Continuity, cont'd

The point is: filmic discontinuity is invisible. This is despite/because of its position as the essence of the medium. Making a film seem discontinuous is almost a trick now because we are so quick to fill in the gaps.

On stage, discontinuity is essentially stunning because everything is out in the open. Consider for instance the blackout before the show begins. This is creating discontinuity. The lie it offers is that suddenly, you are no longer in the space you were just in. Fantastic.

Discontinuity within a play (real, black-out discontinuity, not actors running around with cubes discontinuity) works a little bit differently. We have created a world together, and then, in an instant, it is completely destroyed. There is no telling - absolutely no telling - what world we'll be in next. (Although, of course, if the last line of the previous scene is "Hooray, let's all go to the zoo!" we might expect the Zoo.) So theatrical discontinuity strikes me as the best way to present fantasy, delight, and possibility onstage. Especially if there really are changes to the set etc., a real blackout (no glowtape, no kidding around) that rises to reveal a real change will always surprise and delight an audience. Because there aren't any tricks. My friend Dash used to do this magic trick where he puts a condom up his nose and pulls it out of his mouth. People always asked him how he did it. Did he have a second condom in his mouth? Did he hide it up his sleeve? No: he just did it. That's the magic - confronted with remarkable reality, we will invent an impossibly complicated alternative.

I've heard complaints that blackouts break up a show's unity, but never an explanation as to why that's essentially bad. What if that is exactly what they do: break up unity. Imagine a living room drama in which the great secret is finally revealed. Then black. A moment. Then lights up again. Nothing has changed, everything has changed, what happened in between? Right? That's delightful.

We have so many tricks. So many tricks that litter our stages any-old-how. We use ming vases to hold paper flowers 8 times a week all across the country. Will the revolution come from something no one ever thought of over the last 2500 years? Maybe. But we could also try just thinking about all the jewels we're overlooking.

Facts and Fictions

Smart.  Last night I saw Red Tape Theatre's Enemy of the People.  If you haven't seen it yet you may want to stop reading now because I want to talk about a really amazing trick that works in part, by surprise.  As in my response to A Red Orchid Theatre's The Unseen, I am constantly astonished by the simplicity of the creation of wonder in the theater.  Because, unlike film, a theater audience is constantly constructing reality from a series of rules that are accepted but utterly transient.  In The Unseen, of course I know that Danny is just standing on a stage, of course I even know that it's Danny.  But I've built him into a cell and I've built him into Wallace. When he disappears during a blackout, and I'm terrified that he's been abducted and is being tortured, I've done that.  Nothing that is true has been transcended, but everything I've made has been used to exploit what is true when the two confront each other.

In some ways the opposite of this miracle is undertaken in a brilliant surprise in James Palmer's direction of Enemy of the People. At the start of the performance the curtain speech requests that every audience member leave the theater completely during the intermission.  Here's what's true: we are in a church gymnasium, we are at a performance by a small theater company in it's second year.  We are willing to believe, in a race of thoughts, that we need to leave so that a significant set change can occur, a little odd, but hey that's storefront theater.

At intermission we casually leave the theater and sort of any-old-how mosey into a little lobby where there are some drinks and plenty of space to sit or stand.  Intermission is unremarkable. Then, one of the actors comes out into the lobby and walks briskly to a group of people, maybe they are friends of his.  A little weird, but...so it goes.  Suddenly it's obvious: the next scene was supposed to be a town hall meeting.  Fact: we are in a meeting room in a small church.  We create: we are at the meeting.  

That's it.  Suddenly we are at a Town Hall meeting.  The provision of drinks, the ample seating, Palmer used the facts of our condition to create a theatrical miracle.  It's the employment of these facts that I want to advocate.  A phone rings: we all know.  A prop is dropped, we all know.  The cohabitation of facts and fictions doesn't "take us out," isn't a "distraction," it's the foundation of theatrical artifice, and oh my god, it's rewarding.