“Theater is immediate, its actions are present to participants and audience. And in theater you are part of a community of watchers, while in cinema you are alone, or alone with your partner, whose hand you squeeze from time to time.” P. 7
There is a major difference between theater and every other form of entertainment. There is a major difference between theater and cinema, music, dance, etc. This quote, really portrays what I think of theater and what it means to the audience.
Today people might think of theater as something boring, or something outdated. Yes, some plays are extremely boring, I agree. But it is not all this way. Theater performed by true actors is going to be something amazing. It will captivate an audience and it will make them feel what the characters are feeling.
It is incredibly different from cinema, not only in a form of dimensions, but in the way that it makes you react. Cinema is all about watching something that has already been made. It is about experiencing something, whether its anger or pity or happiness, but not for yourself, but for the person on screen. Cinema is a way to entertain people and nothing more. Yes, it is an art, and I do not mean to criticize cinema because I love it. But it is about the film and not the audience.
Theater on the other hand is very different in that it is immediate; it is intimate. While you are sitting in the audience, you begin to feel what the character is feeling. It is as if, at least for me, you are the character. Theater makes you part of the action, especially if there are times in which the actor speaks to the audience, such as those in Romeo and Juliet. The actors can talk to the audience and make them part of the experience.
• i.e. Theater group went to school to play Hamlet, and they made it very friendly. They spoke to the audience and made the play funny, adapting it to the audience.
There is also the fact that in cinema, the actors can film the same scene over and over again until it comes out perfect. They can mess up as much as they want and not worry about anything because the film can be fixed. Theater however, is an art in which the actors need to get every emotion, every action, every word in absolute perfection. If this is not the case, then the play will be ruined for everyone.
It is also about the “community.” When watching theater, people feel as if they are brought together by their likes and dislikes. You can discuss a movie, but it is a different discussion about theater. There is the “wow” factor in theater that can be discussed into depth. I am not saying that there are not movies as such, like Inception where the discussion can go on for hours. But in theater, I feel that there is something more that you can discuss and argue about. In cinema, it is just the person next to you, and you might or might not have a connection with them. Its just you and the screen. In theater it is you and the person next to you and the whole audience, and the cast, and the characters themselves.
Theater is an art that is being forgotten by some, but it is able to live because of those who still view it as an art, as a part of our society that is needed by all humans to keep sanity.
The Necessity of Theater by Paul Woodruff Response
“There is an art to watching and being watched, and that is one of the few arts on which all human living depends. If we are unwatched we diminish, and we cannot be entirely as we wish to be. If we never stop to watch, we will know only how it feels to be us, never how it might feel to be another. Watched too much, or the wrong way we become frightened. Watching too much, we lose the capacity for action in our own lives. Watching well, together, and being watched well, with limits on both sides, we grow, and grow together.” –Paul Woodruff
The first thing that came to my mind when I read this passage was reality television. Though Woodruff makes a claim that television and film aren’t theater, reality television fits almost perfectly with his definition of theater as being “the art by which human beings make or find human action worth watching, in a measured time and place.” The obvious arguable discrepancy is that reality television isn’t an art, but reality television is exactly human beings making or finding human action that is worth watching. This worth lies on its own relative scale (relative to the watcher) but for these purposes, we can assume the basic continuance of a show gives it minimal worth. It all goes back to our need to be watched and watch others. The general public has become spectators of these television stars. We watch them not for intellectual stimulus or growth, but for entertainment. We want to see how much people can make a fool of themselves or what character they shape to be on a screen. We have an acute fascination to celebrities, not as people generally, but as spectacles. They are our macro-organisms to be studied, defined, and used at our disposal. It is so interesting how immobile one can become while watching reality television. As Woodruff is quoted above as stating, “Watching too much, we lose the capacity for action in our own lives.”
It also must be noted the danger in making people and their lives spectacles. We make them real time performers. Many of those in public eye also subscribe to this full time job. They are “on” 100% 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No bathroom breaks or shifts. Any performer thrives off of audience participation. This makes them constant actors and not people. This constant activity of being watched places a burden on the mental and emotional state of any individual. They begin to lose the separation between their true selves and their performer side, i.e. Michael Jackson. They might become self-conscious or extremely insecure with their truer side so the performer becomes the default. This goes back to Woodruff’s original quote above; we must establish boundaries on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to the “art” of watching.
I thought the very first thing Woodruff starts in on, about the fact that theater continues to reemerge in our society is quite a fascinating thing. People don’t always think of it in terms of that, but I suppose “theater” in the sense that he means it, as he explains later on in the text, is something that we inherently have a desire for. Even the cavemen drew on walls, not quite theater, but one could make that stretch. I feel like a broader category applies, in that we’ve always wanted something, anything to feast our eyes upon, to entertain us. Fire was the primitive man’s TV, storytelling came with the advent of language, there were the gladiator fights in the arenas of ancient Rome, and of course the traditional Theater, with a stage and players and a script.
There’s something about feeling a connection to our ancestors that interests me. I have this really deep interest in sideshow acts, because of how far back they go, and I’m an avid woods-and-outdoorsman in part because of how primitive an art survival in the wilderness is.
I can’t explain it entirely, but something about that nostalgic feeling makes me feel connected to a greater being, the entirety of the human race.
“Through the window of the restaurant I see an unfamiliar figure struck, and this time I am engaged, and I am framing what I see now as a scene, and I am calling on my imagination to give it context.”
So starts a paragraph on page 21 of the Woodruff piece, a paragraph that amazed, shocked, and angered me. “It is unusual to care about a stranger who is merely part of the observable goings-on”, he says. But why? Why is it such a strange thing for us to care about our fellow man? Why do we have to ‘frame the incident as a drama’ to care about the fact that a human being got struck?
To me, the idea of finding our humanness through theater is disgusting. We are a people who will send the texts for Haiti, who will sponsor a child across the world, who will protest a mosque, yet we cannot care about someone right in front of us getting harmed.
Is this really what we have become? Do we need Sarah MacLachlan and George Clooney to tell us a cause is just before we act? Why do we need to ‘see it as a scene’ to do the right thing?
It scares me, to think that Woodruff is right. Because if we find our humanness in theater, then what happens when the performance is over? We stop caring. They are strangers; they are not our concern. Actors, performers? What they do is staged, fake, and yet we care more for the indecencies acted out on “the Indian” rather than real, true assault that we see on the streets.
The performance is over. None of it was real. None of the Indian’s pain is real. We can go home now.
The stranger is a nonentity. None of this is real. None of his pain is real. We can go home now.
According to Woodruff, that is what humans are.
Response to paragraph on pg 22. I agree with Wooddruff because I have also always thought that people love getting attention and being known by others. It might be because since we were babies we were used to getting attention from our parents and since then it has become part of our lifestyles. People consciously or unconsciously want to be watched or known. When people recognize you for something you have done it always makes you feel good inside. Its part of being a human being each human needs the attention of other human beings so that they can live normal lives. If you don’t know anyone or aren’t noticed by anyone then do you even exist?
“That we cannot expect the attention of others as often as would like to have it; still we are watchers of ourselves and of each other, and if we believe in God or gods we believe we are being watched from above. Even if we don’t, we can’t always escape the thought that our parents are watching us.” (pg 23)
• Who hasn’t been in a situation where they wished to be watched, or noticed? Whether by one’s parents (especially when young, as we grow older we may wish quite the opposite) friends, opposite gender, etc. We quickly find that this desire is not one that can always be satisfied- People are busy, or not interested and very often we find ourselves neglected. Sometimes we feel neglected in a big event- such as a sport game that our parents didn’t show up for, or a concert or award ceremony, or sometimes we feel neglected on just a normal day, where it seems as though everyone has forgotten about one.
• If we believe in God or gods, it can be a reassurance that someone up there is watching us, if it seems as though everyone here has turned against one/forgotten one. In having this belief, it can be comforting to realize that we are never truly alone.
• There are times where we are thankful for that neglect; when we make a mistake or do/say something that we regret. Of course, if believing in God or gods we realize that we are never truly getting away with something, that we are always being watched. After making that mistake, this may not be the first thing that comes to mind, but often enough the thought “What would my parents say if they saw/knew/find out?” That “looking over the shoulder” feeling can be overwhelming, because somewhere, somehow we are always being watched in our worst moments- It is interesting how it can feel that we are on display during those moments, yet forgotten during everyday/important moments.
• We are always watching others, always observing what we like/don’t like in strangers or friends/family. We can’t help observing individuals, and it can be a very good way to learn- learn what one would like to fix in oneself, or, in that observation, to realize that one has nothing to complain about in ones own life.
I relate to most parts of this article, and one of them in particular was on page 24: “Theatre is an art… because it can be done well or poorly”. I agree with Woodruff on that point that no one has to watch anything, and therefore the performance should be captivating. Since everyone wants to be watched, we must learn to capture the audience. If you give an audience a visual experience that they will be able to recall and discuss later on, you have just brought together people and made them closer.
“The whole art of theater is the one we must be able to practice in order to secure our bare, naked, cultural survival.”
When I began reading this article I really disagreed. I have never felt that theater has been a part of my life. But as I continued to read and understand Woodruff’s definition, it changed my mind. It made me realize that anything can actually be theater. It is merely the act of being watched. Theater is a essential part of our being and existence. Theater is a part of what makes us a civilization. It is one thing that distinguishes our culture from that of animals or other creatures. It gives us culture. Humans need to be watched and theater gives them that opportunity.
When I read “We need many things from the culture in which we swim; language, religion, and theater are three of our basic cultural needs” I shook my head and thought “Really? Do we really need theater?” I understood the need for language and religion: language for communication and religion (for those who actually believe in one) for hope, order, unity. But why do we need theater? However, as I read through Woodruff’s introduction, I understood why. If theater really is everything that he defines it as (from Athenian dances, to college football, to weddings and funerals, to the need to be watched vs. the need to watch) then theater really is a cultural need. These things are part of our daily lives and since we cannot exclude them, then we surely can’t exclude theater out of our lives.
My mind instantly recalls the screaming chants, and the alcohol driven words being yelled by the random two guys besides me. As I gazed my eyes towards the front, from a distance I was able to witness the thousandths of people- from all backgrounds, cultures, and states- all together under the beaming sunlight screaming with excitement and livelihood in the large and vast stadium. I was dumfounded by the uniformity that day. Everybody wore blue and white shirts, some with stripes, others without them, and with large signature names marked vibrantly in their backs for the world to see. Rodriguez, Cano, Jeter- thousandths of these names being proclaimed by someone else, at least for those few hours. This was my first Yankee game, and one of the most exciting experiences I had ever had. “Lets Go Yankees” was what we all screamed and shouted, as they played against the orioles. Then suddenly, a moment so overwhelming and so uniting took place. As we attempted to do the wave- something that was successful only up to half of the stadium- from the stand rose this brave young man who stood up and vibrantly showed off his Boston red sox shirt. In that single second, everybody with their fists up, moving them up and down, started yelling “Boston sucks”. It was a moment of unity and bonding and what Woodruff would classify under theater. It was the act of watching the Yankees that truly connected us, and even more so, having a common thread as to how defensive we were all of the Yankees.
I found it extremely interesting how Woodruff classified watching American sports in actual stadiums, such as that of football or baseball, as a form of theater. While it is not art theater, it does classify under the definition he gave of “theater is the art by which human beings make or find human action worth watching, in a measured time and place”. At first glance, I immediately believed I was going to disagree with Woodruff’s idea behind classifying sports such as theater. Yet after a moment of reflecting I realized that theater in itself is so strong and broad at the same time. It is colorblind, meaning no matter who you are, where your come from, or how your identify yourself, there is a universal thread that connects us all and that is that we all posses raw, human emotions. It is these emotions that help us connect on a universal level. You may not understand one word a person is saying, or may not even understand his or her customs and way of lifestyle, yet we do understand when someone is sad, upset, happy or scared. For ultimately, emotions are collective, and therefore this makes theater universal for it is the expressing of these emotions and real life situations. Hence why people unite in a baseball, basketball, or football game, for at those moments people are feeding of the same human sensations- competitiveness and excitement. In this sense, this form of theater is necessary. This is simple- understanding and expressing how we feel is essential for human survival, and watching others express these emotions is as of much importance, for it gives us a better understanding of who we are and why we feel. What truly gravitated me to Woodruff’s arguments was the fact that there is a difference between theater and art theater. You can find theater in the various aspects of life such as in a “wedding, funeral, football game, street dancing, church services”. In order to classify it under theater, it needs to be something captivating, again something that draws on emotions. I felt as though when human essence, human events and sentiments are portrayed whether its through a game, or dancing, or even a wedding that can be classified under theater. Ultimately, I do agree with the idea that everybody at one point or another enjoys being watched, or enjoys watching, and that theater truly lives up to its definition when human nature and human reactions are captured.
\Football flourishes on campus because it builds an ardent sense of belonging to the University community.\ — Top of page 13.
This part was really easy to relate to and understand. When I was beginning to look for colleges I may be interested in attending in my Junior year of High school, I primarily looked for universities that had a football team. It is obvious that the sport wasn’t one of which I could play in but I wanted to attend a university that had the sport for different reasons. I wanted to be able to go to countless games and sit among fellow classmates to cheer on our school. In some brochures, there were students who painted their faces or wore their school logo to show support. I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to be part of the big celebrations that would happen after victories. The student body would all come together for those nights and some would possibly parade around campus. It would feel like one big, gigantic family.
Lehman was the only college I applied for that did not offer football but it offered the Macaulay Honors Program which, being that it was the smallest branch, would hopefully have the unity I presumed a University that offered football would have. Also, Lehman was the only CUNY school that had a beautiful campus which I have seen be used for many different activities to help unite the student body.
Need to be watched:
Page 22
I think we all feel like we need to be watched, no matter what age, because we constantly need the reassurance of our existence and importance. I think that no matter how old you are, being watched by someone somehow creates a sense of being cared for, however on different emotional levels. It’s true that the older you get, the less attention you expect, but that somehow that creates more need for it. I think we always want an audience because humans are afraid of being alone.
The author mentions that “theater is a necessity” to humans, I’d have to say, I agree with the statement. Theater, not literally just categorizing it as just plays, but other forms of media, are essential to life in a sense. “Theater” is an escapist route and it allows for a path that one could embark on if one chooses to “escape” reality for a bit. It’s sort of an outlet onto which we can go to upon our times of need, loneliness, or even during times when we’re happy. It’s another world for humans.
“Even if you are so sure you team will win that you feel no tension, you still need the win to the public. Secret victories do not count.”
I feel that this quote exemplifies something that happens to every single one of us. Many of the actions we take everyday, many of the things we want to happen, do not have solely ourselves as the audience: we also want things to happen for others. We do care about what they will say or think – regardless of how much we may deny.
Whether we call this “everyday acting” theater or not does not really matter to me. What matters is understanding and accepting that something very similar to what happens in “Art Theater” happens everyday in our lives.
I like when Woodruff justifies the fact that we prefer to be present at certain situation (like a son’s wedding) by saying that “Theater is immediate”. He is right, it is immediate, and so are many things in life. Everyday we carefully analyze most of our action to make sure that the audience will understand correctly the message we want to convey.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘982862544 which is not a hashcash value.
It is very interesting to note the importance of shared self-expression between cultures. What theater, poetry, graphic art, photography, and music all have in common are that they allow for a means of communicating ideas, beliefs, telling stories, teaching morals, and arguably most importantly, developing a sense of fellowship among those who perform and the audience.
Music remains to be a particularly powerful medium of communicated fellowship among people even in today’s world, where other art forms may be dying out as society and technology change. The passage regarding “words written to go with music” interested me. As Woodruff says, it is true that word-less music has far less appeal throughout all cultures, but I strongly disagree with the statement that music calls for words. I find more poetry in word-less music than I ever could elsewhere. Music without words allows the melodies, harmonies, chord progressions, and the movements to speak louder and more powerfully than words ever could. It is frustrating to me to hear people say that music without words is not meaningful, or that song titles do not make sense if there are no words. The wordless artist (or songwriter) tells stories, conveys emotion, and crafts purpose into his music through the instruments alone.
Having music without words allows the listener to feel the music and draw his own interpretations of the song’s meaning. In fact, two people can come to differing conclusions regarding what a wordless song is about. Does this mean that one of them is wrong? Or does it mean that the artist failed at crafting purpose into his song? Not necessarily. As I listen to songs I love, I constantly see new emotion and meaning in them that I did not see before.
Wordless music is stimulating. It is pure, and free from the boundaries of expression through speech. Music with words, on the contrary, does not allow such self-expression from the listener. The words are laid out for the listener. The meaning is set in stone. There is no mystery; there is no audience interaction. Music with words does not resonate with me the way music without words does.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘1418805305 which is not a hashcash value.
“People need theatre.” These were the first three words of the article and right away I thought to myself “what a load of (excuse my language) BULL. Like many teenagers I never saw theatre as a major part of my life, in fact I’ve rarely ever even thought about theatre, so as far as I was concerned theatre had no effect on me. On the third day of Macaulay orientation when we saw the three plays by Israel Horovitz, though I slightly enjoyed the experience I thought to myself what does this have to do with college or life? Throughout my life I had seen numerous plays, which I have enjoyed, but I never saw them as anything more than a temporary means to entertain myself. However reading this book has given me a whole new way of looking at “theatre.”
This article talks about how theatre is a large part of human civilization. It talks about how humans need to watch others, and need to be watched by others. It even expanded on the definition of theatre and showed me that theatre is not just people acting on a stage. So therefore this article has revolutionized the way I think about theatre to the point that after finishing the article I thought to myself “wow now I realize that the first line of the article is actually very true.”
As this article changed my views on theatre it also brought many questions into my head about it. For example the author showed how the definition of theatre is broader than most people think however I personally still don’t understand a real solid definition of theatre, before reading this article I thought I did but now this article has shaken my surety of knowing it and now I wonder “what can theatre truly be defined as?” So as I very much liked the article maybe I just didn’t understand correctly or maybe the author really did fail in this particular task, so my only complaint is that the author helps remove the typical definition of theatre from out our minds and places certain limitations on what he thinks theatre is or is not but he doesn’t really give a solid defintion of theatre. However this again makes me wonder if maybe he did that knowingly in order to make the reader think? So therefore though I found this article enlightening, it brought more questions than answers to my mind.
I have been told that the way I tell a story and the way I speak is very similar if not totally reminiscent of the way some of my closest friends speak. This is because we spend so much time speaking to each other that we rub off on each other. I find a similar trend in my writing. When reading a book or when spending a lot of time reading a certain writer’s work, my writing begins to borrow their form and feel. The passive actions of listening and reading are just like the “watching” that Woodruff writes about. It must be that the “art to watching and being watched” transcends the limits of theater (or perhaps theater has no limits and may include any form of social understanding, such as listening/talking and reading/writing).
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘545654805 which is not a hashcash value.
“The sooner we try seriously to dispense with it the better, although peace may be too, well, peaceful, for human nature to tolerate.”
I chose this quote, because the idea of a utopia, where war does not exist, has always interested me. People always wish for peace, and never want to see another war again, yet if there was no war then we wouldn’t be able to handle it. Why is it that we need wars, that humanity is incapable of living in complete peace? We all have impulses to do things, but most of us are able to hold these back, and balance our wants and needs.
“Theater frame people and their actions in order to make them more watchable. Practice in framing human action as watchable helps us cultivate humaneness.”
For me, these two lines rang for some reason. People get easily attached to movies and plays they see. They feel that connection for some reason or another because for as long as it is happening, it’s actually real to them and in their faces. However, it cultivating ‘humaneness’ does not ring true. People can come out claiming that what they had just seen moved them and that can be true but once they see that same situation on the street, it doesn’t compute. That humaneness isn’t there for real life; it’s on hold somewhere in their heads. It just brings up so many incidents and behaviors that say otherwise that I disagree with this line.
Granted, people can and will be moved by what they see in theater or in a movie and they’ll act on it. But how many people who have seen that movie on dolphin-killing in Japan will go do something to protest against it besides saying, ‘that’s horrible. They need to stop that?’ How long did it take for the rest of the world to respond to the Holocaust, to the Rwandan genocide, to Darfur? People claim that it’s a tragedy and they do nothing to stop it, to help the victims or just those people affected. That’s not humane, that’s being human. That’s self-preservation, not helping those in need because it’s not happening to you yet. People turn away from others on the train, they take steps away from that smelly hobo that needs you to call 311 for them. We can see that in a play and talk about ‘probably’ helping out. We’re not going to, most people don’t. Theater doesn’t cultivate humaneness, it shows us the humaneness we’re lacking in society.
Response 9/2/10
“Wordless music is rare in most cultures and has limited appeal”
I wholeheartedly believe that the necessity of theater is completely inaccurate, as is the necessity of being watched. True, there is always a strong desire to be seen or heard -be it a personal feat or an emotional vulnerability- but the very notion that humans have a true need to be watched is absurd. I feel that theater is more of a preservation of people’s thoughts and ideas that were meant for people who want to share said beliefs with each other.
I agree with the article’s point that culture has been evolving over the years and because of this, we should be used to the boundaries of cultures expanding. I believe that theatre is extremely essential to today’s culture for it promotes a sense of togetherness and community. Because we need memory and language to survive and thrive as a culture, we need theatre for it utilizes culture and language.
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“Theater is immediate, its actions are present to participants and audience. And in theater you are part of a community of watchers, while in cinema you are alone, or alone with your partner, whose hand you squeeze from time to time.” P. 7
There is a major difference between theater and every other form of entertainment. There is a major difference between theater and cinema, music, dance, etc. This quote, really portrays what I think of theater and what it means to the audience.
Today people might think of theater as something boring, or something outdated. Yes, some plays are extremely boring, I agree. But it is not all this way. Theater performed by true actors is going to be something amazing. It will captivate an audience and it will make them feel what the characters are feeling.
It is incredibly different from cinema, not only in a form of dimensions, but in the way that it makes you react. Cinema is all about watching something that has already been made. It is about experiencing something, whether its anger or pity or happiness, but not for yourself, but for the person on screen. Cinema is a way to entertain people and nothing more. Yes, it is an art, and I do not mean to criticize cinema because I love it. But it is about the film and not the audience.
Theater on the other hand is very different in that it is immediate; it is intimate. While you are sitting in the audience, you begin to feel what the character is feeling. It is as if, at least for me, you are the character. Theater makes you part of the action, especially if there are times in which the actor speaks to the audience, such as those in Romeo and Juliet. The actors can talk to the audience and make them part of the experience.
• i.e. Theater group went to school to play Hamlet, and they made it very friendly. They spoke to the audience and made the play funny, adapting it to the audience.
There is also the fact that in cinema, the actors can film the same scene over and over again until it comes out perfect. They can mess up as much as they want and not worry about anything because the film can be fixed. Theater however, is an art in which the actors need to get every emotion, every action, every word in absolute perfection. If this is not the case, then the play will be ruined for everyone.
It is also about the “community.” When watching theater, people feel as if they are brought together by their likes and dislikes. You can discuss a movie, but it is a different discussion about theater. There is the “wow” factor in theater that can be discussed into depth. I am not saying that there are not movies as such, like Inception where the discussion can go on for hours. But in theater, I feel that there is something more that you can discuss and argue about. In cinema, it is just the person next to you, and you might or might not have a connection with them. Its just you and the screen. In theater it is you and the person next to you and the whole audience, and the cast, and the characters themselves.
Theater is an art that is being forgotten by some, but it is able to live because of those who still view it as an art, as a part of our society that is needed by all humans to keep sanity.
The Necessity of Theater by Paul Woodruff Response
“There is an art to watching and being watched, and that is one of the few arts on which all human living depends. If we are unwatched we diminish, and we cannot be entirely as we wish to be. If we never stop to watch, we will know only how it feels to be us, never how it might feel to be another. Watched too much, or the wrong way we become frightened. Watching too much, we lose the capacity for action in our own lives. Watching well, together, and being watched well, with limits on both sides, we grow, and grow together.” –Paul Woodruff
The first thing that came to my mind when I read this passage was reality television. Though Woodruff makes a claim that television and film aren’t theater, reality television fits almost perfectly with his definition of theater as being “the art by which human beings make or find human action worth watching, in a measured time and place.” The obvious arguable discrepancy is that reality television isn’t an art, but reality television is exactly human beings making or finding human action that is worth watching. This worth lies on its own relative scale (relative to the watcher) but for these purposes, we can assume the basic continuance of a show gives it minimal worth. It all goes back to our need to be watched and watch others. The general public has become spectators of these television stars. We watch them not for intellectual stimulus or growth, but for entertainment. We want to see how much people can make a fool of themselves or what character they shape to be on a screen. We have an acute fascination to celebrities, not as people generally, but as spectacles. They are our macro-organisms to be studied, defined, and used at our disposal. It is so interesting how immobile one can become while watching reality television. As Woodruff is quoted above as stating, “Watching too much, we lose the capacity for action in our own lives.”
It also must be noted the danger in making people and their lives spectacles. We make them real time performers. Many of those in public eye also subscribe to this full time job. They are “on” 100% 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No bathroom breaks or shifts. Any performer thrives off of audience participation. This makes them constant actors and not people. This constant activity of being watched places a burden on the mental and emotional state of any individual. They begin to lose the separation between their true selves and their performer side, i.e. Michael Jackson. They might become self-conscious or extremely insecure with their truer side so the performer becomes the default. This goes back to Woodruff’s original quote above; we must establish boundaries on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to the “art” of watching.
Renisha.
I thought the very first thing Woodruff starts in on, about the fact that theater continues to reemerge in our society is quite a fascinating thing. People don’t always think of it in terms of that, but I suppose “theater” in the sense that he means it, as he explains later on in the text, is something that we inherently have a desire for. Even the cavemen drew on walls, not quite theater, but one could make that stretch. I feel like a broader category applies, in that we’ve always wanted something, anything to feast our eyes upon, to entertain us. Fire was the primitive man’s TV, storytelling came with the advent of language, there were the gladiator fights in the arenas of ancient Rome, and of course the traditional Theater, with a stage and players and a script.
There’s something about feeling a connection to our ancestors that interests me. I have this really deep interest in sideshow acts, because of how far back they go, and I’m an avid woods-and-outdoorsman in part because of how primitive an art survival in the wilderness is.
I can’t explain it entirely, but something about that nostalgic feeling makes me feel connected to a greater being, the entirety of the human race.
“Through the window of the restaurant I see an unfamiliar figure struck, and this time I am engaged, and I am framing what I see now as a scene, and I am calling on my imagination to give it context.”
So starts a paragraph on page 21 of the Woodruff piece, a paragraph that amazed, shocked, and angered me. “It is unusual to care about a stranger who is merely part of the observable goings-on”, he says. But why? Why is it such a strange thing for us to care about our fellow man? Why do we have to ‘frame the incident as a drama’ to care about the fact that a human being got struck?
To me, the idea of finding our humanness through theater is disgusting. We are a people who will send the texts for Haiti, who will sponsor a child across the world, who will protest a mosque, yet we cannot care about someone right in front of us getting harmed.
Is this really what we have become? Do we need Sarah MacLachlan and George Clooney to tell us a cause is just before we act? Why do we need to ‘see it as a scene’ to do the right thing?
It scares me, to think that Woodruff is right. Because if we find our humanness in theater, then what happens when the performance is over? We stop caring. They are strangers; they are not our concern. Actors, performers? What they do is staged, fake, and yet we care more for the indecencies acted out on “the Indian” rather than real, true assault that we see on the streets.
The performance is over. None of it was real. None of the Indian’s pain is real. We can go home now.
The stranger is a nonentity. None of this is real. None of his pain is real. We can go home now.
According to Woodruff, that is what humans are.
Response to paragraph on pg 22. I agree with Wooddruff because I have also always thought that people love getting attention and being known by others. It might be because since we were babies we were used to getting attention from our parents and since then it has become part of our lifestyles. People consciously or unconsciously want to be watched or known. When people recognize you for something you have done it always makes you feel good inside. Its part of being a human being each human needs the attention of other human beings so that they can live normal lives. If you don’t know anyone or aren’t noticed by anyone then do you even exist?
“That we cannot expect the attention of others as often as would like to have it; still we are watchers of ourselves and of each other, and if we believe in God or gods we believe we are being watched from above. Even if we don’t, we can’t always escape the thought that our parents are watching us.” (pg 23)
• Who hasn’t been in a situation where they wished to be watched, or noticed? Whether by one’s parents (especially when young, as we grow older we may wish quite the opposite) friends, opposite gender, etc. We quickly find that this desire is not one that can always be satisfied- People are busy, or not interested and very often we find ourselves neglected. Sometimes we feel neglected in a big event- such as a sport game that our parents didn’t show up for, or a concert or award ceremony, or sometimes we feel neglected on just a normal day, where it seems as though everyone has forgotten about one.
• If we believe in God or gods, it can be a reassurance that someone up there is watching us, if it seems as though everyone here has turned against one/forgotten one. In having this belief, it can be comforting to realize that we are never truly alone.
• There are times where we are thankful for that neglect; when we make a mistake or do/say something that we regret. Of course, if believing in God or gods we realize that we are never truly getting away with something, that we are always being watched. After making that mistake, this may not be the first thing that comes to mind, but often enough the thought “What would my parents say if they saw/knew/find out?” That “looking over the shoulder” feeling can be overwhelming, because somewhere, somehow we are always being watched in our worst moments- It is interesting how it can feel that we are on display during those moments, yet forgotten during everyday/important moments.
• We are always watching others, always observing what we like/don’t like in strangers or friends/family. We can’t help observing individuals, and it can be a very good way to learn- learn what one would like to fix in oneself, or, in that observation, to realize that one has nothing to complain about in ones own life.
I relate to most parts of this article, and one of them in particular was on page 24: “Theatre is an art… because it can be done well or poorly”. I agree with Woodruff on that point that no one has to watch anything, and therefore the performance should be captivating. Since everyone wants to be watched, we must learn to capture the audience. If you give an audience a visual experience that they will be able to recall and discuss later on, you have just brought together people and made them closer.
“The whole art of theater is the one we must be able to practice in order to secure our bare, naked, cultural survival.”
When I began reading this article I really disagreed. I have never felt that theater has been a part of my life. But as I continued to read and understand Woodruff’s definition, it changed my mind. It made me realize that anything can actually be theater. It is merely the act of being watched. Theater is a essential part of our being and existence. Theater is a part of what makes us a civilization. It is one thing that distinguishes our culture from that of animals or other creatures. It gives us culture. Humans need to be watched and theater gives them that opportunity.
Ismail
When I read “We need many things from the culture in which we swim; language, religion, and theater are three of our basic cultural needs” I shook my head and thought “Really? Do we really need theater?” I understood the need for language and religion: language for communication and religion (for those who actually believe in one) for hope, order, unity. But why do we need theater? However, as I read through Woodruff’s introduction, I understood why. If theater really is everything that he defines it as (from Athenian dances, to college football, to weddings and funerals, to the need to be watched vs. the need to watch) then theater really is a cultural need. These things are part of our daily lives and since we cannot exclude them, then we surely can’t exclude theater out of our lives.
My mind instantly recalls the screaming chants, and the alcohol driven words being yelled by the random two guys besides me. As I gazed my eyes towards the front, from a distance I was able to witness the thousandths of people- from all backgrounds, cultures, and states- all together under the beaming sunlight screaming with excitement and livelihood in the large and vast stadium. I was dumfounded by the uniformity that day. Everybody wore blue and white shirts, some with stripes, others without them, and with large signature names marked vibrantly in their backs for the world to see. Rodriguez, Cano, Jeter- thousandths of these names being proclaimed by someone else, at least for those few hours. This was my first Yankee game, and one of the most exciting experiences I had ever had. “Lets Go Yankees” was what we all screamed and shouted, as they played against the orioles. Then suddenly, a moment so overwhelming and so uniting took place. As we attempted to do the wave- something that was successful only up to half of the stadium- from the stand rose this brave young man who stood up and vibrantly showed off his Boston red sox shirt. In that single second, everybody with their fists up, moving them up and down, started yelling “Boston sucks”. It was a moment of unity and bonding and what Woodruff would classify under theater. It was the act of watching the Yankees that truly connected us, and even more so, having a common thread as to how defensive we were all of the Yankees.
I found it extremely interesting how Woodruff classified watching American sports in actual stadiums, such as that of football or baseball, as a form of theater. While it is not art theater, it does classify under the definition he gave of “theater is the art by which human beings make or find human action worth watching, in a measured time and place”. At first glance, I immediately believed I was going to disagree with Woodruff’s idea behind classifying sports such as theater. Yet after a moment of reflecting I realized that theater in itself is so strong and broad at the same time. It is colorblind, meaning no matter who you are, where your come from, or how your identify yourself, there is a universal thread that connects us all and that is that we all posses raw, human emotions. It is these emotions that help us connect on a universal level. You may not understand one word a person is saying, or may not even understand his or her customs and way of lifestyle, yet we do understand when someone is sad, upset, happy or scared. For ultimately, emotions are collective, and therefore this makes theater universal for it is the expressing of these emotions and real life situations. Hence why people unite in a baseball, basketball, or football game, for at those moments people are feeding of the same human sensations- competitiveness and excitement. In this sense, this form of theater is necessary. This is simple- understanding and expressing how we feel is essential for human survival, and watching others express these emotions is as of much importance, for it gives us a better understanding of who we are and why we feel. What truly gravitated me to Woodruff’s arguments was the fact that there is a difference between theater and art theater. You can find theater in the various aspects of life such as in a “wedding, funeral, football game, street dancing, church services”. In order to classify it under theater, it needs to be something captivating, again something that draws on emotions. I felt as though when human essence, human events and sentiments are portrayed whether its through a game, or dancing, or even a wedding that can be classified under theater. Ultimately, I do agree with the idea that everybody at one point or another enjoys being watched, or enjoys watching, and that theater truly lives up to its definition when human nature and human reactions are captured.
\Football flourishes on campus because it builds an ardent sense of belonging to the University community.\ — Top of page 13.
This part was really easy to relate to and understand. When I was beginning to look for colleges I may be interested in attending in my Junior year of High school, I primarily looked for universities that had a football team. It is obvious that the sport wasn’t one of which I could play in but I wanted to attend a university that had the sport for different reasons. I wanted to be able to go to countless games and sit among fellow classmates to cheer on our school. In some brochures, there were students who painted their faces or wore their school logo to show support. I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to be part of the big celebrations that would happen after victories. The student body would all come together for those nights and some would possibly parade around campus. It would feel like one big, gigantic family.
Lehman was the only college I applied for that did not offer football but it offered the Macaulay Honors Program which, being that it was the smallest branch, would hopefully have the unity I presumed a University that offered football would have. Also, Lehman was the only CUNY school that had a beautiful campus which I have seen be used for many different activities to help unite the student body.
Need to be watched:
Page 22
I think we all feel like we need to be watched, no matter what age, because we constantly need the reassurance of our existence and importance. I think that no matter how old you are, being watched by someone somehow creates a sense of being cared for, however on different emotional levels. It’s true that the older you get, the less attention you expect, but that somehow that creates more need for it. I think we always want an audience because humans are afraid of being alone.
The author mentions that “theater is a necessity” to humans, I’d have to say, I agree with the statement. Theater, not literally just categorizing it as just plays, but other forms of media, are essential to life in a sense. “Theater” is an escapist route and it allows for a path that one could embark on if one chooses to “escape” reality for a bit. It’s sort of an outlet onto which we can go to upon our times of need, loneliness, or even during times when we’re happy. It’s another world for humans.
“Even if you are so sure you team will win that you feel no tension, you still need the win to the public. Secret victories do not count.”
I feel that this quote exemplifies something that happens to every single one of us. Many of the actions we take everyday, many of the things we want to happen, do not have solely ourselves as the audience: we also want things to happen for others. We do care about what they will say or think – regardless of how much we may deny.
Whether we call this “everyday acting” theater or not does not really matter to me. What matters is understanding and accepting that something very similar to what happens in “Art Theater” happens everyday in our lives.
I like when Woodruff justifies the fact that we prefer to be present at certain situation (like a son’s wedding) by saying that “Theater is immediate”. He is right, it is immediate, and so are many things in life. Everyday we carefully analyze most of our action to make sure that the audience will understand correctly the message we want to convey.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘982862544 which is not a hashcash value.
It is very interesting to note the importance of shared self-expression between cultures. What theater, poetry, graphic art, photography, and music all have in common are that they allow for a means of communicating ideas, beliefs, telling stories, teaching morals, and arguably most importantly, developing a sense of fellowship among those who perform and the audience.
Music remains to be a particularly powerful medium of communicated fellowship among people even in today’s world, where other art forms may be dying out as society and technology change. The passage regarding “words written to go with music” interested me. As Woodruff says, it is true that word-less music has far less appeal throughout all cultures, but I strongly disagree with the statement that music calls for words. I find more poetry in word-less music than I ever could elsewhere. Music without words allows the melodies, harmonies, chord progressions, and the movements to speak louder and more powerfully than words ever could. It is frustrating to me to hear people say that music without words is not meaningful, or that song titles do not make sense if there are no words. The wordless artist (or songwriter) tells stories, conveys emotion, and crafts purpose into his music through the instruments alone.
Having music without words allows the listener to feel the music and draw his own interpretations of the song’s meaning. In fact, two people can come to differing conclusions regarding what a wordless song is about. Does this mean that one of them is wrong? Or does it mean that the artist failed at crafting purpose into his song? Not necessarily. As I listen to songs I love, I constantly see new emotion and meaning in them that I did not see before.
Wordless music is stimulating. It is pure, and free from the boundaries of expression through speech. Music with words, on the contrary, does not allow such self-expression from the listener. The words are laid out for the listener. The meaning is set in stone. There is no mystery; there is no audience interaction. Music with words does not resonate with me the way music without words does.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘1418805305 which is not a hashcash value.
“People need theatre.” These were the first three words of the article and right away I thought to myself “what a load of (excuse my language) BULL. Like many teenagers I never saw theatre as a major part of my life, in fact I’ve rarely ever even thought about theatre, so as far as I was concerned theatre had no effect on me. On the third day of Macaulay orientation when we saw the three plays by Israel Horovitz, though I slightly enjoyed the experience I thought to myself what does this have to do with college or life? Throughout my life I had seen numerous plays, which I have enjoyed, but I never saw them as anything more than a temporary means to entertain myself. However reading this book has given me a whole new way of looking at “theatre.”
This article talks about how theatre is a large part of human civilization. It talks about how humans need to watch others, and need to be watched by others. It even expanded on the definition of theatre and showed me that theatre is not just people acting on a stage. So therefore this article has revolutionized the way I think about theatre to the point that after finishing the article I thought to myself “wow now I realize that the first line of the article is actually very true.”
As this article changed my views on theatre it also brought many questions into my head about it. For example the author showed how the definition of theatre is broader than most people think however I personally still don’t understand a real solid definition of theatre, before reading this article I thought I did but now this article has shaken my surety of knowing it and now I wonder “what can theatre truly be defined as?” So as I very much liked the article maybe I just didn’t understand correctly or maybe the author really did fail in this particular task, so my only complaint is that the author helps remove the typical definition of theatre from out our minds and places certain limitations on what he thinks theatre is or is not but he doesn’t really give a solid defintion of theatre. However this again makes me wonder if maybe he did that knowingly in order to make the reader think? So therefore though I found this article enlightening, it brought more questions than answers to my mind.
I have been told that the way I tell a story and the way I speak is very similar if not totally reminiscent of the way some of my closest friends speak. This is because we spend so much time speaking to each other that we rub off on each other. I find a similar trend in my writing. When reading a book or when spending a lot of time reading a certain writer’s work, my writing begins to borrow their form and feel. The passive actions of listening and reading are just like the “watching” that Woodruff writes about. It must be that the “art to watching and being watched” transcends the limits of theater (or perhaps theater has no limits and may include any form of social understanding, such as listening/talking and reading/writing).
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“The sooner we try seriously to dispense with it the better, although peace may be too, well, peaceful, for human nature to tolerate.”
I chose this quote, because the idea of a utopia, where war does not exist, has always interested me. People always wish for peace, and never want to see another war again, yet if there was no war then we wouldn’t be able to handle it. Why is it that we need wars, that humanity is incapable of living in complete peace? We all have impulses to do things, but most of us are able to hold these back, and balance our wants and needs.
“Theater frame people and their actions in order to make them more watchable. Practice in framing human action as watchable helps us cultivate humaneness.”
For me, these two lines rang for some reason. People get easily attached to movies and plays they see. They feel that connection for some reason or another because for as long as it is happening, it’s actually real to them and in their faces. However, it cultivating ‘humaneness’ does not ring true. People can come out claiming that what they had just seen moved them and that can be true but once they see that same situation on the street, it doesn’t compute. That humaneness isn’t there for real life; it’s on hold somewhere in their heads. It just brings up so many incidents and behaviors that say otherwise that I disagree with this line.
Granted, people can and will be moved by what they see in theater or in a movie and they’ll act on it. But how many people who have seen that movie on dolphin-killing in Japan will go do something to protest against it besides saying, ‘that’s horrible. They need to stop that?’ How long did it take for the rest of the world to respond to the Holocaust, to the Rwandan genocide, to Darfur? People claim that it’s a tragedy and they do nothing to stop it, to help the victims or just those people affected. That’s not humane, that’s being human. That’s self-preservation, not helping those in need because it’s not happening to you yet. People turn away from others on the train, they take steps away from that smelly hobo that needs you to call 311 for them. We can see that in a play and talk about ‘probably’ helping out. We’re not going to, most people don’t. Theater doesn’t cultivate humaneness, it shows us the humaneness we’re lacking in society.
Response 9/2/10
“Wordless music is rare in most cultures and has limited appeal”
I wholeheartedly believe that the necessity of theater is completely inaccurate, as is the necessity of being watched. True, there is always a strong desire to be seen or heard -be it a personal feat or an emotional vulnerability- but the very notion that humans have a true need to be watched is absurd. I feel that theater is more of a preservation of people’s thoughts and ideas that were meant for people who want to share said beliefs with each other.
“Theatre is necessary”
I agree with the article’s point that culture has been evolving over the years and because of this, we should be used to the boundaries of cultures expanding. I believe that theatre is extremely essential to today’s culture for it promotes a sense of togetherness and community. Because we need memory and language to survive and thrive as a culture, we need theatre for it utilizes culture and language.