Eric Bogosian
Art is a Lie that Tells the Truth
January 22, 1999.
I've been away trying to write and lay out the bones of new projects. I've come to two conclusions:
First of all, I haven't been listening to enough Ozzy Osbourne.
Secondly, I don't know how to write a play. I'd like to be able to write a play. I'd like to write stacks of plays that other folks would perform. But the reason I don't know how to write a play is that I don't like plays. I like performance. And that's what I try to make.
My solos are performance and so are my "plays", "Talk Radio" and "subUrbia". I'm not saying I haven't written plays, I'm just saying I don't know how to write one (as in I don't know how to write a great one). Great plays are about story. Perhaps no one in modern times really knows how to write a play. But I'm just worried about me because I don't want to spend the next ten years dicking around trying to do something I will never be able to do.
But...but...but...yeah, but. The starting point of the solos and the two "plays" that work is performance. What is the performance situation, what's HAPPENING in front of the audience. I can say I write physical plays, but that's still not it. A "play" should have a great story in it, it should be readable. My stuff is more about organizing an effort that leads to a performance. And so the important thing has to be the performance.
The naturalistic, issue-oriented play that is in favor today at its best is an example of reasonably good writing and an opportunity for actors to "act." But I'm not even so sure I like "acting." It's like I was railing against all the actors "playing" retarded people and blind people. I said, "Why would anyone want to do that?" and Jo retorted, "Well, they're actors, they're acting." But if that's the case, I don't like "acting" because then "acting" is about "imitating" and that's, as far as I'm concerned, like saying photography is about taking a picture of something and the more like the thing it is, the better the picture.
I'm not interested in verisimilitude. That's why I like Brecht, Richard Foreman, and actors who are big hams. That's why I like Shakespeare and Sam Beckett. "Art is the lie that tells the truth." (Picasso?)
I also don't like contemporary theater that announces to the audience that IT IS ART. As contrived as it was, I hated "The Chairs" last year on Broadway. I liked the physicality of the performance, but the actors might as well have been reading the phone book. Thirty years ago the very act of putting on a play of Ionesco's was antagonistic to the foundations of status quo theater. But today it's museum quality baloney.
Contrivance has to hook into your guts. It's cultural, which is to say all the signs and signifiers of the work (language, movement, sex, violence, loudness) exists in a relationship to the culture the audience brings when they enter the theater. Obviously, the plays of Moliere or Sheridan mean something very different to an audience today than when they were first written. What makes Shakespeare's plays so huge is that their cultural rivers run so deep. We can understand Hamlet today because Hamlet transcends his time and ours. On the other hand, if a "surreal" play or an "absurdist" play is produced today, you have to ask "Why?". (On the other hand, a Joe Orton play is "revived" and is better than ever.)
I want to be swept up in the vision of the artist, which goes beyond "acting" and "writing" and becomes something total. I don't want to "learn" anything, I don't want to "appreciate" how "well" it's acted. It's like Susan Sontag said awhile ago, the work isn't what is contained in it, it's what it is. Like if you try to interpret Lenny Bruce for his "message," you've kind of missed the point. Which is why most people miss the point. Imagine getting off on a great piece of music because of what it "said" or how "well" it was performed. Passion is revolutionary, so the status quo will intuitively try to undercut it.
Hey, taste is personal. Very hard to argue. But I'm having this argument with myself and letting you listen in. The basic point is, as long as I try to write "plays" I'm banging my head against the wall. If I can create "performances" that look like plays, sound like plays - great.
I am not a "good" writer. Not that I wouldn't like to be. But when I try to write serious work, the audience laughs. I try to write something "funny" and the audience doesn't react at all. I have to write vast amounts to come up with the nuggets of anything good at all. I feel like a prospector panning for gold who has to sift through tons of gravel just to find a few flecks.
Spiritual Thought For The Day
We are all conduits for something. Whatever we are in contact with, whatever we surround ourselves with, passes through us whether we like it or not. A driver zooming through traffic because he's listening to speed metal is a conduit for the music. Likewise, we are conduits for the enterprises in which we participate. Ideas pass through us, spirituality and certainly the desire for money passes through us as surely as the cord through the wooden hands of a marionette. When large corporations are the ultimate purveyors of what we make, it has to affect our work. We become conduits for corporate ideology. We take the check and wonder why we're miserable.
If you really, truly care about me you will purchase a copy of my CD Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead. I'd really appreciate it if you went to a Barnes and Nobles Bookstore and asked for it in the Spoken Word recordings section. If that's too hard, just click onto Amazon and order the album right now. Send me the receipt and I'll send you a free book.
