Theatre will survive Covid-19, but without food on the table theatre makers may not
Should we do something? If so, what — and how? And why? Or should we do nothing? These are the questions that performing artists have been asking themselves, and one another and their audiences for two months.
The questions are urgent and existential. The askers are understandably obsessive and anxious. The problem is that there are no right answers.
Some eloquent interventions in this discussion have been doing the rounds. Two circulated widely by SA friends and acquaintances in the theatre industry came come from American colleagues. In April, there was an essay on the website Medium by someone under the alias of Nicholas
Berger arguing for “The Forgotten Art of Assembly, Or, Why Theatre Makers Should Stop Making”.
The title says it all: the magic of theatre requires people gathering to share an experience in the same space — and given that this is impossible, artists should not attempt to create an equally meaningful digital equivalent.
Then, last week, the artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Joseph Haj, issued a heartfelt video statement in which he echoed some of the pseudonymous Berger’s points. Recording performance for viewing on a screen, Haj notes, is an art form in its own right and has a name: film. But it is not theatre.
Unlike Berger, whose maudlin reflections force him to admit that theatre is “nonessential”, Haj affirms that theatre’s survival as an art form over thousands of years demonstrates precisely that it is essential to human beings. Covid-19 won’t be theatre’s death knell. Nevertheless, theatre has temporarily ceased to exist.
Although these are thoughtprovoking claims, the “long view” of theatre as a fundamentally necessary practice is of little comfort to artists for whom the closing of stages means loss of income. Theatre will survive, but without food on the table theatre makers may not.
So musing on what constitutes “proper” theatre is a luxury available to few — and certainly almost none in SA.
Theorising must be tempered with pragmatism. As a former CEO of the Market Theatre, Ismail Mahomed phrased it in response to Haj’s video, “the presentation of theatre online is a new evolving genre that will need to be defined by its own aesthetics and craftsmanship; there should be a space for it provided we acknowledge this and do not pretend that it is THEATRE”.
The philosophical questions remain. To use some fancy words, we could say that these are ontological (what is theatre?), phenomenological (how does it feel to perform for a camera or watch on a screen, as opposed to being connected via a stage?) and even epistemological (are we confident that these questions are worth asking, or can be answered?). But instead of hand wringing and navel gazing, they can spur creativity — and, if we are able to take them seriously without taking ourselves too seriously, they can even yield joy and pleasure. Fun. Comfort. Laughter. Remember those?
UJ Arts & Culture, a creative hub located in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg, has come up with a perfectly positioned response to the performing-arts dilemma. From May 26 to June 6, it will host UNFESTIVAL SA, a nonfestival arranged under the theme of Counterintuitive. According to Pieter Jacobs, head of UJ Arts & Culture, this theme was chosen “because very little makes sense right now”: “A festival of nothing makes no sense. Festivals are celebrations of traditions, cultures and things we love. But Covid-19 came and turned everything on its head.” The UNFESTIVAL is “not a celebration but rather a tribute, memorial and perhaps even a mourning for many of the things we love, of which the pandemic has robbed us”.
In place of cancelled, postponed, unplanned and incomplete events or productions is a series of nonperformances.
They each have tantalising nonbillings, reflecting a range of unart forms: untheatre, undance and other unexperiences. Promises will (or won’t) be made. They may (or may not) be kept. Delay and deferral are inevitable.
Whatever you do, make sure you use real money to buy your virtual tickets. It will go to the UJ FADA Dean’s Bursary Fund and Business and Arts South Africa’s artist relief efforts.