More Musings on the Naked Theatre
Live performance, be it ritual, dance, music, storytelling, sermonizing, or sitting in a darkened auditorium watching a show on a stage, has been the dominant form of entertainment the world over for the last ten thousand years or so. From Peking Opera to Haitian Voodoo to the latest sex farce on Broadway, theatre has “held up a mirror” and given humanity a reflection of itself, at once both grotesque and beautiful. More visceral than anything printed on a page, more invasive than anything hung on a gallery wall, theatre is, or was, the best (and often only) way the members of civilizations could self-identify, connect with their compatriots and, ultimately, find a palatable route to their conception of eternity.
No more. Since the invention of the camera there has been an explosion of new media. Photography came first, then cinema, then radio, television, and the internet. Each of these new mediums exponentially increased the methods by which the members of a civilization could self-identify, connect with their compatriots and, ultimately, find a palatable route to their conception of eternity.
To perform is no longer an act of faith, nor is it necessarily a learned skill. In fact much of the time it isn’t even recognized as performance at all. A contestant on a reality TV show, a teenaged girl who posts a video of herself dancing in a bikini on YouTube, a local alderman making a clumsy speech into a screeching microphone – they are all performers, whether they (or we) realize it or not. Theatre is no longer the exclusive, hallowed domain of the village shaman, the Stratford actor or the Bollywood mega-star.
Anyone willing to make the necessary sacrifice of self-preservation, regardless of talent, training or even competence can become a star, literally overnight. Most of those who find this new-found fame did not seek it deliberately, rather their motivations, if any, were to secure the adoration of a small, very specific audience – people very close to them, and the resulting interest from strangers merely an unintended (and often unwanted) consequence. Vanessa Hudgens, a star in her own right already, posed nude for a self-portrait she intended to be seen only by her boyfriend, yet it when it leaked out onto the internet she became, however briefly, a star to an audience whose tastes run far, far away from High School Musical. Countless others have had similar (and often no less embarrassing) experiences.
The internet is the platform where the written word, music, the visual arts and performance have been unified on the same palate. It is there that media, ironically, reverts to a singularity – one single conduit through which every piece of information must flow to reach its target, the end user. More importantly though, it is a platform where the content is dictated exclusively by the end user, the person controlling what is being viewed on the screen or heard through the speakers. Content providers can only offer up their gems – no one is under any obligation to buy, try, or even take notice. Attempts to censor or filter out certain content are lacklustre, at best, (and bypassed with such relative ease that a teenager can hack into the CIA) and it is ultimately the users that decide what content is acceptable, and how that content will be used. Thus the police now post convenience store robbery videos online, companies “Google” and “Facebook” prospective employees, and pre-schoolers send Grandma an e-card on her birthday.
In other words, everyone is now a performer, and everything, essentially, is or could be seen as a performance.
The Naked Theatre is a new way to think about putting on plays. It’s an idea that I hope will make what we do viable once again, to provide us, the producers of theatre (be we actors, directors, playwrights, designers or the poor schmuck who has to put bums in seats) with a new set of tools for understanding how to embrace the evolution in human communication, to create theatre that people will want to see, and theatre that we will want to create. Ultimately The Naked Theatre is a path towards a re-balancing of the arts…
No more. Since the invention of the camera there has been an explosion of new media. Photography came first, then cinema, then radio, television, and the internet. Each of these new mediums exponentially increased the methods by which the members of a civilization could self-identify, connect with their compatriots and, ultimately, find a palatable route to their conception of eternity.
To perform is no longer an act of faith, nor is it necessarily a learned skill. In fact much of the time it isn’t even recognized as performance at all. A contestant on a reality TV show, a teenaged girl who posts a video of herself dancing in a bikini on YouTube, a local alderman making a clumsy speech into a screeching microphone – they are all performers, whether they (or we) realize it or not. Theatre is no longer the exclusive, hallowed domain of the village shaman, the Stratford actor or the Bollywood mega-star.
Anyone willing to make the necessary sacrifice of self-preservation, regardless of talent, training or even competence can become a star, literally overnight. Most of those who find this new-found fame did not seek it deliberately, rather their motivations, if any, were to secure the adoration of a small, very specific audience – people very close to them, and the resulting interest from strangers merely an unintended (and often unwanted) consequence. Vanessa Hudgens, a star in her own right already, posed nude for a self-portrait she intended to be seen only by her boyfriend, yet it when it leaked out onto the internet she became, however briefly, a star to an audience whose tastes run far, far away from High School Musical. Countless others have had similar (and often no less embarrassing) experiences.
The internet is the platform where the written word, music, the visual arts and performance have been unified on the same palate. It is there that media, ironically, reverts to a singularity – one single conduit through which every piece of information must flow to reach its target, the end user. More importantly though, it is a platform where the content is dictated exclusively by the end user, the person controlling what is being viewed on the screen or heard through the speakers. Content providers can only offer up their gems – no one is under any obligation to buy, try, or even take notice. Attempts to censor or filter out certain content are lacklustre, at best, (and bypassed with such relative ease that a teenager can hack into the CIA) and it is ultimately the users that decide what content is acceptable, and how that content will be used. Thus the police now post convenience store robbery videos online, companies “Google” and “Facebook” prospective employees, and pre-schoolers send Grandma an e-card on her birthday.
In other words, everyone is now a performer, and everything, essentially, is or could be seen as a performance.
The Naked Theatre is a new way to think about putting on plays. It’s an idea that I hope will make what we do viable once again, to provide us, the producers of theatre (be we actors, directors, playwrights, designers or the poor schmuck who has to put bums in seats) with a new set of tools for understanding how to embrace the evolution in human communication, to create theatre that people will want to see, and theatre that we will want to create. Ultimately The Naked Theatre is a path towards a re-balancing of the arts…
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