No Masterpieces, No Flops #1

In a recent post Scott Walters invites readers to participate in a discussion about Quality by throwing out this curveball: there's no such thing as Quality. But I'm not so sure he means it. I'm not so sure he isn't aiming for something else and just missing the mark somehow. Theoretically, if there is no such thing as Quality, then there should be no bad plays nor should Scott be able to identify Angels In America as a "Masterpiece" or August: Osage County as a lesser play. Yet he does. How is he able to do that? Why does he do that?

Later in his post, Scott writes that Quality is interactive:

Like a rainbow, which exists only when rain, sunlight, and an observing eye are in proper relation to each other, quality exists when a play with certain characteristics in a production with certain characteristics interacts with an audience who recognizes, appreciates, and is able to interpret those characteristics. You need to have all three elements for quality to exist. It is a gestalt. An excellent play in an excellent production that is performed in front of an audience that has no interest in it is not an excellent play and production.

But I wonder: if a play with certain characteristics in a production (So he's not talking about literary theory here; we’re not going to Albee territory.) contains these certain characteristics that an audience might recognize as Quality, then wouldn’t Quality, rather than being a rainbow, be kind of like the stars - always there even if we can’t see it? This distinction probably doesn’t matter really because I'm not sure Scott is interested in Quality in and of itself since he closes the paragraph by making Quality contingent upon audience interest alone (their ability to apprehend no longer matters now). That leaves us with a scenario where the curve of Quality may either be or not be. Hamlet may or may not be a better a play than any other; it's the audience who's the Decider.*

So how does that work out? What happens when you apply that thesis to a Masterpiece and use the most reductio ad adsurdum situation you can come up with? Say Angels in America had initially been presented to audiences of right wing christian fundamentalists who weren't, for whatever reason (even ambivalence, although unlikely, will do here), able to see past the content to recognize, appreciate and interpret the certain characteristics that indicate AIA is not just a Quality play, but a Masterpiece. I know this is a far-fetched scenario, but play along with me, okay? According to Scott, it couldn't be a masterpiece. Even Scott's determination that AIA is a Masterpiece would be invalid (unless maybe he were the only person in the audience). It seems like this way of decidering would make the creation of masterpieces even more statistically improbable and not only that, completely outside the critical will of the artist.**

So. Sure. That's an extreme example, but if Scott's thesis is sound it should apply even in the most absurd of situations. I’m not sure it does. But that's okay. He's working something out here (in a dynamic medium) and after some comments from a few readers touching on some of the points I've already made (although no one goes to the scary fundamentalist place, which ultimately reveals a lot about me, no?), Scott substitutes Value for Quality and accepts that Quality exists. Which leaves us exactly where?

• Quality exists.
• Sometimes when we talk about Quality, we're really talking about Value.
• We can all agree there's a basic level of dramaturgical competence a Quality play must meet (this allows for the curve that gives us Angels in America and August: Osage County).
• All forms of Deciderization are not equal. Are some more equal than others? Which leads us to the lottery system Scott has suggested.

Earlier in his first post, Scott alludes to over 2500 years of Western dramatic and/or critical theory and funnels it towards this conclusion: since no one can agree about what Quality is, let it be a rainbow or let it be interactive, or let's eliminate it altogether so that people can't use it as an excuse to "shut down discussions around power and prejudice." This kind of reductivism (whether intentional or not) makes me wonder whether Scott is interested in Quality or a shared vocabulary or diversity or just expediency. Because a 2500 year argument seems to indicate the opposite of what Scott first concludes: whether we agree about what Quality is, we at least acknowledge that it's out there and that for some reason it's important to us. How about finding out why and for what reasons? What does what we value reveal about who we are?

Instead Scott has us sifting through the big pile of plays only to determine which ones meet an agreed upon level of dramaturgical competence. Which is not such a bad way of doing things. I’ve been a reader for a screenplay contest for several years and we’re presented with an outline of basic elements a good screenplay will have – like it will be properly formatted, we’ll know what the conflict of the story is by page 20, each scene will be about one thing only (ideally some sort of conflict), pages will be clean because the dialog is sparse, the writer will give us just enough description so that we get the idea of the setting and any physical business (not so much that he's doing the director's work), the second act falls on page 60, third act on page 90 or so. But, of course, there are always exceptions to these rules and I’d like to think I catch the exceptions when I’m reading. But the basic deal is that me and a group of readers make notes on the scripts we read so they can be passed on to another pool of people to be read and assessed. Any script I’m not sure about or want to give the benefit of the doubt, I can include in the pile of yeses. The point here is that more than one person is making decisions about competency, form, and content, as well as aesthetic qualities.

Which is where Scott draws the line. Any aesthetic decisions made beyond determining competency involve personal taste, so it’s at this point that chance should take over and do the choosing for us. I understand his urge here even if I object to his reasoning. Because I wonder ultimately what does it solve? Since all art relies on perception, how one sees what one sees is critical. Indeed, how one sees is an act of criticism. This act can either be conscious, (ie. the audience knows about the art form and is able to assess the work according to what it knows about the form) or unconscious (the audience is unaware of the variety of socio-politico-cultural forces that factor into the establishment of taste and preference we use to evaluate every thing and everyone which and with whom we come into contact). I'm not even scratching the surface here. But by explaining what we like we expose our underlying cultural assumptions, prejudices and preferences. If we want a theater that's more inclusive and diverse, maybe understanding what lies beneath our aesthetic choices is one of the necessary steps towards finding workable solutions to creating a theater that is more reflective of our culture (whatever that is and however you define it).*** These are not easy questions. But why not ask them? Sure, such discussions would likely be messy and uncomfortable and emotional (and apparently have been). But it might lead to a conscious and lasting change within the person doing the choosing about what he or she sees, appreciates, and/or creates. It at least acknowledges and trusts in our ability to adapt and change and grow.

*In which case, let there be no more talk of Hits or Flops or Masterpieces or even Shared Vocabulary. This kind of deciderization scares the bejeezus out of me.

** What then? Given that in this scenario right wing christian fundamentalists are the dominant Audience, would this play ever have been produced after it's initial development at the Eureka? Would the Eureka have been brave enough to take a chance with AIA in the first place, especially if it meant somewhere down the road the theater might risk losing an NEA grant for having produced this eventual Masterpiece? From there it's a short trip to Reverend Wildmon land, where an audience decides that AIA is degenerate and pornographic, then a few proactive people (with the help of any number of willing organizations) decide it’s worth their time to systematically destroy Tony Kushner's rather promising career by demanding that the NEA revoke or deny grants to any theater who produces the play (essentially banning the play). Or how about this scenario: the audience decides it wants to be more punitive. Maybe Mr. Kushner ought to spend the rest of his life in prison (with special instructions to keep him far away from pencils, pens, typewriter, computer, or in the absence of those - any sharp object with which he might use to gain access to his own blood so that he can write on the walls and feed that rather hungry impulse to speak truth to power through his art). But wait, how about that's not enough. The play also needs to be banned out right and its performance punishable by short-term or long-term (depending on how punitive a society we were living in) imprisonment for artists and audiences alike. I know all this sounds far-fetched and reductio ad adsurdum. For that to happen audiences would have to take theater pretty seriously. Or any art for that matter. Incidentally, this sort of collective relativism lies at the heart of Atlas Shrugged and is pretty much the critique Rand is making of American society, so I'm not sure what Scott means when he equates believing in meritocracy with reading AS by the light of Fox News.

***For a good example of someone questioning his cultural/socio-political advantages and preferences take a look at how David Williams, producer and maker for the Sydney-based theatre company Version 1.0, analyzes his privilege as a white middle class male.