Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1977 - 26

at least preserved communal and contemplative life,
but the natu ral sciences and systematic, self-oriented doubt destroyed these and far from liberating
us delivered us into the clutches of necessity. Estranged from the world of nature and history
we cling to mere life, unable to grasp reality and
deprived of common semI!, authority, and public
traditions. 4
One of the common theories put forward to explain
our inability to grasp reality is explained by Maxine
Greene, an educational philosopher. She quotes Daniel
Bell, Hannah Arendt, George Steiner and David Hawkins
in support of her contention that the most significant
events of our time, being mathmatical and scientific,
are for the most part, beyond the understanding of a
great majority of men. s Thus, society can not even discuss those ideas which influence their lives. In fact, recent scientific discoveries involve particles so very small
or events in the cosmos so far away that they are beyond the experience of man and therefore almost impossible to turn to poetic use.
Another group of observers sees our culture in the
middle of a transition that is heading toward unknown
territory. Alfred Kazi n writes:
Technology lords it everywhere over the old-fashioned, art educated intellectuals brought up on
modernism. Technology and bureaucracy, aided
by all the sciences of manipulation and propaganda,
mass culture and mass emotion, make up our public
drama. Billions of people are being whipped into
shape at any cost to the so called individual, as in
China; or are being left to die in the class wars, civil
wars, merciless pol itical wars of South East Asia; or
are left to starve and die on the pavements of Calcutta and Bombay. Everywhere in the West there is
panic, the most obvious slackening of will and hope
and faith in anything more than the ever-more urgent whiplash of the money motive. We are under
the gun. 6
And Susan Sontag is equally grim.
. . . this civilization, already so overtaken by barbarism, is at an end, and nothing we do will put
it back together again. So in the culture of transition out of which WI! can try to make sense, fighting off the twin afflictions of hyperesthesia and
passivity, no position can be a comfortable one or
should be complacently held. 7
One further theory is important because it depends
somewhat on all the others. Daniel Bell, in "The Cultural
Contradictions of Capitalism," explains that our society
has turned to forms of immediate pleasure rather than
retaining Capitalism's historical process of delayed gratification. And Richard Senneth's new book, entitled The
Fall of Public Man, is reviewed in these words:
, . , In mid 18th century London and Paris, .. we
even had separate modes of behavior for dealing
with the public and private aspects of our lives.
Away from our homes, we played public roles,
dressed and spoke theatrically so as to project
those roles and thus maintained a sense of civility.
26

FALL,1977

But in time, the rise of industrial capitalism and the
ascendency of a secular view of the world combined
to undermine this public mode of behavior. The
concerns of our private selves became transcendent.
Hence, today we are steeped in narcissism. 8
The result of narcissism on the arts is everywhere
evident. It is even legitimized in a course given by The
Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, described
in a mailing piece this way:
"Critical Issues of Art in the Seventies"
The art of the seventies seems to be generating an
intense scrutiny of 'forms of the Self.' This manifests itself in not only the arts of sculpture and
painting but also in film, photography, dance, and
theatre. Strategies for exploring the self range from
documentation through re-invented autobiography
to the formal use of time. 9
Self involvement is only one of several symptoms of
ou r fragmented, disheartened, and transitional soci ety.
Maxine Greene says that artists today are communicating.
She believes they are reflecting the general despair and
the sense of being lost that we all have. That may be so.
Private depression is a heavy burden when it lasts a whole
generation and I believe we have turned to other forms as
an antidote.
For the most part we have turned away from rational,
lineal, intellectual, verbal forms of communication to
more sensual forms. Bell's theory explains this switch
while the attendance figures of ballet and opera support
it. Legitimate theatre, the well made play of ideas, has
been deserted by the educated, affluent audience in
favor of the more sensual entertainments of ballet and
opera. Dance audiences in particular have grown each
year so that New Yorkers can usually, at any given time,
pick between several competing companies of excellence.
The theatre-goer on the other hand, is lucky to find one
or two plays of verbal excellence in anyone season. Very
often such plays are English imports and have limited runs
because audiences will not support intellectual theatre,
even with the most excellent casts .
There is one exception in today's theatre which I believe proves the rule. It used to be that a Jewish play in
New York would find an immediate audience. Today,
the Jewish play is being replaced by the Black play. It
seems to me that theatre, needing an audience with
common concerns, interests, and enthusiasm, is now
able to communicate only to the one group in our society
which still constitutes a community. The Jews have
moved to the suburbs but the Blacks, because of external
pressures, remain a geographical and psychological community able to share a theatrical experience as a group.
I imagine that unless there are drastic changes in our
society, Black theatre will increase in prominence. It will
be interesting and possibly sad to see what economic and
sociological pressures do to Black theatre as it grows.
There are already hints of difficulties in the form of exploitation films for Blacks, and of some Black theatre
people who claim that the ordinary critical standards of
theatre do not apply to them. There are stories of Black
actors refusing to wear servant's costumes when playing

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