4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

toward a poetics of performance 183
developed to facilitate quick changes of scenery – visual surprises.
Additional storage space was necessary as productions involving bulky
scenery were kept for future productions; dressing-rooms became
more ornate as costumes and makeup increased in complexity. The
stage space of the proscenium theater is an efficient engine for quick
scene changes and mounting sumptuous effects; this theater produces
“numbers” and coups de théâtre like a many-course meal at an expensive
restaurant. Usually every attempt is made to hide how effects are
achieved. Dramas written for the proscenium usually include one or
two intermissions because it’s necessary for patrons to see each
other, evaluate the product they’ve purchased, drink, smoke, and
re-experience the thrill and surprise of the rising curtain.
Theaters are located in a theater district; performances are offered at
the edge of workdays, “after work” or on weekends and general holidays:
theater is a place to go when work is finished, it is not meant to
be a rival of work. Because it is a model of the mercantile process, and a
product itself of the working middle-class, the modern theater can’t
impede that process. Nor is it proper for the theater to entice patrons
from their jobs (except on Wednesday afternoons, matinées traditionally
reserved for blue-haired non-working ladies). Movies and baseball
are different: they are offered as alternatives to work, though night ball
is the accommodation of the big leagues to the workday. The theater
district – often also a sex and restaurant district – stimulates consumer
appetites by offering a series of shows just as each show offers a
sequence of scenes. Competition is fierce among theaters – this competition
is for customers not prizes; when prizes are given they are
used to attract more customers. Regardless of their artistic quality, most
shows fail (which means they don’t attract buyers), but hits run as long
as people will pay to see them. Thus, in all these ways, the proscenium
theater is a model of capitalism. Today, as capitalism evolves into corporatism,
new kinds of theater arise. Cultural centers and regional
theaters – art fortresses run by impresarios overseen by boards of directors
– are examples of corporatism. Environmental theaters – built in
cheap hit-and-run spaces, often in out-of-the-way neighborhoods –
exemplify a resistance and alternative to the conglomerates. But
environmental theaters exist only in the creases of contemporary
society, living off the leavings, like cockroaches.