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An Interview with Jim Pickering's Right Brain, Conducted by Jim
Pickering's Left Brain
I recently sat down with myself to discuss
the importance of theater, and the
two of us came up with a few notions
we’d like to pass along.
Left: Just why should people go see a
piece of theater, anyway?
Right: It’s a dream.
A communal dream. A shared dream.
Left: And that’s important because . . . ?
Right: . . . well, because a community
needs to dream as a community just as a
human being needs to dream for himself.
Left: Why?
Right: Let’s go back a ways. I figure that if
people hadn’t needed to dream, the need
for sleep would have been eliminated
long ago by the process of natural selection.
Survival of the fittest. Darwin . . .
Left: Science, I think, is my department.
Right: Scientific thought is
really just a highly disciplined function of imagination,
partner, don’t kid yourself. As I was
saying . . . if sleep weren’t necessary for
man’s survival, surely a strain of humans
who didn’t need to sleep would long
ago have rid the species of the strain
who did need to. Since dreaming is a
major component of sleeping, it’s logical
that dreaming is important to us.
Left: Okay, but what does that have to
do with people coming to see plays?
Right: I think we have to look at a community
as an organism, a living thing.
And I think that theater, when done well,
is a great contributor to the health of
that organism.
Left: Couldn’t one say the same for film
or television?
Right: Decidedly not.
Left: That was pretty emphatic.
Right: Well, I’ve dedicated 35 years
of my life to the difference between them.
Left: Mine, too, don’t forget.
Right: Shut up. Your turn comes later.
Here’s the deal. Movies and TV show us
stories, just as theater does, but they
look at the action of those stories from
only one point of view – that of the camera.
When real live people watch real
live actors, they are in the midst of
something that is truly shared. A person
sitting in a darkened movie house or a
darkened room at home staring at a
screen experiences the material through
the same filter as any other person . . .
Left: Even when the movie audience
is huge?
Right: Yes. Because the movie itself
would proceed in exactly the same way,
no matter how many viewers were in
attendance. So nothing is really shared
among those viewers. The movie or TV
program can’t learn anything from the
audience, can’t GROW because it’s not
really present.
Left: And theater is different how?
Right: By the mere fact that
each live performance can only exist – each MOMENT
of each performance, for that matter —
in the instant it takes place, as the work
of the actor’s imagination meets and
meshes with the audience’s. Since each
person in the audience brings a unique
history, sensibility, sense of humor, etc.,
to the theater, and since the actor giving
only the performance which that audience
will see and hear, there is a much greater
sharing. And good actors learn from audiences.
Their performances grow.
Left: You mean the actors change their
performances . . . ?
Right: Don’t be dense! At the level of
performance we are talking about at
Milwaukee Rep, it all takes place within
the intent of the direction of the play, as
that has come about during rehearsals
and (in the case of an original work)
rewrites. Good actors learn from audiences
what not to do: how to simplify;
how to keep mannerisms and over-acting
from getting in the audience’s way;
how to hone what they’re doing more
and more specifically – I could go on.
Left: Don’t, okay? Get back to that dream
thing. I’m not quite sure I got that.
Right: A play is a dream. Written
down, rehearsed and performed. It usually takes
on the guise of a narrative, but the
course of events in that narrative resembles
the course of events in a dream
much more than, say, that of a documentary
or sporting event. It’s ironic, in a way.
Theater is very labor intensive – when
The Rep produces a play, it crafts a handsewn
moccasin. When Disney produces a
TV show it mass-produces a croc.
Left: Hey . . .
Right: Croc without the “k.” Unless, of
course, they’re attempting a comedy.
Left: Go on.
Right: But
it’s usually more expensive to
go to a play than a movie . . . AND unlike
at a movie, the audience is actually paying
to work. Their contribution – laughter,
exclamations of surprise or the
silence of rapt attention – is crucial to
the EVENT of performance. That’s what
makes it LIVE.
Left: Do you mean “live” or “live?”
Right: Yes . . .
Left: I see . . .
Right: . . . and another thing about the
collective dream – just as a human needs
to dream in order to comprehend questions
and problems which the conscious
mind can’t necessarily comprehend, so
the community – our audience – needs to
participate in live theater in order to confront
the issues of its subconscious.
Left: Like what issues?
Right: Well, what they really all boil
down to are a few cosmic questions,
like, how does man fit in? How does he
reconcile his striving with his mortality?
Is love possible?
Left: But lots of plays aren’t about
heavy stuff like that.
Right: All good ones are, each
in its own way – from KING LEAR to THE NORMAN
CONQUESTS. Otherwise they are not
much more than tracts or sitcoms. That is,
they preach how people should behaveinstead of expressing how people
do
behave, or pander to the lowest common
denominator of a potentially huge audience
(and profitable) by depicting merely
the vulgar and the innocuous. Hah! I’m
back to the evils of TV once again. We, in
the theater, are perplexed at how so much
of what is mediocre can steal so much of
our audience. It seems as if ever since 9/11
people just don’t want to get together and
participate in the watching of plays. Now,
when they need to flush out their subconsciouses
more than ever. My God, you’d
think what we do would have a greater
appeal than ever! But it seems as if they’d
rather be anesthetized on their sofas.
That’s downright unhealthy for people –
as individuals and as communities.
Left: I see. Is it my turn now?
Right: Next time.
Left: And then I’ll be in italics.
Right: Touché’.
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