Does Theatre Spend too Much Time Navel Gazing?

Recently reading my way through various theatre blogs, I was struck by the fact that many posts were simply "interviews" where a list of questions had been sent to one artist or another and their answers listed. Questions such as "What role does anger play in your work?" seemed to abound, and yet there really seemed to be very little said. This is not to insinuate that the questions were not answered, in many cases they were, but there seemed to be little real substance.

One, however, should not mistake this reference to "real substance" as a condemnation of the answers afforded by these artists. For the most part, the questions were answered truthfully and thoughtfully. However, what was lacking was that essential aspect of a good publication, the concept of significance.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with such questions, they must be posed for a specific reason. If a playwright's work is based in anger... what does this mean for the theatre? Similarly with a director, dramaturg, or any other given discipline, what is the significance of their mindset? Samuel Beckett, poet laureate of the Theatre of the Absurd, lamented his Nobel Prize in literature, assuming that commentators would then search to find meaning in his plays from the context of the man's life when, according to Beckett, his own life experience had little impact on his dramatic theory and expression. Beckett refused questioning, as opposed to embracing it, but had a significant reason for doing so.

The fact that playwrights do/do not draw much of their work from anger and frustration must be given a context. Quite simply, what does it mean? Might such a fact point to a decline in the standard of living, or other such source of frustration, and thereby the drama be turned outward as a weapon against the root of said frustration? Such would be the ideal.

Aristotle viewed good drama as having medicinal qualities. Brecht posited that impulses could be directed to affect social change. The Savannah Dramaturgy encourages these artists, particularly the originator of the questionnaire that is the centre of this article, to try and draw some significance from their attitudes. It will not only inform their drama, but also might assist in curing what ills them. Attitude without context is simply navel gazing, much akin to simply "being avant-garde" for the sake of being edgy, as opposed to finding it to be the most effective method of dramatic expression for one's own particular message.