by Ben Spatz
A healthy dose of postmodernism is really important. It brings with it many insights. For example, that Shakespeare's interpretation of Hamlet should not be privileged above anyone else's.
But there are these plays that people are doing these days which are about how it's not really possible to do plays anymore these days. I find this kind of play to be really boring. They take away all the character and emotion and meaning. The don't just break the illusion, the disintegrate the illusion until it's just a memory, and then they interrogate the audience about having ever accepted or enjoyed the illusion in the past. The content of these postmodern plays is that it's impossible to do meaningful art in this day and age, all art must be meaningless, the only thing art can speak about is itself... It's worthless to evoke illusion, but yet even this non-illusion is a form of illusion, hey what a paradox! Gosh wow!
It's not a paradox at all. Of course this kind of play is also illusion, of course it's also performance. What's different about it is that its ironic distance, it's self-reference, the fact that it's really boring. This is supposed to make you question what the role of theater is in our society. But it seems to me that that kind of question is best raised in a conversation or a classroom--the kind of place where dialogue can happen and the question can lead to answers. Putting on this kind of play in a theater setting is sort of nihilist, a kind of dead end. If you're right, and theater can't exist, then there's nothing left to be said, and if you're wrong, then you're wasting your time.