Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1970 - 22

entirely oblivious of danger and with no
concern for what the high seas may ultimately do to the ship. Suddenly, however,
a wave larger than any previous one approaches and the artist's muscles set in
preparation to meet the blow." Dr. Bullock
would say that at that instant the man has
entirely lost his distance.

through most of our daily lives. The outcome of a conversation is just as much up
to us as it is to the other person. This
meaning of aesthetic distance, then, refers
not to the luxury of affecting the ongoing
art, but to the ultimate luxury of remaining
free from the concerns and responsibility of
participation in a completely open system.

This feeling of detachment from practical
consequences has a long history. Over the
centuries one can discern two major forces
at work in critical attempts to describe the
communication between a work of art and
its audience. The primary force has been
the designation of a work of art as an object
to which the perceiver can relate only as an
observer. This approach assigns a relatively
or completely powerless role to human
perceivers of art, implying no exchange of
energy, no involvement in an interaction,
no participation in the making of the art
object.

It is in this sense, more than any other,
that for many, there is a heavy stake in
not opening the system any more.

The concept of the frame that is literal
in painting and metaphorical in relation to
other art objects is here the fundamental
feature which marks off a system from its
environment. This concept underscores the
difference between the role of perceiver
(our traditional role toward the art object)
and the role of interactant which is our customary role in most other aspects of our
existence.
According to this conception, the art object is a closed system, and we are outside
of it, whereas the rest of our social reality
incorporates numerous open systems into
which we are firmly set again and again.

Metaphorically, as the audience, we must
remain sufficiently far from the source of
power to be affected by it and to affect it
sl ightly without having the usual responsibilities for the outcome of the product.
The opposing force has always been the
desire to make the arts into fully open systems. Some schools of thought have tended
to shift emphasis from the overtly passive
behavior of a perceiver of art to the covert
activity involved in his perception. To think
of artistic experience as being in our own
minds gives us the same power to share
in the making of the artistic product as we
have when we actually interact and share in
the making of social events.
In the theatre, productions which pretend
to give open-system cues to the audience
are no real threat to aesthetic distance except insofar as the audience's sense of its
role may become temporarily confused. Actors in the audience planted or running
about, fooling around with the framing cues,
beginnings, and endings of a play, are indeed ineffectual attempts to break away
from the relatively closed system of the
performance. This can be seen only too
clearly in the embarrassment caused by an
audience member's momentarily confused
response to these phony invitations. Someone may actually cry out or move or otherwise interfer with the set pattern of the
production. This, of course, remains intolerable to audiences and performers alike.
One is reminded of theatrical performances
in primitive areas of the world in which a
message for newcomers might be pinned to
the curtain: No matter what you see, do not
be disturbed-it's all imaginary.

In the arts, it's easy to maintain the posture of "observer outside the closed system." Traditional paintings, sculptures,
buildings, and motion pictures seem aloof
and impervious-not to the ravages of time
but to our perception of them. "Liveprocess" arts, however, such as musical
and theatrical performances have always involved minor exchanges of energy between
the performer and the audi ence. This is to
say minor changes have occurred. It has
become commonplace for actors and musicians to observe and perhaps to revel in the
live audience as a spur to high attainment
in moments of the performance. Indeed,
this enjoyment is often so great that it becomes easy to forget the heavily programmed
nature of the usual performance-the notes
of music, the lines of dialogue, and the patterns of action that flow quietly but inexorably through their predetermined end.
In short, the performing arts engaged with
live audiences are rarely totally closed systems.

Advancing the physical frame of the production so that it begins not with the proscenium arch, the lighted circl e of theatre
in the round, or the very entrance to something called a "theatre" permits the action
to flow in, around, and among the audience.
This no doubt stimulates very different responses but must be seen again as a relatively harmless thrust in the direction of an
open system.

They might better be thought of as partially open systems, where audience response and the performer's adjustment to
it provide a minimal sort of interchange
without throwing the system wide open.
The role of the audience, then, contrasts
starkly with the role of participant or interactanl. This latter role is the one we are
assigned in confrontations with others

It is only in the so-called happening and
its variations that one can see a real threat
to aesthetic distance as here defined-a
real destruction of the psychological frame.
And while it is possible that art like athletics may become more intramural, more
participatory, it seems safe to say that the
luxu ry of aesthetic distance and performance
by professionals will continue.

The plain fact of the matter is that we
participate in open systems, exhaust ourselves in the art of interpersonal communications, and suffer the consequences all
our lives. To build smaller systems and to
freely assign ourselves the role of relative
exclusion from artists and their works seems
for many persons to be an important antedote for the rigors of complex societies. It
is likely that aesthetic distance in this last
sense will continue to characterize the majorityof performance-audience relationships.
However, at the same time, perhaps because artists ti re of the old rules, perhaps
because there is always at least a small
segment of artistic consumers who also
chafe, we must expect continued thrust
toward the theatre experience becoming an
open system. In the end, we may find ourselves in the position of the young man in
New Faces of 1952 who pleaded with a
young lady to "Take off the mask, that's all
that I ask you to do," and when she did,
he pleaded with her even more fervently to
put it back.
Perhaps the most typical cliche of the
1970's is to call each new development a
"revolution" and when a mature attempt is
made to counter such a revolution, to call
out something like "Get the wagons in a
ring." Such tactics are fine defense against
the attacks of Indians, but in the arts, no
onslaught of a new aesthetic has ever really
been stopped.
Much as the scene painters protested in
the first quarter of this century, the new
stagecraft established itself. It seems that
stagecraft and its American ideals are under
attack today. Let's face it. The theatre we
knew twenty years ago is under attack, but
instead of howling in the wind, it is wiser
to understand what's going on and what may
happen. I have no personal inside track and
don't pretend to be an expert on the form
of the theatre of tomorrow. I'm here as a
very interested observer who has spent a
little bit of time trying to understand what
he reads and what he sees going on in the
theatre around him.
As a practicing scenic designer I have
more than a passing interest in the aesthetics of the theatre, which I would call a
history and development of manifest taste.
A new aesthetic in the theatre, like the
emergence of any new species, seems to
develop according to certain laws or guiding principles. It is these principles that
force the arts to express each period in
time in a typically appropriate way.
To explain a bit more fully how this
evolution takes place, I'd like to point out
what I would call the "principle of changing
schema." As an artist grows, he develops
a characteristic way of expressing himself
while he learns his traditions, whatever is
typical of his particular time or place. Tradition is something you can't get away from.
This "learned way," then, is his schema,
and it includes all of the current conven-

@illO THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

OCTOBER,1970

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