The Role of Art in the Cultural Conscience
"Grow up, Americans. That’s one theme of the 31st Humana Festival of New American Plays, which invited critics and industry people to Kentucky’s state theater, the Actors Theater of Louisville, last weekend for its annual drama marathon. The event is as ebullient as it is exhausting."–Philip Boroff, via Bloomberg.com
A while back, I got to be one of the minor contributors to a book on the role of Art in authoritarian cultures. It’s a fascinating subject – basically, there have been times in history when no other voice save the arts has dared to face things such as the "disappearing" in Central America, fascism in Spain and Italy, Totalitarianism in Russia…and perhaps even our country?
Anyway, I find it encouraging that at a play showcase such as the one in Kentucky, the majority of the plays were, basically, morality fables. Maybe the swing of the pendulum is going the other way
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I am highly political, but not in theatre, interestingly enough: I’ve long seen a difference between political and poetic theatre, and I always been suspicious of ‘political theatre’ because while I believed that “Stories always have ‘Truth,’ ‘Truths’ do not necessarily have Stories.’
This isn’t to say that certain ‘Truths’ cannot find their way from art into social life and politics, but the danger is producing propaganda rather than art if one’s starting goal is political. Not that propaganda is necessairly bad — I have my biases and world viewpoint, and I’ll respond to propaganda as positively as the next person, but — it’s just really preaching to the crowd who already agrees with you, or futher alienating those who don’t.
I don’t know how great art finds Truth (or perhaps Truth somehow natually finds its way into great art), but I think of the great plays, like “Fences” by August Wilson or “Master Harold and the Boys” by Athol Fugard. These plays will touch anyone, everyone — and I mean everyone (except for the naturally incorrigible) — will be affected by these plays.
I could be easily wrong, but my intutions tells me that eternal Truth comes (somehow) out of Art, but Art (sometimes) will not come out of Truth, no matter how true it is…