But let me back up a little. When the Center Theatre Group’s press office sent me an email saying, “Hey, this guy’s on a short run but you should go check him out,” my first reaction was: Mike who? As if anticipating my puzzlement, the email came with links to YouTube clips, an appearance on Letterman, and a New York Times article, all of which I proceeded to ignore in an effort to approach the show with a pristine, open mind. Flash forward to the opening performance last night at the Kirk Douglas, and I’m reading Mike’s bio feeling very ignorant. The man’s been around. Various theatres. Commentary for PRI and NPR’s Day to Day. Contributions to WIRED, Slate, Salon, and Vanity Fair. Awards and fellowships. It’s enough to make me wonder what slab of granite I’ve been living under.
It brings to mind that one time I went to a screening at the L.A. Film Festival. I sat next to an aspiring actress. We chatted. My work as thefrontpageonline.com’s resident art critic came up, and she asked, “So, did you go to film school, or take film history classes?” When I finally removed the knife that had been plunged into my chest, I later told myself, “Hey, you’ve got a university education. You’re well read. You rocked at philosophy and critical thinking. You don’t have to ‘splain nothin’ to nobody.” Which, of course, was just a way of sewing an auto-didactic silver lining on a potential cloud. Besides, I comforted myself, at least I wasn’t an aspiring actor.
I realized yesterday, however, that while I’m not the Edmund Wilson or Anthony Lane of art criticism (yet; I’m ambitious), there is a saying that, with a little modification, applies: Optimists never can be surprised. In that vein, critics at the beginning of their careers always have room for discovery. I’m enjoying discovering these voices, whether new or established, and it would be a shame to have reached a point where I’ve seen and absorbed so much that the bar for new works would be set in stratospheric jadedness. Now, you may think that I’m meandering like a monologuist, but as the one element not really addressed in Daisey’s, the role of the critic in American theatre, I can’t help but think about what art criticism means. The art critic, though apart from the theatrical community, also is a part of the community. When Daisey raises questions as to shrinking audiences, I have to wonder if maybe art critics – everyone’s favourite people – are failing, too. Or if art criticism, that endless search to explore and understand art through careful and critical examination, also is at risk of becoming fossilized.
Setting that aside, which makes this an aside nestled within an aside – I’ll get back to the standing ovation soon – Daisey isn’t just a monologuist, but a raconteur who does meander but is charismastic all the while. Oh, we laugh, we cry, we are buffeted by the sheer visceral theatricality of a man sitting behind a desk on a stage empty, save for a solitary light. He confronts the monologue’s title right off the bat; it’s not so much theatre that failed America, but WE (as in, audiences and the theatre-makers together) who failed. Through autobiographical anecdotes that span the side-splitting and the gut-wrenching, Daisey offers up a stirring, defiant manifesto for the actor, the theatre crew, the art of theatre itself.
A Familiar Foe
Of course it boils down to commercialization, that old bogeyman, the mustache-twirling villain that long has been Art-with-a-capital-A’s nemesis. As Daisey asks at the beginning of his performance, we know this story…so why are we going to see it? The answer is because Daisey makes a passionate case for how theatre suffers from the industry’s focus on tangibles like theatre buildings and fundraising, but loses focus of the art, the performers, and the crew that supports them. Institutions, like corporation, have as their first priority self-preservation – perpetuation. Durability is, indeed, their defining feature, and the increased cost to cast, crew and audience results in any number of deranged symptoms, like the need to cut prices because regular ticket prices are too high.
While he doesn’t lay out clearly the vision he holds for theatre, he offers enough for us to build our own picture. Theatre as spontaneous, local, focused on the here-and-nowness of a performance. In other words, the theatre as a performing troupe along the lines of the repertory model. There is some irony, in a way, of advocating this grassroots vision of theatre while Daisey himself, an East Coaster, is one of those outsourced performers brought in by the Center Theatre Group to perform at the Kirk Douglas. But though Daisey may be a roving prophet spreading the gospel of good theatre, his message is provocative and his delivery is massively captivating.
Whether he is entirely right in his apocalyptic diagnosis of American theatre, however, is open for discussion. Right here in Culver City, beyond the juggernaut that is the Center Theatre Group, the Actor’s Gang may not function quite like a repertory theatre but is nonetheless a performing troupe with a regular gang of actors and grassroots sensibilities. Another, more traditional repertory group is the Independent Shakespeare Company who perform, every summer and fall, accessible productions in Barnsdall Park. There is good, honest theatre to be found if one makes an effort. And as for Daisey, well, good theatre is good theatre however it comes about, and he brings out the best of the art form. That standing ovation? Well deserved.
How Theater Failed America. Written and performed by Mike Daisey. Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory. On stage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre until Saturday. Visit the Center Theatre Group's website or call 213.628.2772 for tickets and information.
Frédérik invites you to discuss How Theater Failed America and more at his blog.