The Big Questions
Originally published at The Off-Center. Please leave any comments there.
Success! I finally sat down with Psychomachia (at the eleventh hour, as is my M.O.), and hammered out some of the glaring inconsistencies, added a scene here, a couple lines there, tightened up some typos and replaced leftover old character names with the appropriate new ones. All in all, I spent about six hours going through it, though the number of changes I made would not indicate as such. Huzzah, I am prepared from my reading on Sunday at The Bridge Theater Company, or at least as prepared as I will ever be. I would love to get a production out of it, but I honestly have no idea if that script is ready for it. I suppose we’ll see.
It’s a closed reading, though, so for the first time I won’t be amongst a bevy of supportive friends. I may have one or two with me, but… well, this will be new. I am very much looking forward to it, however.
That said, this fucking work week just won’t bloody end. I check the clock at, oh, 3:30 and then twelve years pass and I check the clock again and it mocks me with 3:34. My chair is uncomfortable, I have lost circulation in my wrist because no one here values proper support and I just want to go home. Oh, but I’m going out with a friend of mine, dinner, movie, the usual. Steer clear of the mundanely personal, Jenny. Say something interesting:
If you frighten a chinchilla, it will lose all its hair: Chinchilla, poof!
In other news, I had some interesting discussions with my friends today, via the e-mail list we are all one. Much of it focused around some of the big questions that I would really like to answer for myself. If you have any theories, please, please share them with me:
- What is the responsibility of the artist?
- What socio-cultural relevance does art have, outside of pure entertainment value?
- What, if anything, can art truly accomplish?
- Is theater dead, and what can we do to revive it? Is it even possible?
When I say “art”, I mean everything: literature, drama, poetry, music, dance, fine art, everything. I think of things like Picasso’s Guernica, and I assume that we must still possess the ability to create something of that power and magnitude. It’s just that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.
I don’t really know what to say about the questions I’ve listed above. The only answers I have, at present, are vague at best. The responsibility of the artist is, I suppose, to create or express that which he feels the need to create or express. I don’t know, yet, what relevance our current arts have outside of entertainment value. They can make us feel, what then what do we do with that feeling? Sit on it, stew in it, and ultimately go about our lives. What can Art accomplish? I’m not sure yet, as I have not personally tested it’s limits. And I don’t happen to think theater is dead, or at least I hope it isn’t. But I suppose time will tell.