The Dialogic and the Aesthetic: Some
Reflections on Theatre as a Learning Medium
by Anthony Jackson
A Doll's House will be as flat as ditchwater when A Midsummer
Night's Dream will still be as fresh as paint; but it will have done
more work in the world; and that is enough for the highest genius, which
is always intensely utilitarian.
— George Bernard Shaw, "The Problem Play"
People have tried for centuries to use drama to change people's lives,
to influence, to comment, to express themselves. It doesn't work. It might
be nice if it worked, but it doesn't. The only thing dramatic form is
good for is telling a story.
— David Mamet, A Whore's Profession
These two assertions, some 100 years apart, were of course meant to be contentious—
but they do point to one of the recurring questions about the role that
theatrical art plays in modern Western culture and nicely encapsulate the
contrasting claims made by practitioners and critics alike for the "work
in the world" that drama can do. On the one hand, it is argued that what
is conventionally thought of as great dramatic art—while it may be imaginatively
rich, aesthetically compelling, and "timeless" in its appeal—will not achieve
the social impact that plays such as A Doll's House have done.
Such plays have a different function. They can be directly useful to us
in the "real world" beyond the theatre walls, perhaps capable of influencing
that world or at least influencing the way we think about and operate in
the world—but they may not, consequently, have much shelf life. A Doll's
House, of course, obstinately refuses to leave both shelf and stage
but in this respect may be an exception that proves the rule; the vast majority
of "interventionist" dramas rarely outlive their historical moment. (A play
such as Spirochete, a living newspaper written in 1938 in Chicago
with the aim of heightening public awareness of the widespread—but barely
discussed—problem of syphilis and of the cures available, undoubtedly did
much effective work in the world but remains of and for its time.)
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