Thea-TAH vs. Theatre (repost)

The following is lifted from the rec.arts.theatre.plays newsgroup. It's one of a few posts in a recent debate on that newsgroup that express some interesting points of view. The text is reproduced here without permission (it's in the public domain) and the author is credited at the end of the extract.*****Wow, this has become quite a string here.I wanted to see if we could get some dialogue about an issue that I thinkis close to the center of this thread.Some people are involved in theatre because they have fun doing it. Maybethey did it in high school. Maybe they did a show in community theatre.Maybe they just always wanted to be on stage. Either way, their mainapproach is to have fun (although they may have goals to be professionalat some time in their life.)Then others are involved in theatre because they view it as an art form,they see it as a form of expressing themself, and they intend on spendinga significant part of their life doing theatre for professional purposes.I have noticed that on this newsgroup we have people from both sides andpeople who would place themselves in the middle of that spectrum. I thinkthis is causing a lot of friction.I find myself on the "professional purposes" side of the spectrum, so Itake some offense to the term "thea-TAH." I have spoken with some peoplein my community who take theatre as seriously as I do and see it as theirfuture profession. We are familiar with Stanislavsky, we read AmericanTheatre, we try to keep abreast of what shows are playing in New York andthe regional circuit, we take great interest in genre, acting style,costuming, diction, projection, believability, etc. when we see aproduction. Because of our background and our aspirations, we have set ahigher standard for what we consider "good theatre" and we have oftendiscussed how "there's no good theatre around here." Does that make ussnobs or unappreciative of those not as well versed in theatre?Last month I found myself discussing theatre with one of my director'shusbands. He is doing his Ph.D. in Physics and I brought up this verypoint. He commented that theatre is marketed to everyone, so everyone hasan opinion. But when he talks about Physics, no one is going to challengehis thoughts on the topic or even be able to discuss it unless they'vetaken several course on physics. He noted that people who "study" or"work in" theatre will probably find themselves frustrated at dinnerparties or with their friends because most people have seen a play andmany people have been in a play. I've never worked in a lab withelectron particals so I recognize that I know just about nothing aboutPhysics even though I did take a course on Physics in high school and onein college, but I wouldn't be able to say: "You know I did take a coursein Physics in college, I'm not stupid." Not that he ever said I wasstupid, but I never tried to discuss Physics with him as if I were on thesame par.My roomate is doing her Ph.D. in Political Science. She knows so much onthe topic that I find myself not even trying to debate anything with herbecause she'd kill me in a debate simply because she is much more studiedin Poli Sci than I ever will be. Now when she and I discuss theatre,things get very tricky. She goes to see plays and as an audience membershe has a right to have an opinion. But we often find ourselves indisagreement, luckily she realizes that I am approaching theatre from adifferent angle and I realize that she is approaching it from a differentangle. So when I say: "Placing the show in 1980s Texas didn't work. Halfthe accents were stereotype rather than authentic. The lead male wasmiscast and has trouble pulling off anything dramatic. Etc." and shesays: "I loved the show, it was fun" we have learned that we see itthrough different eyes. Some people have accused me of treated them likethey were stupid just because I commented on what I thought was a lousyplot twist or one-dimensional character interpretation. But when I sendscripts that I write to Equity theatres, they judge me on standardsprobably highed than I have, so I've had to learn to have very highstandards on other's work and on my own.I think everyone who does work in theatre wants their show to be the bestthing possible and that people at all levels of theatre put a lot of workinto it. But I know that I will be judged under very harsh standards whenI start getting produced in Equity theatres. So I have learned to "tearapart" other people's shows so that when I read my work I can be just ascruel so that when I put my work in front of the public, hopefully theywon't be saying: "that female character has no motivation, comedicone-liners are inappropriate for this theme, etc." I want my work to bethe best that it can be, I am perfectionist. And because I've puthundreds of hours and thousands of dollars into this major passion in mylife, I guess I feel like I can be a little more picky about theatre.So that is kind of where I'm coming from in my approach to theatre. I'dlove to hear what other people think.~ DJ Kaiser (aka DJ Sanders) djkaiser@uiuc.edu ~~ http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~djkaiser ~~ "If you want to walk in someone's footsteps, ~~ First you need to learn where they walked." ~