfishly refuses to think of her brother as anything but a horrible person even when confronted with the evidence that he is not.

And yes, Evan is selfish. I hardly have to explain the ways how— the entire plot does a pretty good job illustrating this.

The selfishness is not accidental. These characters were written this way on purpose.

Why? What purpose would the authors have in making all of their awful? Wouldn’t that run the risk of their show going misinterpreted?

It must be that these writers are so out of touch with audiences that they just didn’t know that these characters would be taken this way. Or… they are written this way intentionally to send a message.

What message might that be? Let’s look at what else these characters have in common. All of these characters are also similar in that they are not doing very well. Alana is depressed and has contemplated suicide, Jared “has no friends” according to Evan, Evan’s mom is working as hard as she possibly can and still knows she’s not doing enough, Connor’s family is all obviously grieving in their own ways. It’s the old adage, “everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” 

Each of these characters is struggling to get through life the best they can. They are dealing with each other poorly. Barely any character gets through this show without hurting everyone else’s feelings— literally the only ones who do not directly hurt EACH OTHER are Alana and the Murphys and Jared and the Murphys… and that’s only because their sole interaction occurs in one very short scene.

This similarity is also purposeful. I think it’s crucial, in fact. Evan is not the only one hurting anybody. Everyone else is causing everyone else pain. 

Why is everyone selfish? Why is everyone struggling? Why is everyone hurting everyone else? 

Drum roll…

BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT LIFE IS!

Dear Evan Hansen is not about a lie, Dear Evan Hansen is about the ways life is complicated. Relationships with people you love are complicated– especially when these relationships hurt you.

It isn’t so simple as “these characters hurt each other, guess they all better stay away from each other”— all of these characters are IMPORTANT to each other, so they do not have that luxury. Jared is mean to Evan but Evan is his “only friend.” Alana is taking advantage of Connor’s death, but she’s doing so because she has been exactly where Connor was and relates to it on a personal level. Evan’s mom is insecure and this complicated her relationship with her son, but she cares deeply for him and is doing everything for him (even to an occasionally unhelpful extent). 

Dear Evan Hansen is about the ways nothing is easy. Blame and condemnation is easy, but it’s also senseless in real life. You cannot simply say “Connor Murphy was a monster and it’s good he’s dead”— that’s what “Requiem” is about! You cannot simply say “social media is making the youth suicidal!”— while “Waving Through a Window” highlights the ways it is damaging, “You Will Be Found” very explicitly highlights the ways it brings us together. You cannot simply say “lying is bad!”, because while “For Forever” is entirely a lie, it makes connor’s family feel better, and in case you missed that the show is saying “LIES THAT MAKE PEOPLE FEEL GOOD ARE NOT INHERENTLY BAD,” the show explicitly states this in the final scene. Paraphrasing (because I obviously don’t have the script in front of me), Evan says, “I lied, I did a bad thing,” and Zoe replies, “it helped my parents, didn’t it?”

Saying “EVAN IS A BAD PERSON! LYING IS BAD! THE SHOW IS BAD!” so willfully ignores the entire text of the show. The show is about how “bad people” do not exist. “Good people” do not exist! Flat moral categories without room for gray area are unrealistic and nonexistent in the real world!

Not a one of these characters is “good” or “bad.” That must be intentional, because otherwise why would Jared of all characters end up being the voice of reason in Act 2?

Jared is an asshole in act one. He’s really not that likeable at all. He’s consistently a jerk who says mean and crass things that are only sometimes funny. But he is the first person in act 2 to call Evan out for what he is doing. 

“Fine, fine,” you might be saying– “But Evan faces no repercussions for what he did!”

Evan Hansen is a child. He is a senior in high school who is suicidally depressed. Does this excuse his behavior? Say it with me: NO! But his behavior is not excused! By the end of the show, Evan has lost his “adoptive family” and his girlfriend, and the final scene is very clear that he does not get Zoe back (and won’t be getting her back going forward, either).

Evan Hansen did a seriously awful and fucked up thing. And despite this, it is crucial to the story being told that Evan is not alone in the end. After Evan admits his horrible lie in “Words Fail,” the song “So Big, So Small” follows, leaving us with the message that, in spite of everything, Evan can still rely on his mother. He is not hopelessly damaged for eternity. He is not condemned to Hell for being an awful horrible liar. Even though he has done a terrible thing, and even though his mother is a flawed parent by her own admission, he still needs her to be there for him.

In the final scene (which is the scene immediately following “So Big, So Small”), we see Evan is becoming a better person and things are getting better for him— whereas it was strongly implied that Evan was debating killing himself as the lie started to fall apart (see the scene where Evan talks to Connor’s “ghost” towards the end of act 2).

The most common argument against this show that I see is “Dear Evan Hansen is about a kid who tells a horrible lie and gets off scot-free.” But that isn’t what happens. Even lied and lost everything. And– I think this is what the show is all about– he is able to come back from it. Because life is weird and complicated, and because doing bad things doesn’t make you a bad person eternally incapable of redemption.

In an era known for performative moral purity for social media, this show is a hard sell. Social media is a sphere where we rush to judge and label others. The fact that this cycle is destructive hardly needs reiterated, as even most internet users denigrate the “callout culture” that has arisen in recent years. (Keep in mind that social media is a heavy element of the show’s design and plot– this certainly wasn’t an accidental connection.)

It bears mentioning that terms like “virtue signaling” and “cancel culture” have been co-opted by a variety of far-right goons, and that to call their usage of these terms dishonest is putting it extremely lightly. This show critiques the truest sense of virtue signaling and cancel culture by highlighting the fact that morality is not simple enough to put into a small, simple box. People are complicated, as is morality itself; therefore, a gray area must be left between the shades of black and white.

Crucially: Evan’s lie was not entirely a net negative. Despite how he takes advantage of it, Evan also does right by Connor’s memory. The Conor Project is an unequivocal success! The show ends with Evan sitting in the memorial orchard he helped raise money to plant in honor of Connor: The orchard that Zoe says her family is now coming to for weekly picnics, allowing them to grow closer and work through their grief together!

In short: It’s not as easy as “lies are bad!” It is not as easy as “Evan is a bad person!” Every person does good and bad things, and every action has good and bad outcomes! 

People are allowed to just not like this show. I’m not the Evan Hansen police. But if your argument is that people SHOULDN’T like the show because it’s about a kid who lies— are you honestly arguing that everyone who lies is a bad person? Would you honestly argue there’s no value in lying if it can help someone feel better?

Do you actually truly think all lies are bad… or is this position just a false moral high ground you have placed yourself on instead of meaningfully engaging with the text of this show? Which is it, huh?

TL;DR: media literacy is dead, moral ambiguity is lost, this show is good, you’re all just mean.

0
Analysis, Theatre

Performance as Falsehood and Sally Bowles’ Glorious Self-Destruction

Posted on by Thtrthts

“Leave your troubles outside. Life is disappointing? Forget it! We have no troubles here. Here, life is beautiful.”

This line is one of the first in Cabaret. In the final scene of the show, it is mirrored derisively, dripping with bitter irony. “Where are your troubles now?” The Emcee asks. “Forgotten? I told you so!” At this point, the lives of every character in the show have been made worse; the nazis are rising to power, our characters’ dreams and relationships have been ruined, and we can assume that more than one will soon be dead, or else suffer immensely otherwise. 

The message here is obvious: Ignoring your troubles leads to ruin. Don’t let yourself be distracted by singing and dancing and theatre— You must face reality. If we pretend our problems don’t exist, we will inevitably have to face them regardless. By the time that confrontation comes, we will be unprepared, and the problems might be too large to circumvent.

This is the main idea of the show. I’m not breaking any new ground by talking about it. However, this theme goes deeper than the events of the musical— it’s written into every single song, too. 

I’ll explain that in a moment. First, though, let’s talk about Sally Bowles.

Right before the COVID quarantine started I saw a local production of Cabaret that made some unique choices with the script. Some I enjoyed, others I wasn’t a fan of. One that immediately struck me as odd was the way the actress playing Sally decided to perform the titular song “Cabaret.” She decided to break down in tears towards the climax of the song, and perform it as though Sally is hurting, regretful of the decisions she has made. 

At the time, this choice simply felt wrong to me, though I struggled to express why. Why shouldn’t an actress interpret her character’s inner life as she sees fit? There wasn’t anything in the script I could think of that directly stated that Sally shouldn’t be crying here. The actress humanized the character— isn’t that something to which most performers strive, anyway?

I returned to analyzing this scene many times, as the show is one of my favorites, as well as the song itself. My knee-jerk reaction was to say that Sally should not be sad during this song, but angry— violent, obstinate, and frothing in her own stubborn madness. She’s digging in her heels and deciding that she’s going to die on her terms— in a storm of drugs and liquor and passion— and no one else can change this trajectory. 

But is that just my interpretation? Why couldn’t someone else interpret this scene differently? Is my interpretation really “correct”? 

In unrelated Cabaret musings, I often wondered who exactly was writing these songs Sally sang in her performances at the Kit Kat Klub. That feels like a silly question to ask of a musical— like, it’s a musical, do you usually worry whether or not the characters came up with what they’re singing on the spot?— But context makes this situation different. “Don’t Tell Mama,” “Mein Herr,” and “Cabaret” are all expressly in-universe performances. They are introduced by the emcee and performed to an on-stage audience as well as the real, live audience. Did Sally write these? Are any of the words she says truthful? Did she ever actually have a friend named Elsie, and did she really tell her mother she was living in a convent? Or are these just pieces of a song, as unreal to Sally as they are to the actress portraying her? 

Regardless of whether the events are real, the fact that these songs are a performance imply she isn’t talking about or reflecting on her real thoughts. To illustrate my point, compare “Don’t Tell Mama” to something like “The Wizard and I” from Wicked. In the latter song, the main character is singing as an act of introspection, reflecting on her feelings and emotions. She’s not singing to anyone, and it’s presented as though she is discovering her feelings as she’s singing about them. The song is expressly internal, and we, the audience, are merely peeking in on this reflective process.

“Don’t Tell Mama” or “Mein Herr” are different. These are not at all Sally monologuing her thoughts to herself and by voyeuristic extension the audience. She’s very clearly addressing an audience, and she’s presenting a story or information rather than personal thoughts or feelings. Maybe some personal feelings are involved, but analyzing her own thoughts or emotions is not Sally’s primary purpose. It can’t be, because first and foremost, this is a presumably scripted performance. 

But if our primary reasoning for deciding whether or not something is a “performance” comes down to whether the character is addressing an audience and if they are relating information or a story to that audience rather than reflecting on personal feelings… then by that definition, basically every song in the show is a performance.

Let’s examine this song by song.

“Wilkommen” is clearly addressed to the audience. The Emcee is certainly not monologuing his feelings, he’s just explaining things to us. We get the sensation, again, that this is a scripted performance, and while he might personally identify with or reject any ideas presented by his script, that isn’t his primary goal. His primary goal is to reach us. 

“So What” doesn’t seem like a performance at first blush, but under our definition, it is. Think carefully: Fraulein Schneider is addressing Cliff directly throughout the entirety of the song. She’s not introspectively, internally reflecting on her feelings— she doesn’t have to. Nothing that she’s saying is new to her. She is already intimately familiar with the thoughts she’s expressing to him— this song represents her established worldview. There’s no in-the-moment, personal discovery here. She’s explaining the story of her life and how she feels about it to her audience. In that regard, she’s performing.

As previously mentioned, “Don’t Tell Mama” and “Mein Herr” are in-universe performances.

“Perfectly Marvelous” also meets the same criteria as previous songs. Like in “So What,” at no point does Sally step outside of addressing Cliff to think about her own emotions— she merely addresses Cliff. We get the sense that she’s coming up with the song in the moment, but none of this is introspective or really about her feelings at all. It’s another performance. 

“Two Ladies” is addressed to us as well, and is pretty clearly a “performance” rather than anything genuine. This is the case for most of the Emcee’s songs. 

“It Couldn’t Please Me More” seems to stretch our definition slightly by virtue of being a duet, wherein the audiences are also the performers, performing to an audience who is performing back to them. Yet, again, there is no introspection in this song. Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz are not internally considering their feelings, they are merely expressing them to their audience. 

“Tomorrow Belongs to Me” is a strange bird as well. According to the script, it’s a pre-recorded voice singing a propaganda song from a radio. Occasionally the pre-recording is forgone in performance, the director deciding to have a cast member sing it live. Regardless, by virtue of being propaganda, there’s no introspection here. The audience varies somewhat depending on your interpretation and the production you see— it may be us, whomever is listening to the radio, or the state of Germany as a whole— it’s hard to say with complete certainty. Nonetheless, it fits our definition of a performance, since it is directed to someone and is not a personal, emotional exploration. 

After this is “Money”, another audience-addressing performance by the Emcee, “Married,” another odd performance-duet as in “It Couldn’t Please Me More,” and “Tomorrow Belongs to Me (Reprise),” which is another in-universe performance at Fraulein Shneider and Herr Shultz’s engagement party. “Married (Reprise),” same as “Married”; “If you could see her,” same as “Money”; “What would you do,” same as “So What?”; “I Don’t Care Much” same as “Money” (though admittedly there is room this time for debate whether this is an audience-addressed performance or a Klub performance); and “Cabaret” same as “Mein Herr” and “Don’t Tell Mama.” The finale is also addressed to us, same as “Wilkommen.”

Did you notice I skipped one? 

“Maybe This Time” is the ONLY exception to our rule. It’s possible different directors’ interpretations can muddy this fact. In some productions, this song is not a performance. Sally Bowles is not singing to anyone, and she’s reflecting on her own emotions. There’s no “performing” here, because the song is genuine, personal, and private. In other productions, Sally is given a microphone and this song is performed to us, as if this were another Klub performance. In this instance, the song would be a performance, and the actual meaning of the words to Sally becomes accordingly unclear. If this is only a performance, we have no reason to believe she is thinking or feeling what she is singing. 

However, given that at this point Sally is no longer performing in the Klub, the decision to present this scene as a Klub performance complete with a microphone feels poorly justified by the script. One could argue that she is addressing us, the audience, in a sort of theater of her own mind, but this is never done by any character in the show besides the Emcee, who is given free rein to break the fourth wall as he sees fit. (Remember, though the song “Cabaret” is sung directly toward the audience, it is technically framed by the Emcee’s introduction as a return performance at the Kit Kat Klub.) Ultimately, the script seems to encourage an interpretation which renders this song a personal, emotional exploration rather than a performance, because it gives Sally a genuine reason (for the time being) to stay with Cliff and hold off on an abortion. If this is merely a performance, then her motives for these decisions are unclear. 

One could argue that her reason for staying with Cliff is purely monetary and parasitic— he’s the one renting the apartment in which she currently lives and he’s spending the money he earns from smuggling on their dating life. However, Sally makes it pretty clear that she should have no problem finding another man to support her, and she lives a relatively nomadic lifestyle in this way. Just before “Maybe This Time,” she is about to pack her suitcase and leave. She mentions that she has never lived with another man this long and that she has dozens of offers to stay elsewhere. “Maybe This Time” must be her changing her mind about leaving Cliff— an introspective journey of personal, emotional discovery that expresses genuine thoughts— or she would simply leave when the “performance” that does not and cannot express her actual feelings is over. 

So what does this mean? Why does it matter that every song, barring one exception, is a performance?

Remember what the show’s message about performing is. 

Cabaret is, for the first hour or so, all about performance. It’s all dancing girls and sex appeal and funny comic songs. “We have no troubles here,” it says, and convinces you of that by encouraging you to be lulled to figurative sleep by the pure, hedonistic beauty of it all. (Cliff expresses this very same sentiment at the very end of the show, having also been lulled into a figurative sleep.) But all of this show biz is simply there to distract you from what’s really going on— Hitler is rising to power, and our friends are in danger. As the Emcee caustically repeats his remarks about forgetting your troubles from “Wilkommen” during the finale, he illustrates the efficacy of the concept of performance as distraction, and the show ends as a reminder to resist such distractions and stay awake to what is happening around you. Life is not just a cabaret, old chum— look out.

The idea, then, is that performance is meant to distract, confuse, and obfuscate. That’s what the first hour of the show is— hiding from the audience the upcoming tragedy by presenting us with what appears at first blush to be a sexy, comic love story. As the characters perform to us and each other, they are all hiding from their reality. They don’t stop to truly reflect and think about what’s happening— they’re merely performing.

This is what I mentioned earlier— how the show secretly reinforces its own theme, without our noticing at all.

But what does this mean for Sally Bowles and “Cabaret”? Does this affect how this song should be interpreted? Does it make one interpretation “right” over another?

If performance in this show is primarily meant to obfuscate, mislead, and ignore reality, then we can assume that no one is ever really singing their actual, real feelings. They might more or less agree with the words they sing, but we’re not getting a complete image of their thoughts, not really. They are catering, in some way or another, to their audience, and attempting primarily to captivate this audience. If this captivation requires bending the truth behind the words, so be it.

When Sally is singing “Cabaret,” we have no reason to believe any of what she is singing is true. We, the audience, can at this point tell that life is not just a cabaret, and that Sally is wrong.

But while we have no reason to believe Sally’s story about Elsie is real, we do have reason to believe that she thinks that “life is a cabaret.” After all, she says roughly as much multiple times— not in song, but dialogue. The dialogue in this show, in contrast to the songs, generally is about emotions and feelings, and while not all of it is trustworthy, the characters are seemingly far more forthright in their dialogue than their “performances”. After all, the show is relating the idea that the allure of pretty singing and sexy dancing women is a diversion from reality: quiet moments where two characters discuss their feelings on an abortion is not a fun performance the show would deride as deceit. Remember, it is only in dialogue that the rise of the third reich is ever directly addressed. Spoken word in Cabaret is not meant to distract from reality— in fact, it is the means the Emcee uses to express the main idea of the show to us during the finale. 

In act two, scene four, Sally notes that she believes politics have nothing to do with she and Cliff. Cliff prepares to flee the country, and Sally is confused, reminding him that they love their lives in Berlin. She doesn’t understand. She thinks nothing truly bad can happen. She really believes it. 

So even if “Cabaret” is merely a scripted performance— a song written by a stranger that has nothing expressly to do with Sally or her life at all— we know she identifies with the words she is singing. 

And keep in mind, Sally is the only character to ever show her true feelings in a song. It seems she lacks the practice at performing and hiding her feelings in ways other characters have mastered. 

So while “Cabaret” is a performance, Sally is expressing true feelings. She believes what she is singing. Whether or not the story is real, it’s all real enough to Sally. We have enough evidence to believe that she really means she wants to die like her “friend” Elsie, a prostitute apparently known for her drug and alcohol habits. And we can believe she has really “made her mind up” that life is simply one big party— “only” a cabaret— and nothing more important worth preserving. She is fully willing to stake her life on the song’s message. 

Therefore, Sally can’t be regretful during this song. Her confidence in her choices has not been shaken. She believes she is in the right. She is not seeing the futility of ignoring the world’s problems— she is adamantly, and, as far as we can tell, genuinely stating that she does not believe they exist at all. 

This song is not Sally Bowles coming to a new realization. “Cabaret” is Sally declaring plainly what she has already decided. She would not be upset. She would be obstinate, angry, and confident in the way that can only stem from deciding the problems of the world are not her own. As I proposed at the start of this essay, she is digging in her heels and declaring that no one will alter her course. This is Sally Bowles specifically selecting self-destruction right before our eyes. 

After all, though she is singing truthfully, she is merely performing. And as Cabaret tells us, in performance, you are not accepting reality— you are ignoring it. 

0
Analysis, Theatre

No, Rent is not Outdated

Posted on by Thtrthts

Loving Rent is apparently no longer theatre-kid-couture. Where learning every word of “La Vie Boheme” was once a blossoming theatre fan’s rite of passage, a counter-culture of despising the show has sprung up in recent years, possibly in part as a response to Lindsay Ellis’s popular video essay from 2016.

There are a number of real criticisms one can raise about the show. The story is heavily dependent on the sufferings of LGBT people and people of color, despite being written by a straight, cisgender, white man. (Not to mention that despite the colorful cast of characters, the plot centers primarily on Mark and Roger, the only two straight white men in the main cast.) Many point to the privileges the main characters enjoy in spite of all their moaning and wailing about being apparently unable to pay their rent.

I understand these positions, I think they make really good points. Ironically, these aren’t the arguments I see most often. More than anything else, what I hear is that Rent is outdated and out of touch with modern audiences.

I think this is a dishonest argument.

To be clear, Rent came out in 1994, and is certainly a product of its time The arguments I mentioned above are good examples of ways the script definitely shows its age. It hasn’t aged perfectly my any means.

But judging Rent too harshly for this doesn’t make much sense. Rent is very specifically about living as poor, queer artists and visionaries, in the village, in the 90s. The show is a response to the attitudes and issues of that time, and it was a radical response when it debuted. Appraising it with a modern eye with no regard for the age it represents not only dismisses the fact that it was an important, revolutionary part of theatre history– it also ignores the fact that it was revolutionary for its era. Essentially, you’d be ignoring the entire purpose of the show.

Jonathan Larson had a storied penchant for writing about his own life. That’s what Tick, Tick BOOM is about, and it’s also what Rent is about. Larson lived in a tiny apartment without a buzzer, and he actually had to toss a key down to his friends from the fire escape, as explained in the RENT coffee table tome.  According to family and friends, Larson loved life, and especially loved living the way he and his friends did. He loved being a struggling artist in a crummy, rundown apartment, and loved devoting as much time as humanly possible to his art.

Many of Larson’s works are explicitly about his favored way of living, and Rent is no exception. Rent is like a loveletter to Larson’s lifestyle– a romanticized autobiography in a sense.

Larson dreamed of creating “a Hair for the 90s.” Larson succeeded, whether in fostering a renewed interest in the theatre among new audiences, creating a show with a lasting legacy, or reflecting attitudes of the era in a contemporary musical like nothing else. On all accounts, he succeeded. And it may be a testament to that success that, like Rent, Hair is now also criticized a show that is too outdated to resonate with modern audiences.

To remove the context of the 90s from Rent removes what Rent is at its heart. It simply cannot be done, and I don’t believe Larson intended for it to be done. Larson intended to capture a very specific era and attitude of history. Condemning it as outdated because it fails to align with modern attitudes would be akin to leaving Oklahoma! out of the theatrical canon simply because it’s old-fashioned.

Besides, even if Rent shows its age, it’s outrageous to imply that nothing of Rent could possibly apply to modern audiences. Despite being distinctively about the 90s, its messages are universal and enduring, much like those of Hair. Rent‘s core theme is that love is the most important thing in a person’s life (“Seasons of Love”), and that you have to live while you can, as though any day could be your last (“Another Day,” “Finale B”). Rent is also about the urge to pursue work that is fulfilling rather than money-making, and the grind of trying to live for more than money. This is a very timely message. It’s also about opposing the bourgeoise, and issues such as gentrification and mistreatment of the poor and homeless… and it’s also about a pandemic, and how opposing government mishandling of a pandemic can be a radical notion. Writing this article in June 2020, smack in the middle of the COVID crisis in the US, Rent feels quite possibly more up-to-date than ever before.

Though Rent‘s story is purposefully unique to the 90s, its messages transcend that era. This shouldn’t be that surprising. Besides the fact that this is generally how popular media works, many of the issues of 90s America are still painfully relevant, as COVID shutdown complications are proving. Gentrification, homelessness, substance dependency, disease, sexuality, and gender identity are all topics still hot discussions, despite Rent acting as something of a canary in the coal mine on many of them almost thirty years prior. Maybe we should all revisit Rent again– if we can’t figure out how it relates to modern society, we must not understand what’s actually happening in modern society.

Rent is not outdated. If anything, to call it outdated only calls attention to what woeful progress we have made on the issues Rent spotlighted thirty years ago. Though it perhaps only aspired to portray the attitudes and events of its own era, it somehow continues to be relevant– and that tells us that its time is hardly over.

4
Analysis

Love, Rejection, and Guido Contini

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Guido Contini is the energetic centerpiece of the musical Nine. He is a celebrity superstar, an actor and movie maker who writes, directs, performs in, and subtitles his own movies. He is a playboy control freak with charming film-biz charisma who compartmentalizes his life’s worries and deals with problems as they arise. The show is his world as he sees it– a thrilling voyeur’s vantage into the mind of a director of peerless talents.

In the face of his ever-fluctuating work atmosphere, seemingly the most constant thing in Guido’s life is love, and a never ending assortment of it, in many various forms. Through the show we meet his four loves, each occupying a different role in his life: His wife, his mistress, his muse, and his mother.

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0
Analysis

Joyful Celebration in the Face of Death: Jonathan Larson’s Rent

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A while back, I saw a Facebook post where some theatre folk were sharing their theater culture’s pre-show traditions. These are always wildly different, but invariably bizarre, fun, and full of energy. The comment that made me stop and think was one about a high school’s pre-show activities for their production of Rent. The poster said they typically did some fun sort of hype-up activity, but didn’t do it for their more serious shows– Rent included– because it wasn’t appropriate.

This took me off-guard. Sure, Rent is a serious show, but it’s never one that I’ve considered so overly serious that any celebration beforehand is bad. In fact, after some thought, I’d wager even the opposite- that Rent is serious, and you must celebrate. The seriousness of Rent isn’t the most important part of it. Rent is about much more than dying of AIDS and battling drug addiction. These are present and powerful entities in the show, but they are never the most important piece. Rent is, at its core, a celebration. Rent’s message is not one of sorrow and regret, but one of celebration in spite of, and even of, death itself.

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1
Analysis, Guides and Tips

Get the Most out of Your Rehearsals by Journaling Them

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About a year ago I was assigned a project for class that involved learning about anything and tracking your learning in a multimedia format. Since I was at the time involved in three different productions occurring simultaneously, I decided to make a blog about my efforts in learning to be a director. Though this project itself was very low-stress and even enjoyable, I got a perfect score and a glowing review from my professor, as well as a brilliant learning experience I didn’t expect.

Apparently required journaling of rehearsals is pretty common in school theatre programs nowadays– I never had to do this, and so I was able to approach the task with a fresh mind. Even if an assignment like this has previously tainted your experience with journaling rehearsals, consider revisiting it– it can be very beneficial for your learning, both in regard to that show and to your overall development as an actor and artist.

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1
Analysis

“We Have No Troubles Here”: Cabaret, Escapism, and Censorship

Posted on by Thtrthts

 Edit in 2024: Wow! The Eddie Redmayne effect has found me. I forgot this post existed, but I’m happy it’s getting attention now. I’ve become a much better writer over the last several years, so I gave this post a much-needed edit for grammar. Please note that this post was written before the 2024 Broadway revival, so some details may not align with the current production. Thanks for reading!

The musical Cabaret begins and ends the same way. The show opens with the Emcee greeting us and promising us that “we have no troubles here!” Along with our protagonist Cliff, the audience falls for the “mysterious and fascinating” Sally Bowles and the lurid, hedonist denizens of the Kit Kat Klub. We give into the enticing escapism that the Emcee promises. Then, in the finale of act one, a character takes off his jacket to reveal a Nazi armband, and our entire paradise is thrown into chaos. Along with Cliff, the audience watches helplessly as the Third Reich rises to power, much to the apathy of our thoughtless heroine and her self-absorbed friends. At the very end of the show, our old friend, the Emcee, returns to us once more. He mugs to the audience, and we think he’ll make us laugh— leave us on a high note with some silly quip— and then he removes his coat to reveal a striped uniform marked with a yellow Star of David and a pink triangle. “Where are your troubles now?” He asks us. “Forgotten? I told you so.”

The show’s titular song is very famous and very frequently sung out of context. Young girls at vocal recitals happily belt “life is a cabaret, old chum,” as if that’s really the takeaway of this musical— as if the song isn’tdelivered in the show by a post-abortion Nazi sympathizer who has fled the only meaningful relationship in her life because she was afraid to give up her lifestyle of debauchery.

The message of Cabaret is that life is most certainly not a cabaret, old chum.

Cabaret tells us to shove our escapist fantasies and be aware of our lives in three ways.

First, there’s the action of the plot— Cliff embraces escapism and happily ignores reality until he realizes he’s been unwittingly serving the Nazi party to support his life with Sally in Berlin. Sally seems like an ephemeral, carefree spirit, until Cliff is forced to come to terms with the fact that she’s really an irresponsible, clueless mess. Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz fantasize about marrying until Nazi party members who were once their friends remind them that Herr Schultz’ status as a Jew means their marriage would bring dire repercussions. Every character is forced to face an unhappy reality by the end, their fantasies cut short. The only character who stays in denial is Sally. By that point in the plot, she seems not only like a badperson, but a pitiable one, doomed by hubris to spend the rest of her life in a self-destructive daydream.

Second, there’s what happens in the audience. The Emcee in Cabaret is both the Emcee of the fictional Kit Kat Klub as well as the Emcee of the audience’s evening in the theater. From his very first entrance, we the audience are inserted into the show. He speaks directly to us so the line between house and stage becomes blurred. We’re invited into a dreamworld ourselves, the world of Cliff and Sally and the Klub, and we fall for the fanciful conceit of this world the same way Cliff does. We ignore the warning signs and allow ourselves to be taken in by sex and lace and sequins, until it’s too late to deny our bystandership. We haven’t been paying attention. The audience becomes an unwitting, but not entirely unwilling, accomplice to the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Perhaps my favorite scene in the show falls just after the start of act two. A heavym emotional scene ends, and here comes the Emcee, prancing on stage with an apparently female gorilla in a tutu. The audience laughs and claps along as he sings a characteristically nonsensical song about love and acceptance and the gorilla dances a ballet. “Why can’t the world leben and leben lassen— live and let live?” He asks, and we laugh, because he’s describing a relationship with a monkey. We laugh right up to final line of the song: “If you could see her through my eyes… she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.” Suddenly, no one is laughing.

The third way Cabaret functions as a cautionary device is a bit more subtle.

In his landmark book The Empty Space, theatrical legend Peter Brook categorizes different types of theatre by the effect they have their audiences. One of these is the Holy theatre, wherein the audience is moved to total self-forgetfulness by the magic onstage before them. Think Elphaba soaring into the sky on a high note and an orchestral flourish, think Elle Woods leading an entire parade of backup dancers and singers into a courtroom for a grand finale, think the Mother Abbess reducing an entire audience to tears with the final chords of Climb Every Mountain.

Then there is the Rough theatre, which is effectively the opposite of the Holy. The point of the Rough is not to make us forget ourselves— it is to make us self-aware, and uncomfortably so. It is a finger which points at us and says “you out there in the audience are not off this hook.” Cabaret is a perfect example of the Rough theatre— it lulls its audience into happy complacency, and then it criticizes them when the consequences of their complacency are made clear. And that scolding comes with a sting.

This is the third way Cabaret is tells us to kill off our escapist fantasies. Cabaret is not just a cautionary tale presented through theatre. It is a shock to the senses, a bucket of cold water thrown on the audience— it is timeless in that it points to anything happening in our lives which we are tempted to ignore and says “look at what you are missing.” It’s about reminding us to live the rest of our lives differently. Our night at the theatre alienates us, makes us uncomfortable and self-aware, and so we return to our regular lives with open eyes and a sense of unease about where else we may be an unwitting, complacent accomplice.

“We have no troubles here,” indeed.

Cabaret tells us sardonically that if we claim to have no troubles, we are probably clueless, or else simply in denial. It spares the audience no discomfort in letting them know that they’ve all been had— and that they sorely need to wise up in the future.

I love Cabaret for this message. It’s one of my favorite musicals. With all the hallmark trappings of an iconic theatrical production, it’s full of pretty women, song-and-dance numbers, sex, flirtation, laughs — and yet, it is a profoundly emotionally effective piece, made all the more powerful by leaning into the things that make it uncomfortable.

I’m thinking about Cabaret right now (more than I usually do, anyway) because of this news story. LaGuardia High School was forced to remove all of the Nazi imagery from their production of The Sound of Music after the principal deemed it too offensive.

Well, of course Nazi imagery is offensive. That’s the point.

As Cabaret illustrates, the offensive and uncomfortable are powerful. Cabaret is intentionally shocking. It contains generous fornication, drugs, Nazis, violence. But the inclusion of these elements is not an act of worship. Cabaret is not the raunchy free-for-all it wants you to think it is. These elements are traps in order play the audience as the fool. Sex is seemingly glorified, until we realize it’s just the fancy gimmick used to lure us in— and the second act, one we’ve seen the truth, is decidedly sexless. We are tempted to ignore Sally’s drug use and implied alcoholism because she is so “mysterious and fascinating,” but are forced to come to terms with the fact that she’s not at all the lovable diva we thought we saw in act one. By the end, the offensive content is just that— offensive. We’ve seen it for what it is, and that’s why it’s in the show.

Cabaret illustrates that ignoring our problems is not a solution.

The Holocaust is a part of our history. The Sound of Music is based on the memoirs of the real-life Von Trapp family, who really did flee Austria when the Nazi party rose to power. And, like it or not, it seems we can’t go more than a few days recently without comparisons of either American political party to the Nazi party. We can’t pretend there were or are “no troubles here.”

Censorship in high school theatre is a widespread issue. Stories go viral regularly about principals discovering, two weeks before opening night of their school’s production, that they probably should have actually read the script they approved. Most often, censorship of this sort comes back to this idea: pretending that problems don’t exist. Instead of discussing suicide, domestic violence, substance abuse and dependency— real problems students today face— theatre departments are gagged. Discussing these is a liability when we could simply be quiet. Nazi flags are too offensive to be seen on stage, never mind what we may think of them when we see them carried in marches on the street.

High school administrators are engaging in a strange sort of escapist fantasy themselves, in which everyone else is aware of the problems, but they plug their ears so as to avoid addressing them. Never before would I have thought to compare high school admins to Sally Bowles, and yet, here we are.

When serious problems are addressed in a theatre space, it allows a dialogue to begin that benefits actors and audience alike. Cabaret does this brilliantly. These benefits can be multiplied in school theatre, where students’ learning is guided by educators. The school auditorium becomes a place not just for lighthearted family fun, but for real, meaningful learning— and in a school, no less!

Cabaret admonishes us to look for the problems in our own world and make them our business. Cabaret tells us that life isn’t carefree, and trying to pretend it is only brings unhappiness. Cabaret reminds us that escaping from the real world might mean forgetting your troubles temporarily… but in the end, they’ll still be there.

If we let ourselves get wrapped up in laughing at the man dancing with the gorilla for long enough, we’ll discover we’ve missed something important— and if we let that happen, no one will be laughing at all.

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