Thank you to Lauren Gunderson for the opening salvo of her new blog exploring why the ancient art of "live theatre" is still with us, even in our media-filled, technologically advanced age.
A lot of her statements sound like she was either a founding member of meat & potato, or a least had sat in on some of our production meetings. Marynell and I have been striving to create "tribal" events in which everyone one in the room (actors and audience alike) are experiencing an important story together--or as Ms. Gunderson puts it: Actor+Audience+story=Theatre. As we say throughout our website, "The true origins of theatre are when one member of the tribe sat on this side of the fire and told stories to the rest of the tribe sitting on that side of the fire."
And praises to Ms. Gunderson for mentioning that ever-important element so often missing in today's "modern" theatre: theatricality. When did theatre a) become a place where screen writers "test" their scripts before sending them off to a Hollywood producer, or b) become a place where characters talk us to death, analyzing an issue to the point of "good god, when's the intermission so I can get the hell out of here? If I wanted a sermon, I would have gone to church instead"?
(Picture is from "How the Robin Got Its Red Breast", Beginnings, meat & potato 2005)
