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lies like truth

Chloe Veltman: how culture will save the world

Detaching A Play Text From A Performance

images.jpegA friend and I had a discussion this morning about how possible it is for an audience member to detach his or her experience of seeing a staging of a play from the play text itself. We disagreed.

My friend thinks that if a play is great, you can still enjoy a production of it, even if the production is very bad. He looks at the staging as an inconvenience and a distraction, but no matter how ham-fisted the mise-en-scene is, it ultimately doesn’t stop him from enjoying the play — as in the words on the page — itself. “It’s hard to fuck up Macbeth,” is what he said.

I feel very differently about this. A bad production can completely wreck a play for me, no matter how great the source text might be.

I envy my friend’s ability to divorce the text from the staging. I have never been able to do it. For me, plays are no good simply sitting on the page. I mean, they’re OK. I like reading plays. But plays are meant to be put on stage. That’s where they’re supposed to come to life. A lifeless production cannot help but kill the dramatist’s words.

lies like truth

These days, it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fantasy. As Alan Bennett's doollally headmaster in Forty Years On astutely puts it, "What is truth and what is fable? Where is Ruth and where is Mabel?" It is one of the main tasks of this blog to celebrate the confusion through thinking about art and perhaps, on occasion, attempt to unpick the knot. [Read More...]

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