[NEohioPAL] State of the theatre - State Theatre - Kulchur Notes

[marvymark at aol.com]

Martin,

Brilliant!

Who else could cite Aquinas and Angsley in the same diatribe and still leave the reader with no idea of what point was being made.

Keep up the good work.



Mark



?Mark Hudak


-----Original Message-----
From: Ensemble Theatre <ensemble-theatre at sbcglobal.net>
To: Robert Hawkes <rhhawkes at gmail.com>; MARC MORITZ <marcmoritz at yahoo.com>
Cc: neohiopal at listserve.com
Sent: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:50 am
Subject: [NEohioPAL] State of the theatre - State Theatre - Kulchur Notes




Yes, Robert, I want to get you started.

I DO want to get you started. 

?

Don't forget that a rebel must have a cause. 
Otherwise he/she?is. .just. . .a . . .rebel. 

And we know what happened to Johnny Reb. 

?

Yes, the ads, and the dvds, and the cds, and the

couch potato culture. . .truly, as T.S. reminded us-

The Wasteland. And it is only because we seem to

have had 'value-added'- that smirky,slanted eye

attitude that those who 'lived' the 60's - that most

terrible of generations, had made the world a better place

in which to live. But as we can painfully see, that is not 

the case. 

?

But what is critical here is not to wear this disappointment

in the future dripping from your shoulder, telling those

younger ones that their butts belong in a theater seat. 

You're right. It was a habit they never learned-but more so

a 'value that was not added. And since habits start young-

you know what Aquinas said- 'Give me the child at?7 and I 

will give you?the man.' Now you must give the man AND the

woman-full blown, springing from their parent's foreheads 

only these 'fullblowns' have been blown out of the water. 

Blown out of the culture, blown from their families, and 

schools, and nearly a million - this month alone, are addicted

to prescription drugs.

?

Did I hear another shooting on the news?

?

Your invective against the Cleveland Orchestra is also against 

the Cleveland Play House, and all the 'play' houses because the

'image' has pervaded us -that flat, 2-d, sensually, intellectually, psychologically devoid form by which we have become totally obsessive about appearances, what things appear to be, and there is no mind left for substance-

no mind because it was not made a habit-some of us still call it

'critical thinking-forcing upon oneself the discipline that rejects

immediate gratification-delaying satisfaction for the sake of the

process, full investigation, comprehensive study and analysis-

these are fossils as sure as Monarch and Cliff Notes have taken 

over the ragstands in college bookstores. 

?
You cannot avoid your elitism-even Ernest Angsley says -'you are

SPEshul' - otherwise you cannot add ANY value to the culture. 

Didn't you say you wanted to leave this place better than you found it??? You have already done that - yes, this page says so. 

?

My father always said that to me - "Don't get me started."

See what happened??!!

?

Martin Cosentino

?

?

?

----- Original Message ----
From: Robert Hawkes <rhhawkes at gmail.com>
To: MARC MORITZ <marcmoritz at yahoo.com>
Cc: neohiopal at listserve.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 5:28:48 PM
Subject: [NEohioPAL] State of the theatre - State Theatre - Kulchur Notes

It's a big, wide, all-culture issue, as I see it. The live theatre may be in all the trouble so eloquently analyzed here, but so are serious music, serious filmmaking, poetry and other imaginative literature, painting, and any serious art at all.

A. It's partly about a huge shift in central cultural priority that starts with the Romantics and reaches its full flower with (most) rock music and (most) television: the Art of the Common Man comes home to roost, and our most lively and lucrative arts now represent the Best We Can Be, but the Most We Can Make. And the less imagination we have to use to consume it, the better, until we reach the utter absurdity of "reality TV" - which is about as "realistic" as a Road Runner cartoon, but which demands actual negative imaginative input from its audience. 

The audience at Severance Hall and at other "classical" venues is likewise aging and dwindling - and also grousing if anything new or different is presented, not realizing, apparently, that the more an institution such as the Cleveland Orchestra is allowed to be a mere museum for the established repertoire, the more its possibly inevitable death is hastened.

My generation - the rock'n'roll generation - never returned to serious music after a period of rebellion, never took its children regularly to serious concerts, never had that music in the house. (I did, but I'm in a tiny minority by now.) I used to be able to joke, in my classes, that copper, like Leonard Bernstein, was a great conductor. I can't make that joke any more, not even if I use the name of the current Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra. 35 years ago, it used to be a real faux pas to schedule Parents' Night on Orchestra Opening Night. Now it couldn't matter a damn.

The same thing has happened to the theatre. "Younger" people don't go to the live theatre, not so much because it's become something of a rich man's toy, I don't think, as because they were just never taught the habit. I know, from inviting friends to come to plays I have been in, that it's incredibly hard to get even otherwise reasonable adults to do something they're not used to doing. It's not the money; it's not the actual inconvenience. It's the doing something they were never taught to do. And what they're used to doing is going down to the State to see Wicked and imagining that that's what theatre is all about. 

The serious arts are just not central to our culture any more, so why should we pass them on to our children? What's central is reality TV and American Idol; canned pop music EVERYWHERE (including my dentist's chair); cineplex cinema films that ALL look the same, celebrating mindless violence, slick effects, and general dehumanization - in short, whatever will numb my intellectual, aesthetic, musical, visual, and spiritual sensibilities and reduce me and everybody around me to the lowest common consumer denominator.

B. Suburban sprawl. Some "younger" - and older - folk who might come to the theatre, or to serious music, don't do it much because it's just "too far" from where they live, and they are content to cocoon at home unless it's something REALLY special - like Wicked.

Don't get me started.

RHH 


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