Political theatre

From a friend:
Yes, you do have to go see Tings.

In my head, political theater, more than most other theater, is harder to read into being from a script.

Most, uh, whatthefuckdoyoucallit, literary theater is mostly separated from most literature by the physical embodiment of the characters, which it's easy to make up in your head.

But political theater is a lot more explicitly about ideas. And the only thing political theater has to set it apart from everything else political (essays, etc) is theater's ability to slit open all your filters and hit you in the lower Dantian. The New York Times can talk at you about how shitty it is in Darfur as much as it likes, but there's something about smelling the big men with guns as they saunter into the medical tent that excises, for an instant, the ability to be complacent about it. So it seems almost a disservice to read political theater. Watering down.

(I say all this because you've studied political theater more than I have, and I want you to tell me why I'm wrong).

My response:
See I think political theatre still needs a story. Because if there's not a story than there's nothing for the audience to commit to, and nothing for them to realize. For instance, there's the sniper who wants to go to college, and the first time you see him he's doing jobs, and then you find out that actually one of the people responsible for ravaging the town of other people you met, but at the same time you feel for him because he just needs money to go to college, and the next time you see him he's gonna sell his guns so he can go to college, and the final time you see him he threw his guns away without selling them because he didn't want them to end up in the hands of some kid, so he's not going to college and he's back to doing jobs killing people and he doesn't even have guns. Powerful story, right? But the audience doesn't have to commit to him, all they are being asked to do is realize that not all snipers are bad people.

Mother Courage is amazing because it makes you journey with these people and suffer with them and in the end there is no catharsis. You just have to go on. And you walk out of the theatre completely frustrated at the business of war, not at the play. Note: I have never seen a production of Mother Courage.

Lebensraum is amazing because not only do you delve briefly into 50 people's lives, seeing the mini-tragedies and the mini-celebrations but also following families and falling in love. By the time she dies, you have grown so committed to them that it breaks your heart. Because you've seen the web woven, but could not anticipate the trap.

Angels in America is successful because it is not sensationalist in structure, it is in fact very realist, embodying magical realism, it takes its time, it's almost shakespearean in the size of material and interwoven and yet separate paths it follows. It makes no proclamations and yet is inherently political. But it makes you think it's not.

The storytelling is what is lacking. Not that there aren't stories, there certainly are. But if you asked me what Taking Over was about (and I saw it), I would say gentrification. If you asked me what Tings was about, I would say privitization (and that's me actually reading into it a little bit farther than it asks for- because it struck a realistic chord pulled from watching the overly satirical movie War, Inc last week). Both try to give you a glimpse of a world that is not your own, they ask you to commit for an hour, maybe 75 minutes, but that's it. That's enough. I disagree. I don't think it's enough. I want to walk out of the theatre upset because of its implications, or with a sense of championing something I did not think to champion before. When I finished reading In Darfur for the first time I got chills. I want that from every show I read, and yes that means I am incredibly jaded and find it hard to get through many plays, but I also know when it happens that it's really incredible theatre. Cabaret, Goliath and A Crooked Line all did that for me.

And all of that happens before there are live performers.