©2009 Ryan C. Tittle
Tragic theatre has a lot in common with Blues music. They may be nothing like each other, but they are oddly and inextricably linked. That is because both forms come out of one singular human endeavor. I shall explain this, but first-- think about the Blues for a second. Regardless of its cultural significance, why would anyone on Earth want to dress up, pay a cover fee, go out in public and sit with other people to listen to music called "the Blues?" Similarly, I suppose, one could ask why we pay money, dress up, and go to the theatre to see plays labeled as "tragedies" or "dramas."
The reason we do this is because both forms come out of the human impetus to share the experience of humanity with other humans. Blues musicians and the really good playwrights appreciate as well as any other human being the pangs of joy, hope, and faith that can occasionally permeate this world. But, in the end, their dedication to their art forms do not let them deny the experience of pain, loss, and death that make up the world. The emotional depression of the thoughts do not depress them because they face them continually and for the purpose of our enlightenment. I suppose, in this regard, I do not put Sophocles and Shakespeare on any different plain than John Lee Hooker. All of these great men and women understood why their art forms existed.
News of the workshop production of one of my more bleak plays had reached the ears of a casual acquaintance—someone whom I had met through a friend and, then, only briefly. My friend had explained to this person that I had labeled my play a "tragedy." This word is very frightening to people nowadays. Some are frightened by its connotation, others are frightened because if you say you've written a tragedy, you're obviously pretentious. This acquaintance, with fatuous heirs and a slick smile, told me to make sure I threw a little hope in there—"No one likes to go to a play and be upset at the end of it." I thought about this for a long time. At the time, I simply smiled and moved on about my business. Later, the seemingly harmless quip made me angry. Someone who obviously had no idea about how hard I work to create human drama had just told me my business and had done so in a way that stepped on the integrity of what I've worked half my life trying to do. Even later on, it depressed me-- this person obviously had no idea why my art form even exists.
I suppose he was right, though. This is a world, after all, in which everyone is obsessed with happy endings—works that do not simply explore peace, joy, harmony, hope, etc., but insist upon them. In doing that, we've lost sight of one of the most fundamental reasons why tragedy exists. Drama is not, as people might have you believe, there to make you smile or give you hope. We live in a world where you can carry around a something-pod that will blast "Walking on Sunshine" in your ear or show you last week's episode of Ugly Betty as you're doing the nominal things of the day. Music and the dramatic form can be experienced anywhere, at any time and, more than likely, you're not going to carry around Requiem for a Dream on your portable DVD player.
But, theatre, music—the great art forms—understand we share all of the experiences of human life. Not just the good times, but the bum times as well. Tragedy, in fact, came out of the need to confront the gods. It came out of the need to make sense of this world-- from fertility rites to comedy and from death rites to tragedy. While we have put away the rites, the forms are no different now in their seriousness of purpose. We are essentially very lonely people walking around a very confusing planet. And we are trying to make sense of it in spite of lost hope. We have false senses of ourselves, hopes, ambitions, faux-confidence. We keep trying variations of ourselves on other people. Most often, they don't work. And we keep on changing, rearranging. Through this experience, there are many stories. Stories of love and hope, yes. Also, stories of family, children, death. It is from this impetus that we gather together to represent life in an arena and share close contact with others. Together, we hope this will uplift us all by the fact that we've gotten together and explored an issue, told a story, shared an experience. This experience can be the joy of love in the face of hardship in Much Ado About Nothing. Or it can be the experience of Waiting for Godot, watching Estragon and Vladimir struggle against only having each other. Suddenly, the audience looks around and realizes we also have only each other. A connection is made. An experience shared.
Onstage, a Blues musician tells an old, old story. A story of someone who had a wife and lost her. The pained expression on his face and the strains of the weeping guitar go to our very souls and make us ache. We've all been there—in some way. The experience of life is often having something and then having had it taken away. Does the song leave you with a smile? No, it leaves you with something better: the knowledge that there are other people who've been through exactly what you've been through.
Tragedy is incredibly similar. Do you think the Greeks had any more interest in getting together and getting upset as we do now? Of course not. But, they knew they would learn when they did this. They were not afraid—as Shakespeare's generation was not afraid—to face the realities of existence, to let the poets (playwrights) speak for our hardships and troubles as well as our love and our peace.
The same friend who had introduced me to the aforementioned acquaintance later got into an argument with me concerning the play referenced earlier. This actor is a very passionate person who had been cast in the workshop, but simply did not see any hope or "holiness" in the tragic proceedings of the play and broke with the company days before rehearsals began. He felt like having something to do with my play impeded upon his integrity because I had not allowed for any hope to shine through at the end of the work. I stood up for myself. I had to. I'll admit—the play is challenging. Bleak? Perhaps. And no, there is not a clearly defined "hope" inherent in the script. As in any tragedy, the "hope" is that, through the allegory of the main character's ultimate demise, the audience is challenged to search within themselves to find the hope. After all, when you've hit rock-bottom, there is no where to look but up. I told him he was right—there was not "hope" in the text. The hope is that people come, listen to the words, open themselves up to the experience of human sharing and, when they leave, they will be left to look into themselves very deeply as adults have to do from time to time.
In retrospect, I remember being generally sympathetic to his conundrum. I've been there before. I have, at other times in my life, experienced not wanting to paticipate in certain plays for "spiritual" reasons. And, had I believed my former friend was right in his decision to excise himself from my work, I would have continued with this sympathy. I asked him what he thought the purpose of theatre is. First, I gave him my thoughts. I told him something similar to what I've told you above. He answered that it was to show God. I see that, but I can't completely agree. The experience of theatre came out of, again, us being able to try and make sense out of this cockeyed existence we've been given. That is the beauty of what we do. That is the hope. That is the purpose of living—as an artist or otherwise. And I can't tell you how much we have to stand up for this. I will make sure I spend my life fighting for the right to tell the honest truth, to share this experience. Because, without others, there is no me. There are no stories without each other. And without each other to lean on, there is no story.