[The final installment of Sarah Ruhl's garland of essays. See the "essays" category on the left for previous posts.]

13. The Scary

Mac Wellman has said that theater is so rarely scary anymore, that it is a terrible challenge now to write a scary play, a play that actually induces fear. Is this because of the rise of the cinematic imagination? What was scary about Hitchcock was what was just off screen. But in theater, what is just off stage is melodrama, which is not usually fearful. The Dreadful vs. the Fearful. And if Aristotle claimed that pity and fear are of primary importance (not that we have to believe Aristotle all the time or half of it) but if we are to agree with him about pity and fear, and fear is gone, then are we writing plays that only have pity—what are plays about now ? How to write a play that induces fear?

Why is it that Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is the longest running play? Because it induces fear? Do we like to be scared? Why do we like to be scared, and do we prefer now being scared at the movies because it is darker or because the blood looks so real? Or has being scared become so much its own genre—crime shows, detective novel, the procedural, the mystery, the thriller—that is there no place for it on the stage anymore partly because the stage is now suspicious of that literary genre as an art form? (more…)

[The third installment of Sarah Ruhl's garland of essays. See the "essays" category on the left for previous posts.]

7. Hungry Ghosts, Gardens, and Doing Plays in New York

The ideal audience is either wise or innocent; the know-it-alls are not the ideal audience. This makes New York a tricky place for a new play. Another thing that makes New York tricky is the hungry ghosts. Hungry ghosts in Buddhist thought can never fill themselves up. It is not: we will put up the play for 4 weeks and see who comes. It is: what of the reviews? Will it extend? Will it move? Will it run forever? Feed me! Says the hungry ghost. And if a play were to run forever, could it properly be called theater anymore? Instead it would be an ossified strange thing, dangling half-way between live theater, a parade, and an amusement park ride. Think of the longest running plays…what happens to them…what do they become….restaurants and plays should not be open for longer than the half-life of a chef, because they are about living consumable items.

I was talking to a group of theater donors in a city other than New York and they spoke at length about their gardens. Where the bamboo grew. Where not to plant bamboo, and where to plant it. This particular theater audience seemed to come to the theater to have fun. I thought: oh my, they get what they need from their gardens at home in their gardens. And they get other pleasures from the theater. In New York because we do not most of us have gardens, we come to the theater for what we might properly get from our gardens. And because you cannot get exactly from theater what you can get from a garden, we come to the theater anxious, vengeful, cranky, and with blood on our teeth. In a perfect world the virtues of theater are similar to those of cultivating a garden—something living, something patient, something always growing. Perhaps it is in those cities where people learn these virtues that they come to a theater hoping to nurture the lifespan of a theatrical company, rather than wanting to devour or spit out one show at a time.

Again, I am no innocent, nor do I exempt myself. I speak only of virtues that I myself might imitate. Where do I live? New York. Why? Because I love it here. Why? Because I love the people here. Do I have a garden? No. Would I be good at gardening if I had a garden? I don’t know. (more…)

[This is a continuation of Sarah Ruhl's series of short essays about which she says, "If anyone would like to finish any of them for me, consider them all fair game."]

2. On the Loss of Sword Fights

We lost sword fights somewhere in the 20th century and it has meant a new accepted standard of dramaturgy: drama is conflict, conflict is drama. Because our primal bloodlust requires a good fight on stage. But it is one thing to fight with our bodies and swords (it requires skill and virtuosity) and another to merely bicker with words. The gun-fight on stage will not do, it will not do (because it has no virtuosity and because we all know guns are fake on stage so there is no real fear with a gun on stage) but swords have a reality on stage even if they are fake. Fake swords make a better sound than fake guns for one thing—they come from the object itself rather than being dissociated from the object with a sound cue and no real bullet. And so Shakespearean sword fights became in the 20th century Hedda having to bicker with her husband and then shooting herself off stage. (But that brings up the question of suicide with a gun or with poison or with a knife which is another question entirely—the protagonist’s monologue before the death can be better heard on stage with poison than off-stage with a gun-shot, which means the primacy of language itself fades with death by gun.) But going back to the duel…fake swords are mano a mano whereas fake guns are merely: did you remember to bring your gun or didn’t you? If you remembered your gun, you win the battle—if you forgot your gun, you die. Of course there is the matter of the quickness of the draw, but that is better captured on film than on the stage.

Which brings me to: perhaps people have gone to the movies instead of the theaters at this point because their bloodlust is more accurately satisfied at the movies because there gun fights really do inspire fear and anxiety—as do car chases. Because gun fights and car chases are really no good on stage. Which leads us to think that technology itself is really no good on stage. (Should actors be trained in karate or some other fighting art? Should they be trained in a physical fighting art rather than in the art of the verbal duel—i.e. I have an obstacle?) (more…)

[This is the first in a series of Sarah Ruhl's essaylets on theatre that DEVICE is publishing this fall.]

1. On Titles — Comedy and Tragedy
Tragedy is most often named for the tragic person; whereas the comedy appears to be named with nouns or phrases from the world at large. For example: Romeo and Juliet. As opposed to: As you Like it. Or take: Titus Andronicus  versus A Midsummer’s Night Dream. (In my own work Eurydice for a tragedy and The Clean House for something more absurd.). Nouns signify the world and the structure of the world over and above the individual. Is this because tragedies are about the loss of one individual soul? The tragic perspective privileges one person over the continuity of the system, the structure, the life force, whereas comedies (which often end in marriages) are named with phrases, linguistic structures, which signify the description of a life structure, going on, on and on, after the play.