Theatre of Consumption

I’ve noticed a pattern in my work, and it surprises me. Looking back on the year and the productions we have done I see some striking similarities. I assure you that they are coincidental and yet, it might be wise for me to do as I was instructed in college and say “Absolutely. That is exactly what I trying to do.” Alas it is too late, for I have already given away my lack of genius and revealed it as mere kismet. Yet my myopic hindsight leads me to interpret the consistencies in said shows as having some higher meaning. Not unlike Robert Wilson’s synthesis: when the various, and assuredly random, elements work together to create an apparent whole. Like the waves of wheat in the breeze seem to move to the strains of Mozart on the car radio as you drive by, and it seems so...intentional.
Initially the similarities are fairly obvious. All productions, from “Romeo and Juliet” through “Joseph” and “Mother Courage” and ending with “Of Zombies and Commies”, are decidedly non-realistic, in presentational form as I taught my Drama 3 students this year i.e. presenting a play as opposed to representing reality. All had an episodic structure, some more disconnected than others, and expected the audience to follow them on a journey into the abstract, the bizarre, and at times the surreal. “Romeo and Juliet” repeated the same scene 5 times. Each repetition changing and diminishing the understandability of the text. “Joseph” took us on a post-modern journey into the story of Joseph of Egypt, with its breaking of the 4th wall and genre hopping it is surprising to me that it has become a staple of the last bastion of realism in America. “Mother Courage” well... “Mother Courage” was “Mother Courage” wasn’t it? Who would have thought that a play that leaves out much of the story in favor of socio-political ranting and had giant puppets with guns for hands would be so well received? And a One-act written by students, that has a bunch of Zombies (in all their gory glory) interspersed with Megalomaniacal marxists as the bloody coda. All of this seems to point to an unhealthy obsession with experimental theatre. Truly I do what I love.
But upon closer inspection, there is a more subtle and, perhaps, more striking similarity amongst these works. “Romeo and Juliet” showed the words of one of the greatest playwrights in the history of the world being consumed (literally devoured in the end) by vivid visual imagery. “Joseph” was an attempt to create to most artfully digestible musical in my time at PHS. As one of the most popular Musicals in Utah I wished to see if the patronage would consume it with the same vigor and zeal as they have the other gazillion times before. Like how people like to eat pizza, even though they have eaten it at least once a month since they were two. (p.s. mission accomplished) “Mother Courage” deals with a family that is assimilated (as in the case of Eilif becoming, visually, just like the robotic soldiers) and ultimately devoured by war. The One-Act (whose title “Of Zombies and Commies” makes me giggle) portrays one group, that is the Zombies, literally consuming others and another, the Commies, consuming American Pop Culture (from Celebrity Trivia to shopping at Wal-mart). Ultimately leading to a showdown in which the Zombies eat all the Commies, showing perhaps how American zeal of consumerism ultimately leaves us mindless copycats even in our appropriation of one of the most dangerous ideologies in history.
The fact of the matter is that all of these coincidences reflect upon me, and what I believe theatre is for. I am fascinated with the idea of consumption. We consume all day. Air, water, food, love, and probably most of all, the media. We literally glut ourselves virtually every moment with little regard as to what it is that we are consuming. Do we consider what it is that we view? Or has our appetite for cheap, copious, entertainment become a terrifying doppleganger of our ever expanding waistlines? Have we Americans become so enabled and addicted as to incapacitate ourselves with an overabundance of media lard. One of my goals for these students has always been to have them become more wise consumer, more informed on the possibilities artistic nutrition. Not just eating the intellectual Twinkie simply because they are unaware of the enormous variety of healthier and more deeply satisfying options available. Entertainment once meant “to engage the mind”, now it is hardly uttered without its companion “mindless”.
So as I reflect on my serendipitous artistry and, perhaps more accurately, my oft quixotic venture into the bizarrosphere, my hope is that in our search for truth, we will open our eyes a little wider, tune our ears a little more finely, chew a little more slowly on the things that pass before us. Perhaps we will find a delicate flavor we have missed, or maybe it’s just indigestion.