What is the role for theatre today?
My feeling tends to think that it is interesting when used in art projects and really dead when used "on stage".
So i guess what I am asking is what is the role of a theatre (as physical place) , does it have any use today?
Yeah, I've really never had any time for the theatre but the work PDR Anti-Heroes by Cao Fei [http://blog.art21.org/2011/04/15/cao-fei-prd-anti-heroes/] changed my mind about theater and about Chinese art. I like the idea of subverting popular vernacular traditions like this. And I think what I like about theater now, is that it was what Greenberg specifically rejected as a non-condition of Modernist art, that it avoid the theatrical. Because I guess the equation is Modernism is tied with modernity and progress and visions of the future, whereas theater is linked to a more primitive art form at the root of humanity. Taking theatre back to it's anthropological roots is pretty interesting to look at. [http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text/1] There's also this artist Spartacus Chetwynd [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJl5KlWuhpw] who was an anthropologist and now stages amateur panto school plays which I kind of like as well. Actually, I was looking at Paul Macarthy
ReplyDeletelast night, and he's actually awesome as well, I like it's viscerality-theatre as raw and primitive cinema.
And according to this review of the Venice Biennale, fake theatre is all the rage in contemporary art right now
ReplyDeletehttp://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/international-pavilions/