What I've seen recently

Have you ever been in a conversation that went like this?

"I just saw this play. I loved it."
"Really? I didn't like it. I was disappointed in it."
"Why?"
"The last scene from the end...I just thought it didn't work."

I have conversations like that all the time. From both sides. I assume you have as well. I think I'd like to avoid having conversations such as these for as long as I am able.

I've just recently seen two entirely different and much heralded productions: Happy Days with Fiona Shaw at BAM, and Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll on Broadway. I've also seen Cloverfield and There Will Be Blood at the movies. A whole lot of very different work, with very different goals, to take in and respond to.

In thinking about how to share my responses, or even if I should, with those that read this blog, something a little more important to me personally has bubbled up.

I've noticed that I approach almost everything I see as a sort of amateur critic or reviewer, even when I am under no obligation to respond with that narrow a lens. I'm not paid to reduce my emotional responses to something communicable to an audience (even those who read this blog); I'm not arrogant enough to think I am providing critical feedback to other artists who will benefit from my advice; I am not functioning as a consumer advocate.

So why, when I think about plays and films I've seen, do I often sound like I'm writing a list of their pros and cons? Why do I tend to say "I liked it" or "I didn't like it." Why do I say "It was good" or "It was bad?" Why do I even use that scale? I have a four star rating system embedded in my brain, and it I feels like it's crippled (in some ways) my ability to involve myself with what I watch, and worse, explore what I've seen after the fact, when the real exploration takes place.

For example... it would be easy to say Happy Days is marvelous and give it a cursory seal of approval with all the trite expressions that go along with it. The flip side is that it would also be possible to discuss it from a distance, to "weigh in" on its merits, to assess it. (Was this 'as Beckett intended it?' Was it too funny, not funny enough, how did you like the sound design, etc, etc. )

The truth is, while watching Happy Days, I got that feeling that always drew me to Beckett's work to begin with. I felt as if I were sharing a secret joke with someone, and as if in each moment, the joke would transform. In one moment, I'm looking at a woman whose husband is having a sort of half-witted experience with his own genitals, and she's buried from the waist up. Cruel, unfair, typical. I'm seeing a portrait of a certain type of marriage, maybe. Then, I'm seeing general plight in any life... the rituals, the self-restraint, the lack of control, the inner strength that you have no choice but to find.

Then, I'm hearing the increasingly painful and, somehow, inspiring humanness of Winnie. How she finds certain impossibly unfair things...wonderful. How I'm pitying her and falling in love with her and I'm laughing at her and feeling a sense that somehow, I will be her or her husband or someone I know will be, or that I am already.

And I thought about global warming.

And I thought about Iraq.

And I thought about my grandmother, and how she died, in her attic.

I was also sitting in the balcony. I was with one of my oldest friends. It was cold outside. It wasn't the first production of Happy Days that I'd seen, but it was the first time my friend had seen it. All of this factored into my personal experience while watching Shaw play Winnie.

Anything else, the merits of the approach, the set design, only matter insofar as they affect how I was feeling when I watched it. What it gave to me as a piece of art (that is to say, an expression of something true and beautiful, produced to inspire in me feelings that I do not have when I am not watching it) is all that matters in the end. The rest is vanity or "making conversation" or trying to sound expert or imitating the newspapers.

I have seen productions that did not make me feel all the things Happy Days, as a play, is capable of making me feel. This version, at BAM, was evocative of what I've described. That's about all that I need to focus my attention on.

I guess what I'm after is... I am trying to give myself permission to not externalize my responses, and also, when externalizing, to not couch my responses in terms of criticism or review. It's a bad habit, and worthy of breaking.

I hope that makes some sort of sense.

Onwards and upwards.