Aesthetics and Didactic Intention;
Community Theatre and its Modal interface with Common Beauty.
I have titled this paper Aesthetics & Didactic Intention; Community Theatre and its modal interface with Common Beauty, and the body of research I have considered consists of a theatre production that I produced in June 2006 titled Swamp Treasures.
Firstly a little background to the production and its reasons for being.
In October of 2005 I determined to produce and direct a large community performance for the Fuel Festival, a bi-annual festival of New Zealand theatre that takes place in Hamilton. With the backing of the Festival, the Hamilton City Arts Council, the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Waikato University and Environment Waikato I set out to produce not only a theatre event but an opportunity to scrutinize certain theatrical techniques and evaluate the efficacy of these techniques, in short to examine my own work for its ability to transmit certain information through variable theatrical media. These media were not of an instructive style. I used masks, music, poetry and song rather than clearly informative didactic information sharing, even though the subject matter offered an opportunity to present an avalanche of substantial information facts, figures, biological data and emotive political viewpoints. Our theme was ecological preservation in the face of global commoditization of land. Our specific subject matter; conservation and restoration of the Waikato Wetlands hence the title; Swamp Treasures. So my objective in creating a theatrical performance to examine was to determine the effectiveness of communication and what kind of information could be communicated.
I wanted to present a case for conservation but not in didactic manner. Rather than an impact report of the human effect upon the environment, or an information sharing exercise that might name the villains and cast them against the conservationists thereby perpetuating the political dispute, I wanted to present a voice from the swamp itself; the voice of the creatures, I wanted to tell their story. I began by asking such questions as; what is it like for the Pukeko birds to cross the road? What happens to the spirit, emotion, life state of a bird family whose nests are overturned by dogs and they become refugees in their own land? And what of the fabled creatures that once inhabited this environment the Patupairarehe, should we simply discount them into mythical non-existence, or perhaps if we gave them a stage, what would they say? I wanted to present their point of view. The opening prologue, sung by a 20 voice choir included these lines;
Black backed duck and brother frog
Sister fish and dragonfly
You have not been forgotten
We have come to tell your story.
This was the challenge I set myself, to use theatrical media to represent these concerns and then evaluate the degree of communication that the audience had experienced. I determined that I would do follow up interviews with a group of 15 teenagers. One group was aged 13/14, another group aged 17/18. I deliberately chose to interview these age groups for two reasons;
1. Their knowledge of wetlands and conservation issues would probably be minimal beyond the soundbites they may have encountered. This proved to be the case, one answer to the question how much did you know about the Wetlands, I just imagined a swamp, boggy place, I didn’t have a really good idea.
2. Their experience of an atmospheric, interpretive, poetic and visual kind of performance would have been limited. By recording the response of such people, an unsophisticated theatre audience, I hoped to get a naive fresh response rather than one from a viewer who is accustomed to such theatrical styles and therefore able to interpret information in an educated manner. I wanted the response of the naive mind, to test our performance techniques on fresh uncluttered ground.
The term aesthetics comes from the Greek and was coined by the philosopher Alexander Baumgarten in 1735 to mean The Science of how things are known via the senses. The Scottish philosopher David Hume set the term into English vocabulary defining it as studying the standards of taste, and it is for my purposes today the study of perception in relation to art. In consideration of aesthetics one is lead to consider beauty and whether or not beauty is a purely subjective quality. Immanuel Kant observes that everyone has their own taste but the case of beauty is different from agreeableness because “if one proclaims something to be beautiful then one requires the same liking from another, one judges not just for themselves but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things”.
In creating this production I determined that I could make a bold assumption and presume more than ‘beauty as if it were a property of things” and proclaim my attempt to find a ‘common beauty’ you might say a ‘bottom line beauty’. I wanted to create an encounter that could move an audience to utter the words, “wow that was beautiful”. Beauty provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, giving meaning or satisfaction to the mind. Beauty may engender a salient experience of a positive reflection of the meaning of ones own existence. An object of beauty or an experience that engenders a response of ‘wow that was/is beautiful’ is one that resonates with personal meaning. Spiritual teachings often focus on the virtue of beauty and assert that beauty as an aspect of spirituality and truth. There are I believe compelling reasons for considering that beauty exists in a way that transcends material manifestations and it is this experience I was interested in providing for the audience. As a theatre director I am particularly interested in working with specific design of music, light, costume, set and choreography as opposed to the dramatic storytelling model, yet it is important that the performance is clearly engaged with a subject matter and that subject is treated with coherence and integrity. So I created Swamp Treasures with these intentions concerning the aesthetics of the production, all the while being underpinned with the intent to transmit an empathy with and appreciation for the exploited and diminishing Wetlands. I had no desire to conceal my own agenda, as a person and as a theatre director I wished to express my commitment to a stable, clean and balanced ecology that humans live in harmony with, and I wanted to win people to that point of view, but as already stated not through the purely intellectual process of information sharing but the spiritual process of aesthetical persuasion and this ingredient I am calling ‘common beauty’ was to be the prompt and communicative mechanism.
So this was the intention, I now had to instigate the process doing the job of a producer/director to create this large scale community event.
I wanted a large cast but had not the time or resources to rehearse and work with eighty people so I invented for myself a model which proved to be very successful. I invited five community performing arts groups to join with me in creating this work, yet I retained overall responsibility and artistic control. I invited The Waikato Youth Choir, The Waikato Youth Orchestra, Kinetic Youth Theatre, The Te Aroha Contemporary Dance Company and an acting ensemble of undergraduates from the university. I then worked closely with the directors/choreographers/conductors of four these groups, the fifth, the acting ensemble from the university I worked with myself. I gave them the brief of what our overall theme was and through discussion it was decided which aspect of the theme that particular group would explore. So this gave us five autonomous performing arts groups who would perform the work.
For instance my colleague Kalani Tarawa, a choreographer and graduate of Waikato University dance program created a 10 minute choreography based on the demise of the homelands of the Patupairarehe, the fabled ‘little people’ who once lived in the wetlands. It became a story of refugees, of a people exiled to the mountain fastness as a result of the draining of the swamp and the felling of the forest. He and the group of teenagers from the small Waikato town of Te Aroha had 8 months of preparation time. I would check in every month as to how the progress was developing, request adjustments, give encouragement, and I did this with all the groups. We created a very balanced program this way giving opportunities for these community groups to focus on an achievable 10 minute performance outcome, adding up to 60 minutes of performance. Then we all had three evenings in the theatre together, prior to our opening, where acting as director I was able to pull it all together, ensuring each section was able to dovetail cleanly into the next. I also devised a finale which involved a reprise of one musical section and a mass choreography of all the performers. It was a montage structure; not only in the treatment of the subject matter but there was also a montage of media and theatrical style. As a construction model and way of preparing the work it proved to be very successful. Each group was focused, well rehearsed. The respective directors, choreographers and conductors all felt a sense of autonomy and the performers also experienced a sense of ownership of the work, each group having created their 10 minutes in a spirit of collective resourcefulness.
Now to the outcome, did it work? Were intentions achieved, what did I discover in the post production research process?
So the research into the methodology of community theatre making was very encouraging, the conclusion being that the correct balance of autonomy and central direction means a large cast can come together in an efficient manner minimizing pressure and workload on the principal director, giving community groups an achievable expectation, and ultimately presents a broad range of attitude, style and experience. So technically I would recomment thid model as a very efficient way of involving a large group of people yet ensuring a production quality that stood up to the test of audience appreciation.
The interviews of the young people who viewed the performance were conducted 1 week after the performance by a teacher at the school where the interviews were carried out. I then transcribed the tapes and was able to draw some conclusions from their answers.
I will relate this material by telling you the questions and an assortment of answers that typify the response. I have abridged and modified some of the answers in order to make coherent what is at times a kind of teenage code for descriptive language, but I have not altered the meaning or spirit of their responses. I will then draw some conclusions from these responses.
First question
Did you know much about the Wetlands before you saw the production.
Answers.
I knew they were a swamp, that’s all.
I knew they were in danger of being destroyed
Not much at all
I had a vague impression, that’s all.
I once saw a display they had at the zoo, but that’s all.
Second Question.
Did you have much idea about the bird life?
Answers
No idea, no idea at all.
I thought there would be birds living in there
Yea ducks and stuff
Third Question
Did you learn anything from the Wetlands, and if so what was it?
Answers
I knew about the different dangers faced by Wetlands, like farming practice and developers who want it because its prime land.
I learned about the attitudes of people towards the wetlands, the cultural attitudes and the sounds of the swamp were something new.
To me the biggest thing was discovering how much life there was in the wetlands. Rather than just talking about these animals they had really good physical actors playing them, made me realize these are more than animals but are life forms that have been there since forever. I realized how much you don’t see but its actually there.
The play showed us the importance of wildlife and that it is threatened.
I am a member of Greenpeace so I’m committed to conservation but what came across to me was the closeness to New Zealand of it, New Zealand culture and it made it more personal, it made it spiritual and there was link between the culture of the land and myth and legend, and the Maori culture.
It was the human aspect that was new for me.
At this point the questions becomes specific to one section of the performance by Kinetic Theatre. This piece was number 5 in the sequence of 6 and was very didactic in its style. The actors used direct address and voiced clear and persuasive opinion on the subject. It was the only sequence in the performance that did and the respondent students did refer to it a lot as the style was so markedly different and clearly informative.
Fourth Question
Did you learn more from the didactic presentation at the end, the Kinetic Theatre one where they spoke directly to us, or more from the music and the visual aspects of the earlier part?
Answers.
I found the Kinetic stuff much clearer, the dance the abstract stuff was pleasant on the eye but I didn’t find it relevant. The opening part was mystical and then there was the message, I would have found it more involving to integrate it all into a storyline.
The first part I didn’t understand until the second part.
I don’t think I would have learned as much from the second part if I hadn’t seen the first , because the first part made me really care and be interested enough to listen.
With the Kinetic theatre piece I felt like I’d seen everything they did before, we’ve had those messages drilled into us since we were little, take care of the environment and stuff and I felt I understood the plight of the wetlands much more from the first piece. I saw the creatures and I thought this is real as opposed to a bunch of people telling us about this place, its plight and what I should do about it. It’s the difference between reading about Africa and going to Africa.
The first part caught your attention emotionally and got you into the feel of what was happening around and in the swamplands, and this kind of carried over into the speaking part.
Fifth Question
Were there any particular emotions that were brought out in the first part?
Answers
While I was watching it I was aware of another whole mystical world that I was being welcomed into.
I was talking with my media studies teacher about and she used adjectives like ethereal, fantastic. To me it was sort of expansive, building our horizons and it opened your eyes. The wetlands are not pretty and they are not marketed to you and you don’t see them for their own natural beauty and I think that’s what the first visual piece did and that’s how it affected me, I realized there was more to beauty than what the current media and theatre are showing us.
Certain of the images were really amazing for example the tall long necked creatures walking out of the mist.
I really loved the impact when we walked in the tree onstage was so cool. And that started a sense of awe.
The next questions relate specifically to the masks, and the response to them.
Sixth Question.
How effective was the use of mask?
Answers
· I thought they were very effective and enhanced the ethereal aspect
· I often lost track of what was going on, there was a story they were trying to tell but I couldn’t follow it.
· Obviously what they are trying to convey is that these creatures are alive and equal to us and we should help protect them and stuff, but having them as mask kind of impersonalized them in a way. Some of them were good, especially the frogs but I didn’t get to see a lot of emotions through that.
· I felt the masks were on stage too long and the lost that sense of awe that we felt when they first appeared. The longer they were onstage the more you realized they were in fact human, that there was a human behind the mask and the effect wore off.
I would like to draw a tentative conclusion concerning my examination of their responses to the poetic and the didactic forms of presentation.
doesn’t last my idea of common beauty did exist in this context and came across as sense of awe. These young people were more impressed by it rather than moved. Their response was one of how amazing rather than an emotional response. They were not able to connect the sensation of appreciation of ‘common beauty’ to the idea of the subject matter and what the ‘real’ consequenses are and how the consequence comes from relying a a previous body of knowledge a previous awareness that ok we know they are endangered, wow aren’t they beautiful, no I don’t make that connection therefore the beauty idea only lasts as long as the illusion and the illusion only lasts a short time because they soon see the humanness under the mask and the technical aspect of what they see becomes critical and takes over.
the idea of beauty was mentioned but it did not sustain and needed to develop beyond just the image or the initial impact.
presentation. The teacher who conducted the interviews was asked at one point for her response and she said
I was able just sit and take it all in and not question or worry about its meaning. I felt quite moved and quite sad and moved emotionally that these beautiful creatures were really endangered and were part of New Zealand and we are losing it and personally I found the first part most effective in terms of coming across to me. And a student response to that was We are a younger audience and we try and understand and we tend to be like, what’s going on?
Robert Schuman distinguished two kinds, natural and poetic
I would now like to turn to the outcomes of the other research aspect in the production, and an area the namely was the production successful in transmitting certain information through its theatrical media.
According to classical theism beauty is a quality of god and therefore does exists in a way that transcends its material manifestations
random hope the synergy is right , but I am making a conscious attempt to build beautiful images and pathways from image to image that will strike the observer as beautiful and in that moment of perceiving beauty what is it that happens? Is there an elevation of spirit does the emotional life of the observer become stimulated and this stimulation arouses feelings of wonder and a feeling of humanity the feeling that by appreciating the beautiful stage images are we in fact becoming happier, this is my desire, to become a full filled and happy person and so the personal challenge I set was could I do this and share it with others, could something as ephemeral and temporary as theatre provide a feeling of full fillment for the observer. And what of the importance of this concept was it something that is attempted by other theatre directors, is this idea of common beauty and by that I mean a beauty that is refined but accessible and not austere or requiring a studied understanding of form or process, but something that the uninitiated could also experience. I wanted the audience to experience that sensation where one almost stops breathing because the moment is so sublime and then as the moment passes they breathe out as if to say “that was beautiful” And does that experience change a person, does it make a person have a better day and better night in the theatre and better life? My reasons for wanting to understand this are many fold. A lot of it stems from my weariness of the ugliness of the world. Once again I appreciate that these are subjective terms and one persons ugly can be another’s beauty but I want to discover are there baseline principles that constitute a generic beauty? Can I as a theater director and designer set up visual and oral sequences that become a portal, an escape valve for the mind and allow the viewer to interact with the world in a way that makes them feel good. As
I would like to now start a slide presentation that will run throughout the rest of this presentation, they are slides of the performance.
My research questions were at once specific and general. There were some areas that I knew could only ever be subjective and I would have the opportunity to observe and listen and decide for myself if the work was effective. Effective in this form is does it please me? Can I detect a sense of pleasure amongst the audience or monotony and ennui in the face of a non linear, poetic, visual formnon language based presentation boredom and were as follows. These were to be my own personal responses something that every play director , writer, designer experiences when they view their own work in action. This is an important time to view and assess for yourself the effectivness and power of your own work. This may seem niave on my part but I truely want to provide that for an audience. I believe that the theatre has come in many ways to replace the area of succor that religion once catered for and that how seldom do we now, in contemporary western consumer communities share common surges of spirit and emotion in the company of strangers. One place it happens is in the sports arena when the code or visceral and living by association is the bottom line to the experience. If the team that I support wins then I am elevated and satisfied, if they lose I can be downcast and disappointed.
How effective is the mass presence of the mask? In Swamp Treasures there were up to 25 masked figures on stage at the same time, is this a case of overkill? Does the presence of the mask require more ‘space’ around it in order to be effective will the presence of too many masks blur the clarity of definition and effectiveness. In the well studied masked
forms of antiquity, The Greek, the Noh and other Asian masked drama forms, the mask is given a splendid solitude; there are seldom more than six on stage at one time. Is this for theatrical reasons? Because the practitioner’s surmise that a massed presence is too overwhelming or are there other reasons that the number of masks at any one time are limited?
Our subject matter can arouse vibrant intellectual debate as to the importance of conservation, people often have deep convictions about the issue and I wanted to test the emotive quality of the masks. By humanizing the masks, by putting them into a scenario that could be a human situation like being a refugee in your own land