Although I do see an argument for
the potential danger of theatre dying out due to our culture of instant
gratification, I don’t think that that will actually happen or at least not
anytime soon. To be fair, I may just be
an optimist. I think that performance art and theatre even though they do have
heavy overlap at times will always still have an equal amount of
separation. Even though tons of people
aren’t rushing to the theatre today, there are even less rushing out to see
performance art. If either of the two
dies out, I think it will be performance art even with its new wave, not
theatre. In my observations of my
generation, mixing performance with media in a theatre context has been for the
most part successful, but only successful when they can feel connected to the stage
in what is going on, while still maintaining a distance from it. Audiences want the gratification of having a
say, but not be the center of attention.
Where as performance art, focuses much more on directly influencing the
audience as a way to connect to them,, rather than the medium connecting
them. This sort of puts the audience
more under a microscope and in my experience that connection is too strong and
rather unpleasant for many young modern audiences considering the topics that
are explored in performance art.
Performance art takes very specific stances that are crafted to incite
some sort of intense reaction, where as theatre, at least more popular theatre,
does that as well, but many times will leave things resolved to settle tension,
making audiences want to be exposed to it.
Now, I’m not saying that’s necessarily a good thing and theatre
shouldn’t always have a clean resolution, but many times it does and those are
the shows that are commercialized and are almost guaranteed to bring in a
specific audience. Performance art does
not have that commercial appeal so to say that with the rise a new movement in
performance art could override theatre is far-fetched.
I
definitely think there is truth to Huyssen’s concept of “imagined memory” based
on some of my personal memories being colored by media-built experiences.
This news clip speaks about how
snapchat was apparently hacked and nearly 100,000 photos could potentially be
posted due to this third party hacker who breached the snapchat privacy walls. After watching this, I’m not so concerned to
where I would never use snapchat again, but whenever I use the app now I will
not necessarily hesitate but I think it will be in the back of my mind that
whatever I’m taking a picture of could easily be exposed and posted online and
seen by people that I’m not contsenting to see it. When I think of the app or use it now, I will
be hyper aware of the possibilities of exposure more so than I was before
especially since that before I saw the news clip, I didn’t know that the
creators of snapchat were actually app making newbs and are sort of learning
how to deal with security and privacy as they go. I think that this defineitly has an impact on art and theatre. This news clip was carefully constructed and specific things were included and excluded from it to make it an effective video and raise awareness. For instance, the potential of underaged nude photoes being leaked would be a huge concern because it would be considered child porngraphy, but if that little tidbit was excluded I honestly wouldn't be nearly as concnered because since I am an adult, in my head I would only thinking of photos of adults being leaked, which don't get me wrong, is messed up and not ok. But children's photos being leaked is a whole new level of crime. Art is carefully crafted like this as well to convey a specific message that the audience will perceive and to shape the audiences thoughts on any given issue. The media's tactics are mirror images of artist's tactics.
"Art is carefully crafted like this as well to convey a specific message that the audience will perceive and to shape the audiences thoughts on any given issue. The media's tactics are mirror images of artist's tactics." YES! Okay! Now I have a question about this brilliant statement- Does this feel manipulative to you? Or is that important to generate a conversation?
ReplyDeleteYes, I think it is very manipulative. Now this can be a very bad thing about theatre. I think there is a reason why artists of the past have always been oppressed by political regimes. Politicians often understand the kind of influence that theatre experiences can create in an audience. When these manipulative tactics are employed, it can be scary and create rash reactions in which a performer could create a following that allows him/her to be an authority figure on particular issues. I think there is a fine line that needs to be walked on so that we, as theatre artists, try to maintain focus on what is important about theatre. For me, it's the audience. I would like to provide all sides of an a issue and let them be the judge-I would ideally like them (the audience) to be engaged in a conversation, but I can't necessarily guarantee that. And I think this line gets even more fine when theatre artists have a power trip and are aware of this influence and abuse it, putting their own individual interests before the interests of the audience or the people. Humility is essential to ensuring that although you are crafting your performance in very specific ways, you are also doing it in a way that isn't brainwashing the audience but exposing them to new perspectives and from there they can decide their own views.
ReplyDeleteThe snap chat story reminds me about earlier in the semester when we were talking about documentary theatre. It's up to the news anchors and media to chose what to keep and leave out of major news stories. This doesn't necessarily have to do with the prompt, it was just something to point out.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that performance art may die out before theatre. You don't necessarily hear about performance art as much unless it's something like a direct action or protest-like performance art. Maybe it's just that I don't keep up with the times or I don't pay attention to the outlets that cover performance art. You are more likely to see promotion for a piece of theatre rather than performance art, and so it lives because people are more aware of it.