Theatrics

I've engaged literally in theatrics only a few times, although life requires some form of performance most of the time. Teaching, everyday politeness, and responding to unexpected questions, for example, are three kinds of interaction that require a level of performance.

I remember Larry King's having interviewed Marlon Brando toward the end of Brando's life. It was a terrible interview because King was intimidated by Brando, and Brando was being Brando. At one point, however, Brando tried to demystify acting. He asked King to imagine a real-life circumstance in which you're sitting at a bar having a drink when a stranger comes up and sits beside you and behaves somewhat oddly. Brando started to say, "So when you respond to that person, you're acting--you're presenting yourself so as to have some control over what seems a strange, possibly threatening, situation" [or something like that--I'm paraphrasing]--but then King cut him off and asked something uninteresting (to me).

I wanted Brando to finish the thought, the kernel of which seemed to be that everybody acts all the time. Of course, that's different from being a trained actor who actually gives a sustained performance, but Brando was trying to teach King about one simple basis of acting.

I tried out in high school for the lead role in The Crucible and so overwhelmed the director of the play, Mr. Murphy, that I was cast in a bit-part, as Ezekiel Cheever, the court-bailiff. I think Mr. Murphy just needed bodies; otherwise, I may not have been cast at all. Perhaps the apex of my acting-career occurred when the actor playing the judge blanked on his lines. He was supposed to order me to bring in the prisoner. I waited a beat, and then I ad-libbed, "Shall I bring in the prisoner, judge?!" The judge-actor said, "Thank you!"--a wonderful double-entendre. Decades later, I "acted" in a short film called Cliche and thereby, absurdly, landed my name on IMBD.

When I go to live theater, I often watch the edges of the performance--actors' shoes, the faces of other people in the audience, the ceiling. I don't do this in any obtrusive way, and I'm sure the actors would rather I suspend disbelieve completely and get immersed totally in the drama. I do re-focus on the drama, but I also like withdrawing from it for a moment. I especially like plays in which people come on the set to change the set right in front you. I pretend the people are actors pretending to be set-changers.

I don't know the theater-world well at all, but I assume that back-stage people get weary of actors and that actors, by the same token, feel as if they're the ones risking everything out there. With regard to plays or films about theater, I'm partial to The Dresser (1983), a film with Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay; Shakespeare in Love; Anton in Show Business (a play); and a recent film, Bigger Than the Sky (2005), which is about a regional theater (Portland, Oregon) that puts on Cyrano; the director casts in the lead-role a person with no training in acting, and we go from there. The film seems to capture "theater-people" well, at least as I see them from the outside of that world, and it's a very thoughtful presentation of the phenomenon of regional theater and the obstacles such theater faces with regard to what to produce, how, and why.

Here's link to a nice poem, by Clay Derryberry, about theater:

http://www.artvilla.com/wordplay/?p=602


And this little poem concerns theater-backstage, at least I think it does:



Properties


Reality doesn’t just come out of nowhere.
We sawed boards into shapes of clouds,
worked polymers into blue sky.


Adam and Eve enter left, spew their lines,
name a fashioned set. Backstage we hear
each board creak. The sky moans like a sick duck.


Somehow the better drama’s back here—
heat coming off the stage-manager’s neck, lust
unspoken between me and the set-dresser.


Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom

Ego

According to the OED online "ego," as referring to "the conscious thinking self," entered the English language toward the end of the 18th century; in fact, the first citation is from 1789. As a psychological term referring to that part of the mind that is most conscious of the self, it arose about 100 years later, along with "depth psychology," of course; and at about the same time, it came to refer, negatively, to self-centeredness. That is, according to psychology, "normal" human beings, whatever that means, are supposed to have egos, a sense of themselves, some kind of unified personality. But society suggests--or does it?--that we shouldn't have egos in the sense of being selfish, drawing too much attention to ourselves, and--in the extreme--becoming narcissitic or sociopathic.

All the major religions seem to encourage a person to check the ego, to look not for ourselves when we look inward but (perhaps) for God, and to look outward--to others (especially those in need), to mystery, to the fact that everything changes, to the fact the ego is short-lived. Buddhist texts, The Bhagavad Gita, the Q'uran, the Bible--all seem to agree, perhaps loosely, certainly from different perspectives, on this anti-ego stance.

And yet this society, the only one I know relatively well, really constantly asserts the opposite. It is obsessed with celebrity, personal wealth, getting ahead personally, buying stuff to make oneself look great, and so on. In what way is Donald Trump, for example, not quintessentially American, and if he is that, then is there something wrong with how Americans define themselves, and if he is not that, then why is he so poplar, such an icon? In what particular ways does he advance the Golden Rule or basic precepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition or of any spiritual tradition?. . . Jacques Ellul claims that one key to propaganda in any culture (including ours) is that it appeals to the masses but in a way that gives the individual the sense that he or she is being addressed individually. So when a politician derides "running out of Iraq with our tail between our legs," he is appealing to some kind of mass-pride in a mythic "America" that can be reduced to the image of a dog, but he is also inviting each person to think of himself or herself as a beaten dog running away, and thus to reject anything connected with ending that war.

In fact, the word "we" is rather beside the point. The people who will leave from or stay in Iraq are military personnel, some journalists, and some private contractors. They aren't dogs, and they don't have tails, and if the military leaves, it ought to leave in the way that preserves the most lives--of the personnel and of Iraqi citizens. "Running out of Iraq with our tail between our legs" thus disintegrates completely, as a statement with any meaning, when treated with the simplest analysis. And yet as propaganda, it apparently works--on individuals, on their egos. It means something because it appears to mean something.

TV has become an especially bad place for ideas or genuine, interesting disagreements (as opposed to shout-ping-pong or interrupt-o-rama) to be explored, partly because it is composed chiefly of advertisement, around which "programming" is folded like wet bread, but also because those moderating the ideas have ceased to moderate or to be moderate. Say what you will about Larry King--he's old, he can lob softball questions, and every guest if of the same cultural importance--but he sets his ego aside and lets people talk; at least he gets that much done. Obviously, Larry King must have a huge ego; he's ambitious, and he likes being liked and likes knowing famous people. But as an interviewer, he can control his ego. Charley Rose seems to be able to do that, too--and Tavis Smiley.

But mostly TV isn't interested in ideas, nuances, thoughtfulness, or exchanges that are neither rushed, combative, faced, or some combination of all three. That's too bad. Once this popular medium had some potential, didn't it? Think of how good it might have been. It is now awful, and I think it's not going to get better. So when someone like Ron Paul (he may be right, he may be wrong, he may be both, that's not the point) cuts through the crap and speaks what he takes to be the truth, we are a) refreshed (again, whether we think he's right or not) and b) certain that his candidacy will go nowhere because he has chosen to say what he really thinks and to pursue a line of argument instead of saying something involves tails between legs, yadda-yadda.

The following wee poem concerns ego, and it's certainly one I could stand to take to heart (physician, heal thyself, and all that):

Station K-E-G-O

It’s just him, broadcasting
to himself with one watt
of power, pretending
to interview an Other,
playing requests and
and taking calls
he called in to himself,
about himself,
breaking for news about his life,
weather he enjoys, sports
that delight him. This
is Radio Solipcism,
from a studio of Self,
broadcast to stations
all along the Narcissistic Network.